Episode 159 - Coming Home To A Feminine Mindfulness Practice
I am a big fan of traditional, seated meditation. I need silence like I need water. It purifies me, and washes away the grip of ego, welcoming in the voice of the soul, and the courage to be with what is.
As a feminine being however, with G cup boobs and curvy hips (I’m a bit Zafu top heavy), I’ve often felt the round curves of my being press uncomfortably against the straight lines of pure silent, seated meditation.
The feminine soul thrives in aliveness, expression, beauty and embodiment. So it makes sense that our presence practices might need to adjust to meet our unique needs.
Today, I’m sharing some of my most cherished practices for building a honeyed approach to cultivating presence through the joy of beauty and the splendor of the senses.
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Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode on a feminine and feminist path to creating more mindfulness, more presence and more radiance in your day-to-day. So I say feminine and feminist because I want to start by honoring that.
01:34
Mindfulness and meditation is a long lineage with deep wisdom, and one of my meditation teachers, susan Piver, sometimes says that what keeps people from meditating is feeling like in order to be good at meditation, or to even try meditation, you have to be able to slow down or shut off your thoughts. But that actual pure meditation and mindfulness maybe not meditation, but more mindfulness is the practice of being with what is, and so if you have racing thoughts and you can sense that, great, you're doing a great job because you are sensing and being with what is. And, of course, the being part, the being able to be with without judging or reacting or responding or being consumed by, is a whole other ball of yarn. But I start there because I want to pay deep respect to the practice of simple seated mindfulness and meditation, and I also want to say that, as a feminine being and a feminist, I have often found in environments that teach meditation that there is a more, more masculine, more linear approach that I don't always feel or find that my body and being fit the mold of, and so today's episode is designed to give you some inspiration around building a sense of presence in your life and in your day to day that glitters with some of these energies that we call feminine. And so when I think of the energy of the feminine, I think of a really broad spectrum. I think of everything from the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean against the rocks of Big Sur all the way to the plastic lime green, metallic strip of eyelashes on a drag queen's lash line in the New York City Pride Parade. You know, feminine energy is creative, it's expressive, it's spontaneous, it's fun, it's so fun, it's curvaceous, it's inviting.
04:24
And when it comes to presence, there are those of us who not only like to, but need to be seduced into the experience of being with our bodies, being with the present moment and coating that present moment with the radiance and the glow of beauty. One of my favorite John O'Donohue quotes if you listen to this podcast you know that I'm a huge John O'Donohue fan and in his book Beauty, the Invisible Embrace, he has a quote that says when you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you. Moments of beauty begin to braid your days. Oh, I just want to kiss him on the cheek. I mean, just reading that, it's like I feel my nerve endings hang a little heavier, and it also brings my awareness to the fact that, while seated, quiet, mindfulness, meditation is a powerful and essential way or at least has been a powerful and essential way to arrive at presence. For me, it is one path to presence. Just a few moments ago I was painting, like painting a room, not painting on a canvas and that sound I love painting, I love to paint that sound of the roller going up and down and the satisfaction of the paint creating this lustrous, creamy coffee ice cream color on the walls. Creamy coffee, ice cream color on the walls. It's like I could just merge with that sensory bliss.
06:35
And so today's episode is designed to open up pathways to a sensory, beauty-soaked, pleasure-laden path to presence. And so, as we dive into our gems, I first want to say that each of these gems has been crafted and shaped around creating your own sanctuary of presence. Your own sanctuary of presence and I use that word very intentionally, because we recently opened doors to the Come to your Senses Sanctuary, which is our membership community, where we celebrate and practice together this feminine path to presence. This is the final week to receive the opening celebration savings on joining the sanctuary and also where, this weekend, we have our joys of summer retreat, which is a seasonal retreat that I offer for members to sink into some of the unique pleasures of the season. So, to learn more about the sanctuary and to dive into your sanctuary journey, you can head to the link below this episode or schoolofsensuallivingcom. Slash sanctuary.
08:15
And so, as we begin our conversation on a feminine and a feminist path to mindfulness, a feminine and a feminist path to mindfulness when I want to begin is with the boon of my existence, which is beauty. You know, if you've listened to even a scrap of this podcast before, you know that beauty is really at the center of the swirl of my own spiritual practice and I love to bring that essence to you here, in both practical and more abstracted, non-tangible ways, and to just give an example of one of the ways that beauty can be a mindfulness and presence practice. I am in California as I'm recording this. Yay, if you also have listened to a scrap of this podcast, you know that I've spoken before about how my big dream is to move to Northern California, or one of my big dreams, and I am here for the summer and I am getting to know neighborhoods and just taking it really slow as I wade into this dream. I've taken the wrecking ball approach many times in pursuing a dream and this time I'm doing it a bit differently and regardless, I'm here and staying with a friend for a few nights before I go to my more long-term stay.
10:02
And the first day I got here we went to this amazing concert in the park. I mean it was in the middle of a eucalyptus grove, the trees are waving with the music, the style parading by, just my whole being was vibrating. And when I got home that night. You know we had been out in the sun all day and it was very overstimulating. Of course, you know there are people all around noise all day, and so that evening I had planned to film a video for the sanctuary of a cleansing routine and massage routine for the face, and I sat down to do it and it was this golden light streaming through the windows. Actually, let me go back. I had recorded it prior in Asheville, on the tail of leaving town, and just looked a little bit like a crumpled piece of newspaper and I was like I don't know that this really drips with the energy that I want to put out there in the sanctuary. So I decided to press pause on it and record it once I got here and I'm so glad that I did, because I was able to just completely drop in to the pleasure of it.
11:39
And not only did the massage help to reduce some of the sun damage and puffiness and redness I had been experiencing from the day out in the sun, but my inner an approach to beauty called elemental beauty, where, rather than relying on products and procedures outside of us and outside of nature, we are reconnecting with the most essential beauty treatments, such as our own touch and the simplicity of ingredients found in our kitchen pantry and the simplicity of friction on the skin and oil on the skin, and understanding the lymphatic system and the way that the tissues of the skin respond to different styles and skills when it comes to touch. As you can hear, I am a fountain bubble-less over with enthusiasm when it comes to stuff like this. And, of course, in addition to the aesthetic radiance that is created when we connect with a more elemental relationship with beauty, there is the inner radiance that is created when the nervous system is able to be soothed and where my spirit, which had been really floating and vibrating outside my body for a very delicious reason. You know, stress is not the only thing that can cause our energy to lift like a hot air balloon drifting into the clouds. It's also excitement and joy, and the presence practice of entering the temple of beauty ritual allows our awareness to sink back down to earth and where that excitement and enthusiasm and joy can actually be integrated, rather than taking us outside of our window of tolerance and therefore manifesting as stress or exhaustion down the road. So this is one pathway to presence.
14:18
The next gem on a pathway to presence is the gem of movement. When I was on the plane on my way out here, I was writing about some of my desires and my intentions and sometimes I mean especially when I travel I get all my ideas. Something about being in a suspended period of time where, you know, especially on an airplane, it's like I'm not in my normal day-to-day routines and so I'm given just some quality time with myself and that spontaneity and that excitement of travel stimulates new thoughts and ideas. And I was writing about some of my desires and intentions and sometimes, after I do that, I'll take a few moments to listen to what spirit would guide me, to like what is important for me to do, for me to remember how would spirit have me trip. And a big message that I got was do your movement practice, and specifically a movement practice called primal feminine flow, which I learned from my feminine embodiment mentor, jenna Ward.
15:49
And, like I said before earlier in the episode, you know, meditation, seated, silent meditation, for me has been a really important practice. Array of guava and passion fruit and grapefruit and lychee juices all spread out on a buffet, and then there is the picture of pure water, you know, and for me silent meditation is that pure water and it's also very unsexy, you know, it's like I'd so much rather do my beauty practices, my movement practices, but I do notice in the morning when I do some of these rituals to prepare for my day. In fact, I just said to the cat yesterday the cat at the place where I'm staying well, we've done absolutely everything that we can do to get centered this morning and hasn't happened yet. So I think we just need to get on with it. And I realized that I had not done my five minutes of silence. And I am not one of those floss your soul in the morning.
17:20
Every morning. You know yoga and meditation and journaling and this and that like that is not my jam, but it has become really important for me lately, especially with all the change that's going on in my life, to have some sort of practice in the morning to connect and to get grounded for the day. And I had done 1-800-MARY-OLIVER, which is a practice where I take one of Mary Oliver's books and I flip it open to a random page and I take in her nutrition of writing throughout the day. I do a two-way prayer, a letter from love, and I do a 10-minute primal feminine flow and then I cap it all off resistantly with a three to five minute quiet, silent meditation practice. That's all I can handle right now.
18:26
Someday I aspire to be someone who can sit in quiet solitude for 60 minutes or more. Do I really aspire to that? Solitude for 60 minutes or more? Do I really aspire to that? I don't know, but it would be nice to add that to my lexicon. But anyway, I'm sharing all of this because I do want to affirm the necessity and the importance of becoming intimate with silence and stillness, with silence and stillness.
19:02
But silence and stillness has not helped me move through and be intimate with and be creative with the force and flow of my thoughts and emotions in the way that movement does. Silence and stillness allows me to watch that Richter scale of thought and emotion and detach from it. But movement, you know, when I do a Koya practice, it is like the emotions, the thoughts are this beautiful palette of paints that I get to take to the canvas of my being, my being and the things that I once thought were monsters under the bed or unfeelable sensations that I have to do everything to avoid and out positivity in your face, out positive and not fall into the crevasse of existential dread. It's like all of a sudden those things become these gorgeous portals to new dimensions of self-love and presence and insight and wisdom, and so I cannot recommend movement enough as a way of cultivating that sense of embodied presence.
20:48
And you know, I remember once in therapy talking about resources and resourcing and we were talking about there's a big difference between exercise and movement, and that exercise obviously is a way of exercising, strengthening the body, clearing the mind, raising the heart rate, all of those beautiful benefits. But the kind of movement that I'm talking about is less about telling the body what to do and more a practice of listening to the body and being in dialogue with the body. And in the sanctuary, every week we have a sanctuary spa which is essentially a live gathering where, for 30 minutes, we practice together these tools of feminine presence. And coming up today, actually, when this episode airs, we have an elemental beauty movement practice that I'm so excited to share and, of course, is recorded. So join us in the sanctuary to dive deeper with a felt experience, with this gem of movement. And the final gem that I want to offer today also is a practice that we do in the sanctuary and that is the sanctuary of spirit.
22:23
This gem specifically centers around writing as a path to presence. You know, my thoughts remind me a bit of the scene in Harry Potter where the basilisk dies and the thing has been poked in the eyeballs by Fox and shit. I just realized this is a spoiler alert, but guess what? We don't support JK Rowling anymore anyway, so I'll carry on. It's this moment where a giant snake with sharp teeth is sinking into a body of water and it's thrashing back and forth and I'm just giving this description, which I'm realizing now as a teacher of presence, is like hmm, we teach. What we want to learn to this podcast is that we keep it real around here.
23:47
But the thrashing of thought, especially in the morning, especially as someone who works from home and requires a lot of self-motivation and self-discipline to get going, that thing is real and it's real to contend with. And me sitting alone with it often. Well, it's just not as peaceful and comforting as sitting alone with it through my pen and a piece of paper, and as someone whose spiritual template is really a maze of dogma. You know I grew up of dogma. You know I grew up very religious, very Catholic and very much believing and identifying in a God that equated suffering with salvation, and the harder it was was getting to the divine. And that is not my way anymore. And that's really what the entire body of work have come to your senses and my coaching career has been all about is working to restore restore what my body knows to be its spiritual home and haven, which are these arts of beauty and care and love and connection.
25:33
And my favorite practice, the one that has really changed my life and changed my mind and changed what I prioritize each day, away from that urgent, thrusting voice of relentless productivity, pivoting that eye of awareness back towards what really matters to my heart, which is connection and presence and feeling like I'm actually here in the life that I'm living. That practice is two-way prayer and I did an episode not long ago called the Practice that's Changing my Life and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And two-way prayer is simply writing to whatever force you believe in as greater than you, whether it's the universe, love, your higher self, your intuition or just Sky Daddy, who I don't really believe in but I'm pretending to believe. You know, many times I can get caught in the spider web of trying to figure out this force before I talk to it or put my trust in it. And sometimes I just need to pretend and a letter from love is where you, or a two-way prayer is where you write a question to that force and allow hotel to a friend's paint and sip. My good friend Miranda, who is an artist, an activist, a atmospheric witch. She hosts these paint and sip parties in Asheville, north Carolina. A little plug for Miranda you can go to her paint and sip parties in Asheville, North Carolina. Little plug for Miranda you can go to her paint and sip. Or you can schedule your own private paint and sip with you and your group of friends.
27:52
And we were on this rooftop and we were painting and laughing and talking. And you know, I was on the verge of heading to California and it was our last time to see each other in person. So it was somewhat bittersweet and I looked up and it was golden hour, that time between full daylight and full, not daylight when dark or dusk arrives where the sun is, this brilliant, honeyed, gorgeous light and this orange light was just spilling over everyone at the bar, illuminating water glasses like they were candles or torches, and everything just had this halo and golden hour reminds me of these moments in life that, when presence is poured into them, seem to sparkle differently, and I used to think that my career as a coach and as a facilitator was about helping people get more golden hours in their lives. And what I now understand is that no human being really has that power or that formula. If they do, they're selling something. Ps, I am selling something so little capitalistic disclaimer here. I don't have the formula, and I never will have the formula to creating and filling life with only golden hours, but what I do have is some really powerful tools to create fertile soil for more golden hours to emerge in the most unlikely of places, and the good news about presence and this fertile soil is that, while it cannot be controlled, it can be cultivated, and so to have a kindred community and a caring steward on your path to presence.
30:22
I would be delighted to welcome you into the sanctuary today, so head over to https://schoolofsensualliving.com/sanctuary to join us, and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Have a beautiful week Ciao episode. Have a beautiful week, ciao. If you enjoy what you hear on this podcast, you'll be besotted with what you discover in my brand new audio collection in celebration of beauty. This three-part series explores beauty as more than a pleasing aesthetic beauty as a spiritual calling, a tool for healing and an unexpected way to soothe our minds, nurture our bodies, awaken our spirit and transform our world. Head to https://schoolofsensualliving.com/beautifulor click the link below this episode to download your complimentary collection today. Thank you.
