Episode 190: 3 Ways To Find Your Center Through Enchantment
Do you ever find you can be totally in your groove, until a co-worker stops by and, zap! Your nervous system short-circuits.
Do you long to feel centered, calm, easeful, and awake, but most days you feel more like a windsock flapping about at a used car lot?
Do you desire a path to presence that doesn’t require more work or discipline, but invites you to stroll down a petal and stardust strewn path to enchantment?
Then today’s episode was cooked up just for you.
You’ll be enchanted by:
Three practices that you’re already doing, and how to make them sparkle with enchantment
How allure is the way to create a sustainable centering practices, with enchantment as the path
Validating words and thought magic for those of us who crave a richer, more playful path to presence and regulation
Finding your center is more than being relaxed, it’s being rooted in yourself so that no matter how life, work, and relationships heave you about, you stand steady.
And I daresay, it can be fun.
Join me here for 3 Ways to Find Your Center Through Enchantment.
With sparkle and candlelight,
Mary
P.S. - This episode is a bit of cream off the top of what you’ll experience at my upcoming free workshop: The Everyday Enchantress. Click here and let’s make the everyday feel magical again.
The Everyday Enchantress • A free workshop to bring magic, intuition, and meaning back into your days
Wednesday, October 29th, 6pm ET
P.S. - Yes, there will be a playback!
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Project 1
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 Three Ways to Find Your Center Through Enchantment. So in last week's episode, which was called How to Make Daily Life Feel Magical Again, I talked about how enchantment has been a theme that is worrying and stirring around. Come to your senses quite a bit right now. And because this is a season of enchantment at the time of this recording, it's autumn be because in the sanctuary, which is our global community space where we practice slowing down, leading from presence and living from wonder. We are studying a whole season of enchantment, and some of that cream is being ladled off the top and given to you here on the podcast. And see, because in just about a week, I'm going to be teaching a free workshop called The Everyday Enchantress, and you can find out more about that at Mary Lofgren enchant. And so when we talk about finding our center, you know, what that phrase really means to me is that place where not that we won't get knocked around, but where we can remain standing because we have our sense of balance. When I used to live in New York City, I would ride the subway. And there's a certain bravado that comes from being a no hand on the pole subway rider. You know, someone who can just kind of surf from where they're standing when the train is crowded. Although often I've had to reach up and grasp the ceiling in order to maintain my composure. But you know what I'm trying to say? So finding your center. It is also a way of saying, this is who I am. This is where I stand when I'm in relationship with someone or something. You know, it's very easy to get lost in that which is outside of us. And finding our center allows us to relate to whatever that is, whether that's your spouse or your pet or your boss from a place of self, and that healthy quality of self that comes from our center. And there are lots of ways to find our center. Just a few examples would be meditation, yoga, going on walks in nature, affirmations, things like that. And for some of us who are drawn in by beauty and who find magic to be like medicine, and not necessarily magic as in making things happen by casting a spell, although that's part of it. But the magic of being alive in a body on this planet, fully, sensually sensorial, connected. There are some of us who are drawn to the path of enchantment as our spiritual practice and our mindfulness practice. And if that's you, my friend, you are in good company and you are in the right place. Because this is basically what all of our episodes really revolve around here on the podcast, but also because today's episode is devoted especially to that. So if you ever find that you can walk into work cool as a cucumber, and then that one coworker drops by your desk and your hair fries like you have stuck your finger in an electrical socket and you're a cartoon. Or you can be bopping along throughout your day, and then you open your email and all of a sudden it's like you have Scrooge McDuck. Swan dived into his gold silo. You have swan dived into your email, completely lost your sense of center or any other amalgam of events that cause us to lose our center, particularly in the digital age. You are so welcome here, and I am so excited to bring to you three gems on how to walk yourself back home through enchantment. Sell each of our gems. Today is going to begin with a quote, and this first quote comes from one of my favorite spiritual authors, Mark Nepo. Nepo. Nepo not exactly sure of the pronunciation, but his books are incredible, and one of his quotes that I love is to listen is to lean in softly with the willingness to be changed by what we hear. And this first gem is a practice that I am fresh off of. I literally just returned from a walk in the woods about five minutes ago, and this is a listening walk. Now, one caveat that I want to share before we dive in is that all of the practices that I'm going to share today are things that you're already doing, and things that you've probably already thought of. Lord knows we don't need another infographic of ten things to do to come to mindfulness. I mean, I see things like that on Pinterest and I'm like, oh God, you know, first of all, it feels so incredibly simplified. But second of all, it's like, this just looks like a to do list to me. Like I already feel more stressed. And that is the very last thing I would intend in this episode. What my intention is, is to share these simple rituals that you're already embarking on in your life, and add a creative dimension through the art of enchantment. And so a listening walk is a walk in nature. And last week I shared about the tool of an intuition walk, which is a way of building relationship with your inner voice and with a body based approach to your decision making. A listening walk is a bit different. A listening walk is where you go into nature and. You start your walk with the sheer intent to listen. And I've done these kinds of walks where I'll set an intention at the start, and that can be powerful and insightful, but the most powerful for me, especially if you want to find your center. You know, to me, finding our center is walking through the labyrinth of the mind until we get to the deeper layers where thoughts dissolve. And for me, when I set an intention on one of these walks, I'm constantly tracking everything as a potential message or answer to my question. And like I said, that can be really useful and helpful. But a listening walk is a little different because you are setting out on the path with the sheer intention to sink beneath the frothy, foamy waves on the surface of the mind and move into some of the deeper chambers of listening to your inner being, to the messages of nature, and to the little whispers that your guides long to deliver to you, but that can't be heard in the volume of the freight engine of day to day life as a human being in 2025. And I find that my deep listening usually starts to kick in around 15 or 20 minutes. I was reading about seeing the meteor shower. There was a meteor shower recently, and I was considering driving up to some of the darker places in Northern California where I live. And one of the things that said in the article I was reading is you want to give your eyes about 15 to 30 minutes to adjust to the dark so that you can see at maximum visibility. And I really loved that because it was just such a reminder that it takes time for our senses to adjust to a new environment. And so 15 to 20 minutes is my sweet spot. But as with everything you hear here, you are encouraged to find where is your own sweet spot in this process. And another recommendation I would have for a listening walk is to allow yourself to be held in the open palms of curiosity. So again, sometimes if I'm doing like a method or a tool, I'm like, okay, I'm on a listening walk. Okay, I just saw a rock. And what does that mean? What kind of message is that? You know, and it's just all comes from this desire to figure it out and to be able to control my experience and extract the meaning from the experience. I also remember a time where I was at an equine therapy retreat and working with the horses. And, you know, we do a one on one with the horses and or we did at this retreat. And I was like, okay, I have like 15 minutes with the horse. Like I got to maximize my experience and I just could see myself. And this was, you know, part of the biggest lesson that I learned from the horse is like, I could see myself just really trying to manage the messages that she was trying to give me. And it was a beautiful experience of letting that go and her inviting me to just soften in and collect the information and do the figuring out later. And so I extend that invitation to you as well, being myself and Luna, the beautiful horse. The next gem has to do with an altar that you visit every day, and that is the altar of your bathroom sink. And our quote to set up this gem comes from Sidney J. Harris. The time to relax is when you think you don't have time for it. And so this second gem is spell casting through skincare. This past week in the sanctuary, every week you are given a new charm and they are small presence practices, delivered one pearl at a time. And this week's charm was called skin care, spell casting and Confidence conjuring for your morning ritual. There are specific movements and invocations to set yourself up for the day. It's really a masterpiece in seven minutes, I have to say. I'm very proud of it. But anyway, so skin care. I mean, I could talk for hours about the Power of Beauty ritual to help us find center. But what I love the most about skin care, and I don't even personally like to call it beauty ritual because beauty is just one layer to it. What really we're practicing is spa therapy and spa ritual. Spa is a word that means healing through water. And I'm a licensed esthetician and have been for over 20 years. And when I was in esthetician school, I was a very angsty teenager and I would go to school hungover and exhausted and late, and I would lay my body down on the massage table and there would be lavender steam placed in front of my face. And this ballet of the esthetician and trainings fingertips as she danced across my face with cleanser and. I am so incredibly grateful for that experience, because during the time where I was as uncensored as a freaking windsock in a used car parking lot every day, I was given the gift of enchantment and embodiment through aroma and touch and regulation and exfoliation. And it was just such a gift. And so the next time you visit the altar of your bathroom sink, might I suggest elevating that routine, which, if you're like most people, probably involves slapping that cleanser on your face and doing a quick flash splash with the water. Probably still cold because you don't have patience to warm it up. And that is just fine, my friend. There is no shame, no self-care guilt around here for not doing it perfectly. But if you feel inspired to add a bit of enchantment to that process, what I suggest is that perhaps you light a candle, lower the lights, and as you cleanse your skin, either closing your eyes to make it a more ritualistic, inward calming experience. Or if you're feeling brave and curious. You can look at your own eyes in the mirror and really hold soft eye contact with yourself as you trace these enchanted shapes around your face. You know, so when we cleanse our skin, we usually do big sweeping circles, and sometimes we'll do accidental spirals and infinity symbols. And all of these are ancient shapes that hold power. And so something that you can do for like three minutes at the end of your day is not just relaxing into the sensation of your own touch and the aroma of the cleanser, but perhaps you want to deliberately close the neural pathways of your mind as you prepare for sleep. The neural pathways that are always being lit up by future thoughts and things to keep track of, and things to manage. Just some massaging of the temples with that intention can have an incredible effect on your psyche. Just like a mom who doesn't allow snacking after 8 p.m. is like kitchen closed. I remember I had a friend's mom who would say that when we were kids. And it was powerful because it was like, well, no matter what. We're not going to be allowed to have a snack. But then, of course, you know, after midnight, sneak in and grab a handful of M&Ms. But anyway, kitchen closed, neural pathways closed. It is time for sleep. We are winding this down, or winding closer to those neural pathways so that new pathways of ease and relaxation and softness and comfort can be opened. For those of you who are maybe not so into this kind of thing, this might feel a little goofy or a little too esoteric, but I just really encourage you to give it a try, because there's just something that locks into place when we pair our psyche and our intention with the power of our senses. And in this case, particularly the sense of touch and the sense of aroma, you know, one of the affirmations or invocations in the audio that I was talking about earlier that I prepared for the sanctuary is as we splash our faces from the cleanser, as we wash away old stories, and we open to what's new and fresh and growing and alive. So there's so many ways you can make your bathroom sink more of a luxurious, enchanted place to be. This is just one. The last gem that I want to share with you, and this is something you'll hear a lot more about at the workshop every day, Enchantress. But this gem centers around a quote from my friend and teacher and author, Veronica Vala, who is a burlesque performer and a practitioner of magic. She wrote a book called Bohemian Magic. And I'll never forget sitting in a burlesque class with Veronica. This was like. 20 some years ago, and she was teaching us something called spellbinding burlesque, which was bringing the tools of magic and enchantment and spell craft into your performances. And she said, be careful what you say before your performance about your performance, because your words are wands. And that has always stuck with me. And I find that in the world of personal development and growth, there can be some hypervigilance around positivity, which, you know, personally feels like a cheese grater on my cerebral cortex. But anyway, I mean, not really. I have learned to fall in love with positivity and possibility and those filters for how we see the world. But sometimes it can just feel, um, a bit abrasive and annoying. But the invitation here is as you move through your day, rather than focusing on what you do say or what you want to say or what you should say, I invite you to say less. And to focus not necessarily on finding the right words or affirmation, but more on practicing a bit of restraint so that you can be more careful. Careful as in full of care and intention with what seeds you're placing into the soil of your life. And I remember one time experimenting with a complaining cleanse, and there's so much I could say about that. But what I'll say is, it really impacted me because I always thought some sort of, you know, ditch the complaining was kind of just not very trauma informed and would mean that I couldn't have any quote unquote, negative thoughts or experiences. But what I discovered is that I didn't have to get rid of anything. I simply took away the filter of sharing what was uncomfortable or unsettled or annoying without vulnerability. Because for me, a complaint was a way of just saying, I have this charge and I, I, I'm so uncomfortable with it. So I've got to get rid of it. And then giving it to that person that I was complaining to. And sometimes that person was me. And it was just this complaining, charged loop going on in, in my head. And when I removed the filter of complaining, it's like I could still talk to the person about what I was experiencing. But there was a deeper level of vulnerability because I had to say how I actually felt. And I had to be prepared that if I was going to tell this person about it, I had to have some accountability to perhaps doing things differently around it. And so all of that is just to say that words are wands. And sometimes the most impactful way to wave your enchanted wand of language is actually to take away the clutter and see what remains. And so, my friends, that concludes today's episode on three ways to find your center through enchantment And as I shared at the beginning of the episode, this is merely the tip of the foot of the cauldron of what we're going to be exploring at the Everyday Enchantress, which will have some of these magical elements, but on a deeper level, is about cultivating a quality of attention where you can be connected to the wonder and the beauty and aliveness of the enchantment that is constantly humming all around you through the senses and the sensory and the living world. And so link below this episode to sign up. Or just go to Marie Lofgren and I will see you there and in our next episode. Thank you for listening. Ciao.