As the days grow shorter, you might be bracing for winter. But the darkness is not only worth exploring, it is worth craving. In this episode of Come To Your Senses, Mary Lofgren explores the sensuality of darkness, the natural rhythms of nature and the body, and how to reclaim the hidden gifts of the darker season.
Drawing on creation spirituality, embodiment, and the wisdom of the natural world, Mary explores:
Why we associate darkness with something to fear or overcome
The difference between the warmth of light and the glare of constant stimulation
The fertile, creative power of descent, mystery, and the unknown
Embracing the parts of yourself you've been taught to fear
How a deeper relationship with darkness can open you up to more rest, pleasure, and a fearless freedom
Discover a richer relationship with winter, your body, and the many pleasures that live beneath the surface of the light.
LINKS FROM THE SHOW
Join the live workshop on the Sensuality of the Dark Season, November 17th
Sensing the Sacred Guided Journal
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Podcast. Embracing The Sensuality of Darkness
Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode on embracing the sensuality of Darkness. I'm rubbing my thumb against my fingertips as I say that, because if you're like most folks, myself included, you might have a relationship to the darker months of the year where you brace against it and you're like, oh, God. Winter. And there are lots of good reasons for that. But you may also be missing out on some really precious, delicious, nurturing gifts of this time of year. You know, here in the Northern Hemisphere we have just crested the first week of November. The days are getting shorter. Our bodies are turning inward.
And in a culture that really practices a perpetual, machine like expectation of consistent energy and consistent output. This shift can feel like it goes against what we need to thrive. AU contraire, my friends. This shift simply goes against an ethos that was never made for the human experience, nor was it made to honor the cyclical rhythms of nature which are reflected in your human body and psyche. And so today's episode is a gem in the pouch of a collection of gem that I'm excited to announce I'll be sharing at an upcoming workshop called Inhabiting the Sensuality of the dark Season that's happening on November 17th. It's a global workshop you can join from anywhere, and I wanted to create this workshop because what I'm going to share with you today, some of the things I'll share with you today are really powerful in shifting that relationship to the darkness in your mind and in your thoughts.
But ultimately, our relationship to anything is driven by the subconscious, and the subconscious is so closely related to the magic and beauty and pleasure found in darkness. So at this workshop, we are going to be exploring this relationship to darkness much more thoroughly. But we will also be doing somatic movement and sensory ritual so that you can open to all of the secret pleasures that are hidden in the fold of darkness, anchor them in your body, and use them as navigation for how to have a rich, pleasure filled, delicious dark season ahead so you can join us at Mary Löfgren Park. There will be a link below this episode to sign up, and I would love to see you there and luxuriate in the dark season together. Mary lofgren.com/dark. And with that, let's dive in to today's episode. And so in order to shift our relationship to darkness and therefore our experience of it, we begin with the word just like in the Bible. All things begin with the word. And while I am not a Bible scholar or really even a fan, I do appreciate scholars and theologians who offer different interpretations. You know, this past weekend, I was on a zoom with Megan Waterson, who is a teacher of the lost Gospels of Mary Magdalene and is a feminist theologian, and she was talking about the importance of diversity in the translation of Scripture.
And one of the voices that so deeply resonates with me is that of Matthew Fox. He wrote a very controversial book back in the 80s called Original Blessing, and I talk about this extensively in my book. My journal called Sensing the Sacred and in Original Blessing. Original blessing is kind of a counterargument and an exposé on the intentions and the origins of the concept of original sin. And if you are someone who's had a journey around embodiment and a re-unification with your body throughout your life, as most if not all listeners to this podcast are original blessing is this. Creation based spiritual concept where rather than being born sinful and separate from the divine, we are born embodied of the divine we are born in, and two blessing and this creation spirituality, which is different from creationism, which is more rooted in a literal interpretation of religious creation stories like Adam and Eve. Creation spirituality is an ethos rooted in seeing the natural world as sacred and infused with divine presence and creative energy, and it draws on nature and the body and our sensuality and creativity as a living blessing. Whereas many other types of religion might interpret our relationship to nature as some sort of domination or hierarchy. And I share all of this because as we go back to the word, which was maybe three minutes ago, but as we go back to this statement of the word in original blessing, Matthew Foxe talks about the Hebrew word dub ha, which translates to word. But beyond just the words of language, dub ha is creation. It is the creative event of life itself.
So when we speak a word like darkness, I invite you to notice how does that word bloom within your body? I'll say it again and invite you to just turn inward to whatever degree you're able to, in this moment, dropping in the word darkness. And noticing what textures are there. How does that word taste on your tongue, both in its spoken form and its somatic sensual form? The way you sense its presence and likely you will notice many different layers. And that speaks to the etymology of darkness, which in some translations means to conceal, to shadow. In some translations it means gloomy.
But in Ancient Greek one of the origin translations is dair carmi, which means to look, which I think so beautifully describes. The contrast and the paradox of darkness is that we may brace against darkness, and we may reject it, and we may fear it. But there is also this deep curiosity, and we see things in the dark that we may not be able to see in the light. In the quest of spirituality, enlightenment is often the name of the quest itself to bring in the light which nothing wrong with that. Love me some light. Got a candle burning on my desk right now, but there is often and ignoring of the essential nature of darkness to nurture and sustain life.
And that's true within us and around us. And so let's talk about some of the experiences of darkness that are part of the natural world and are part of what sustains life. So there is the darkness of the inner body. I love to connect to my heart and sense into some of its more infinite depths. And I share that with coaching clients. Every time we drop in together is we bring our senses not just to the physical heart, but to the mystery of the heart. And I always imagine those depths as being kind of dark caves. The cave is a powerful metaphor for hibernation, for shelter, for containment. Whereas a lot of spiritual concepts emphasize ascent moving upwards towards the sky, towards the light.
Darkness brings us into the beauty of descent being less visible, less emphasis on producing, less outwardly oriented, and invites us into the sensual pleasures that aren't focused on constant stimulation. One of the ways I relate to my own relationship to darkness and light is the way that I notice a difference between light and glare. And for me, light is warmth. It's simple. It's not aggro, and it doesn't obscure. it illuminates. Where's glare? When I think of, you know, driving in California, when the sun is setting and there's often glare, my vision is obscured. And in a screen oriented age, we are met with glare nearly constantly, to the point where it can be uncomfortable to take your eyes off the glare.
You know, if you've ever been in a scroll hole and you're like, just one more, just one more, just one more. And your phone dies. That's never happened to me. But, you know, you see the dark screen and you're like, are both sad and also tremendously relieved because literally, a fishhook could not have drawn you out of that dopamine drunkenness. That is an example of the way that glare becomes this fixed state of being. And why we feel so crazy around our phones. Because it's a departure from our natural relationship to light and darkness, and what you can expect from shifting your relationship to darkness in nature's rhythms, but also in your own self.
I know this from my own experience of relating to darkness as a fertile, juicy, pleasurable place. And from watching hundreds of my coaching clients embrace these more shadowy, less bright, more hidden, yet more rich parts of themselves is being able to own your dark parts. You know, in the world of schematics and embodiment coaching, and this is a term taken from internal family systems, but no bad parts. The body doesn't speak in the language of good and bad. Ascent and descent.
It simply speaks in the language what's true? It's our mind in the schemas that are created through outside influences that deem those parts good and bad. So if you have ever wanted to resurrect lots of religious terms going in today, if you have ever wanted to resurrect the power of some of these darker emotions like anger and shame and some of the desires that you're afraid to admit that you have. Learning how to move these through the body as power rather than limitation, or something to be managed. Tremendous power in that. Embracing darkness also means embracing deep rest.
And how many of us are carried by this glare of guilt around taking a deep rest? But when we have that somatic relationship with the nurturance of darkness, deep rest becomes not just more accessible, but more essential. There's not as much clutter of resistance between you and your relationship to receiving deep breaths, but as you shift your relationship to darkness. You will find that you can be happier with less. Less consumption. Less control. Less expectations of yourself and of others to be perfect in order to be good. And what will be focusing on in the workshop on November 17th is one key transformation, which is, instead of feeling own by your fear of the shadow, the unknown, your resistance, your learned resistance to darkness.
That you actually begin to crave the dark, which leads to a certain fearlessness in life as well as a much broader leisure capacity. When we don't need things to be sunny, positive, and stimulating in order to feel pleasure, there is so much pleasure to be had in the richness, the mystery, the primal, lush, fertile nature of darkness. There is magnetism there. There is nocturnal vision, and there are deep, powerful parts of you that cannot be known through staying in the false safety of glare that can only be known by stepping into the rich fertility of the dark. And so if you know that these parts of yourself that it's time to meet them, greet them, love them, embrace them, inhabit them. Come join us on November 17th. Again, this is a one time only event where we'll be blending guided movement, reflection, ritual, and tools to give you a map in your exploration of this luscious landscape within. So click the link below this episode to join. Thank you so much for listening today and I will see you there.