Episode 184 - Gems of Wisdom From Your Beauty Godmother
Your beauty godmother (hi, it’s me 💁🏻♀️) is here to liberate you into a new kind of ritual.
As a certified esthetician and spa therapist for over 20 years, I’m continually struck by how confused so many women feel about their products and beauty practices.
But there’s a deeper well of beauty wisdom that goes far beyond any flashy device or fancy ingredient.
It's time to dip your tootsies in a rose-scented bath and receive these Godmother-given gems, passed from my heart to yours.
In today's episode, you'll discover gems on:
How to make your beauty rituals a more grounding, enchanting, sacred experience
The most important beauty advice I'd give you if I could only share one thing
Why beauty is a natural, human instinct, not a modern invention, and how to reignite your own intuitive beauty wisdom
What to do when you don’t have the energy for a big to-do at the bathroom sink, but still want to feel like yourself again
Let’s return the power of beauty ritual to where it belongs: into your own two hands.
With love & satin sleep masks,
Mary
P.S. 💋 This month inside The Sanctuary, we’re wrapping you in beauty secrets and radiant rituals.
Want to learn how to give yourself a Ritual of Radiance in just 1, 5, or 10 minutes?
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Hello beautiful and welcome to the Come to Your Senses podcast. I'm your host, award winning certified feminine embodiment coach, licensed esthetician, and enthusiastic foster dog mama to animals across the land. Mary Lofgren Here we explore how to bring more richness, radiance, peace, and pleasure to our lives, homes and hearts through the joy of beauty, the wisdom of the body, the warmth of connection, and the splendor of the senses. I'm so glad you're here. Pull up a pouf and let's dive in. Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode Beauty Advice. I'd share if I was your godmother, which I kind of like to think of myself as godmother to my community at large. But one of the things you'll hear in today's episode is about my own godmother, who was very special to me, and who nurtured a relationship to spirituality in me that was really rooted in unconditional love. And one of the ways that I see unconditional love so beautifully. Demonstrated and expressed in our world is through acts of beauty. As someone who is a licensed skin care professional spa therapist for over 20 years, I have a lot of knowledge in this area. But also as someone who has really devoted my life to beauty and to feminine reclamation around beauty as a spiritual practice. I got a lot to share with you today, and today's episode is actually a sweet peek behind the curtain of our sanctuary membership, which is a membership community for feminine beings who are seeking a body based approach to presence and spiritual practice. And this month, our theme. Every month we explore different theme in this month. Our theme is Slumber Party beauty secrets and radiant spa rituals. And so I wanted to just give you a little sneak peek of what you can expect when you decide to walk through the garden gates of the sanctuary. And this month in the sanctuary is part spa day, part beauty school, part slumber party, and part feminist beauty revival. And I wanted to just give you this little taste because the sanctuary is open for enrollment through August 7th, and it is not too late to join us to slip on your satin sleep mask and smear some green mud on your face and come and join the beautiful campfire of beauty and presence and pleasure that we have laid out for you. And so, without further ado, we're going to jump into our gems. And I can't wait to explore the godmother's guide to beauty ritual. Hello gorgeous beings, and welcome to This Charm, which is a private podcast, The Godmother's Guide to Beauty. So I am very blessed to have had a wonderful godmother, my Aunt Kathy. My parents were very religious, very Catholic, and Kathy was very Catholic. But something that was unique about my parents is that they were what I would call guitar mass Catholics. When they got married, several churches denied their requests to have my uncle, who's a Christian brother, play the guitar because it wasn't regarded as a traditional enough instrument in the church. And so my parents, in their warmest essence, had a very Christ like quality. And my Aunt Cathy radiated that like honey dripping from her heart, through her laugh, through her big 80s glasses. She had a bigger round body. Her hugs were legendary, and she deeply inspired myself as a godmother to my three brilliant God kiddos. God is children and also really just my life path of bringing and merging this feminine essence with the warmth of spirituality and love and. Those all encompassing aren't Cathy hugs. And so Today's Charm is a podcast dedicated to bringing that same honeyed warmth into your approach to beauty. I think we all have experienced the endless clickbait and conditioning and myths around beauty and the confusion between youth and radiance when it comes to feminine beauty. And so, in this mini class lesson of luxury, we are going to explore three ways to approach beauty, where I invite you to pull back the beaded curtain on my salon. We are going to wipe clean the slate of everything that you've been taught about beauty and beauty, ritual and adornment. And we are going to start fresh from the perspective of a godmother who loves you deeply, who sees your limitless radiance, and who wants to take you through an initiation of beauty as a feminine spiritual calling and homecoming. AKA, that godmother is me. So strap yourself into the purple velvet throne that I have laid out for you, and let's dive in to three charms on how to bring more of this effervescent spirituality into your beauty rituals. So the first and the most foundational comes from a quote. That is attributed to Sophia Loren. Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful. A story that demonstrates this transformation in my own life is one of the most transformative things I've ever done. I was in my 20s. I took classes at Mama Gina's School of Womanly Arts, and this was a school entirely dedicated to a woman's pleasure and to the art of using pleasure to create a resplendent, abundant, desire driven life. And I came in on day one. I remember exactly what I was wearing. I was wearing this little polka dot blazer this very 1920s with a bright red lip, and these were daring things for me to wear at that time, because I felt and held so much shame about my body. And throughout the class and throughout the workshop, there were several exercises where women of all ages, shapes, sizes, socioeconomic backgrounds, tastes. We're challenged to adopt total ownership of their beauty and where we were also given the opportunity to reflect each other's beauty back to one another. And what was so transformative about it is seeing other women practice believing that they are beautiful, immediately changed the way that I saw them, and led me to practice the belief that I was beautiful and immediately transformed my own experience of my own beauty. And so a practice that I want to suggest that can be incredibly transformative. I just experienced this last night, actually. I was in a fitness class. And, you know, fitness classes are not really the most body worship friendly environment. You know, I was standing in front of a row of mirrors under overhead lighting. And at the end of the class, when we were stretching, I looked down and I saw my hip. We were doing like a spinal stretch. And I looked down at my hip, and at first glance I criticized it for being too big, too misshapen. It should be this. It should be that. And then I realized, oh, that is like the shape of a gorgeous butternut squash or a beautiful autumn gourd. I'm really into gourds. Watch out come autumn. I'm all about the gourds. But you know these shapes of nature. And it made me think of this Instagram post that I saw on one of the most powerful body positive influencers that I know named Nellie London. And it's a real. And I'll pop a link to it below this charm. But it says maybe the problem isn't how you see your body. Maybe you're comparing it to the wrong things. And it's this gorgeous display of her body displayed in comparison to these beautiful places in nature. Like the freckles on her face being compared to the speckles on a lily and the curve of her hip against her waist being compared to the curve of a mountain ridge against the sea. And it is just so, so spectacular. And a practice that I find incredibly useful is to look at different aspects of your body and your beauty. And compare them to things that also strike you as beautiful. And so this is one practice that I want to invite you into this week as your practice of this godmother's redirection around beauty. And an example is, you know, when I look at my belly, there is a gorgeous, overflowing cello like shape that also reminds me of those sterling silver pedestal bowls that you see in Renaissance paintings that are just overflowing with grapes and oranges and fruit and flowers. That's a one example of a comparison that shifts the way I see and experience my belly, away from the old paradigm of what we might call the white male gaze to this feminine gaze of abundance, and where beauty is not something we must fit into like a standard. But it is this inherent, ever present, honeyed radiance that every woman, every human, everything in some way possesses. It simply awaits our recognition. And I just want to read a few lines from a poem I wrote when I was moving through the world as my burlesque persona, Kitty Cavalier. And it's called adoration. I love my legs. They are like elegant champagne flutes, like ladyfingers, drizzled with chocolate and whipped cream. I love my breasts. They are the ripest plum hanging on a vine in Tuscany, still warm from the afternoon sun. I love my hips. The way I can grab the flesh on the bone like a crisp brown Christmas turkey cooked with butter under the skin. I love my collarbone like an Olympic ice skater. She is graceful, elegant, a perfect ten. And I'll drop this poem also below this episode in the download section. But these are just some examples. You know, it's not that I don't look at my legs and see things that the patriarchy would have me believe are less than rapture. But by doing these reframes, and by drawing my awareness to a more expansive vision of my beauty, it instantly changes the way I think, the way I see myself, the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I show up in the world and who I believe myself to be. And so I strongly and fully, as your godmother, encourage you to whip out your journal, write down 3 or 4 aspects of your beauty and compare them to other things of rapturous beauty. And of course, you're always welcome to share them in the journal. I would be besotted to read them and celebrate you. The second charm for today in the godmothers approach to beauty, is seeing beauty less as a project of improvement and more as an elemental celebration. So sometimes beauty can feel more like a firehose of advice that completely overwhelms the mind, body and senses. Then a natural intuitive knowing towards that which will bring out the best in us and in the skincare industry, which I have to say, just little feminist aversion. I think it's kind of bullshit that we call the skincare and adornment industry, the beauty industry, because the health of our skin, the radiance of our skin, you know? Yes, there's an element of beauty to that, undeniably. But calling it the beauty industry makes beauty a commodity. And so that's just a little side note of questioning when we think about skin care products. You know, the emphasis is often on the newest ingredient, the newest device or gadget. But when I care for my own skin, as someone who's been a licensed esthetician for over 20 years. The products and treatments that I do are so very simple, because nature provides us with so much to intuitively care for our radiance. Things like salt on the skin, the friction of our hands, the simplicity of a gentle soap. I don't really recommend using soap. It's very stripping, but a gentle, cleansing agent, the warmth of golden oil drizzled onto the skin. The benefits of massage and the way that massage naturally assists our face or scalp our bodies, our bellies, to operate in a way that's functional by draining away toxins and stagnancy and bringing in And new, fresh, nourishing circulation. And so the sanctuary is chock full. My friends, of these elemental kinds of beauty rituals. So we have a nourishing belly massage. Working with your belly. While it may not seem directly related to the glow in your skin. Working with your belly through massage and through the radiant belly breath, meditation opens up again that central channel of the body so that more circulation can flow through the scalp. Massage deepens the health of your hair by exfoliating dead skin around the hair follicle, nourishing your scalp with new circulation, which leads to new ideas. One of my favorite radiance boosting rituals. Is a one minute steam ritual where, especially in the middle of the day, especially when I just want to crawl under a blanket and sleep for the next three hours, is I'll go into the bathroom, I'll run the hot water, take a fresh washcloth, place a droplet of essential oil. That step is optional. If you want to add some aromatherapy, run it under hot water, wring it out, and place it either on your face. I especially love to hold heat gently over my eyes. I find that so soothing. Or if you're wearing makeup, you can just lightly hover the washcloth around your face for a little bit of steam. But really, if I'm wearing makeup, sometimes even doing this treatment will enhance my makeup by giving me a little bit more of a dewy glow from the steam so you can lightly press the washcloth as long as you're pressing and not wiping, your makeup will typically stay relatively intact, and this is one example of the healing properties of water. If you use an essential oil, the enlivening properties of aroma, the simplicity of warmth and temperature, the healing of your own touch. And as you do this ritual, you take with you your godmother's blessing that you are deserving of warmth and richness and radiance, and that comfort that comes from these feminine rituals. And that is a perfect segue into the final charm for this mini private podcast, which is beauty. Is worth it. So the world and its demands will always try to convince us that there's no time. There's not enough time to adorn yourself. There's no reason to put on makeup when you're not going to see anybody that day. If makeup is part of your pleasure, practice as it is mine. There's not enough time or I don't have enough energy at the end of the day to wash my face. And sometimes these are all very true. You know, I don't want to invalidate reality or put any pressure on you to do more than is within your capacity. But I do want to remind you that any investment in beauty is an investment in a feminine way of being, particularly in a world that will convince you there is no value in things that have this innately feminine nature and beauty ritual a washcloth ritual, putting on makeup at the start of your day to give yourself a little extra pampering and adornment, slowing down to maybe mix patterns in your wardrobe and dare yourself to step out of your style comfort zone. These are all ways that we say, actually, this does matter. Actually, my energy does matter. And beauty. You know, one of the my favorite expressions is that beauty is life. Beauty is creativity. It is art, it is expression come to life. And so taking time, making time. Investing time into the spell that beauty casts upon your life is always. Always worth it. Signed with love. With an ostrich feather plume quill. Your godmother. So thank you for listening. And just to recap those charms, the first trust reference to that quote that the thing that makes you beautiful is the belief that you are beautiful. The second is shifting your relationship to tending your beauty from that of improvement, cosmetic, and fitting in to a standard that was never really designed for you or your full humanity, and instead approaching beauty as something elemental and abundant and inherent. And finally, investing time and beauty gives you life and is always worth it. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. A little sample of what you can expect inside the garden gates of the sanctuary community. You can head to Mary Lofgren Sanctuary or just click the link below this episode. And once again, enrollment is open now through Thursday, August 7th. Rituals, radiance, and resplendent await. I hope to see you inside.