Ritual and Ceremony: Innate Longing for a Revival of Tribal Intimacy

We are tribal. It doesn’t look this way today but only 100 years ago most of us were living close to relatives and in small communities were we knew many of the people. Because there was no television, Internet, video games and PDD’s (personal digital devices) we all actually talked to each other. We organized events that brought us together in many ways. In Westernized nations most of this has been lost today.

All kinds of things can unite us and bring us together with ‘tribe’. The music festival season has just passed here in Northern California. The offerings are infinite and, yes, it’s about music but it’s more than just the music; it’s about seeing and being with tribe. Your tribe, even if you actually don’t know anyone at the event!

Music unites us. It is proven in brain science that two different brains sync and move together in every detail when they listen to or play music together. Our brain waves actually fall into sync and create a similar pattern. This is why drumming during ritual ceremonies, both ancient and modern, is used. It unifies the brain, body and soul of the individuals participating in the ritual.

We go to places where we will find our ‘tribe’ because we want to be surrounded by the same values, actions and activities that stimulate us. This is a process of activation of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons help us to assimilate with the others of our family, culture, society and tribe. The same areas of our brain that fire when we see someone else doing an action, fire when we do the action ourselves. This is part of what makes us social human beings.

I’ll be dancing at a festival and see another person, usually a woman, do some great dance move and then I will effortlessly and simple do the move, too. There is usually very little problem in copying the move. Why would that be? It is because we have the innate ability to copycat everything. This makes us a part of our tribe, our culture, our family of biological kin and friends.

We are copycats. This is how babies learn and how we all are life-long learners. This is also why we need other people in our presence. We are learning all the time, even when being passive about it. That’s one of the reasons we go to where our tribe will be. We go to festivals, school events, soccer games, the hairdressers (you know, the gossip tribe is there), church, the skateboard park, bingo and on and on. We are hungry for our tribe. Being with like-minded people is a necessity of life.

But all of these modern things are sometimes poor substitutes for the real thing. Deep, ceremonial tribal experiences fulfill our longing for belonging and entrain our brains and souls with an infusion of intimacy. Rituals and celebrations are needed in life and it’s time we brought them back into our lives. Creating a ceremony or ritual is easy. It requires a bit of imagination and an intuitive freedom to begin. Here are some examples of simple ceremonies and rituals you can create:
- A prayer of gratitude at every meal
- A conscious recall when you feel thankful that is acknowledged with a…
- Sitting in morning meditation each day
- Picking flowers for your home out of the garden each week
- Creating a bathing ritual with your lover
- Sharing massages every Friday night with your partner
- Reading a book to your toddler each night before bed
- Creating a coming-of-age ceremony for your daughter or son
- Holding a blessing way for your new born grandchild
- Creating a community dining experience in your neighborhood on a regular, weekly basis
- Manifesting a community garden where everyone meets on Saturday morning to grow flowers and vegetables
- Joining or creating a woman’s group or a man’s group in your area so that you have a resource by which to go deeply into life’s issues
- Making love more often, with conscious intention

Ceremony creates lasting memories by increasing the neural chemicals that result from emotional involvement in the ritual. Social well-being is far more than the Facebook lives we lead today. We need to be in each others presence so that our mirror neurons can work and our music sense can sync us and we can look into each others eyes and flood ourselves with the bonding neurohormone oxytocin. We need tribe to survive. Create a ceremony or ritual for yourself that involves the people in one of your ‘tribes’. Everyone will be happy and more connected if you do!

Pushing Your Edges - Gently

“Don’t reject anything you are experiencing. Meet it instead with a brief moment of non-judgmental awareness – touching it and letting it be.” From Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships by John Welwood
Tantric practice invites us to push our boundaries, just a bit, so that we experience something new and unique, not about the ‘thing’ we do but about the way in which we experience and then handle the situation. There is a profound practice that is essential for any Tantrica – nonjudgmental witnessing. It looks like this: “I’m noticing that I’m beginning to raise my voice.” or “I’m really feeling grateful and happy right now.” Period. Nothing more - nothing less. It isn’t: “I’m raising my voice and that’s going to get me in trouble.” That statement is judgmental and inflicts a little ‘ding’ on your psyche whenever you speak it to yourself. In the same respect, it isn’t this either: “I’m really feeling grateful and happy right now and I deserve it.” Yes, you deserve it but even adding that piece to the simple acknowledged presence of the ‘feeling’ contains elements of judgment.
This is a practice that helps you pay attention to how you are feeling, to what your gut is telling you. You already know, in your psyche, that that means you are becoming angry or that you are feeling proud of being deserving. You can go on to simply notice that fact. Don’t judge your self, don’t think about what you should-of, could-of done, don’t do anything to take yourself out of the ‘feeling’ mode of the witnessing.
When this ‘witnessing’ becomes second nature it will nurture your spirit and lead you to greater understanding of who you are. There is no higher goal in life than to find out the details of the real you. That is the beginning of a beautiful relationship – you loving you!

Oxytocin and the Interplay of Relating

Significant new studies are showing the complexity of the world of neurochemicals that make up our bodies, minds and souls. Fascinating studies on the neuropeptide oxytocin are showing its importance in pair-bonding between lovers, families and friends. It is also being singled out for its role in the more feminine trait of ‘tending and relating’ in the face of adversity. Fight or flight, in the face of stress, seems to be a more male trait and may have something to do with the interplay of testosterone levels and oxytocin levels. Estrogen, on the other hand, enhances the affects of oxytocin and helps to promote the brain’s use of oxytocin to create win-win scenarios.

Reactions to stress factors are smaller and pass faster in people under the influence of higher levels of oxytocin. Estrogen enhances oxytocin release and androgens like testosterone mitigate it. It may be that as women age (the degree of free testosterone in their bodies and brains increases as estrogen compounds decrease) they become less attached to their long-term love relationships, especially if they are strained. They seek friends, family and, sometimes, new mates so as to increase their levels of oxytocin. All of this is unconscious, of course, but helps us understand the movement of humans in the relationship love dance.

Oxytocin may be why men seek more sex partners than women tend to. Women produce more oxytocin, in more ways than men, and it helps them create bonding relationships of all kinds. It induces trust, intimacy, reaching to help others and reduces stress so it only seems natural that men would seek, unconsciously, of course, their own ways of increasing the supply of it to their brains. Because men have access to oxytocin during orgasmic pleasure and, in smaller amounts, through intimate relating like kissing and cuddling, they would seek these behaviors naturally. Women, on the other hand, have more opportunity to experience the oxytocin high through not only orgasm and cuddling but through nursing, childbirth and general friendship tending. They just are more ‘wired’ for the production of oxytocin because it is biologically necessary for bonding them to friends and family.

There are several companies experimenting with low-level oxytocin sprays that may be out on the market in a few years. What will that do to the world of love and bonding and connection? In a society that prides itself on innovation, where is this taking us and how will it benefit, detour or cause problems in the human striving to love and be loved? In the face of free-will corporate profits, I’m sure we’ll be finding out soon enough.