Understanding and Integrating Ritual in your Practice

Cultural rituals are part of our everyday lives. They’re visible in the way we sit down to eat, the way we interact with the community around us, and even in the way we connect with clients.

Whether cultural rituals are therapeutic or harmful depends on the individual, the setting, and their purpose. Some rituals may even seem foreign, strange or even pathological when seen in context of the DSM-directed diagnostic and treatment approach.

But for us as clinicians, it’s important to have a solid understanding of cultural rituals so we can effectively integrate their healing ability in our practices. And the best place to start is by considering our own relationship to rituals.

That’s why we’re offering these free worksheets which include a cultural ritual assessment to help you understand your name, your heritage, and your culture. Don’t let cultural misunderstanding hinder relationships with your clients. Download these free worksheets today!

Take the first step toward multicultural awareness and competency by completing these exercises.

Please share these free worksheets with your friends and colleagues and don’t miss our NEW online course: Multicultural Awareness.

Want more multicultural worksheets? Check out Build Rapport & Cultural Competency today!

Leslie Korn, Ph.D., MPH, LMHC, is a renowned expert in two interrelated disciplines: Integrative Medicine and nutrition for mental health, and Cross Cultural Psychology and Counseling. Her humor, breadth of knowledge and style of presentation make her seminars exciting and practice-changing. She has over 40 years of experience as a clinician, educator and research scientist and has worked in urban and rural settings with diverse communities including Latino/a and Native communities. She lived and worked in the jungle of Mexico for over 25 years where she directed a public health clinic working alongside traditional healers and also had a successful private practice for 15 years in Boston where she introduced somatic psychotherapy and yoga at Harvard Medical School in 1985.

Dr. Korn has a dual doctorate in Behavioral Medicine and Traditional (indigenous) Medicine, and a Masters of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Korn also earned a Masters in cross-cultural health psychology from Lesley University where she taught for 20 years. She was a clinical fellow and instructor in psychology and religion at Harvard Medical School ,the former clinical director of the New England school of Acupuncture, Faculty at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. She is an approved clinical supervisor, a licensed mental health counselor, and was a Fulbright scholar in Mexico and an NIH-funded scientist conducting research on massage and Polarity therapy, Dr. Korn is the author of Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health: The Complete Guide to the Food Mood Connection, Eat Right Feel Right: 50 recipes and Tips to Improve Mood, Sleep, Attention & Focus, Rhythms of Recovery: Trauma, Nature and the Body, The Multicultural Workbook, Preventing and Treating Diabetes Naturally, The Native Way and the forthcoming The Good Mood Kitchen. Dr. Korn is core faculty and fieldwork supervisor in mental health counseling at Capella University and maintains an international clinical consulting and coaching practice for clinicians and their clients.