Episode 146 - The Art of Creating Sacred Sensory Spaces
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Mary:
Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to come to your senses. It is a new year and I am so excited to be back in this seat with you. Our last few episodes were a recast of Word of the Year, and then we had our beautiful guest, jenna Ward, on to talk about the unseen and unsung power of sensitivity. Those episodes were all recorded earlier in 2023, and so it's been a good month or more since I've come to you live for a new episode and very grateful for the rest that I took over the holidays feeling really refreshed and excited to come into this new year and to come into this new year with you. And in today's episode, I want to share with you one of the things that has really helped me in the last year create a relationship with my embodiment practice. That has helped it become so much easier and so much more sustainable to, in a word, do the shit I know helps me. You know, when we say like embodiment practice, to me that sounds so formal and really what I'm talking about is the spaces and times in my day to day or I get to be more intimate with my own divinity as it expresses through my body and through my life, and one of the things that's made it challenging to have that be a regular practice is not having a space that feels like a sanctuary that I can go back to again and again. You know so, in our homes we have places where we eat, and places where we cook and places where we tend our beauty and places where we rest, and it's a little less common to have a place in our home to simply be. And that's exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you today is my own process of creating a space in my home which doesn't have to be super fancy. I mean, I converted my entire dining room into a come to your senses space. But if I'm not going to go big, who is? You don't have to go that big. You can take a tiny plant stand and a pillow and that can be your space for coming to your senses. It can be really, really simple, and we're going to make it really simple today.
And if you'd like a more insider's tour of my personal space, for newsletter subscribers you'll be receiving a few images and just a real personalized look at my come to your senses space. If you're not currently on the newsletter and you want to receive that particular newsletter. You can just go to the main link below this episode. There are going to be a couple of links about today's episode that I share, some links to other episodes that can help inspire you around this, and there will be this one main link that goes to the episode page, and there you can sign up to receive a personalized tour of my personal sanctuary where I come to my senses, and I'd love to invite you all to come along with me. So, with that, let us now dive into our gems on creating a space to come to your senses.
And so, first of all, where we begin is with that phrase coming to our senses and what that really means, because if we're going to create a space in which to come to our senses, we want to be really clear about what we're anchoring into, and over the holidays that's been something I've really been deepening into is the essence of that as we begin the Come to your Senses Co-Terry, which is my group coaching program that has begun this January, a new round we've really been distilling into that, and so the expression Come to your Senses means to awaken, to awaken from a trance, to regain a state of consciousness, and how I perceive that as it relates to what we do here, is that when we tune in to the wisdom of the body and the wonder of the senses, we naturally awaken. We awaken from the trance of cultural conditioning that separates us from our bodies and from each other. We awaken an inherent sense of our own divinity, so that we don't spend our lives going around chasing it. We instead create our lives from this place of owning it and sourcing it. From our center, we awaken nerve endings that have been shut down or dead end over time due to chronic state of fight or flight or past trauma or numbness in the body. We start to feel more deeply, more fully, and therefore we can be more intimate with ourselves and intimate with each other. And these are just a few of the ways that we awaken and come home to ourselves. When we come home to our senses and a quote from Charles Dickens that I found as I was preparing for this episode is Home is the heart's anchor, and so a come to your senses space is a space that is created in your home. However, if you are one of my dear, beloved digital nomads out there as I am sometimes too and you don't have a physical home or a consistent space, no problem, we can still create a space that travels with you wherever you go, or if you travel a lot for work or for family, whatever. This creation of a sacred space in whatever space you dwell in is really just a mirror for the sacred spaces within yourself to sink into your heart's anchor.
And the second gem is another principle that we practice here, which is feeling first. When you imagine having a space in your home where you can come back to the sacred, come back to your heart flow and move in your body, indulge in simple pleasures, how do you want to feel in that space? And so in a previous episode I talked about how, growing up, my dad worked for IBM and IBM's slogan IBM was a computer company, still is, and IBM's slogan is just think. So, like all over the house would be just company swag. That said think. You know pencils and signs and plaques and bags and things like that, and it's a common expression. You know think first, think before you act. And there's a lot of wisdom in that. In a world that really exalts thinking and feeling gets about 10% of the spotlight. What we're seeking to do here in this exercise and it comes to your senses in general is create a little bit more balance between those two superpowers. And so when I propose the idea of this sanctuary space in your home or in your life, you might have all sorts of ideas of what you would put in there and what space you might use, and all of these beautiful imaginings of the mind. And what I also encourage you to do is drop into that heart's anchor and when you think about a place where your body and your beauty and your being can unfurl and have a regular home to come back to, to be in relationship with those parts of yourself, how do you desire to feel in that space? And whatever those feeling words are are going to be your keywords and those are your compass to move and propel you in the direction of your actions. So if you're a person who, with projects, tends to have a very strong start in a very doughy middle like pulling bread out of the oven and it's still doughy in the middle and then a very burnt out or non-existent ending, what you might want to consider once again is that connection of feeling and sensation prior to action, because let me tell you, there is no lack of ideas in my little brain, of actions I can take, things I can create. I have a really strong drive, but that drive drives me into the ground If it is not fueled by feeling. And when we have a hard time completing a project, often the missing ingredient is not our drive, it's that fuel, and fuel comes from feeling.
So how do you want to feel in that space? Is it relaxed, comforted, alive, stimulated? You know there's all sorts of desires that you might have that will be right for your body, I think for myself. One of the reasons I've resisted this for a long time is because I thought I would have to have what a therapist once called bouncy ponytail space, like she was talking about how she thought that in order to be happy, she would need to meditate every day and go to yoga all the time and basically walk around with a bouncy ponytail and a state of serenity, and that what actually makes her happy is pizza and Netflix. And it was a real mind-blowing moment for me personally in that therapy session. Thank you, brynn.
And in my own, come to your senses space. You know it's like I love you crystal lovers out there and crystals just don't turn me on. What does turn me on is an image of Billy Porter, decked out in a gorgeous hat with lace, fishnet gloves. You know that inspires my spirit and so inspiration and life force is a really important word for me and how I want to feel in my come to your sense of space and then, from that foundation of feeling, your beautiful mind gets to come in and fill in the details. So the most basic needs for a place like this are a place to be, so like a place to sit, whether that's a chair or a throw pillow or a meditation cushion, whatever and a place to place things, so like a small table, a plant stand. You know, it doesn't have to be super fancy, you really just need your things and your body and, ideally, some privacy. So in my come to your senses space it's a big open room but I have it divided from the rest of my house with a beaded curtain, this beautiful like. It's not bamboo necessarily, but it's like a wood beaded curtain. It's lovely and it brings a really nice textural, bohemian feel to the space and it just creates that little line of demarcation where it's like oh okay, I'm not just going from the kitchen to this secondary kitchen space, I'm entering a totally new dimension, what I also did in that room is my kitchen doesn't have carpeting, so I put an area rug in that space so that there's that additional line of demarcation between the space. So what that might look like for you. I'm imagining a corner in your bedroom or in your apartment where maybe you have a small area rug, or like a sheepskin pelt, like a faux sheepskin pelt or a real sheepskin pelt. They sell those at the farmers market in my neighborhood and they're always so beautiful. So some element of containment can be really, really helpful. And then in that space.
You know how I choose to furnish that space for myself is with objects that possess beauty as well as meaning, and so, for example, I have a framed quote from one of my favorite mystics, john O'Donoghue and it was actually a client and a friend wrote in her most exquisite handwriting this quote on a greeting card that she sent me, so lovely, and so I actually edged it with gold leaf and put it in this beautiful frame. The card itself is like four by six, but the frame is one of those big squares that has like a mat with a small opening, so it has a lot of impact. That's one of my favorite possessions in that room. I also have a plant hanging in a mirror ball plant container whatever you call those things I do not have a green thumb, but you know, hanging plant container. I'll put a picture of it in the newsletter post. And oh, it was a Christmas present. She was telling me about how she had gotten me this gift for months that she just felt like was so me, and I cherish it so deeply and it creates this beautiful light in the middle of the day that sparkles around the space. I also have in my space a couple of different altars and so again I'm working with an entire room. So I have an altar to some of my bigger desires. I have an altar to the season that we're in. We just completed the season of Yule, so I had an altar set up to celebrate that season. I have an altar that has just kind of precious items like I was in my hometown recently and I bought this beautiful candle that, I swear to God, I have been eyeing for 25 years. There's this store in Rineback, new York, called Summer Moon and, growing up in Hudson Valley, I would go there and I would just moon like moon. You know, I don't mean that as a pun, but just just gush over the things in that shop, and one of them was this beautiful green candle holder that, I swear to God, I have wanted since, you know, I was a teenager and they still had it when I was there recently. So sister snapped that right up and it now furnishes. I come to your senses space. I also purchased at Summer Moon this beautiful tin garland with horses and I have that hanging in my home, and so these are all objects that are aesthetically beautiful but all vibrate with a deep sense of meaning to my soul. The second thing I would highly recommend having in your space is the things that help inspire your spirit. So I have this beautiful basket that has the current rotation of books that inspire me.
So right now, some of the books that are in there are the Koya book Navigating a Life that is Wise, wild and Free, by my friend Rochelle Sheik. There is a book for kids called Mother God that I read to myself sometimes. There is the Radiance Sutras by Lauren Roche, which is beautiful. There's the book this Hear Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, which is a gorgeous love letter to the body and to liberation, and these are just books that sometimes in the morning I'll just pull them out and I'll read one paragraph and that will be, like you know, my Oracle card for the day or my Oracle reading.
And then, of course, I have sensory elements in this space as well. So there are candles, there's a beautiful incense holder, I have a beautiful Bose speaker, which, gotta say, I bought myself this speaker like seven years ago when I was going to teach a retreat and I needed to bring my own sound system and so I splurged on this expensive portable speaker. And, man, that thing has stood the test of time and it plays so loud and I just freaking love it. It's like one of my favorite possessions. So toot toot for Bose. Well, done you, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes of today's episode. So the sensory elements, you know, once again, it's like I can't tell you how many times I have resisted dropping onto my mat to do a movement practice because it's like I just I don't want to play music from my phone. You know like the mind will come up with the most juvenile reasons not to drop in.
And by having these luxurious, decadent details for the senses, it's like there's just a lubricated entry point because the Bluetooth is already connected and I can just roll out that mat on this sumptuous beautiful rug and turn on my bows and I'm good to go. And the final gem that I want to offer is more of a gem on how to approach creating this space and can also be applied to really any creative endeavor, which is that the purpose of creating a space like this is not necessarily to get the right outcome, but it's more what you learn about yourself in the process and how much you can play with the process.
So, for example, the photos that you'll see in the newsletter post about my Yule altar are going to look gorgeous and glowing and fabulous, and right now ye old Yule lost. Her is cluttered with a couple of objects because Yule is over and I haven't reset the altar yet, and so it's like there's definitely a part of me that, in that space, obsesses over the details, and I get to learn a lot about my perfectionist and the belief that in order to be worthy of spiritual guidance and connection, I have to be pure and perfect. And so blessings. On the clutter that is currently on my Yule altar there is also, you know, because it's my dining space. When people come over, I wiggle my dining room table to and fro, and sometimes that process happens immediately after they leave, and sometimes it takes a week or maybe two. And so my come to your senses spaces taken up by a dining table that every time I see it I'm like, oh, got to move that thing back. And so I share these details with you Because, once again, my inner bouncy ponytail greatly confuses perfection with happiness, and my experience, my real human lived experience, is that those two things are two very different things. There is no way to do this right, and I dare you to, rather than trying to make it pretty or perfect or whatever bouncy ponytail might tell us it should be, is to make this experience one of wild play, comedic failures, like pretending one more time that crystals bring you peace when they don't, like I do. I'm sure I'll keep doing that for the rest of my life and, regardless of what it looks like, may your come to your senses space be a place where your heart can lay its anchor.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, I would be so delighted if you would go to iTunes and leave us a review or hit the five star button wherever you get your podcasts. We keep this podcast free of advertisements, and one of the ways that you can support us is through sharing your love of it, by sharing it with a friend or sharing your love on the podcast review pages. So thank you in advance for your support. Thank you so much for listening. You can absolutely tag me on social media If you want to share photos of your come to your senses space. I would be so delighted to see them and uplift them with a comment. And thank you again for being here. I will see you in our next episode.
Have you ever stepped into a room and felt instantly at peace, as if every element spoke directly to your soul? That's the sacred sensory space magic we're unwrapping today.
Our bodies and spirits naturally unfold in spaces that anchor us to the present.
Enrich yourself and your space with gems on:
The true meaning of 'coming to our senses,' awakening from cultural conditioning to embodying our innate wisdom
How to weave together the fabric of feeling with the form of design
How to create a sensory sanctuary that's as unique as you are
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