Spiritual Foreplay
Set up your spiritual practice for success.
Photo©SebastiánFernández/123rf
How many times have you sat down to meditate and struggled with the practice of staying still, clearing the mind and/or holding space for any length of time? Chances are you hadn’t properly prepared, or as I like to call it, performed adequate spiritual foreplay.
Spiritual foreplay is the intentional act to prepare and “warm you up” to a spiritual practice. If you’ve ever had sex with foreplay first — and I hope you have, and do often! — you know that foreplay is just as important, if not more so, than the actual intercourse.
While often a spiritual practice is simply there to calm you and help you move through your daily stressors, what are engaging in is a sacred and important act for which you need to be in the right frame of mind. When you treat it with the respect it deserves, you end up with much better results. While you don’t have to be all gussied up to meditate or channel or pray, if you take the time to set the stage for an exquisite experience you will likely go deeper in the practice.
Setting The Mood
Begin your foreplay by preparing your space and setting the mood to suit your individual preferences and practice. Here are some common examples:
- Running a water fountain or other water feature
- Turning on a salt lamp
- Burning incense, palo santo or another calming scent
- Clearing the room energetically with sage, holy water or incense
- Removing any distractions, such as phones or pets, and closing the door
- Running a noise maker to drown out background noises and/or playing music
- Opening the windows, turning down the lights, creating a spiritually rich environment
Ways To Prepare Personally
Once you have a space that feels inviting and respectful of the sacred act of the spiritual practice, you can now begin to do some personal things to get you into the energy of the spiritual practice. Everyone is different, and backgrounds vary broadly; do what feels right for you.
Being raised in the Greek Orthodox church, I am partial to signing the cross when I begin to commune with my spirit. Though I am no longer a practicing Greek Orthodox Christian, I recognize that my system can easily connect to spirit when signing the cross, burning frankincense and chiming bells. For others it could be some of the following ideas:
- Slowly opening and closing your eyes
- Tapping on EFT healing points while reciting a statement
- Saying a prayer
- Using rosary beads
- Playing a musical instrument
- Vibrating with singing bowls
- Chanting
- Practicing heart centered breathing
- Doing a Yoga pose that feels good for you
- Pulling a card from a favorite deck
- Reading a passage
- Holding a crystal
- Looking at yantras
- Sun gazing
- Coloring, drawing
- Journaling
- Calling on the divine
- Slowly swallow tea or water
The possibilities are endless. The only important feature is that it speaks to you and feels right.
Honoring The Sacredness Of The Practice
When we are first beginning a spiritual practice and wanting it to be a lasting part of our lives, we must respect it. This is a sacred moment in your day. Creating a ritual can be the ideal way to help you get into the flow of the practice with ease.
For example, Transcendental Meditation begins with performing an eye movement and slow breathing before you begin your mantra and start the meditation itself. For years, I was meditating and going quite deep in the meditations, until I got so comfortable with the process that I stopped doing the eye movements and the breathing. I had forgotten about that portion of the process because it seemed insignificant, and I no longer needed it to get into the trance-like state. Well, big shocker here: I stopped having positive results with the meditation. I had to go back to my teacher for help to restore my TM practice. When she reminded me about the eye movements that I felt weren’t important, I went along with her instruction — and I went deep into meditation. It was just that simple.
When you are learning to channel, meditate, astral project, or any other form of communion with the divine, you have a choice to make. Will you show up to this time well-prepared or as you are with no prep? Would you go to a job interview without putting on nice clothes, brushing your teeth and combing your hair? How about your first day of high school? Or your wedding day? There is preparation that does into these moments. Taking the time is a sign of self-respect, as well as respect to those you are interacting with. If your intention is to channel and receive divine communication, wouldn’t it be common sense to provide a vessel that has been well cared for and honored?
Do I Have To Engage In Spiritual Foreplay EVERY Time?
Absolutely not! I recommend you identify the methods that speak to you and use them consistently until they feel integrated as a part of your practice.
I’m not saying that your conditions must be perfect all the time or even most of the time. Spirit doesn’t care about this stuff. Your body and mind on the other hand do. Humans are ritualistic beings. We thrive with rituals and patterns. There is a reason that chanting, incense and breathing exercises have been around for thousands of years.
We are living in an exciting time where you get to choose from a huge selection of methods to perform spiritual foreplay. You get to experiment with them and find what you like… just like sexual foreplay!
The idea is to find something that tells your body, your mind, your nervous system, your energy system, aka, all of you that you are now entering the spiritual practice. It is a way to get all of you on board consistently with ease. You will find that once you have your spiritual foreplay, you won’t have to use it every time, but you will have it to help you fast track your way to the spiritual outcome desired. As you incorporate new spiritual practices, you can use the same foreplay favorites to signal your system this new method is safe, and ready to be added to the infinite blessings available to you on your spiritual journey.
Reprinted with permission from Lori Lamont’s Empowerment EFT Substack.
Lori Lamont is an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) master trainer, mentor and practitioner, who is passionate about self-empowerment through EFT. On her EFT journey, she has become competent at helping others release their resistance and claim their power by studying with a wide variety of mentors and trainers. Lori is offering a 4-day virtual EFT 1&2 training beginning Nov 1, 2024. Save $75 with code SOC75.
