Dare To Delight: How To Boldly Craft A Holiday of Peace & Pleasure
Something I’ve noticed over the years is the overwhelming amount of resources there are to help us “survive” and “get through” the holiday season.
But what if we dared to…(glances over shoulder to make sure no on is watching) enjoy them?
While the holidays can really run a snow plow over our nervous systems, allow me to gently perch on your shoulder as the fairy goddess-mother I am, and whisper encouragement for your own peace and pleasure with today’s episode.
Whatever past or present stressors have colored your experience of the holidays, it is always a good time a to celebrate the light that you are by creating traditions that are uniquely your own.
Some of the gems you’ll discover include:
My favorite year-end savoring ritual
Gorgeous, nature inspired decor tips
Seasonal sensory pleasures to gift your body with delight
Eco-friendly gift wrapping rituals
Join me for today’s festive fabulosity!
With love and dried citrus,
Mary
P.S. - Today’s episode offers just a taste of the full banquet of delights we explore every week in The Sanctuary. If you’re looking for a cozy community to soften stress, deepen intuition, and nurture a life of beauty, presence, and enchantment, join us in The Sanctuary today!
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Mary Lofgren - Host
00:02
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 poof and let's dive in. So glad you're here, pull up a poof and let's dive in. Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to Come to your Senses.
00:53
So this episode is airing around the holidays and one of the things I notice is that there's a lot of resources out there for how to survive the holidays, how to cope around the holidays, how to take good self-care around the holidays, and this episode is somewhat inspired by that very worthy intention. And I'm looking side to side to make sure no one is around, because what I'm about to say feels almost a little scandalous that this episode is really about rituals to help you enjoy the holidays. And that is not to say that our resources for mental, emotional, spiritual health are in any way not needed and essential, but I also know that, with all of the emphasis on you know the holidays being something we have to get through and survive for me instantly kind of puts me in a defensive mode and positions me in an orientation and a relationship where I'm kind of bearing down to barrel through. This experience and this episode is intended to help you maybe shift your orientation and relationship with the holidays from something colored by experiences past or relationship with stressful people or stressful relationship to the holidays to this time of year is something that's really been on my mind as I've been preparing for the word of the year, mastermind, which kicks off in January. That I created an episode about my own word of the year in our last episode and shared that. Over the next few weeks I'm going to be delivering a series all about sacred relationship with the essence that calls you, and if you'd like to learn more about that, you can click the link below this episode or just go to schoolofsensuallivingcom and the trumpets will direct you to our beloved, beautiful mastermind.
03:55
That's going to be starting in January, but that kind of kicks off the first ritual that I want to share, which is one of my most sacred, cherished annual rituals, and this is a savoring ritual, so I typically do this ritual on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. I did it this year on the day of the solstice, by candlelight. But essentially it's bringing your calendar and your photos if your photos are kept on your phone and a journal and going through the year and listing your favorite moments, the achievements that you created this year, the relationships that you deepened, the moments that you want to remember. I was just doing this the other night, and it's always amazing when I do this ritual how I can begin thinking oh, this year I didn't do what I wanted to do, what I set out to do. You know, whatever I have been doing a lot of end-of-year coaching sessions with clients, and that's really the refrain as we look back on the year past is that, looking through the goggles of scarcity, seeing only the holes of what we didn't do instead of the absolute abundance that we did create. And so the reason I say bring your calendar and your phone is because those can be a way to look back month by month, and sometimes I'll categorize it by month and I'll look in the month of January like, oh right, that was the time I made a beautiful roast chicken with my dearest friend and we had iced gingerbread, cookies with vanilla non-dairy ice cream and talked about our desires. And talked about our desires.
06:15
Oh, june, I launched the sanctuary. I fostered a dog that needed to be put down and she had some of the best days of her little life. We had them together and I was with her when she passed. I fostered two cats. I don't normally foster cats, but there you are. I packed up my car full of stuff and shipped it out to California.
06:35
I hosted a engagement dinner, like all these things that when we look back or I'll speak for myself, when I look back at the year past, in a capitalist culture that measures success based on career achievements and financial gain and these very linear markers of what it means to have a successful year, this year was not my most successful year. In fact, this was a year where, financially, I had a much lower earning year than I have in years past, but I was also moving across the country and exploring a new place to live and creating new relationships. And so, if I look at this past year in terms of the currency of my courage and my sense of satisfaction and self-integrity with the choices I make about my life, this was a queen of a year, and so that is your first gem, is a savoring ritual to look back on the year and collect and put on paper the gems that you have collected and are carrying into this next year, because, as we know, a fertile, aerated bed of soil is the most promising place to plant seeds. And so, as you plant the seeds of your desires and intentions for the year to come, as you choose your word of the year, having this past year digested and integrated and savored and honored is a really special and meaningful practice to do.
08:38
Another holiday ritual is really simple and it includes a bushel of greenery that you can procure from your backyard or from a grocery store, something like evergreen or juniper or cypress or pine and any flowers that bring you pleasure. So maybe it's the traditional holly berry and, you know, a red rose with a white chrysanthemum situation, or maybe you just feel possessed by the desire for some aubergine, somewhat faded roses. You just let your pleasure guide your purchase of some fresh flowers. Pleasure guide your purchase of some fresh flowers. And these festoonings have the power to bring so much joy into your life and the life of anyone who enters your home In the sanctuary which is our Come to your Senses community, where we gather to create more beauty. Where we gather to create more beauty, more enchantment and more magic and meaning in our everyday lives.
09:54
One of the benefits of being a sanctuary member is you get these seasonal support bundles, and in the one that I just recently sent out for Yule, which is a pagan holiday of midwinter, it explains why so many of the decorations that we use this time of year, such as trees in our home, evergreen boughs on our these are ancestral traditions of honoring nature's resilience, and holly and pine, for example, are examples of plants that do not lose their greenery and their flourishing even in the deep, dark cold of winter, and so adorning your home with greenery has a tremendous amount of significance, beyond just the commercialized ideas about having the perfect tree or the perfect mantelpiece, and I love to use pieces of greenery paired with fresh flowers in small bud vases at varying heights. Actually, in the sanctuary we have an entire master class about the art and the charm of the bud vase. This sanctuary is where I really get to nerd out on all of the little charms of life that makes such a difference in the quality of our days, and so I love using bud vases. Sometimes I'll even gold leaf a bud vase from just a spice jar and an ancient jar of cumin, and take the label off and throw some gold leaf on the bottom my friend, miranda Wildman, taught me how to do that and just the gold glitter, light reflecting with the pine and with the holly. My God, it's just festivity. Festive festoon in your face all the time. Festoon in your face all the time. And so these are things that you can do around a candle on top of a table runner. You know they're very hardy and they don't hold a lot of water, these evergreens. So a table runner with evergreens and some candles and a few bud vases with fresh flowers, and a few bud vases with fresh flowers, oh divinity.
12:32
I also love to dehydrate oranges this time of year, which is just the simplest thing you can possibly imagine. It looks super fancy, but it is really all you do is stick them in the oven. You can Google how to make them and in the sanctuary oh my gosh, this was so touching Many people made dried oranges and one member actually brought some to a neighbor and then taught her neighbor how to make them. And it just deeply touches my heart that these Yule, seasonal midwinter traditions are being revived through our community. So thank you to our member who was generous with that beauty and and dried oranges I just actually gifted. I'm part of a secret Santa, although it's through a divine, feminine, spiritual community, so we call it instead Sophia's surprise, as in the goddess Sophia.
13:29
I just gifted a garland that I handmade of orange slices that are somewhat adorned with a bit of gold leaf strung on twine, and I mean just the pleasure. I made it by the light of a salt lamp on solstice night watching Downton Abbey. It was so cozy and romantic. I also, on solstice night, drew myself a bath with some of those dried oranges floating in the bath, some special bath salts that were gifted to me from a friend handmade. I sprinkled some lavender rose petals in there and had just candles ablaze, and it was so delicious and that's another way to savor and to enjoy this time of year is with a ritual bath, and so that's why I invite you to, in addition to the greenery that you decorate with, purchase some fresh flowers, because there is something so magical about pouring a bath and sprinkling the enchantment of fresh flower petals in your bath to adorn your body as you soak, preferably by the golden glow of candlelight.
14:52
This year I had a Yule log that I purchased it was like a birch log with three holes for candles taper candles that I purchased from Etsy and as I bathed with lavender, rose petals and bright, juicy orange slices and the aroma of this vetiver lemon delicious bath salt on the air, there was this birch log. I'm laughing because it just it's like something so simple, but having the enchantment of a real piece of wood from the forest in Northern Maine sitting there adorning the edge of my bathtub, like oh God, it just brings so much joy and pleasure to every one of my nerve endings. And for you again, around this time of year, baths can be such a comforting, loving, decadent ritual to give your body. And then the final gem and the final use for your greenery orange slices, holly and fresh flowers is the joy of wrapping. Now don't get me wrong. I love a gorgeously adorned gift that is perfectly wrapped with jewel tone wrapping paper and chiffon or velvet ribbon, and you know all of these trimmings. But it also breaks my heart all of the waste that is created around the way that we wrap gifts, and especially, I remember, on holiday mornings just you know these huge bags of wrapping paper that would go in the garbage, and so some solutions that I have found to still receive the joy of wrapping while also feeling a little bit more in integrity with my environmentalism is there are fabric options for wrapping your gifts. For example, you might get some charming dish towels or napkins at a craft fair that you then wrap a picture frame in or a book in. There are options online where you can purchase pre-cut fabric wrapping paper, but I gotta be honest, I've never really had much success with fabric wrappings. But there are some really cool companies out there that are making compostable, biodegradable wrapping paper, biodegradable wrapping paper.
18:02
One of the things I'll do is just take a roll of brown butcher paper and then use some raffia ribbon, which is biodegradable. And again, this is where the greenery comes in. You slide a pine branch and tie a dehydrated grapefruit and blood orange slice with a little gold leaf sprinkled on it and, my friend, you are just rolling in holiday charm and beauty. And another thing I'll do is I'll use washi tape, which is a light adhesive tape that usually has some kind of fun design because it doesn't have as much of a pull. So if you're wrapping gifts and use washi tape, you're more likely to be able to reuse the wrappings. And even with the butcher paper, you can take rubber stamps and I love using like a white ink pad and then just cutting that up and using that as homemade gift tags to add a little bit more meaning and personalization and more color to the brown paper.
19:29
And these, my friends, are the gems and the joys that I hope will infuse your holiday week with not just care, comfort, coping mechanisms, but a true, resplendent, delicious relationship to this time of year. That is your own ritual of reverence for the light and the beauty that you are. And once again, if what you heard here today delights you and intrigues you, head over to schoolofsensuallivingcom where you can learn all about the sanctuary and creating a year of enchantment connection to nature, connection to others, weekly practices in embodiment and beauty, weekly gems and bonbons that are delivered to infuse your week with delight. And part of this year's sanctuary experience is layering in this extraordinarily powerful word of the year mastermind. That kicks off in January and there are only 20 spots available in the mastermind to keep it really intimate and connected and, in addition to connection with me, in the group of 20. There will also be the option for small pods of support in embodying your word of the year and stepping confidently onto the path of relationship with the essence that wants to embody itself through you, through your life and through the way you live. So head to schoolofsensuallivingcom or just click the link below this episode and let's make this a year of coming to our senses together. Thank you so much for listening, so grateful to have you as a listener, and I'll see you in our next episode. See you in our next episode.
21:37
As you prepare to step into a new year, take a moment to pause. What is calling to you when we choose a word of the year? It is more than setting a resolution or even naming a desire. It's a vulnerable step into a living relationship with the essence that whispers from your soul. My New Year gift to you, for annual members of the Sanctuary, is the Word of the Year Devotional Mastermind. Anchor your intention into your body, breathe life into its essence and be supported in community. Schoolofsensuallivingcom. Slash sanctuary to learn more.
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