Episode 219 — Deepen Into Autumn Through Sensory Pleasures
Autumn presents us with change, vibrance, and a vivid reset before we enter into the darker months of the year. This episode guides you through all the sensory, spiritual, and style pleasures that Autumn has to offer in her grand banquet of delight.
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Podcast. Celebrating Autumn 2026
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 on celebrating Autumn. Through the seasons, the senses and the spirit. So this episode is coming out the day after the autumn equinox and equinox. Times are times where the darkness and the light are in equal balance. So as opposed to the times of solstice, for example, summer solstice being the longest day, the day with the most light, winter solstice being the shortest day, the day with the least light and equinoxes are these times of reflection and are almost like a turning point or a hinge point in the journey of the year. And if you missed the actual day of the equinox with your celebrations. No problem, my friend. Some might not say that. Some might say that's big problem if you're looking to celebrate the Equinox. But for me, I like to keep a very simple, very unfussy. Practice of aligning my senses and my spirit with nature and the seasons. And that's what today's episode is going to be all about, is how to use what you have at home, how to really simplify sensual and sensory pleasure, how to build altars without a single supply, and how to realign with the original spiritual practice, say original as an origin of living in harmony with these celestial events and honoring the life force at the heart of nature. And today's episode is also a tuning of the French horns to announce that the sanctuary, which is a signature. I don't even want to call it a program, but a guided experience of stepping out of the noise and pressures of daily life and back into connection with your body, with the senses, with beauty, and with the season is now open for new members.
Sanctuary is my most beloved offering that I've ever created, and that shows through our membership where our annual members repeat two three times. Not necessarily because it's always all new content, which I think is common in more membership and subscription models. But because what we explore in the sanctuary is the sense of timelessness and these concepts and practices and experiences that ground us both into the here and now and into the wider hands of what has always been. There's lots of new delights and deliciousness this year, including. Something I'm very excited to announce, which is that when you enroll, you receive the Sanctuary Box, which is a box that contains sensory gifts for each seasonal turn, as well as creative craft supplies to support you in using your hands and your creativity to tap into a sense of radiant presence and make your life feel more full and rich. Not just busy, not just full as in lots of stuff happening on the calendar. All has been fully felt. So Mary Lofgren sanctuary enrollment closes on September 30th and we begin October 1st. I look forward to welcoming you to the journey of being a sanctuary at. And with that, let's now dive into our gems. As I shared at the start, we are just past the time of the autumn equinox. This seasonal holy day in the nature traditions of paganism and modern Wicca is a seasonal holy day called Mabon. And the word Mabon translates to Divine Youth. And I like to think about this celebration of the seasons being an opportunity to renew our childlike relationship with the Earth. You know, there are so many pleasures for our inner child that autumn presents like picking apples and going on hay rides and being outside with a mug of hot cider and Equinox.
Time is a time where the balance tips and our seasons officially begin to move in a new direction, in this case moving in the direction of the dark season. And the dark season. We can have a complicated relationship with the dark season. In a culture that really worships the circadian rhythm and worships a state of perpetual harvest, and really those who are able to make their bodies most like a machine to be most rewarded. And that's one of the things that studying the seasons has really given me, is a totally different relationship to rest and to the dark season, which I used to dread. And now I anticipate, like a little raccoon who is ready to take her rest and be renewed, and then come out again in spring, refreshed. And autumn equinox is a time to really reflect on how do you feel about the dark season? Some questions that you might drop into your own body are. What does the dark offer me in terms of nourishment?
How might I welcome the darkness as an opportunity for renewal, or for exploring the hidden gifts of shadow? You know, speaking to that relationship to rest. This past weekend, I taught a free workshop to kick off the opening of the sanctuary, and it was called the Art of Keeping Time. And Keeping time as in holding time, experiencing time rather than time. Feeling like it's just slipping away or flying by. And you know, any time I teach a free event, there's a pretty great amount of output. There's all the logistics, there's the emails, there's the sounding of the horn to get people to come. There's the graphics, and then there's the very real preparation for a beautiful experience for those who attend. And this was on a Saturday that I taught the workshop. And on Sunday I looked over at the chair in my room, a bedroom which was absolutely covered and clothed. Chair spilling over onto the dresser. I mean, art supplies strewn about and of course, the impulse in that moment, the conditioned response is what's wrong with me? Why am I such a child? I'm 46 years old, can't even clean my room.
But then I realized, oh, right. I just went through a really big cycle of the spring phase of conceiving of this idea, the summer phase of ripening it into reality, the autumn phase of delivering it. And now I am in the rest phase where the reason there are clothes on my chairs because I literally don't have the energy to put them away. All of my energy has seeped back into my body because I am now in the sacred after of this event. And then as my energy restores after this period of rest, I will have no problem clearing off my dresser and clearing off my clothes. And so the seasons offer us grace when it comes to our own natural rhythms and the absolute persecution that can come from our inner manager who expects things to be the same always and embodying this arc of the seasons and this full revolution of the season, on the inner and on the outer, allows us to live more in the reality that everything is changed. As Octavia Butler once said, God is change. And while things are always changing, there is also this rhythm that we can rest into of the seasons. The moon phases, these quadrants of the year, and the way that nature teaches us to be more human inside of them. And in the sanctuary.
You know, the seasons are what write our curriculum. There's so many things I could tell you about the way that the sanctuary works, but one thing I'll say is that we gather nine times out of the year for these longer sensory embodied at home retreats, and that's when you get to open your little package that contains a seasonal sensory gift, as well as a small, simple, no experience, no perfection required. Craft a because these things are really fun. And who doesn't love a box full of packages that are waiting to be opened throughout the year, but be so that you have a chance to not just think about or notice the change in seasons, but you get to actually feel it in your body and feel that ancestral connection to this rhythm of time. Our next gem is celebrating Autumn through your senses. So I know I don't have to tell you that autumn gives us so many opportunities to feel our aliveness through the senses in this season, more so than any other season in my opinion. I mean, we have the change in temperature, we have the change in light, we have the changing leaves, we have changing foods. It's really a significant shift in how our bodies orient to our own aliveness. So some of the simple pleasures that may be obvious, but some that might be a little less obvious or forgotten about are things like nature, pleasures, pumpkin and gourd. Those of you who are longtime listeners, you know I love Awardee Gourd. I mean, who doesn't? The Striations on the sides of gourds. The vibrant mums that come out this time of year. The crunching of leaves on the autumn equinox. One of my own rituals is to have a baked apple and do a bit of ritual around that with cinnamon and honey.
And so the smell when you walk into the house of Apple speaking, maybe with the crumble of oats and butter and brown sugar on top. Get out of town. So delicious. Speaking of taste, pleasures of autumn, we have a rainbow of roasted root vegetables that strut the catwalk of the farmers market this time of year. Sage and pumpkin reunite in their holy union. Hearty oatmeal in the morning. These are just some of the delectable flavors of autumn. There are so many experiences in autumn, like your favorite autumn movies, making crafts, Halloween joy, country drives, nature haunted houses. That's your thing. I mean, I love to just throw a big scarf around my shoulders and go to the farmer's market and just feast my eyes like the produce in autumn is just so dazzling. And speaking of a giant scarf, let's talk about the style pleasures of autumn. So as the chill descends, it's time to break out that warm, cozy fall coat, which I think fall coats are really such a seasonal statement piece. I mean, you can take yoga pants, a tank top, or a t shirt that is crumpled up in the back of your drawer. You put on a chic fall coat with a colorful scarf and maybe some gorgeous gloves and a hat. Hello! Instant shift from walking to the grocery store to walk into a fashion week show. This is the season for comfy, cozy snacks.
Okay, so I was thinking the other day about how Marilyn Monroe, you know, kind of an icon of a particular flavor of feminine sensuality. When the press would ask her, Marilyn, what do you sleep in? She would provocatively say, My Chanel number five, indicating that she sleeps naked with only her perfume. And I was like, they asked me that question. My response would be my L.L. bean Merino wool men's socks. Because let me just tell you something, friends. These socks are like putting a hug on each foot. They are like walking around with two sheep walking on either side of you. Cannot recommend them enough. Fabulous boots that come about this time of year. Patterned, tight knit, anything. Even the dog sweater can be cable knit.
So so many sensory experiences to have in autumn and finally autumn as a time to connect with the sacred. So some of the spiritual themes of autumn as we know, are release. You know, you just need to look outside to the glorious display of leaves, taking their final joy ride from branch to the earth, to be composted and renewed and to grow again. Cycles of rebirth. Warm. Cozy. The home. Transition into the underworld of winter. Energy drawing from the outward of spring and summer. To the more inward experience of autumn and winter. And one thing that I teach that I've learned through a few different traditions, and was first introduced to me by my friend Rochelle, who's the founder of Coyote inspired movement, is to make a nature offering, and I like to call this practice outdoor altar, where I go into nature and maybe I go in with an intention or question, but more often than not, I just go in with the intention of creating beauty and having nature teach me through that process. And I'll take fallen leaves, acorns, twigs, branches and just arrange them with my hands into a formation of beauty and almost like a tool of divination. Soaking in that beauty of the outdoor altar almost always sends me some sort of a message that I need to hear, and is also an offering beauty and intention to the earth. Because anytime your nervous system is regulated, it helps to regulate the nervous system of the trees and the ground and the animals that surround you.
You know, autumn is a potent time to perform ritual. And as I said before, you know, and this is really true in the sanctuary. We do not do fancy. I mean, sometimes we do fancy because, let's be honest, I freaking love fancy. I live for fancy. But fancy can also be a reason not to do the thing you want to do. And so with your rituals, you might fish through your junk drawer for a candle, stick it into a wedge of baked apple, sprinkle some cinnamon for life and for heat, drizzle some honey for sweetness. You could have it be a gratitude offering or an intention setting for how you want to show up and feel this autumn and into winter, and then blow out the candle as a gesture of being willing to let go of the light season and mindfully and intentionally enter into relationship with the dark.
And then you gobble that thing up as a gesture of being willing to integrate and taste the pleasures of your intentions. Or maybe you make it an offering to the squirrels outside. Maybe not so much with cinnamon, but you get what I'm talking about. And so if these gems feel inspiring to you, and living this as a lifestyle of everyday sensuality is something you desire, if not neat. Because for some of us it is a soul need to have the nutrition and the nurturance, beauty and sensuality in our day to day life.
Come and join us in the sanctuary. I was just reviewing some of the testimonials of the sanctuary as we were preparing to open it up again, and some of my favorite lines are. The sanctuary has brought my senses alive again, and I've reunited with parts of myself that I didn't even know I missed. Another is The sanctuary has reconnected me with a zest for life that I thought I'd lost. And recently I was working with the participant, and she said something that just spoke so deeply to my heart about this creation of the sanctuary, because this is our third year of offering the sanctuary, and she's been a beloved community member for at least two of those years.
And she said, When I'm in the sanctuary space, whether it's through our seasonal retreats or our live embodiment practices, or visiting the library of gems and charms and practices and tutorials, it's like I'm given a little window into how to remember the parts of myself that I keep forgetting, and that's really why it's called The Sanctuary is. It's a place to step out of the noise, to step out of the pressures and demands that separate us from our body and return to ourselves in ways that feel powerful but also really playful.
Like in October, we'll learn how to use incense as a tool for meditation. But we'll also learn how to make monster potatoes. There's a three minute video on how to make yourself baked potatoes that look like monsters in honor of Solon or Halloween. And you know, that's a really important component. Is that so much of growth, work and remembering and returning can sometimes feel so serious. And one of our members said, the sanctuary is like a jewel box of delight for my inner child, a place to slow down and be saturated in wonder. And so I know for some of you, you are experiencing a wonder and delight deficit in life that cannot be solved through more work.
And that's why in the sanctuary, everything from what lands in your inbox to what lands on your doorstep is already done for you. So join us. Mary Lofgren Sanctuary enrollment is open for a short time through September 30th. And thank you so much for listening to today's episode. For every time you tap into the seasons and the senses as a part of your own coming home, and I will see you in our next episode.