RITUAL AT WORK
HOW/WHEN
HOW DOES IT WORK TO WORK WITH RITUAL AT WORK?
Short summary
Laying the foundation
We start with needs and clarity
Working with us is not only about celebrating meaningful moments, it is also about getting in touch with your needs and about becoming clear. The value we give to our clients is much larger than ‘just’ offering a transformative experience, spaces, or rituals for cohesion and rhythm. This is because the processes we use for understanding what you need, who you are and what you are doing gives everything back to you. We need to understand these things to create a fitting ritual for you. A willingness from you to explore topics of needs and clarity with presence and authenticity is therefor essential. Collaboration with us begins with this exploration. If you feel a bit lost in these topics, then contact us from that point. We love starting the process from there.
Viktor's constant request to match the rituals exactly to the purpose and needs of the event and the group was a great added value that gave me clarity.
- Client 2018
Your authorship, your responsibility
If you ask us for help, it is important that you acknowledge your own authorship and responsibility for the ritual. When we start from this point it is much easier to get it right. Only you know what will meet your needs and it is your job to meet them. We just help you in doing that. If all the ideas on what should be part of your ritual end up coming from us, it is still your ritual. Since it is only you that can say that they are the right ideas. This is important for many reasons. The primary reason is that designing the ritual is sometimes easy compared to actually going through with it, and we can't do that part for you. Another reason is that in the work with ritual we are looking to externalise your internal world, and you know this world way better than us.
We work with what is there
We can only work with what is there. If you have been learning how to paint, love it and struggle with allowing yourself to do it because identifying with the practice doesn’t fit “who you are supposed to be”, then we can help you with this. We can ritualize a process of separating from this narrative and in initiating an allowance for the self-image as a painter. If you on the other hand have no interest in painting but have convinced yourself that a painter is who you are supposed to be, we can probably only help you in letting go of this story. Similar to how a marriage won’t make you start loving your partner, but might help you in making it feel safe to show a pre-existing love more strongly.
Designing and engaging the ritual
Ritualization
Instead of understanding ritual as things in themselves, ritual can be understood as a ‘stance’ or an attribute that can be applied to social and personal processes. Taking this stance or getting in to the activity of ‘applying the ritual stuff’ is called ritualization. Ritualization is done both in the design of a ritual and in the active participation of one. Meaning ritual is action as well as a way of thinking. This is a very useful perspective and we will want to be doing this in order to design something with substance. To do this we start from the assumption that ritual-thinking and ritual-action show up together, and then we direct the creative process so that it puts you in a space that is similar to the one that the finished ritual is supposed to contain. We can get strongly involved in this activity through visualisation exercises and rehearsals.
Ways of putting a ritual into action
Usually our rituals will have the shape of a written down step-by-step process before they are put in to action. If you then treat the process as a prescription and do it alone, or if we help you in putting it into action depends on the situation.
Ways of designing a ritual
We can spend some time and create the design of the ritual process together. Or Ritual At Work can do the work based on a brief and a meeting if the ritual in question is not too big. Ideas usually start flowing as soon as the need is communicated. Regardless of how we do it, it is important that you have a strong feeling of connection to the vision of the ritual. Getting to the right design might be possible within the space of a few hours, or it will take much longer. It depends on how clear the impulse to have a ritual is. Making the impulse clear is something we will help you with.
We primarily base this part our process together on the How To Be Clear-methods developed by Charlie Davies.
Using only the internet
When our physical presence in the ritual is not required, it is possible to do all of the work over the internet. We love having clients from all over the world and have therefor learned how to deliver this work online.
