#VirtualRitual – Each weekday our friends from Penn, including Students, Staff, Faculty, Penn Religious Communities Council and other voices from campus will be sharing the ways their spiritual rituals have adapted while staying at home and as they connect to their spiritual communities remotely.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Today Sanjana Bijlani, Associate Director, of Penn Women’s Center shares:

It can be hard to know how to begin a grounding practice, let alone committing to engaging with it with some consistency. What if we made it easier for ourselves? What if we allowed ourselves the flexibility to pick just one thing to give our attention to for as long as we’re able to? During the last few months, I have been sitting with these questions as a way of inviting in new and familiar ways of connecting with stillness and reflection. It could mean revisiting a favorite passage, listening to an old song, or letting a tea bag steep for a little while longer. It could be for one second, one minute, one hour, maybe more, maybe less. When there is so much being asked of our energy, I have been wondering about what it could mean to practice care by letting ourselves be at whatever pace we’re able to. What if we allowed ourselves to ask, “What do I want to choose for myself? What care feels possible to offer to myself?” What if we allowed the asking to be a beginning that we can always return to?