Episode 208: Morning Pleasure as Nervous System Medicine
Sometimes, the pressure to create an optimized morning routine can be so immense.
Cold plunges. Tuning forks.
Shots of liquids that smell like a turnip's flatulence.
Me? I'm more of a buttered croissant, sliced apricot, bergamot steam coming off a cup of Ear Grey kind of gal.
And if I had to guess, I'd bet you are too.
In a world of habit trackers and sleep scores, a morning worth savoring can feel like a lost art.
In today's episode, I'll teach you how to step out of the rush and into the lush with magnetic morning pleasure.
You'll hear gems on:
How to make your morning more delicious
How one breath, one sip, one moment creates a genuine shift from bracing to beauty
The hidden sensory portals already built into your morning routine
My analog alarm + mochi white noise machine
The Sensual Sip, Barefoot Beginnings, the Queen's Walk, and more in my new ritual album Daily Rituals for Delicious Mornings
Links & Resources:
-
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. So, have you noticed that there seems to be a relentless and crushing amount of pressure out there to find the perfect and optimal morning routine. You've got your cold plunges, you've got your tuning forks, you've got shots of liquids that smell like if a turnip farted and all of that's great. I mean, I know some of you out there are bio hackers. I affirm you, but when is often missing is something that is so simple yet so easily forgotten about, which is the pleasure of the present moment. And while knowing the science of the body is incredible and innovative, that same science can't fully land in the body without the sensual. I was recently doing some writing about luxury and the fact that embodied exquisite presence in a world of constant pulling us out of ourselves is really the ultimate luxury. And the word luxury comes from the word Luxus, which means excess. And what that means to me is that luxury is simply an experience of more than enough. More than enough time. More than enough beauty. More than enough pleasure. And today's episode will likely optimize your morning a bit. But rather than going the flatulent turnip route. Today we will be going. The route that we often take here had come to your senses, which is straight to delight. And one of the reasons I wanted to record this episode is because I recently created a brand new offering that I'm really excited to debut, which is called Daily Rituals for Delicious Mornings.
The community helped me create it. I sent out a poll to some of our listeners and some of our sanctuary members, and what I really heard from folks is that while, you know, we want more intentional mornings and we want more magnetism throughout our day, God, what we really want is just some deliciousness. And I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the album throughout the episode and at the end of the episode, but for now, if you would like to feel like your mornings are unfurling before you, rather than rushing ahead of you, head to Mary Lofgren and I would love to share this ritual album with you. And with that, let us now dive into our gems.
You know, there's this Buddhist quote all of life, our thoughts, our circumstances, our reactions, our relationships arises from the tip of our intention. And, you know, I already kind of set this up a bit in the intro, but we begin with our orientation to mornings. Because often in the world of personal growth and development, there's such an emphasis on moving forward and choosing your intention and acting in alignment. And all of that's great. But the kind of mornings that I'll be talking about here and that I'm inviting you into today isn't so much about controlling or intending, but is actually about sitting back and receiving. A delicious morning is a morning where you get to experience rather than engineer your life. And you might be thinking, well, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? When I got three kids under ten and I got a business to take care of and all these things, and I don't mean to mock anyone by putting on that persona or that voice. I'm really kind of puppeteering my own voice. When I wake up in the morning and less than come to your senses, Mary picks up her phone before her feet hit the floor and argues with full, come to your senses, Mary. But the people with the most time were the most resources are often not the people who have the most delicious mornings. Just like everything else. It's the quality of our presence that determines the quality of our experience. And sometimes when we hear that word presence, you know, a word that's often synonymous with presence is awareness, bringing on that witness perspective or that witness energy. But something I think is important to clarify and distinguish is rather than a detached watching awareness.
Exquisite presence is an experiential awareness. So rather than taking a step back from the experience or just watching it from afar, we're really merging with that first sip of coffee and we're allowing the morning birdsong to play its symphony, bouncing off the cathedral ceiling of our own chest and heart. And this is the magic of our senses is, you know, our senses have the capacity to change everything about our perspective, what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about the world without us having to do anything but receive. And that dovetails us beautifully into our next gem, which is that micro moments can make the most massive difference in your morning. So just like I said a few moments ago, presence is the ultimate luxury or the new luxury. You know, in a world where everything is performance in the sense I mean, sometimes I see I mean, bless you, influencers bless you. But sometimes I see moments from people's lives on social media and I'm like, I, I did not need to see that.
Like I did not need to see that very personal moment first thing in your morning. But there can be this constant view of the not sacred witness that is always watching for am I doing it right? Am I doing it at the level I should be doing it? Could I be doing it more? And what this leads to is a reinforcement of the engine of never enough, never enough, never enough, never enough that constantly hums in the background. And so micro moments of exquisite presence. What that might look like is one breath. One sip. One whiff of the bergamot steaming off of your Earl grey. You know, it may not be perfectly sipping from your vintage teacup with the cream poured in a pitcher, although it might be. Maybe you're that fancy on an average day. Goddess bless you. But that doesn't matter to your nervous system. You know, that's the thing, is that this quality of presence and freedom and joy and delight in the morning. These are body states that occur as a result of the quality of our presence, rather than the number of gold stars we get on our self-care checklist. And so one breath, one sip, one moment is actually a shift from scarcity consciousness, that low grade hum of never enough to abundance consciousness, or shall we say, luxury consciousness in that these simple micro moments become more than enough. The next gem is illuminating hidden pathways to rich pleasure in your morning. So we all have our morning routines. We splash water on our face at the sink. We brew our cup of coffee. We step outside. We sit down at our desk and these all might feel like mundane, routine, unglamorous places and activities.
But actually, these are portals to profound magic. And this is where I want to share a bit more about daily rituals for Delicious Mornings, the new album that I mentioned, which is an album of six guided rituals that center around these simple things that you're already doing and elevates them to experiences that sparkle with delight and feminine frolic. So some of the rituals that you'll find are the sensual sip, a ten minute guided morning coffee and tea ritual. There's the Daily Energy Atelier, which is a affirmation and anointing ritual for when you're placing perfume or essential oils on your body, or if you're just sitting in the car while you're waiting for your kids to get out of soccer practice, and you need a little energetic attunement. There's the Barefoot beginnings, outdoor barefoot movement breath and connection ritual. There's Incense rising, which is a seven minute intuition ritual. There's the Queens walk, walking meditation, and what you can hear. The quality of these rituals is something more than finding your center, although that's very much a part of it. But it's also finding your pleasure, which has an impact on the day ahead, where your energy naturally shifts from efforts to one that is more of magnetism and where you start to see opportunities for fun and connection and pleasure and play in your day that were there the whole time. But when we're wearing that Trojan helmet of effort to get through the day, it's like our pleasure and play. Antenna can't connect to its source.
And beginning the day with a five minute skincare confidence conjuring, which is one of the rituals that's on the album, your channel cannot help but be tuned to the frequency of magnetism. So Mary Lofgren. Com or click the link below this episode to be taken down some of these hidden paths and portals to pleasure by yours truly. And our final gem is one of anticipatory care. So in last week's episode, I shared that I have a new man in my life. He is £6 and his name is Little Man and he's a five year old Chihuahua and I am obsessed with him. I love him so much. And one of the ways that I love him and love myself is in the morning. I'm often searching for, oh, where are my shoes? And where are my pants? Where am I? Comfy pants, you know, because I like to take them out first thing when we wake up. And one of the ways I care for myself is I just, you know, folks, I just. I fold up my sweatpants and I take out my little tennis shoes that have no back on them, that I just slip right in, that I got specifically for taking him on these short walks, because I am definitely one to collapse the back of my sneaker by sliding my heel into it without, um, lacing the laces. If you know, you know. And. If I have it in me, I'll even pull out a batwing cardigan with a tank top. No bra. We don't need to get that fancy, but it's a way of giving my morning this easy, full transition into something that makes me feel good, that makes me feel awake. Instead of just triage, what do I wear? What can I put on my body to just get out the door? And this is just one of the small ways that we can offer ourselves anticipatory care. Another way that I offer myself anticipatory care around using my phone in the morning is, you know, I've often used my phone as my alarm and as my white noise maker. And that means first thing in the morning, what ends up in my hand as I turn off the white noise and check the time. And so giving myself a white noise maker, I have the cutest little looks like a mochi ice cream. It's a little teeny weeny baby white noisemaker that I have on my nightstand and an analog alarm clock.
And so I keep my phone in my room but distant from my bed. And I am telling you, folks, when I wake up in the morning, just that tiny bit of distance from my phone makes it so much easier to make those first five minutes. Like I said, the micro moments of presence in our mornings technology free, which literally is like tossing a pebble in the pond of my entire day. It changes the infrastructure of our nervous systems to begin our days in sacred relationship with the living world through our bodies and our senses, rather than being pulled outward by the pressures of technology. And so, my friends, if this episode helped open a new window of possibility and presence and pleasure to your morning. And you would like to spend your mornings connecting to something greater than your to do list to carry you through your day. Head to Mary Lofgren or click the link below this episode and I will see you at your breakfast table. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time. If you're craving more of this kind of slowness in your daily life, I invite you to come unwrap a bonbon of a practice. It's a free five minute velvet reset to lead you back home to your body whenever your thoughts are spinning. Your shoulders are tensing, or you just need to reconnect to the compass within yourself. It's waiting for you in the show notes or at Mary Lofgren.