Tag Archives: Rituals

Sporty Superstitions

My sister is a sailor on the Stanford women’s team, the number one ranked women’s sailing team in the country. She’s starting in regattas as a freshman, so one would assume she knows what she’s doing. Although I couldn’t get any specific advice on how to make that happen—sorry to those hoping—I did manage to squeeze out some of what she considers to be a part of her “luck” factor. Before any race, and whenever she’s feeling nervous on the water, she does a specific breathing exercise that her coach introduced to the team.

This breathing exercise, which she plainly calls “our breathing exercise,” is recorded online as “5-in-5-out.” Funnily enough, she never really learned it “formally,” she told me:

“It’s just something that our coach told us one day. No real explanation, no official name—I don’t even think he gave us instructions beyond ‘do this when it feels right.’”

Still, from what I found online, the method follows the exact same steps she described:

  1. Sit up straight or cross-legged.
  2. Relax your shoulders.
  3. Inhale quietly through your nose for a count of five.
  4. Hold your breath for a count of five.
  5. Exhale quietly through your nose for a count of five.
  6. Repeat for 10 minutes.

She did however note minimal flexibility in how she practices it:

“I don’t really care about sitting a certain way or how long I do it for. Most of it is just up to whatever I think is best at the moment.”

At the end of the day, she does it however and whenever she feels she needs it.

Breathing exercises are one of those things that I’m not sure folklore has fully claimed yet. I feel as though it is typically regarded as more medicinal than folkloric, but we all know those two things go hand in hand. If I had to classify it, I’d say this kind of ritual has two hands in the folklore cookie jar—one reaching into sports superstitions, the other into traditional yoga and meditative medicinal practices.

When it comes to luck in sports, superstitions are everywhere. Baseball players wear the same jersey without washing it, Serena Williams famously wears the same pair of socks throughout a tournament, and my sister practices this breathing ritual before racing. It’s fascinating that humans try to “cheat” natural physical systems by invoking rituals, almost like tapping into forces beyond the physical—maybe an over-dramatization, but I think my point stands.

The interesting thing is that these seemingly kooky practices often have real benefits. If you believe you are lucky, you can sometimes manifest that luck into something real, whether it be confidence, composure, or performance.

Historically, these breathing techniques have deep roots. The Box Breathing method—famously taught to Navy SEAL snipers to maintain calm and focus—is a modern example. Yet, these practices aren’t new. Yogis developed Box Breathing over 5,000 years ago, originally calling it Sama Vritti Pranayama.

Despite their very real effects, breathing exercises like Box Breathing and 5-in-5-out don’t quite fit within traditional academic “science.” They exist in that murky space between folk wisdom, practical ritual, and physiological effect.

I’ve always loved the idea of trying to cheat chance and manifest luck. Whether it’s for tests, sports, or life in general, it’s only human to strive for perfection and victory by any means necessary—no matter how strange.

College Ghosts

Age: 19

Date: 12/3/24

Language: English

Collector’s Name: Lia

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Subject: I haven’t personally experienced any ghost stories myself, but there is a story in my dorm about some freshmen with spirits. Would that work?

Interviewer: Definitely. Could you tell me a little about it?

Subject: Sure. Okay, in August of the 90s, three freshman guys were roommates. Two of the guys were trying to join a fraternity, and the last roommate was a little bit different from the other two. Let’s call him Jake. Jake spent a lot of time in his room alone, was not that conversational, and secluded himself from the other roommates. One night, Jake randomly invited the other two roommates to partake in a haunted ritual to connect with spirits. The roommates were excited that Jake might finally begin to open up, so they agreed. 

Interviewer: Wait, so there wasn’t any sort of hesitation from either of the roommates about a haunted ritual they are only just hearing about? 

Subject: No, not at all, really. They are teenage boys who likely felt invincible and thought the whole thing wasn’t real. Jake started telling them about how to perform the ritual, which needed to take place in the haunted dorm room of the college. The three roommates walked over to this room that nobody stays in anymore, and messed with the lock to get in. Jake instructed them on how to begin the ritual, where each person would stand in one corner of the room with their eyes closed, leaving one corner of the room vacant. In increments, all of the boys would switch corners. They repeated this process on Jake’s command until being told to abruptly stop. Jake told them all to slowly open their eyes and shift their heads to the vacant corner. They all did as he instructed, and in the corner was a boy, one that looked just about their age. He was a little bit translucent, and his eyes had been scratched out from their sockets. There was dried blood all over his hands. The most notable thing about him, they say, is just how silent he was. His presence could take noise away from anything around him and leave this empty silence. Until he began to scream. He screamed the loudest any of the boys had ever heard, and all of the roommates covered their ears with their hands. He continued to scream with his piercing, angry voice and then started to walk towards the roommates. Immediately they all ran out of the room, closing it behind them. They returned to their dorm, trying to find somewhere that felt safer. They locked themselves inside of their room and sat down trying to catch their breath. Slowly, one another looked at each other, noticing that each of their eyes had scratches around it, and were slowly starting to swell. 

Interviewer: Did anyone else in the dorm building hear any of this?

Subject: It is a very well-known story, but that night nobody but the three roommates heard anything. Now, people who have a dorm room near the haunted one claim that every once and a while they will hear screams through their wall, but only one room can hear it at a time. Nobody really knows who that boy is, or what his story is. 

“Cheers” Before a Shot

The informant described a ritual where people taking a shot together tap their shot glass on the table before saying “cheers” and taking the shot. This is done any time taking a shot of alcohol with others, including friends and family, no matter the place or time. This is done to signal everyone to take their shot and as an announcement of celebration, of sorts. “Cheers” is often said to encourage good will as one drinks, and the meaning is the same here.

The ritual demonstrates a culture which engages with alcohol as a means of celebration. The involved parties want to encourage good will and acknowledge celebration as they dive deeper into their party-atmosphere cultivated by alcohol by saying “cheers” and clinking glasses on the table. There is no magic necessarily associated, just a soft of acknowledgment of good will. The sound made serves two purposes, it seems. One, to signal everyone to take the shot so they can time the drink to be taken at the same time. Second, to signal celebration in the same way that a “woop” does. Noises to announce a celebration are common, such as clapping, “wooping,” whistling, clinking glasses, etc… These are not necessarily to start a celebration but for the announcement of continuation of a celebration. The ritual is widely spread, at least around the United States. Other cultures have similar versions, saying something that imitates a sort of blessing before drinking. This is likely due to the spread of the ritual as folklore, stemming from a traditional blessing around food and drink.

Folk Belief: On Money and Hands

Context:

Informant E is a 21 year old USC student studying American Studies and Ethnicity. She identifies as Chicana and and was born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. E is a junior at the university and is the interviewer’s roommate.

Text:

E: “So if my right hand – the palm of my right hand – is itchy, I put it in my pocket, because it means I’m gonna get money. If the left palm/hand is itchy, that means I owe someone money. So I have to scratch it.”

Interviewer: “Did you learn this from someone?”

E: “My family.”

A friend, also in the room: “If you scratch it does it mean that you don’t owe them money?”

E: “Like I’m not gonna get – it could mean, like, ‘Oh I have to pay rent soon,’ so it’ll start itching. Or I have to go pay someone back because they took me out to go eat. So then that means I have to get them back.” “If I scratch my hand, I don’t have to pay them back. Sometimes.”

Interviewer: “So who taught you this?”

E: “My grandma and then my grandma taught my mom and then me.”

Interpretation:

E’s folk belief is a kind of self-soothing ritual and, though a bit more complicated, I would compare it easily to knocking on wood or throwing salt over one’s shoulder. It’s clearly been passed down to her as familial knowledge. I did search for more information online and found that the superstition originates in the Caribbean which, although not part of Latin America, is close to it, and the belief itself seems to have spread easily throughout the world. I find it interesting that this belief has to do with hands, as I feel there’s a through-line in history. Bartering relied heavily on hands, and handshakes or palms are often symbols of such agreements. Trade and bartering then became money or payment, which is still then associated with hands, and is what I would argue led to this superstition. In general, money obviously is a good thing to have and a bad thing to lose, so this self-soothing ritual can be comforting and seems so common because of that universal truth about the value of money. The scratching part of this belief makes it a ritual or a form of jinx (re: like knocking on wood) in my opinion, as the participant is doing something tangible, as if to put the belief into effect.

Greek Egg-Breaking Easter Ritual

Text: “So every Easter, the day before we will dye hard boil eggs and everyone will have an egg and on Easter we will go around and one person will try to crack a side of your egg. and you’ve got two chances So you go in a circle until everyone has broken both sides and one person has at least one good side left. So yeah. And then they win.”

Context:
Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying Psychology, originally from Palos Verdes, CA from Greek-Jewish descent. We speak in the dining hall, and she is very excited and happy to be recounting her experiences.

“It’s epic and it’s fun and you get to do something with your dyed eggs. I don’t know, you know. It was just something my parents, I guess we were doing. We do it on both sides of the family. But I believe it’s like a Greek thing, and I have heard of at least one other person who does this. Well, I never win, so you know, like I, I enjoy it because it’s something our family does every year. It’s a way to use the eggs. You know, it’s fun to color eggs and stuff. So like then you get to actually like play a game with it.”

Analysis: This tradition is an example of a ritual performed in celebration of a holiday. The term “Easter” comes from the name of a pagan goddess and symbolizes new life and fertility. The ritual furthers this symbolism with eggs also being reminiscent of reproduction and fertility. The bright colors which they were being dyed are representative of the season of spring and the blooming of colorful nature. Although Easter is now largely recognized as a Christian holiday, rituals such as these have little relation to the biblical story of Jesus Christ. This ritual could be argued to be an example of ritual license because of how the eggs are dyed and played with which are activities usually discouraged when they relate to food items.