Episode 186 - How To Revive The Lost Art of Lounging

"The world is full of magic, silently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." W.B. Yeats.  

There is certain sweetness in surrendering to a sofa, drizzled in a patch of afternoon light. Lounging is the art of striking up a romance with time itself. In this episode, we’ll wander through the pleasures of the lounge, how to not get bored and revert to scrolling when you lounge, cultivate a dreamy state of embodied relaxation, and let the art of lounging wrap around you like silk. Hit play and let's lounge!

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• Episode 165: The Wild Joy of Creative Expression with Suzi Banks Baum

• Transcript. How To Revive The Lost Art of Lounging

  Episode 186 - The Lost Art of Lounging

   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 the lost Art of lounging. So as I sit here, there's a black cat next to me grooming her little paw. Lying in repose like a Egyptian goddess and teaching us the embodiment of lounging just with her presence. And I feel very grateful to be one of the last generations to know what life was like before the internet and before cell phones. God, I remember our first car phone. It had a strap, like a Ghostbusters pack that you could wear on your back. And you know. And the reason I share that is because I have a body memory of life without the scroll. And I know for myself and for so many of my friends and clients, the art of lounging and relaxing has often been replaced by the action of scrolling. And whenever I scroll, you know, on social media or on whatever. I notice that I kind of feel like Frodo in Lord of the rings, where I can completely disappear and be in this completely immersive little world and forget that I'm actually in the natural world. And so today we are going to talk about how to use your senses and how to use your body, and how to use your time to restore a state of relaxed presence to your days and where your body can remember not just the ever present wind up of the day, and then the confusion of not knowing how to settle at night. That comes from constantly being exposed to a barrage of information and blue light. But can relax like a cat on a chaise. Into the curves of lounging. And so recently, I went on a trip to the northwest. To visit with some friends of 25 years to celebrate one of our friends 50th birthday. And to really celebrate our collective silver anniversary. And we did a lot of lounging, you know. Often on trips, there can be a lot of adventures going for long hikes. Going to see sights. But really, we just hung out at each other's homes. Well, I mean, I don't live there, but the various friends homes who are in the area and spent time with their kiddos and had coffee together, and we cooked meals together and we laughed and we played Nintendo and oh my God, it was just so nourishing. And one of the things I noticed was that. When I lounge, what really brings me into a state of sacred lounging is creativity. So I brought my little travel palette of watercolors and a single watercolor block. And I knew that I wanted to create a handmade card for my friend for his birthday. And his favorite flower is Deep Purple Dahlia. So fortunately, I was able to find some of those at a farmer's market and bring them home. And each day I would just sit there and work on my Dahlia painting, and I was reflecting on just how much in those moments of lounging. Having something creative helps the mind and the hands and the body to stay in that state of activity, but without the pressure of producing, you know, especially if you have a nervous system like mine that leans more in the direction of what's called dorsal vagal, which is when our parasympathetic nervous system actually goes into a stress and threat response. So, you know, fight or flight is this heightened activation in the sympathetic nervous system? Normal, kind of healthy use of the sympathetic nervous system is what we use to get out of bed in the morning, sometimes to engage with one another. It's the ability to get things done, to flow through our day, to take action. And then our parasympathetic nervous system is what winds us down at night. The rest and digest system. But if you have a history of trauma and where your fight or flight impulses were either shut down or not available, you know, for example, let's say you grew up in a difficult home environment. You can't necessarily run and leave your caregivers. You also can't necessarily fight back against your caregivers because that would be a threat to your safety as well. And so your system might go into this state of dorsal vagal, which is the freeze response, the fawn response where we might. Play along or, you know, do something. I just experienced my sweet little fawn this weekend when I was at a workshop, and I went a little bit beyond my boundaries and, you know, went into some pleasing like that would be a micro example of a fawn response. And what does this have to do with lounging? Well, for someone like myself, whose body easily reverts to freeze, fawn and dissociation, stillness can feel like freeze. And so in order for me to relax, it really helps me to have something creative in my hands. Similarly, you know, here in The Sanctuary, which is our online global practice community and come to your senses, we have a weekly presence gathering. And within that gathering, it's 30 minutes to refill your cup and refresh your spirit. We do presence practices that include movement of the body and music and writing and journaling and sometimes beauty rituals. And sometimes we even have a craft spa. So this weekly gathering is called the Sanctuary spa for the body, beauty, spirit and soul. And, you know, around the solstice time, we'll do this really simple craft of making solstice lanterns and around the Halloween so and time will make intuition stones and, you know, craftsmen. I mean, at all of my retreats, we do some sort of craft. And at the Yule retreat, you'll winter solstice, uh, holiday. Festival season. We had a craft table and I'll never forget. You know, I put the craft table out for one exercise. We had this long farmhouse table and I put at the center. We made our own journals and there were collage pieces and stickers and, you know, collage paper and Mod Podge, and you could not tear the women away like we watched movies from the craft table. We FaceTimed my mom, even because my mom is a member of our community, and it was like people were just glued to the craft table because it activates this part of our inner child and gives us a way to pass the time that is playful. And so one recommendation I have, I have a whole. So first of all, separate recommendation. I have a Pinterest board called Gift Desires. And on that Pinterest board is all the things that I collect throughout the year that I'm like, oh God, I would love that. Not necessarily something I might purchase for myself or, four, you know, spend income on. But something that I would just love to receive as a gift. And I updated all year long so that at the holidays and at my birthday, I can send it to my family members and my friends who want to give me a gift. And it's just so satisfying. Anyway, on that board, I have all these craft kits that I found on Etsy, so a paper marbling kit and a beginner's macrame kit and a felting kit. And you know, all of these things that I mean, with hand marbled paper, there are just endless uses for that. Sometimes I'll even make my to do list on gorgeous paper, just as a gesture of these are sacred tasks that I am performing in order to connect with my Dharma, with my purpose, my higher purpose. And they deserve, as my friend Susie Banks Boehm would say in our episode on Imperfect Creativity as a daily spiritual practice, which will pop in the show. Notes. A nest for your holy knowing. So Susie makes these extraordinary, exquisite handmade books with plant dyes and beeswax that she saves throughout the year from candle nubbins. And oh my God, it is just so extravagantly beautiful. And she uses these journals to write in, because how many of us can relate to getting a beautiful journal? And it's like, oh, it's too pretty to write and I don't want to mess it up. But this is a nest for your holy knowing. And anyway, that's a little bit off topic, but creativity is a way to especially for the feminine nervous system and the feminine oriented nervous system. So whether you are cisgendered woman or you are a gender variant person who feels at home and identifies with feminine energy as being a native energy to you, you are someone who finds regulation not through detaching from life, through stillness, through solitude, but by merging with life through your senses. And it's probably a reason you might be attracted to this podcast. And so big vote for creativity. That's all I'm saying. Get yourself on Etsy. Get yourself a kit. Get yourself lounging. Our next gem is real simple and rather than something to do. This gem is rooted in something to let go of, which is just turn off the devices. One of my most sacred pleasure practices is the bold and brave act to turn my devices off. Or, you know, if you need to have them on airplane mode, whatever. Put it in a box somewhere. To separate myself intentionally from my devices and to see what happens. Initially, there's a period of withdrawal where my system and my dopamine stores aren't sure what to do or where to go. But eventually new ideas and new neural pathways come in and a new level of enjoyment at life's mundane tasks. I don't think that we have any idea how much the siren of our phones. I mean, I love the archetype of the siren, the siren being the sea goddess who calls seductively to sailors and then pulls them down to their death in the sea. That's, I would say, the patriarchal interpretation of the siren. But, you know, our phones and devices, it's like they have this invisible pull on our energy and attention. And there's something about turning them off. For me, it's like blocking an avoidant lover, like. Or a toxic lover like bless and block. You know, it's like all this energy gets really freed up. And I just remember one time I've told this story on the podcast several times, but I'll just tell it again because it was such a powerful experience in I'm a sober human and in early sobriety, I remember. You know, it was such a seasoning. A tender rising. Shall we say, of realizing that I really didn't know how to have fun when I just had unoccupied, alone time and I was using alcohol and just lots of other non substance substances like dating compulsively, spending compulsively, you know, just all these behaviors rooted in urgency to feel a sense of faux aliveness or temporary aliveness. And in early sobriety, I remember waking up one Sunday and I had just moved to a new city, and I was completely felt so alone. And I just had a carrot in the air moment like Scarlett O'Hara. I thought, Scarlett O'Connor, because I'm a huge fan of the show. Nashville, Rayna James forever. She is my higher power. But anyway, a carrot in the air moment of God is my witness, I will not. Go down the Drano hole of doom, scrolling for this whole sundae to soothe but not live, you know. And so I turned off my phone and it was like, okay, let's start there. And I noticed that in just that simple closing of that door, it opened up a new door of actual desire to clean my kitchen and actual desire to get hibiscus orange zest iced tea and make a pitcher. And even to this day, in the sanctuary, we have this little five minute video of how to make your self a Summer hibiscus mocktail refresher, which was inspired by that experience. And all sorts of things happened that day, and I actually wrote a blog post about it at the time called The Most Potent Magic I've Ever Encountered, which simply starts by closing the door to distraction. And as W.B. Yeats would say, the world is full of magic, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. And the final gem on the lost art of lounging is inspired by a dog set that I did recently for a sweet golden retriever that was like a marshmallow with angel wings wrapped in fur. And I was staying at this beautiful home here in Northern California and just watching the house and watching the pup while the owners and their family were away. And I just was so excited about it because this house just had this, you know, not just gorgeousness in its decor and its architecture. I mean, there was beautiful taste throughout the home, but there was just this energy of sweet serenity throughout the home. And I thought to myself, I need a loungewear upgrade so that I can truly settle in to the energy of this house while I'm there. And I went to TJ's and I picked up a really elegant soft. Delicious lounge set like this little pair of shorts and a little top and a robe like a long. It's not really a robe, it's more like a duster cardigan. And man, did that make a difference. And just this morning I came downstairs. I do a guided meditation with a community on zoom in the mornings, and I put on these really cute little joggers, and I have this little slip that I've had for like two decades that is just really durable, lasting. It's actually a Victoria's Secret item, which I don't really like supporting that company, but it has stood the test and my, you know, creamy duster cardigan and I just felt like chic on wheels. And it just makes such a difference to my self-image, to how I perceive the day when I don't feel ragged and busted When I look in the mirror while I'm brushing my teeth and I enter my meditation differently, and I felt inspired to dress with more elegance for my day. Even though it's just me and the black cat at home today. Working. And so loungewear upgrade my friends. Ripple upon ripple of pleasure and relaxation awaits you with just a single refinement to this area of your wardrobe. And that, my friends, brings today's charms and gems to a close. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so honored to hear about it in a review on Apple Podcasts, a comment on Spotify, or a five star follow wherever you get your podcasts. And I try to. Whenever there's a new review, read it on the air in gratitude for you and share your name. So if you would like to have your name read on the air in a little love note. Verbal love. Note of appreciation. Head to Apple Podcast or just go to Mary Lofgren Review, where there's a 32nd video on how you can do it. And I wish you a beautiful week full of lounging and luscious ness. And I will see you in our next episode. For more gems on how to celebrate life through the richness of your senses, head to Mary Lofgren comm. There you'll find an abundant library of free gems and resources. You can check out my award winning coaching programs or flirt with stepping through the garden gates of the sanctuary community. Come and learn how to make beauty, presence, and everyday luxury a lifestyle at Mary lofgren.com.