Let’s get wild. Let’s get Primal.

If you’re on this journey with me, you have some interest in magic and ritual. I do make ritual kits and host ceremonies every month. Maybe something in you sparks when you hear the word magic, or maybe the old way soothes your soul and wakes up a remembrance dancing unabashedly around a fire. Or maybe I’m wrong, and the whole idea of a ritual is really freaking weird and the whole thing turns you off. Well, I’m here to tell you about the science of this healing magic.

In my studies at the Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality, I am learning all about how the old ways, shamanism, healing work, and energy work are deeply connected to the brain. I learned that we have a very special part of our brain called the primal brain. This part dictates the limbic system and the cortex, our emotions and our beliefs about those emotions. Basically, this primal brain dictates how we perceive everything. And yet, we ignore it.

Our own wildness has been shut off in our world. In every culture other than the western industrialized world, there has been time set aside where you could access and release trauma from that primal part of the brain. People would move wildly all night, take plant medicine, shake, yell, chant, drum, dream, howl at the moon, and drop into this very primal ritualistic state of being.

Really what was happening was a deep healing from the bottom up, completing stress cycles and discharging trauma from the central nervous system so that one could enjoy their daily life.

I say, now, we answer the call and bring ritual back.

We need to tap into this part of ourselves. It is what makes us whole. It is what makes us holy. Living a sacred life involves ritual because it helps us be present in our bodies to feel things, to be in the moment. We get so caught up in our attachment to looking pretty, being civilized, and being digestible to others that we never fully let loose the primal, powerful, wild authentic self. Without this essence, we can never be fully integrated human beings.

When you enter this state or ritual or trance, you surrender to sensation. It is liberating, it is freeing, and it is deeply healing.

Get into it — whether you’re doing a new or full moon ceremony, or you are honoring your own cycle, or you’re initiating a womb-clearing and ceremoniously letting go of past-lovers, or building a magical morning and nighttime routine, or infusing ritual into your beauty regime or meal prepping. Our primal brains heal from symbols, colors, and ritual. There is a reason why this stuff is so ancient and powerful — it works.

Make your rituals. Lose yourself in sensation. Feel. Heal. Be alive, as you are, in all your primal raging ethereal glory.

***This post was inspired by my teacher Layla Martin, please look her up if you haven’t!