Episode 183 - Red Lips and Rose Petals: The Art of Beauty Ritual
Cherry ChapStick, kept in my kids patent leather Lambchop purse. 🐑
The snap of my grandmother’s compact.
The smell of cold cream and pink lipstick kissed tissues tucked into my mom’s purse.
These tiny adornments are like charms on the bracelet of my feminine heart, and I’m sure you have a whole host of your own.
This week, we are taking a long, perfumed exhale into the sensual inheritance of beauty.
From Egyptian perfume cones that melted into the skin overnight to the rouge-wearing rebels of World War II…we time travel together through scent, sensuality, memory, and lipstick.
But mostly, we talk about what beauty gives us: dignity, joy, creativity, and a way of laying flowers at the altar of your own becoming.
It’s also a little love note for this month’s theme in The Sanctuary, our membership community:
Slumber Party Beauty, Secrets & Radiant Spa Rituals.
If that theme makes you want to put your hair in rollers and sing Sandra D, you are most welcome to walk your bunny slippers through the doors and join us.
Mary
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Leave a Review for the Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Learn how to leave a review with a 30-second video
-
Red Lips and Rose Petals: The Art of Beauty Ritual
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 Sensual Inheritance of Beauty Ritual. So as I was preparing for this episode, I was thinking about being a little kid and just those little. Gestures of beauty and beauty ritual that usher us into an experience of maturity and adulthood. So when I was really little. It was cherry chapstick and putting it on and pretending that it was lipstick or lip gloss. I remember the very first razor that I ever bought that was like Neon Miami pink, and I hid it from my mom because I didn't want her to know, because I thought I would be too young and that she would disapprove. I remember standing at my grandmother's dresser and like the smell of her cold cream and the snap of her compact. I remember sitting in church, and my mom would let me go through her purse to keep me entertained, and just pulling out napkins with frosty pink lipstick kisses on them, and beauty ritual. You know, more than a cosmetic obligation is really a feminine tradition of the joy of adornment. I always like to really encourage my clients and you, my listeners, to shift the viewpoint of beauty ritual as not necessarily something that we're doing to preserve our skin, to stay youthful enough to continue to be pleasing to the male gaze for as long as possible. But much like Cleopatra considered herself a reincarnation of the goddess ISIS and would do all sorts of beauty rituals to. Embellish and adorn the temple of her body as tribute. Just like we might put flowers on an altar or like candles in a church. To honor this vessel of the goddess that adornment, rituals and beauty rituals are a way of polishing the marble of the temple of your being. And so today we are going to take a little tour, do some time traveling through some of the different ways that our ancestors would adorn some of the ways that. Adornments gained popularity and some of their deeper meanings, and also how you can continue to honor this ancestral legacy of adornment through your own modern and current beauty practices. And in addition to being loaded with education and tips in this episode, this episode was actually inspired by the theme of the month that we are exploring in the month of August in the sanctuary community, which is our Come to Your Senses membership community. And this month our theme is Slumber Party Beauty, Secrets and Radiant Spa Rituals. I am so excited! You know, sometimes our themes, they float a little more spiritual, a little more esoteric, a little more abstract. But when it comes to beauty, I am here, perched on your shoulder as your personal godmother, to give you the deeper story and the true skinny on how to really become your own expert on beauty and beauty ritual. So I'm a licensed esthetician. I also do personal styling and design work for my clients as a way to express and update their adornment style to align with the transformation that they experienced during coaching experiences and during my programs. And I just could not resist opening the garden gates for this week. So we're doing a little flash open of the sanctuary, because I want to give anyone who is interested in a full month beauty immersion the chance to jump in. So if you go to Mary Lofgren. You can join us for a month or you can jump in for the whole year. But this is going to be a really special month with some really special charms on how to make beauty less intimidating, less time consuming, more of just a way to access pleasure and nourishment, and really, this feminine quality of presence that we center everything around here. It come to your senses. And so join me at the 13 going on 30 style sleepover party. We will sing Pat Benatar, and I will tell you everything I know about how to create your most radiant at home spa rituals. The doors
will be open through August 4th, and on August 5th is when we start with our very first Feminine Living Masterclass on Slumber Party Beauty Secrets. So affix your satin mask to your forehead, wrap yourself in your Chanel robe, gather your mandoline, sliced cucumbers and let us feast on beauty in the month of August. Head to Mary Löfgren. To slip in through the garden gates this week only. So where will begin is where we often begin, which is with a quote from one of my favorite spiritual teachers, mystics and past life husbands, John O'Donohue, the Jod, as I like to call him. So John O'Donohue wrote an incredible book that I think if come to your senses were to have a text book, it might be this book which is called Beauty, the Invisible Embrace. And John says, in the darkest of times, beauty is what holds the human heart together. Ah, I just want to allow a little time to let that unfurl in your consciousness before we drop in. Another gem from John. When we speak of beauty, we are always talking about a deeper dimension of life, a presence that reaches into the hidden depths of the soul and the world. And I love these quotes, and I start with these quotes because I am a shamelessly superficial individual. I will talk about the quality of the thread, count in my sheets with complete effervescence and abandon, while at the same time pondering existential themes on the meaning of life. You know, I really think that we need both in life and that they don't have to compete with one another. But what I love about starting with these quotes is that we will be talking today about adornment and beauty, ritual, and how to make your skin look amazing, and how to wear things that honor who you really are. But deeper down, what I feel we're talking about when we talk about beauty is actually hope. Beauty is a way to communicate and presence our own sense of dignity. You know, I think about stories of women in concentration camps during the Holocaust and how they would smuggle in cosmetics as a way to just feel normal and feel human. I think about the way that for our nervous systems, when we are in a constant state of fight or flight, our systems are doing everything that they can to conserve energy so that they can meet whatever threats arrive with that fight or flight response efficiently. But that when we have beauty present and on board, our system receives a signal like, oh, it's okay, I can lower my defenses is a little bit. When we reach for an experience of beauty, we are reaching for an elevation of our visibility in the world. We're not walking through the world. Shoulder. Slunj. Hiding. Slouched, slouched. Slunj slouched is a great word. Shoulders slouched, hiding our light. We are shoulders rolled back, telling the story of who we are and what we believe about ourselves through our adornment. And so I start here because in every one of our episodes, what I think is equally, if not more important to the content is the context and some of the deeper implications of these stories that we're going to tell today. And so a question that I want to invite you to start with has to do with. The main barrier to bringing more beauty into our lives, which is this belief that I don't have time. I don't have time to dress in a way that, you know, I have so much on my plate, like I don't have any thoughts, thought time to spare to like creating a fabulous outfit or I'm so dead tired. At the end of the day, I don't have time to do like a full beauty ritual. You know, I think sometimes there's a lot of shame in the self-care industrial complex of like, oh, if I don't spray my toner, I don't love myself at the end of the day, you know? But really, if this is something you want more of in your life, not necessarily something that you need, not something that you should be doing. But if this oasis of beauty is something that you want to dip a cup into and drink more deeply from a question to start out with might be, what would my ancestors tell me about the importance of beauty in life? And so I invite you to just drop that question into your body and your being, like dropping a stone or a pebble into a pond and letting it sink. What would my ancestors tell me about the importance of beauty? And you can take as much time as you desire with this question. You might drop this question into a journal if you like to journal, to access some of the deeper states of your subconscious. What I notice I get from my ancestors, both biological and spiritual, is beauty is the whole point. You know, beauty. When we think about a time capsule, it's like we don't put spreadsheets. Typically in time capsules, we put art, we put mementos,
we put stories. And all of these are woven with invisible threads of beauty's essence. And depending on your lineage, you know, you might have a more complex answer from your ancestors. My ancestors quite literally came over on the Mayflower card carrying colonialist history here. And when I think about my ancestors, it's like there's, you know, the pilgrims originated from the Puritans and deviated from the Puritans. And so there is this deeply Puritan historical. Aspect to my lineage. I have several members of my family who are clergy in the Catholic faith. And, you know, so there's this mental complication when my brain tries to wrap itself around how my ancestors might be encouraging me to wear vermilion lipstick and put my hair in Velcro rollers and things like that. But deep down, deep in my cells and in my wiring, it's like, why not? This is what life is for. Moments of reverie, moments of connection. Moments of art and being moved and telling stories through our tastes and through how we express through beauty. And that brings us into a perfect segue of our gems today, which move us a little bit out of the spiritual and more into the skillful and the practical, as well as the historical. And so I'm going to share with you three gems, three categories of beauty ritual today. And we're going to go all the way back to some of the earliest records of human adornment. Back to around the age of 100,000 BCE, where adornment was a practice of partnering with the beauty of the Earth. So in Morocco, archaeologists have discovered perforated seashells that were dyed with red ochre and likely strung as necklaces or placed on the body and worn as jewelry. We know that there has been many findings of pots with body paint, honey, frankincense, myrrh, spices used to fragrance the body to nurture the skin. We know that our more primordial ancestors would do elaborate rituals around the fire to honor the gods and to make requests, and that they would adorn their bodies with color and stains and paint and shells and stones and furs as a gesture of dressing up for the divine to become more visible and more worthy to the blessings of the gods. And so some of the ways that you might honor our more primordial ancestors and the earth itself, in your adornment rituals are through simple earthly adornments, like a flower in your hair or on your lapel. You know, maybe you have a blazer or a suit jacket that has a little. Are those lapels? What is a lapel? Okay. I paused to look it up. Fun fact. A lapel is the collar of a suit jacket and a lapel hole. That little stitched buttonhole is primarily a decorative feature, but historically serves the purpose of fastening the lapel for warmth, or to secure a hat, or to secure a decorative flower. So if you are a vintage jacket lover, as I am, maybe you have one of those hidden in your closet. Or maybe you just pin one to your lapel. Other ways that you can practice this earthly adornment is with a naturally derived necklace, such as a consciously and sustainably collected crystal that comes in the form of a necklace or earrings. Things. You might use honey to cleanse your skin. Honey is something you'll find in a lot of modern skin care products. Some people buy fancy schmancy manuka honey, which is a purer form of honey, and we'll use it as a face mask, as a facial cleanser. And of course, using essential oils, which are literally like the lifeblood of flowers and plants to fragrance your body. Our next gem. Our next stop in history. Fast forwards many years to ancient Egypt, circa 3000 BC. And so we know that in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India. Female priestesses would use sandalwood, frankincense, rose, myrrh, and all sorts of sacred woods and essences in sacred rituals. They would burn these aromatics to please the gods as an offering, but also to alter their state of consciousness and to cleanse energy. One of the ways I like to meditate sometimes is with an incense ritual where, you know, I'll often light incense to just fragrance the air beautifully. But. There's a ritual that I teach to clients called scented Smoke, and it's a special guided ritual of watching the curls of incense, almost like a divination or a scrying bowl. And in some of these early traditions, incense was considered a bridge between the physical and the divine. And women especially, were the keepers of this relationship. Let's talk about Cleopatra. And one of my favorite stories about this legend is that Cleopatra, as we know, was a goddess of beauty, ritual and adornment. And did you know that she would soak the sails of her ships in fragrance, so that as she floated down the river, her arrival was smelled
Meld before it was seen. I mean, come on. Icon. Icon in art from ancient Egypt, women are often seen wearing little combs on the top of their heads, which were made of solidified fat and fragrance, and they would slowly melt into their hair and skin throughout the night and weave fragrance and intoxication throughout their experience. The last story this is skipping way ahead in history, but the last story about smell and aroma that I just want to share is Napoleon has a famous communication to his beloved Josephine after the Battle of Marengo in 1800, in northern Italy, where he wrote to Josephine and said, I will return to Paris in three days. Do not wash. So the power of pheromones can also not be underestimated when it comes to our beauty rituals. And so some of the ways that, you know, we jumped around a little bit in history there, but I think one of the threads that wove all of that together is fragrance. And, you know, some of the ways that you can use fragrance as more than just a way to smell good or smell different and more as a ritual is when you are using your perfume or your essential oils, is that you elevated from an action to an anointing. And actually, in the sanctuary, we have multiple meditations that are centered around the art of anointing and making your body a temple of scent. We know that Marni in the movie grease Reese was famous for having many pen pal lovers that she would write to, especially in the military, and that she was famous for spraying down the paper of her love letters. And so I love fragrances, especially letters that, you know, of course, all fragrance letters to loved ones. But even if I'm like mailing in a bill or sending something to the IRS, very light little invitation to whoever is the recipient of that letter to slow down and to bask in a little aromatic, fragrant sensory break. And lastly, when it comes to perfume, you know, I love, there's this great book that was really an origin book for me in learning the art of sensuality. And it's called Lust, Seduction by Elaine Lino. And in that book, she's conversing with a perfumer in France. It's really all about the Parisian art of seduction and how it's not. Frowned upon at all. In fact, it's expected and wanted that seduction be a part of the culture and that American fragrances. This person who's the perfumer is saying that American fragrances tend to shout and say, here I am. Where is this French style of fragrance? Tends to whisper and say, come closer. And so I always recommend less is More when it comes to our perfume and allowing your perfume to be more an exclusive red velvet rope invitation to those who have the privilege of being that close in your orbit. And our final gem, one of my favorites has to do with rebellion, expression, witchcraft, suffrage, sexual freedom. And that is ruching. Your lips, one of the charms that will be showing up in the sanctuary this month is my personal five minute makeup routine. So the makeup routine that I do almost every day, that is just so simple and so natural and just, you know, even if I'm just down here working in my office by myself, just I feel it. I feel its presence on my skin, and I feel the ritual and the impact of standing in front of the mirror and massaging my products into the skin and gently hydrating my lips, and feathering your feminine nest for the day with your makeup ritual. But another charm that will be showing up is the Goddess's Guide to Red lipstick, where I take you through a video of everything you've ever wanted to know about rocking a Hollywood red lip, which I think looks great on every face it encounters. You might think, oh, that would never look good on me, or oh, it would be too shocking. No. Put yourself under my tutelage. I beg of you. I will teach you how to give yourself the gift of this queenly adornment that also makes such a statement. So in the 1920s, for example, flappers were known for bejeweled and be dazzling their garments, cutting their hair into androgynous and masculine shapes or traditionally masculine shapes, ruching their lips and reclaiming their pleasure. In World War Two, red lipstick was encouraged as a sign of patriotism and patriotic duty because it helped women feel more alive. Hello. You know, I imagine for so many women whose husbands and fathers and just men in their lives were out at war, They probably thought, well, I have no reason to wear my lipstick. And the encouragement to wear lipstick. To again reclaim that sense of dignity and normality and aliveness was a way of saying like, this is for you. This is for your pleasure. You know, I love in circles of women, like
the way that we reflect each other's beauty and giving abundant compliments to one another, and the way that that can make a woman feel seen. I love thinking about that happening during that period. And these are just some examples of how these small acts of beauty became greater acts of dignity at a time where the focus was pretty solely on survival. And I've often told the story on this podcast of a time that I was in the hospital and. Hadj, the Pert plus hospital version of Pert Plus shampoo, conditioner, face wash, fanny wash, all in one product. And then a friend brought in some of my favorite beauty products and just the way I instantly felt like myself again. And I love the expression beauty heals and beauty heals in so many different ways. Of course, there are the sensory elements of aroma and touch and softness, but also that restoration of dignity and self-esteem of this body is worthy of nurturance and decoration and adornment, just like laying flowers and candles at an altar. And so with this gem, a way that you can bring this into your life is to practice with your red lipstick. And I'm going to be bold here and say that, you know, I cannot recommend jumping into the sanctuary strongly enough this month, because these gems and charms are going to be so exquisite and informative. And you know, the thing about red lipstick is that it does look great on everyone. But you do have to know the code on how to do it. And we do have an episode called An ode to Red lipstick that will pop in the show notes. But if you want the full Mary perched on your shoulder tutorial, join us in the sanctuary for the month of August. And so the invitation here is to explore and experiment using red lipstick, not just as a way to build your cosmetic appeal, but as a way to be more deeply seen. You know, a woman who walks into a room wearing a vibrant red is a woman who is confident and who is ready to tell you that she's confident. She is not afraid to be seen. She's not afraid to draw attention to herself because she knows that she's worthy of it, and she trusts herself to know what to do with that attention. And even if you don't feel that already, red lipstick can be an extraordinary way to act as if and call that confidence into your being. And the last thing I want to say on this topic, because I'm very passionate about it, is that I once had a woman in one of my programs and she was saying, you know, Mary, you encourage us to explore and experiment with red lipstick, but I'm in my 60s like I'm too old to wear red lipstick. And I just remember I happened to be traveling with friends at the moment, and I was doing a little bit of coaching with her on. The perception of herself as a woman in her 60s, and the perception of what happens to feminine power in our culture as we age, and the slow slipping away of invisibility that is expected of a woman as she ages, and the act of reclamation and the impact that would have on her granddaughters and on the women in her life who may feel like they are slowly dipping into the shadows to see the example of a woman who says, oh, no, no, I am not going anywhere. In fact, this sensual goddess is just getting started. And the permission that that awakens like a fairy godmother wand bopping women on the head. It excites me to no end. And the friend who I was traveling with was in the next room. We had adjoining rooms, and she could kind of overhear what I was saying, and she was like, you know, that brought tears to my eyes, like she was a woman who didn't really love cosmetics and wasn't what I would call like a super femi person and how she expressed in the world. But, you know, hearing that really shifted something in her. And so follow Auntie Mary's encouragement here, my friends, and feel free to send me your images of exploring and experimenting with red lipstick. I would love to see it. And so with that my friends, that brings today is red lipstick and rose petal. Episode two A close. There has been so much history, so much meaning, so much reclamation of feminine power in these stories. And I encourage you to take any seeds that were planted in you from today and allow your beauty rituals and going a little bit outside your comfort zone with how you adorn and how you express to be a practice of visibility and reverence and pride and magic in the way that you relate to beauty and to your body. And once again, this is just the tip of the fairy Godmother wand of magic that is going to be woven around throughout the entire month of August in the sanctuary. So again, doors are open for just one week through Monday, August 4th. And, you know,
these transitional seasons, whether you're in late summer in the Northern hemisphere or late winter in the Southern Hemisphere, this transitional season time is such a gorgeous time to devote to your beauty rituals because you're really Honoring that season of change. Preparing for the new season to come. Releasing the season past and planting seeds for the next season to arrive with more presence, more femininity, more connection to your body, and of course, more soul quaking beauty. So thank you so much for listening today, my friends. My loves. I feel so grateful for your presence and I would love to dive deeper with you in the sanctuary. Lots of love and see you in our next episode. For more gems on how to celebrate life through the richness of your senses. Head to Mary Lofgren. 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.