The Power of Ritual

0:00Gwyneth Paltrow:Welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow, and today's episode is a little different. I'm taking you with me for a drive with Polestar as I reflect on rituals, the small things we come back to again and again that help ground us. The ones we inherit, the ones we create, the ones that shape how we move through our lives. From cooking and connection to sleep and self-care, in the midst of everything, these small moments can become a kind of anchor. Thank you for tuning into the Goop Podcast. Today's episode is made possible by Polestar. Those who know me know my car is my mobile sanctuary.

0:39Gwyneth Paltrow:It's one of the few places in the day that can feel really calm and restorative. So the space matters. That's why I love Polestar 3. It's an all electric SUV with a kind of thoughtful innovation that I'm always drawn to. Things like massage seats, immersive 3D surround sound, and Google Gemini, which can answer questions, set reminders, and just make life feel a little more streamlined when I'm on the go. The technology is seamlessly integrated and complements the minimalist design. Everything feels intentional, clean, and beautifully considered. Whether I'm heading to a meeting or just taking a moment for myself in the car, Polestar 3 makes the drive feel like a sanctuary.

1:21Learn more and book your test drive at Polestar.com.

1:52Gwyneth Paltrow:Walking down to the garden and seeing what's ready for the saucepan upstairs in the kitchen. I know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. So I'm on my way to the grocery store because I forgot eggs. Normally I like to get my eggs at the farmer's market, but I ran out. So we're going to make a quick trip and I can complete my breakfast. Healers and seekers. Hey Google, let's go to my favorite market and take the senior group. Okay, let's go to the nearest farmer's market. So a lot of people ask me about this boyfriend breakfast thing, which started when Brad and I were dating.

2:35Gwyneth Paltrow:Polestar as I reflect on rituals. The small things we come back to again and again that help ground us. The ones we inherit, the ones we create, the ones that shape how we move through our lives. From cooking and connection to sleep and self-care. In the midst of everything, these small moments can become a kind of anchor. Picking a moment, a weekly moment, to do something for him and to cook for him since it wasn't something that he was used to and he was used to giving more and not receiving so much. And so I thought it would be kind of romantic if I were able to do something like this every week for him.

3:23Gwyneth Paltrow:So when we were dating on a Saturday morning, I would go to his house and make him a special breakfast. And it kind of became a ritual around, you know, planning it out was a ritual. It still is. Thinking about, okay, what am I going to make this week? And he's generally paleo. So he sticks to a paleo diet, which is essentially just protein and vegetables. Not no grains, no breads, no dairy. so it's actually pretty tricky to think of fresh ideas for a boyfriend breakfast every every week but it's a challenge that I like and it's also I find it very grounding as a ritual because I'm so in my head all week and on a screen and um working like theoretically and there's something about being in the kitchen and going to the garden first and getting your hands dirty in the soil and chopping and sauteing like I can never think about anything else when I'm cooking and so I think I ultimately started to realize that I was getting as much out of the ritual as I think he was and it's something that you know we've just kind of embedded into our lives.

4:45Gwyneth Paltrow:I'm a traditions person, I would say. I think I really love tradition and the idea that you create these moments that are repeatable and they're kind of like these tentpole moments in your life that you continuously circle back to with your friends, your families, your spouse, your partner, your kids, and that with each time you come back to it, there's this deepening that happens where meaning gets imbued into the tradition and it starts to be something I really notice with my kids you know they they really love traditions because I think there's this there are these kind of pillars in their lives that we all you know it's like a drumbeat there are certain things that they always know that we're gonna do you know whether it's a bonfire on the beach in the summer or Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner or, you know, these things that we kind of as a culture orient around.

5:47Gwyneth Paltrow:And then we fill in with our own traditions. And then for me, kind of ritual is born from that, that idea of tradition, that idea that there are important things that we can galvanize and center around. and they become levers to create consistency, grounding. There are moments where gratitude comes into play. And I think that's why I've become such a ritual person. I mean, I was always a person who was drawn to that. I think, you know, when I think back to my 20s and I think about me doing yoga six times a week and how the ritual of getting up and preparing for yoga and the breathing and the stretching and the movement and the meditation and the shavasana at the end, how it brought so much perspective to my life.

6:48Gwyneth Paltrow:I think I also started doing yoga right around the time I was becoming famous, which is its own crazy thing to contend with.

7:01Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for tuning into the Goop Podcast. Today's episode is made possible by Polestar. My daily rituals keep me at my best. That's why I compose my surroundings so thoughtfully. Polestar 3 reimagines what an SUV can be. Every moment spent in the driver's seat feels intentional. The minimalist interior creates a calming environment designed to appeal to your senses without overwhelming them. Like the Bowers and Wilkins 3D surround sound system, which brings rich depth and detail to every note. And with Google Gemini built in, I can ask for whatever I need in the moment, like helping me find the most beautiful sourdough loaf within a three mile radius.

7:43Gwyneth Paltrow:It's not just about all that Polestar does for me, but what Polestar is doing for the planet too. They prioritize transparency when it comes to carbon emissions, something rarely done in the automotive industry. So if you catch me in the Polestar 3, taking a few extra minutes before the next thing, just know I'm recharging. Discover Polestar 3 for yourself. Book a test drive at your local Polestar space or visit polestar.com.

8:13Gwyneth Paltrow:You know, people used to say, I remember my dad saying to me, my gosh, you're so disciplined. You get up every morning and you do this and it's such discipline. But I wasn't really reading it as discipline as much as I was reading it as this ritual of doing something to ground myself and take care of myself. And that was really where my self-care started because I was counteracting the insanity of my life, you know, in my twenties of being this like hyper public person and contending with all of that, you know, even though I'm not a very extroverted person and dealing with all of the energy coming towards me and people writing articles about me and gossiping and all of that.

8:57Gwyneth Paltrow:It's like, you know, how, what do you do in life to counterbalance that? And you don't have to be famous. I mean, you know, people, energy is real. And even in the office, you know, when you feel like you've been centered for one reason or another, or you feel the energy is strange. Like, I don't know, for me, I've always been very sensitive to people's energies and to projection. And I've always been somebody that people project quite a lot onto so I needed to find ways to take care of myself and to remember that I'm a mammal in a body and I'm just a girl like everybody else and really like that that's where my self-care came from like that trying to correct this over index into you know a life that kind of was very uh unknown and and and a life that you I couldn't really prepare for so and then I just I feel like I got so much out of those rituals and I still do to this day you know I I still have my rituals around exercise and around sleep and around sauna and those things that make me feel that there's a kind of center in my life and or to my life, you know, that there's like a, there's a keel underneath my boat kind of keeping me upright.

10:20Gwyneth Paltrow:I've always been a great sleeper, I would say. And I think partially it's because I have largely a pretty clean conscience. And when I have had periods of time in my life where I've felt that I've been misperceived or that I've done something wrong or made a mistake, like it really impacts my sleep. So like I'll lie in bed at night and worry about, oh God, you know, I, I shouldn't have done that, or I shouldn't have said that, or that was this, I think this person misunderstood what I meant. So I try to, I think, you know, having a clean conscience is kind of the, the first step to sleep and, and, and making repairs.

11:05Gwyneth Paltrow:If you feel like, you know you repairs are needed um because i i've noticed in my life like the the cleaner the conscience the better you are going to go into it of course during perimenopause that's been a whole other wrench that's been thrown into my sleep but i i like to eat dinner early so that my food is relatively digested before i go to sleep i've noticed that that helps a lot my friends make fun of me that I want to eat dinner at 5 30 but I can really tell if I have a late dinner like my sleep score on my aura ring it's like I can see it every time and if I if I have a drink once a week or whatever if I'm like fuck it I'm gonna have a drink then I can forget it like my sleep will definitely be impacted though sometimes it's worth it if I have a great sleep hygiene night that would mean eat dinner really early like 5 or 5 30 and then use up the blood glucose like clean up the kitchen, take the dog for a walk, take out the garbage, you know, move around a bit, walk around the garden or down the street around the block.

12:13Gwyneth Paltrow:Then I love to take a very hot bath with magnesium, sea salt, and any kind of essential oil. I kind of sometimes pick them up and I have a bunch of different ones and I'll smell them and see like, what does my body think it once tonight. And then I get in the bath and I try to not have a phone in the bath. Although sometimes if I'm a little behind on emails or correspondence, I will bring the phone into the bath. But I try not to. Definitely no social media in the bath. And then I get into bed. We get into bed pretty early. One thing I do that people say is not good sleep hygiene is watch TV in bed.

12:53Gwyneth Paltrow:But For me, it's very relaxing and I sleep better, I think, when I've watched a little TV. I don't have red light glasses or anything like too wellness-y in that regard. But I usually sleep, you know, a good eight hours a night, which is pretty good, I think.

13:21gosh it's sometimes hard for me to remember specifics of my life before him I think

13:27Gwyneth Paltrow:we've been together for you know well over a decade but also we've been together so much like we got married and then it was COVID and then I don't know we just life changed so much and we're we're together all the time definitely meditation and the and sauna and cold plunge those are all kind of and boyfriend breakfast obviously these were all like rituals that I started doing after Brad and I got together yeah I would say one ritual that I had before Brad I used to have like a big glass of red wine every night when I lived in London that was a very nice ritual at the time but then my body sort of rebelled and I had to stop drinking alcohol pretty much except for the fun once in a while so yeah that's definitely a ritual that I don't do anymore I've always been a tea person I've always had a tea ritual so that's kind of a before and after too yeah I think also making sure that we move after dinner is a is something that we do we that's kind of a new ritual that we've kind of folded in in just the last couple of months, I would say.

14:39Gwyneth Paltrow:Everybody's really getting their shopping done at 1.43 p.m. Hey, Google, please can you text Brad and tell him I'm on the way home and to please turn on the coffee in five minutes? Sure. Message to Brad F. saying, I'm on the way home. Please turn on the coffee in five minutes. Ready to send it? Ready to send it. Sending it now. I think a ritual that I have from growing up and that's still really important to me is communication with my friends and my family. Growing up, I would have long phone calls with my best friend. I moved from Los Angeles to New York when I was 11, and we managed to stay really in touch with each other and have long phone calls.

15:30Gwyneth Paltrow:and I think just that thing of, you know, I still call my friends on the phone. I still keep those going like a long weekly phone call with my brother. Another thing that I think a ritual, you know, when I was little, my brother and I, we were, when we were really little, we were in Southern California and we spent a lot of time outside and in the sun and in the water and that's something that is very healing to me still to this day and now that Andrew Huberman has said sun is okay, it's back in my ritual. I think ritual is critical for getting through tough times. I mean, if you think about, even in the Jewish religion, the rituals around death when somebody dies and the rituals that people do in order to start the healing process, they're really profound.

16:24Gwyneth Paltrow:I think certain religions have kind of a course through difficult things. Like for example, you know, the Buddhists like around that sort of self-awareness and acceptance. I think those spiritual practices when things are really difficult are very helpful for bringing perspective and for reminding us all that we're on a journey that, you know, life is unfortunately, you know, that to live is to suffer. There's just an element of being human that's very painful. And we go through things that are often much more difficult than other times. but this idea that whatever whatever can sort of help you traverse through these periods maintaining the understanding that it's just part of life you know and for me what I try to do is really feel that all the feelings that come up I think I was sort of raised in a sense to not express feelings that were unpleasant or hard, which was very typical in my generation.

17:42Gwyneth Paltrow:And I heard from one of the doctors that I work with, you know, what you, what was the phrase? It's what you reveal, you heal. So this idea of not suppressing and sublimating feelings, I think is, you know if there's a ritual around that I have a close friend that really has like a practice around feeling their feelings when they come up and really just sitting with them as as burning and painful as they are and just sitting there in the observation of the feeling and kind of letting it wash through and letting the waves of the feeling come back and back and get curious about the feeling and let it run all the way through you.

18:30That was a, I think a really

18:33Gwyneth Paltrow:interesting ritual that I learned about the other day. So I think there are many ways to ritualize getting through the more difficult parts of life. I would say I'm very grateful for my rituals and I also love the idea that we can create rituals for ourselves at any time, whether that's, you know deciding to free form right every morning in the morning to process through our feelings or you know meeting a friend for tea at a special time once a month like rituals are always available to us to create and they bring such a sweetness and a sense of what's really important in life. So it's been kind of fun to contemplate this idea of rituals and why they're important to me.

19:29Gwyneth Paltrow:So thank you for giving me the opportunity to ruminate on them. And I think I'm going to think about a new ritual that I would like to begin. Hey, Google, turn on some nice music for driving alongside the coast of California. Sure, I can help with that.

19:56Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.