9 reasons why you need to create a ritual for your brand.

Last week I finally finished writing Our 39 BC Bathing Philosophy. I really really enjoyed writing this. It's been a long time since I've actually got into a chunky piece of text for the brand and I'll publish the full essay linked below.

I thought it might be cool to analyse why I've actually done this because in case it's not clear to you, every single thing about 39BC, every action, every product release, every collaboration, is all about increasing the valuation of the brand. How does a 4-step bathing ritual increase the valuation of the brand, you might ask? Well I have decided that this week's newsletter is going to be a very very deep dive, a very long newsletter, into how, as a brand owner, you need to create a ritual. This isn't just for products; it can be services too and I'll write that at the end.

This newsletter is basically all about how what seems like a very simple, straightforward 4-step ritual actually increases the valuation of this brand. Okay let's go!

Tonights Stack World Zoom workshop is about Stillness and Zen Buddism. It will be a short one!

Why I Wrote the Four-Step Ritual

I've been obsessed with bathing for the last 20 years. I distinctly remember the year I became obsessed with bathing. It was when I turned 19 years old and it was 2003. My grandfather had just passed away in May. He was my best friend and I was grieving without knowing it. In September I'd moved to London to attend Central St. Martin's. I don't know whether it was just suddenly being surrounded by thousands of people every day instead of the hundred or so in my small town that I would come in contact with or if it was a deep-seated anxiety of being alone. I suddenly got this fixation with having a bath at the end of the night to wash away... actually at the time I didn't know WHAT I was washing away. My mind was too young and I didn't have my language or tools yet.

Anyway that was 20 years ago. 10 years later when I started my own healing journey proper, which then became my book "New Methods For Women," I started to become fascinated by rituals. In fact I've always been fascinated by religion, quite obsessed with religion actually, but then I expanded it to look for other ways to soothe my soul. Like I've written in the essay "Choose Your Healer" I went to cacao drinking ceremonies. I got a yoni massage. I started regular acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I went to a lot of temples.

And I started to think about the human need for ritual. Why do people light candles before meditating? Why do we make tea before difficult conversations? Why do certain actions seem to tell the brain that one chapter is ending and another is about to begin?

And then finally over the last five years or so I became really interested in water. Part of my healing journey was letting my hair go back natural and I kept my hair braided, which meant I could finally swim, bath, shower, spa in a way that was far more freeing than I ever had before. This is especially important for Black women. This obsession with water and bathing meant that I started researching a lot because I'm a Gemini and that's what I do. The ancient history of Roman bathhouses, Japanese onsen, etc. suddenly became something that I was really preoccupied with and as you all know, that's how 39BC was born.

Somewhere amongst all that reading, travelling, photographing and note-taking, I began to notice that cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years often arrived at remarkably similar conclusions. Bathing was never simply about getting clean. It was about preparing the body and mind for a different state of being.

In the beginning of building the brand, we spoke a lot in this newsletter about world building. The endless documents that I told you all to write that you needed in order to truly create a world that someone wanted to be part of. At the time I never thought about this four-step ritual system being part of those foundational documents but the other good thing about building this brand is that I am fixing mistakes very very quickly.

So if you are at the start of your journey, I highly recommend that you include a ritual as part of the process. However even if you have an existing brand, it is never too late to start now organising your products into a system that the customer can buy into easily.

Let's get into the four-step ritual (or three steps if you want to be lean.) And my 9 reasons on why it's important. But first...

How I Wrote the Four-Step Ritual

It didn't come as a surprise to me that the minute I decided to write this ritual, the words just immediately popped into my head.

Initially it was: - preparation - purification - immersion - anointing but not only is that way too many syllables, it had no alliteration and seemed quite ancient, not something that could be modern, and one of our brand values is modernity.

Because I consume a lot of information, I would say that one of my superpowers is synthesising that disparate information into something cohesive and intuitive so that it feels like it just sprang forth from nothing. But of course it's never from nothing.

After years of research, I realised that almost every bathing tradition I admired followed a similar rhythm. There was always a moment of preparation before the water. There was always an act of cleansing. There was usually some form of immersion, whether that was a bath, steam, sweat lodge or thermal pool. Then there was a return to the world, often marked by oils, fragrances, food, conversation or rest. Different cultures used different tools, but the structure remained remarkably consistent. So from this I was able to distil it down and create my own bathing ritual.

Here is my 4 Step Bathing ritual

Eventually I distilled everything into four simple words:

1 - Prepare

2 - Purify

3 - Soak

4 - Seal

You can read the full essay here.

And here are all the reasons you should have a three- or four-step ritual:

1 - The Four-Step Ritual Is a Founding Document

Every civilisation has foundational texts that define its values and explain how people should participate within that culture.