Episode 218 — The Sensual Art of Seasonal Living
What do crispy roast chicken, September sunshine, your sleep schedule, and not knowing your tush from a pineapple have to do with sensual living?
Quite a lot, it turns out.
In today’s episode we explore seasonal living as sensual living, and how a disconnection natural rhythms can leave even the most capable among us struggling with the most ordinary aspects of being human.
From following seven minutes of sunlight through Manhattan to savoring the last summer squash of the season, this episode is an invitation to let the changing light, food, and weather bring you back into your body, and back to life.
You'll also hear a love note to autumn with inspiration to brew the chai, get out the craft bin, and let life love you through your senses.
Join us this weekend, September 19th:
The Art of Keeping Time
A free seasonal salon to feel less like time is slipping away and more like life is sinking in.
Saturday, September 19th
10:30am PT • 1:30pm ET
Playback available
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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 seasonal living as sensual living.
So, at the time of this recording, my little Chihuahua named Little Man is sitting on my lap, and there is this golden September sunshine shining through the windows, illuminating his almond fur, his buttery almond fur.
And this afternoon for lunch, I had the most delicious warm, fresh, crispy roasted chicken alongside the last of summer squash that I will probably have this season, roasted with golden olive oil and salt and pepper, and a delicious piece of sourdough toast layered with salted butter.
And while these might sound like just the normal happenings of every day—looking down to see your pup in your lap, having lunch—this is an example of the way that the seasons and the senses can lead to a wonderfully rich, sensually alive, vibrantly creative life.
You know, I was discussing with friends recently the paradox that very few women I know struggle with the big stuff. Like, we can be head of department. We can meal plan for the next century. We can write you a ten-page report.
But when it comes to things like sleep and eating regular meals or enjoying ourselves on an uneventful weekend, it can feel like, as my friend Billie used to say, you don't know your ass from a pineapple.
And, you know, one of the reasons for this is this disconnect from the seasons and the senses in order to move through daily life.
So, in more agricultural and village cultures—while not utopian, idealized times in history; you know, sometimes I think we tend to look back on our ancestors' time as being these wonderfully simplified times, when the reality is that survival was a real feat—and yet, for our ancestors, there was a connection with the rhythms of life that sustained life that I know, for myself and so many of those who are drawn to my work, we feel and remember in our bones and yet feel totally out of touch with in our day-to-day life.
One of the ways that I think, for those of us who are more indoor-bound—if you work in an office—I remember when I lived in New York, I used to walk to work down 38th Street. I'd take the train into Grand Central, and I'd walk to the office, and I would follow this specific path of the sun because, especially in winter, those seven minutes of sunlight, early morning sunlight, were all I got for the whole day.
You know, by the time I left the office, it was already dark. And, you know, you get on the subway, you go subterranean in order to get places.
And so these natural rhythms of resting, rising, laboring, nourishing get all wonky.
So if you stay up late at night staring at a screen and then berate yourself for not being able to sleep, it makes sense. Without that natural rhythm, it makes sense that your body would be seeking the stimulation of blue light in the absence of connection with the light of day and the light of the moon.
If you try meal service after meal service to try to get yourself into the habit of cooking and nothing seems to stick, it makes sense. It makes sense if your eating rhythms are dictated by what's shown to you in your algorithm rather than what's growing in the ground. It makes sense that you might not be able to stay consistent because there's no relationship.
If you feel like the year is rounding the corner of its end and you're like, "Where did the time go? Where did the year go?" it makes sense if your celebration and engagement with the seasons is reduced in modern life to what flavor latte is currently on the menu or what kind of candy is present in the pharmacy candy section, you know, for Easter, for Halloween.
So in today's episode, I want to share with you a little love note that I wrote about seasonal living and sensual living.
And this comes from a free event that I'm hosting this coming weekend, which is called The Art of Keeping Time, and it's all about how to realign with seasonal rhythms and reorient your relationship to time so that it feels less like life is flying by and more like life is sinking in.
So you can sign up for that at marylofgren.com/time, or you can click the link below this episode.
Some of the things we'll be exploring are the art of stretching time. So while we can't stop time or freeze time, we can certainly shift the way that we experience it through the art of cultivating our attention.
We're going to talk about the difference between more linear Gregorian time and this more holistic seasonal time, and how that can restore a sense of evenness and rhythm to your days.
And we're going to make a craft, y'all. I'm going to show you a really beautiful creative practice that I use in my journaling to make my days feel more memorable, more distinct.
And I'm just so excited. Minimal supplies: magazine clippings and a glue stick if you got them. And if you don't, just your presence is all that's required.
Once again, that link is marylofgren.com/time.
And with that, let us hear a sweet love note to time itself and to the way life loves us through the seasons and the senses.
Greetings, dear one.
As we welcome a new week, I invite you to reflect on the way each of the seasons comes with their own armful of distinct pleasures.
The fuchsia swell of tulips, with egg-yolk striations emerging in spring.
Leaves taking their final joy ride through the air in autumn, both ending and becoming again and again.
Moonlight that shimmers through icy bare branches in winter like a clear quartz kaleidoscope.
The seasons offer us an ongoing rhythm of release, rest, reawaken, and rise.
And even when modern life forces a different, more rapid pace, the harmony of the season still sings in the background of your days. Always.
While we may orbit around the faux sun of screens held in our hands day by day, our bodies remember the pulse of the goddess's walking stick as she treads the wheel of the year, thrumming her vibration through the seasons and our senses.
A soul spell for your week:
The seasons are deeply sensual, and fill up my senses I shall.
So this week, let's brew the chai. Get out the craft bin. Assemble the centerpiece. Step out into the gradually cooling wind.
It may not matter much to the machine of modern life, but it matters to the nature within and around you that spans through time past and time to come.
And that brings today's episode to a close.
If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so delighted to have you join us at The Art of Keeping Time this weekend, Saturday, September 19th, for an afternoon of creativity, inspiration, and seasonal wisdom.
Link below the episode to join.
Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.