MAP Ritual 001.

Ceremony of a Safe Space

MAP RITUAL 001. Ceremony of a Safe Space

Who is this for?: NeuroMystical Kids of all ages, Parents, Families. This ritual can be completed individually or as a group.
*Note: If you have more than 1 child, please only perform this ritual 1 sibling at a time. Each fort is tailor-made for the individual. If siblings want to help, ensure you promote a supportive environment where the sensory seeker controls the show. If siblings or parents have ideas that the sensory seeker shoots down, do not take it personally. You are stepping into their world. You are demonstrating a willingness to learn about how they process the environment around them.

If you are a parent attempting to complete this ritual with your child, do your best to help, not to interfere with their process. Write down as much information as you can. Ask questions along the way if they do not answer, write that down. If they appear excited, overwhelmed, or stressed, write down where in the process there are shifts in energy or expression. The more you notice, the better your MAP will be!

What do you need? Age-appropriate fort materials, such as blankets, pillows, and supports. Or a journal and sketchbook if you prefer to draw or write rather than build the physical structure. Oh! And a candle!

How long will this take? Read through the ceremony first and determine what type of energy you have for the activity. Average time 40- 60 minutes. Shorten or take breaks as needed!

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If your body were a fort built for safety, what would it look like?

Welcome to the MAP (Magical Architecture Program), where we turn sensory data into magic! Today, we are exploring the temple body as a sensory- friendly nook.

Right Now! Magazine has been exploring the importance of sensory-friendly environments for neurodivergent people.( You can find more articles in Right Now! magazine here.) Which sounds great! Until you actually start trying to understand the way sensory information affects the body! And then you could collapse trying to process all the data!

Lights! Music! Sensation! EVERYTHING in one’s environment can be so overwhelming to process! Especially if you are a sensitive person! You’re like a little beacon for all of the invisible worlds that talk! From electrical wires in the wall to buzzing microscopic bugs. The sensory info just globs onto you!

To accommodate this sensitivity, we’re going to take it nice and slow. Which is why I have created a ritual for a safe space! a step-by-step exercise that helps us notice, identify, and integrate the information that feels so overwhelming in our body.

After all, one of the most difficult tasks is remembering to break things down into smaller, more manageable parts. Here’s a little tip from one neurodivergent person/ mom to another:
Are you or your little one still overwhelmed? Break it down into even smaller parts.

For example, telling someone with autism or ADHD to “do the laundry” is not a manageable task. There are dozens of tasks within the task! Therefore, a meltdown may ensue!

Instead of saying “do the laundry,” we might say “put your clothes in the washer.”

However, if you are cut from the same cloth as me and mine … this too will be entirely too overwhelming. In which case, you may actually need to break it down even smaller than that, “bring down your laundry bin”.

The reason I share this is that our ritual is to construct a sensory-friendly blanket fort. But this is an overwhelming task with many steps. So, please feel free to break my steps into even smaller steps and take breaks as necessary! Remember, the goal is to look for resistance within the activity and understand where we become stressed/ or stretched out in the process. Approach your ritual with gentleness. There is no perfect way; there is only your way.

I is crucial - especially for neurodivergent people - to slow down and identify our needs. This is, as my mentor Alison Nappi says, "sensation as information”. (You can find her on Substack at Write with Spirit for more mystical poems and prose!)

In order to understand the nature of our condition, we must be willing to sit at the threshold of our overwhelm.

At first, it might be hard to address the number of bite-sized tasks we can tolerate. Especially if we have been chronically overstimulated! Defiance and resistance may pop up! Which is reasonable, considering we’ve spent considerable time ignoring our tolerance.

This is why we start with sensory data in our environment. Not only is it an area we are probably (unconsciously) vaguely aware of, but there are also more concrete ways to define our threshold of tolerance through our environmental awareness. The more we notice, the more data we log, the more we understand the nature of our condition (so we can turn it to magic!)

I have come up with a fun ritual/exercise to help you (your child/ your family) put words to sensation. The goal is to increase awareness of how well you function in your space, and how your space is (or is not!) designed to support your nervous system.

The cosmic blanket fort is a metaphor for your perfect safe space. It is your perfect blend of sound, lights, textures, size, and style. It is the place you retreat to when you are overwhelmed. A trusty spot full of books and music, tailor-made for you and ONLY you. A place to de-stimulate, decompress, and de-stress. A place where you control the sensory input AND output. Your cosmic blanket fort is highly designed to touch your skin, your heart, and your spirit in a way that heals you.

Let’s open our minds, our journals, and our awareness together, and begin the ceremony of a sensory-safe space!