Leave it at the door 🧥

📸 Photo: The Styled Domicile's blog post Don’t Forget the Door! Eight Creative Ways to Make Interior Doors Feel Special (2023).

I’d like to try a practice where, as people come into a meeting, dinner, or gathering (of any sort), they mindfully leave their coat at the door.

But it’s not just their coat.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Before you enter, take a moment to think of one thing you’d like to leave behind and exclude from this space.

When you have it, infuse it into your belonging (a coat, a scarf, a bag). And let it hold the weight for now.

Before you is a threshold, and when you cross it, the spell is cast.

What you’ve placed into your belonging will stay there; held. It won’t return to you until you cross back through and retrieve it.

When you are ready, cross the threshold, open the closet, and remove your coat (the one carrying what you are leaving behind).

Be sure to close the closet for yourself and the next person.

This act tells you, your bruden is parked. It hasn’t disappeared entirely, but the energy is held by something other than you.

Like a dog resting in its kennel, it knows your care and attention will return when the time is right –> when the gathering is over, you retrieve your coat and you exit the space.

. . . . . . . . . . .

If you were entering the room right now, today. What would you give to your coat? Feel free to email me or add to the conversation on LinkedIn.

Article FAQs generated by AI:
1. What is the deeper purpose of this ritual beyond just creating a moment of mindfulness?
The deeper purpose of this ritual is to intentionally mark the transition from the ordinary into a sacred or focused space, allowing participants to become fully present and embodied. By symbolically "parking" distractions, burdens, or emotional weight in an object, the ritual creates a container that encourages deeper connection, presence, and psychological safety within the gathering. It also affirms the idea that emotions and stressors can be temporarily held without being ignored or suppressed.

2. How might this practice impact group dynamics in a meeting, dinner, or gathering?
This practice could significantly impact group dynamics by fostering a shared sense of ritual, presence, and emotional clarity. When each person leaves something behind, it subtly aligns everyone toward a common energetic field—one free of outside noise or personal baggage. It encourages empathy, respect, and active listening, and can help level the emotional playing field, making space for more generative, meaningful interaction.

3. What would happen if the participant leaves their coat behind? They don’t want to take it with them?
If someone decides not to take their coat (and thus what it symbolically holds) with them, it may signal a readiness to let go... to no longer carry what they placed inside. This could be grief, tension, shame, or a limiting belief. Leaving it behind becomes a transformational gesture: a shedding, not just a pausing. In that sense, the closet becomes an altar or compost bin – a space that holds and metabolizes what no longer serves.

4. Is there any risk that “leaving something behind” becomes performative or superficial if done routinely?
To keep the ritual meaningful, the host or facilitator must model sincerity and presence, possibly refreshing the language or intention behind the act each time. Otherwise, it might lose its potency and become another rote gesture, rather than a true psychological or spiritual threshold.