Episode 137 - Elemental Beauty: How To Cultivate Radiant Feminine Presence
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Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to come to your senses. So, coming to our senses, there's a lot of different ways to interpret that expression, but the most common is to regain consciousness. And to regain consciousness after being in a loss of consciousness, either through fainting, passing out or being under some sort of spell or a trance. And coming to our senses, as we describe it here, is that process of waking up to life through our body. And the result of that is an increase I don't even wanna say increase, I would just wanna say more visibility of your natural inherent radiance and from that radiance, experiencing a sharpening and clarifying and intensifying of your own natural magnetism. When we come to the sources of our senses of beauty and body and pleasure and connection and slowing down to savor, not only do we notice an increase in the level of radiance that emits from our being, but we also start to see the natural inherent radiance in life itself. As your senses become more supple, you're able to notice things like the vibrance of an orange on a table or the spiciness of your beloved's neck or all of these other sensory details that actually provide the signature of the present moment. And today's episode is about how to create your own renaissance of radiance. So renaissance is just another way of saying a rebirth, a new decision, a re-centering of our value system. And as we start to close down this current year and open up to a new year, intentions, desires, creations for the new year tend to be on our minds, and I don't know anyone who couldn't use a little more radiance in their lives. Life can really wear your radiance down to a nub, like a number two pencil eraser that's been used one too many times and makes that horrible scraping sound whenever you use it on the page once it's hit bottom. And today we are going to explore how to open up these portals to a renaissance of radiance and awakening a reigniting of radiance in your life today, as you listen to this episode, and to plant seeds for the new year.
03:39
Now I do wanna say, because honesty and integrity are very core values of mine, particularly as it pertains to business I do have an ulterior motive, and that motive is to let you know that the coterie, which is my six month immersion into artful, embodied living, which kicks off in January this is the final week to receive the $1,000 early babe savings. And in the coterie, what we explore together are these six phases of a renaissance of radiance, and so Part of my intention in sharing this with you is to wet your appetite and incite your desire and help paint the vision of possibility if you were to join us in January in the Coterie and Coterie, in case you're not familiar with that word, simply means a small group with a common purpose, and in the Coterie, our common purpose is a return to centering the body and beauty and presence and radiance at the center of our lives and allowing our lives to organize themselves around our radiance and sink into the magnetism of that to create our dreams. That's our common purpose in the Coterie. And so, as I share these six phases with you, I'm going to be sharing tangible, specific things that you can do and try on, just in this moment, to explore these six phases and open them up in your life right now. And I also invite you to imagine and consider dunking yourself like a strawberry into a pot of ganache fondue, into these principles and these ways of life and being supported through coaching and education and artistry in the Coterie. So if you'd like to learn more about the Coterie and take advantage of that golden ticket $1,000 off early babe savings head to alifewellsavercom. It expires this Thursday, november 17th, and with that let us dive in to our gems.
06:19
And so where we'll begin with this episode is where we always begin when it comes to coming to our senses, which is reconnecting to your body. Oh, let's just welcome in a deep breath on that one, reconnecting and feeling the fullness of your body. So I was remembering just today how, as a kid, my dad worked for IBM, and IBM was a computer company, and their slogan was very simple, it was just think. So. Like all over our house growing up there was this like swag and merch that just said think and thinking rules. We wouldn't be human beings were it not for our capacity to think, and yet thinking with our brains only makes up a very small and specific flavor of our full system of intelligence. And so this first phase is about reconnecting to your body and unlocking your somatic magic. Somatic magic is a term that I use to describe the magic that happens, and so we're going to be talking about the magic of our minds. Anytime we intervene from the mind, gripping and holding and racing around our lives, and take an action that causes an intervention and opens up the channel to funnel some of those thoughts out of the tight corners of full system of intelligence in your body. And so there are so many different ways that we can play with the tools of somatic magic, but we'll start by just asking a simple question or shifting a common saying.
08:35
So you're probably familiar with the phrase think first. You know it's a common corporate phrase. I remember, I think, in Driver's Ed, that was posted all over the place in pictures like think first before you turn, think first before you jump, and I'm curious if you were to drop into your body and your being the expression feel first. So instead of think first, feel first. I invite you to do that right now and notice what emerges. What I notice in myself is all the times throughout my day I think my way into my next step and being curious about what might happen if I took just five out of those hundreds of little decisions that I make day in and day out and I dropped into feeling my way forward instead of figuring it out. Feeling my way forward and I share this with you because it's so common, particularly if you feel pushed forward by a pressure behind you that you can't quite see or name it is so common to allow that pressure to drive you into what I call arbitrary action.
10:16
And this is when I see a person or a client taking all sorts of action or beating themselves up for not taking action when they haven't actually connected to the source of their ignition, which is their feeling body. So I remember once in a session with a client she was putting a lot of pressure on herself to do this thing in her business teach these classes and she was like I know what I need to do. I need to market these and I need to do this and I need to do that. And we slowed down and we did some embodiment around it because I could sense that, like when that tone of voice comes on board of like I need to do this and I need to do that, there's something else leading the charge here. You can hear it in the very tone that I'm speaking it now. It's not a dropped in, clear, purposeful kind of action.
11:20
And when we did drop in and unravel some of the tension that was leading the charge in this experience, it became clear that she actually didn't want to teach these classes at all and that there was something even greater and deeper calling her attention that she got really excited about and I remember for me as a coach it was like such an important moment of visibly witnessing a light turn on when we choose to stop entertaining that driver that just says do more, do more, do more. The reason you're failing, the reason you don't have what you want, is because you haven't done enough. And if you just did more? There's all sorts of conversations that we could have about systems of power that generate this driver within us and there is true magic I can attest to this, I have seen it thousands of times there's true magic that unfurls any time we choose to disengage with that driver, which loves to think and drop in to the deeper stiller waters of what we know.
12:47
And that frequency of the deeper stiller waters in my experience for myself and in watching hundreds of my clients go through this process it exists below the line of the collarbone, not above. And one thing that you might notice when you ask yourself or practice this feeling first, if you're already feeling anxious or pressure, and then you go to feel you're like, well, screw this, this feels terrible. All I feel is the anxiety and the pressure, and that is a very wise and astute observation and I encourage you to go deeper. If anxiety and tension are what's on the surface, what is beneath that, and then, once you reveal that layer, what is beneath that, and this is actually a very specific process that I teach you in the Coterie. It's called the somatic magic radiance ritual and it's something I do before dates, before I teach classes, when I wake up in the morning, and it is just such a powerful way to release emotional and mental tension, to unlock the radiant fluid flowing, knowing of the body.
14:15
The second phase of a renaissance of radiance is connecting to a feminine spiritual practice through the ancient art of beauty ritual. Oh beauty, I feel like Romeo looking up at Juliet as I just say that word. Beauty has been my greatest love and passion since really I can remember. But when I was 18 and graduated from high school, I went directly into school to become an esthetician or skin care therapist, because beauty has a kind of magnetism that I find irresistible and what I've seen is that when a woman steps into her love of beauty as a spiritual practice, there is an irresistible magic and feminine presence that gets awakened, and particularly when it comes to nourishing and nurturing the body through spa ritual Another way I like to describe this phase of the Renaissance is awakening your inner spa. Slut, stick an essential oil under my nose, pour some salt and sweet almond oil on my skin, brush my hair and I will be yours forever.
15:56
When I was a kid, I grew up Catholic and there's a lot of rites and rituals and incense and wine and bread and real sensory components to Catholicism. And when I became an esthetician I felt like I had unlocked this whole temple of the sensual, feminine version of church, with mud masks and body wraps and salt scrubs and gorgeous music and aromatherapy and candlelight and relaxation and skin nurturance and, oh my gosh, I was like a kid in the candy store. And if you're not an esthetician I know beauty can feel like a really overwhelming world to penetrate and there's a lot of clickbait out there and it's very easy to feel let around by the nose when it comes to the prettiness of a bottle versus the quality of the ingredients or the way that it impacts your skin of what's in the bottle, which is why whenever I'm teaching beauty ritual, beauty ritual is one of the most ancient ways that we connect with the divine as human beings, which is why nothing in a bottle can give you or take away from you your inherent right to the natural forces of beauty that exist inside your body and exist in the simplicity of the elements, and that's a fancy way of saying.
17:38
Here's a washcloth ritual that you can do at night or in the morning. I sometimes do it in the middle of my day. Anytime I want to refresh myself. It's really simple. There are so many nerve endings in your face. Think about when you take a shower. I don't ever truly feel like I'm in the shower until the water hits my face.
18:03
The face is just loaded with opportunities to come to our senses, and so a really simple ritual that you can do to increase your glow, assist your hydration, your circulation and induce a state of relaxation, which is the number one ingredient when it comes to your elixir of radiance, is you simply take a clean washcloth and you run it under hot water, and if you want an extra bonus, you can place a drop of essential oil on the washcloth or under your nostrils and you simply take the heat of the washcloth and you press it to your face. If you're wearing makeup, you can just lightly press it and allow your skin to absorb the steam. You will have the most gorgeous glow on your face at the end of the day from the moisture of the steam connecting with the oils of your skin, and that experience of giving your face the rest, allowing your muscles to relax and soften into the heat, opens up the channels for radiance to flow, quite literally, because your lymphatic system will be flowing, your circulatory system will be flowing. That brings nourishment to your muscles and to your skin cells, and there are literally hundreds of ways that I could teach you to take care of your skin and to connect to your beauty, but this is one that is so incredibly simple and that, I feel, puts the power of beauty back into our own hands, because it reminds us that true beauty is elemental. The simplicity of heat, water, moisture, soft fabric, circulation, relaxation these are the true fountain of youth. Serums seek to imitate this natural ecosystem that our bodies and our skins already possess, and, once again, it's also a way to practice embodied sensory mindfulness.
20:32
So if I'm feeling anxious or depressed, one of the things that I'll do is I'll actually skip meditating on a cushion and I will go into my bathroom to my beauty altar. That was a trick taught to me by Elise Marie, who's one of our coterie faculty, and she will be a guest on the podcast in the next couple of weeks. She's called the Beauty Witch and she has loads and loads of treats in her cauldron to deliver around beauty. But she taught me about creating a beauty altar and, after giving my skin nourishment with aroma and water and gorgeous oils and rouging my lips and outlining the portals to my soul AKA my eyes and styling my gorgeous tresses, conditioning them with a nourishing oil my God, I mean I am presence on wheels after a ritual like that. This is one of the ways that we make mindfulness more fluid and less rigid is by including, alongside our meditation practice, quiet time, whatever more traditional mindfulness practices that you might engage in the sumptuousness of adorning your velvety lips with a crimson shade and the tingle of peppermint oil saturating into your hair follicles as you massage your scalp with some rosemary peppermint blend. This is literally how we awaken and come to our senses by awakening that sensual body and regaining consciousness and presence into the present moment through the succulents of life and a body. And so, my loves, we are gonna stop there for today.
22:46
Our next episode will feature the next few phases. There are six If you wanna skip to learning the six phases of a Renaissance of Radiance. You can always go to the Coterie page, alifewellsaveredcom. They are all outlined there for you. And again, these gems that I have dropped into the pouch of inspiration today are gorgeous and glittering appetizers to the main meal, and if you find that these appetizers are deeply nourishing or they spark a curiosity in you, I would be so delighted to journey through these six phases with you in the Coterie, or to sit across the screen from you and help you find your clear yes or clear no to stepping onto the luxurious path of coming to your senses and reigniting your radiance in the Coterie. Early Babe. Savings expires this Thursday. See you at alifewellsaveredcom. Thank you so much as always for listening, and I can't wait to share these remaining phases with you in our next episode. Ciao.
Awaken your senses and amplify your luminosity through radiant feminine presence. In today's episode you'll discover:
- A potent mantra that can instantly shift your state from grinding to grounded
- The ancient power of beauty ritual, and how to wade through the all bottles and advertisements to an elemental knowing of your beauty
- A one step winter beauty ritual to create relaxed presence & instant glow
Ready to ignite the radiant energy within you? Hit play and let's begin!
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Join The Coterie
Immerse yourself in artful embodied living and make 2024 your year to cultivate vibrant, luminous radiance. The Coterie is a six month, body-led coaching immersion. Journey through the six phases of a feminine renaissance, and be supported in a lifestyle of nurturing your body, awakening through beauty, and relaxing into a renaissance of radiance. Take advantage of the Early Babe Savings and join the Coterie today. https://www.alifewellsavored.com/
