Because I’m a big ol’ hippie, every New Year I continue to rope D and friends into joining me on my “Entering the New Year with Intention” tradition.

It’s simply a way for me to mark moments in the year past and powerfully welcome the year to come. It’s also contains a bit of goal-setting which appeals to the Type-A hippie in me. Oh joy!

In fact, way back in 2007, D and I used this exercise to make our way out of debt and create a path to our 2010 sabbatical.

I thought I’d take a few moments to share this tradition with you and invite you to join in.

Our tradition is a bit of a mash-up of what we’ve found to work over the years and suggestions from others. If you’d like to add anything or tweak it to best suit you, please do (and please share!).

Here goes:

Generally, I ask friends to gather at a quiet place, preferably in nature, with some yummy snacks and non-alcoholic drinks to share for a picnic lunch. I also recommend bringing some unlined paper and colored pens to list/draw the year past and the coming year.

Here is the flow (a detailed guide for each piece is below):

1. Find a nice spot to share or your own spot if you’d like to go it alone
2. Offer introductions for anyone who doesn’t know one another
3. Create the space – thank everyone for coming, participating, give the lay of the land
4. Guided meditation: 1) Ground yourself, 2) Review the past year, 3) Imagine the coming year
5. Share, if you wish
6. Closing, including a toast to the time past and time to come and our fab community!
7. Nosh!
8. Leave at your own pace.

Below are some things to consider for the flow.

You may wish to create your metaphor or story-scape to set the stage
One example is of a woman whose stage was a train boarding platform, bags that were to be left behind, trains with destination signs to be filled in as part of the meditation.

Release – What are you no longer willing to carry? What no longer serves you? What will you leave behind?

I asked: What bags will you leave behind on the platform?

Intention – With what do I want to fill the space I’m creating for myself?

Where do I want to powerfully point myself?

I asked: Where is the train, you are boarding, headed?

Follow-through – What is one action I will take to give support to my intention?

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3. Creating the Space – Lay of the Land

• What would I like to acknowledge, celebrate, accept and move on from about the past year?
• What would I most like to have happen in my life between now and the end of next Year?
• Save room for being surprised by what shows up in the moment, a bit of improvisation and play
• Set ten (or as little or many as you would like) new intentions for the upcoming year, taking into account all areas of my life – health, relationships, work, spiritual growth, etc.
• In some way, demonstrate your commitment to your intentions: declare them out loud to your surroundings or to your circle, create a line you will step over, write them and put them in a jar on your altar, whatever comes to you.

Guided Meditation

Ground Yourself

• Ground yourself and become present, with yourself, your surroundings and each other
• Call in whatever unseen help you like through invocation and invitation

Review the past year

• If you have it, review the prior year’s intentions (written in an old journal?), and write about whether or not they came to pass and how they’ve affected my life.
• Acknowledge & Appreciate blessings – Take time to walk through the past year noticing the energy of the different surroundings (weather, people, holidays, etc). What happened in January, February, etc? What happened and how did I feel in the different seasons and places I was during the year? Did I get a new job? Start or finish school? Add a member to my family? Take care of my body in a new way? Did I take any trips that I want to acknowledge?
• Acknowledge & Accept challenges – These may be the same as your blessings, different or both
• Are there things you are not complete with about the past year?  you may use this moment to choose to not be complete with it and enter the next year anyway

Release:

• Choose to be at peace with all of the past year – choose it for all that it is and all that it isn’t
• Do something that symbolically transmutes that which you are releasing (I like fire 🙂 Let your body feel the what you are about to let go
• Let your mind feel the constriction of holding on to the old thoughts associated with what you are now releasing
• Let your heart feel the gratitude for what this meant to you in the past and the sadness or joy of goodbye
• Let your spirit feel the how challenged it may have felt and the new expansiveness about to become available to it
• Align into the whole of you and offer up these things you are letting go to the past

Standing in a space of nothing you have created between the past year and the coming year consider what you would like to create

Imagine the next year

• Take a moment to breathe and reground
• Think carefully about the year ahead and the intentions you have for yourself and your family.
• You may want to consider where you lack balance in your life. This tradition is an ideal time to reflect on what balance you may have and/or are seeking.
• Much like you reviewed the past, take time to imagine the next year given the predictable changes in weather, seasons, holidays, work schedules, etc. What intention would you like to bring into those spaces (leaving room for the unknown).
• What lies ahead? – realities, dreams,
• What may be standing in my path that will support where I want to go?
• What may be standing in my path that will detour me?
• What do I already have that can help me get my intentions met?
• What do I need from myself, my community, the universe to get where I want to go?
• Can I get these things?
• What steps do I need to take to get my intentions met?

6. Closing:

• Standing in December of the year you have just created, illustrate (write a letter, draw a map, etc) your journey that year acknowledging the intentions set for the year. – Be in reality and be unreasonable. Acknowledging how you’ve made a difference in your life and in the lives of others.
• Take a breath and reground
• Let yourself be infused with the energy of the planting of this new seed of your powerful intention and know, have full faith that it will be.
• Ask the Universe to show you the way. Reflect on the interconnectedness of all nature, human beings everywhere with the animals, the waterways, the land and everything that grows from the ground.
• Connect with your circle if you have friends with you
• Thank the unseen friends/Divine/guides you called in at the beginning of your ritual

Follow-through

• Remember to take the simple action steps that you set for yourself in your meditation/preparation
• It might be helpful for you to create reminder notes and to ask friends for support
• Don’t be surprised if some things in your physical reality, emotional, mental or spiritual health shift as a result of this
• Keep a journal to track your follow-through and what shows up along the way