006 - Summer Energy: Tending Your Inner Fire

In this episode, we’ll explore the energies of summer as peak vitality, abundance, pleasure, and presence, inviting us to receive, savor, and shine. 

I talk about summer’s long days, sensory richness, and the paradox of bustling “doing” energy held by steady “being,” then explain why mothers often struggle to access summer medicine: carrying the mental load as the manager of it all, the cultural myth of the selfless/sexless mother, and “maternal numbing” from chronic sensory overload that dulls both overwhelm and joy. 

I offer some simple practices to reconnect—sunlight, water as a sensory reset, play (especially with kids), and flowers as beauty cues. Then I introduces Radiant Mama Ritual, a one-time one-hour session to co-create a doable, customized daily sacred practice aligned with a mother’s season, needs, and sensory preferences. 

You’ll will hear about: seasonal wisdom and summer energy; motherhood barriers to pleasure/aliveness; sensory-based practices with sun, water, and flowers; and details on Radiant Mama Ritual and how to sign up early.

🖤 Connect with me on Instagram @sarah.schott & @thewildreturnpodcast or email at rootandrise.life@gmail.com

🖤 Download your free Everyday Rituals guide to transform your daily life and bring the sacred into the everyday moments and alchemize your routines into acts of devotion to your one wild beautiful life. 

🖤Visit my website to explore the ways we might work together 

PS -- about this gorgeous music: it's the song: “What My Heart is Looking For” by Bonner Black from Soundstripe.com

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to The Wild Return, a podcast where we explore womanhood as power, motherhood as alchemy, and the journey of remembering who we really are. I'm your host, Sarah Schott, a mother, matrescence coach, womb guide, somatic educator, doula, and circle facilitator. I've spent much of my life on my own rewilding journey back to my body, intuition, truth, and purpose, and it's all culminated to this work right now of both mothering my babies in these times and supporting other women as they journey back home to themselves, too. In this space, we gather to reconnect with how our womb and body, motherhood journeys, and nature are all gateways to our soul, healing, and power so that we can live fulfilling lives, show up as the mother our kids really need, and step into our unique role in creating planetary change. Because I believe that what the world needs now is wildly, deeply rooted mothers who remember exactly who they are and the power, clarity, courage, creativity, and joy that they hold and wield when they do so that we can do our part to birth the world we already feel in our hearts, are building in our homes, and wish to see for all of us. Let's walk together Hi, and welcome back to The Wild Return. What I would like to chat about today is the energies of summer. If you are familiar with the things I love to geek out about the most, you'll know that one of them is the seasons. I love learning about and talking about the seasons of the natural world. So we're talking spring, summer, autumn, winter, and how they are mirrors and reflections of the energies and the seasons that we hold and go through ourselves in our own lives here. Because we are a part of the natural world. As much as our modern society often disconnects us from that very real fact about us as human beings, we are just a part of nature, just like the trees, just like the birds, just like the bees. So yeah, let's talk about summer because I feel like summer has this very unique energy, as all of the seasons do. But for summer, I feel like it's so important for us as mothers especially, well, really for everyone, but for mothers in particular, I guess, to tune into because summer is the energy of peak vibrancy and life and vitality and abundance, and just soaking up the energy of the sun and receiving it. And often as mothers, that's hard for us to do, for numerous reasons. So I wanna talk a bit about the energies of summer as I've come to know them, and how this is sometimes difficult for us to access as mothers and why that might be. And then we'll tune into a few practices and parts of nature we can tune into to help us really tune into the energies of summer this year. And then at the end, I'm going to share a bit about my new offering coming out next week called Radiant Mama Ritual, and I'm very excited to share with you about that a little bit more. So let's get into it. So here in the Northern Hemisphere, and I'm located on the northeast part of the United States right now, we are getting in that summer energy. Depending on who you talk to- Summer either starts on the summer solstice officially, which is June 20th this year, or it's already started, and it began back at Beltane on May 1st. I've heard different teachers of mine speak about it in both ways. But here in Pennsylvania right now, I feel like we are really starting to get into the summer energy. I feel like it's starting to... You can feel the shift out of spring. The days are getting incredibly long. I mean, we're almost at that peak daylight on the solstice. It's staying light past 9:00. The heat is starting to pick up. And everything around us, the plants, the animals, everything is really at its highest state, its peak life, and everything is just starting to soak up the bounty of life in summertime on this planet. you see all these different colors. Everything's in, like, full saturation, high-def vibrancy right now, and that's gonna continue through summer with the different flowers blooming, with our different garden crops growing and coming to ripeness, and the bees are buzzing around on all the little clovers in our yard. The birds are waking us up with their incredible, beautiful bird song in the morning with the sunrise. Our bedroom windows face the east, so it's really beautiful to feel and see the sun come up and hear this amazing chorus of bird song each day. The flowers are blooming in turn. We got the peonies in their peak right now. The leaves on the trees, you can tell are spread out in their fullness as wide as they can go right now, just soaking in the sunlight. Everything's in this kind of full on reception mode, major growth, and just letting it all happen in its own divine timing. That's one of the things I've really noticed about summer, how everything is just fully available to the resources of light and warmth and water and nourishment in all those ways, and trusting in its own timing Summer too, I think for us as people, gives us this big different energy, and even just shifts in our schedule. Summer's this time of adventure, celebration, and joy, and freedom. With kids getting out of school for the year, there's this like release of our regular routines and rhythms and structure, and there's this invitation into more adventure and spontaneity, and maybe feeling it more at ease in our days. Or for some of us, it might feel the exact opposite because those structures really, really held us well during the rest of the year, and there could be this sense of unease as we enter into a much looser way of being over the next few months, or having to figure out a new rhythm. There's this sense of togetherness and celebration and all these get-togethers and gatherings, and this general invitation to participate with and in life, both with our other humans during this time of year, with this time of gathering, and also with the non-human world. Nature is inviting us to really slow down enough to pay attention and soak in all the beauty and the life and the wonder and like the abundance of the vegetables and the fruit this time of year, and the flowers. And really remember how we are a part of it, and how giving life is here on this planet I also sense this paradoxical harmony between doing and being this time of year. There's a lot of bustling energy during summer, but it's also held by this sense of stasis. Like, it's not, it's not hasty. Output is steady. There's no rushing this season. So although summer is the season of maximum outward, outward energy, where we are going out and doing things, and being with people, and going on vacations, and celebrating, and going to gatherings, and going on adventures, and swimming, and biking, and hiking, and kayaking, and all the different things we love to do this time of year. There's also this invitation to just let yourself linger, and to relax, and to take your time. I see this in that, like, afternoon lull that happens in nature and in our own energies in summer where it gets really hot and the air gets really still. Even the birds stop chirping. Everything just takes an afternoon siesta. And I feel like that's a beautiful reminder to us asking us, like, how do we hold both this season? How do we fully savor the extra energy we have to go and do things this season, and yet also make sure that we are taking that time to make sure we are being replenished at the same time? So summer asks us, how can we make our cup overflow this season? How can we recharge our batteries to the max and then some? How can we be like the flowers and the vegetable plants in our garden and the trees, and just receive all the nourishment that this season provides for us, drink freely, soak in the sun freely, not feel guilty about it whatsoever, and instead really relish it? How can we let the sun shine its light on us and help us remember our, our radiance? How can it help us remember our beauty? How can it help us remember that we can't shine too brightly And that our fullest expression is welcome, and that we are here to feel lit up and alive in our lives. And this energy of summer relates to our ovulation phase in our menstrual cycle. And both of these are focused on this, this relishing, this savoring, this filling up, this soaking and reveling in delight and pleasure and our senses and our sensuality and our fertility and our creativity and just our primal sense of being. And in this sense, summer invites us to explore our passion, our pleasure, our desire, and our excitement. This is the element of fire within us. It invites us to really think about and reflect on where am I feeling this energy in my life right now? What feels most alive for me? What am I passionate about? And where am I feeling dull? Where am I feeling like my life force has been muted? Where am I not focusing on my pleasure and enjoyment? And maybe how can I bring that back? How can I invite more of that back into my life this season? Now, as I'm talking about this, and as a mother, I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, that all sounds absolutely amazing. I would love to feel that way this summer, but I'm not sure how that would even be possible for my current reality, because my day-to-day life doesn't feel remotely like that." And I know. I've been there. I'm still working on it. But let's talk about that and why we feel so differently in motherhood today, or at least a few reasons why, 'cause I'm sure there are many more. But I have three that I wanna talk about that have been a, have had a huge impact on me and my experience the last five years in early motherhood. The first thing is being the manager of it all, because oftentimes as mothers, we are the ones handling the majority, if not pretty much all of those daily responsibilities and tasks around the home and with our kids and the schedules and all of those things. And just because it's summer doesn't mean that stops. It might be the season of freedom and joy and spontaneity and celebration and spontaneity, but just because that's that season doesn't mean that our responsibilities in our daily life have stopped. They may have changed a little bit, but they haven't stopped. And I feel like we can often feel that friction this season a lot because the energy is different in the natural world around us and in our general cultural society and the way that summer is so when we're managing all these different things, and the pool bags, and the schedules, and the camps, and the get-togethers, and vacations, and the summer bucket list, and maybe the pressures and the expectations that we have around all of these things, we end up not being able to really tap into the wisdom and the medicine and the energies of the summer season as much as we'd like or as much as we really need to. And instead end up like sweaty and overstimulated and burned out, exhausted, and just disconnected and on autopilot and not really able to be present. And I think summer is trying to show us what we are missing when we are frantically trying to manage everything rather than deeply living in and experiencing the fullness of our lives and I think it's inviting us to explore how we might make changes in our lives, in our agreements, in our relationships, in our perspective to step out of that full on manager mode and into more of our full humanness the second is the myth of the selfless and sexless mother. There's this cultural myth that permeates at least our society here in the Western world that once you become a mother, you become this selfless, self-extinguishing ghost of a woman And when we fall in line with this myth, which happens a lot of times more subconsciously than it does consciously, we end up missing out on the richness of our lives. We end up believing that our own pleasure, our own desires, and even our own dreams and needs aren't really necessary or that they come secondary all the time to those of our kids, those of our families, those of our partners. And summer is showing us how important it is for us to feel our aliveness. It's showing us how amazing it is to be in touch with our senses, our sight, and seeing all the colors, our s- the sound, and hearing the birds, and the bees, and the laughter of our kids, and the water splashing at the lake, and the waves crashing at the ocean. And our, our scent, the different smells of the fruits and the flowers and the freshly mowed grass, and our, the taste of all the different fruits and vegetables this season, and all the different textures that we can touch. And it's inviting us to get in tune with that and remember that our senses, and our pleasure, and our desires are really a key part of us actually feeling alive and being in touch with our life force energy, our creative energy. And this isn't something that goes away when we are mothers. All of life in summer is in this peak vitality, this peak sensuality, this peak experience. Nothing is, nothing is set aside. The mothers aren't left out here. Everyone is invited to participate. And the third thing that I think really impacts our ability as mothers to fully experience the energies of summer within us and within our lives is something I'm calling maternal numbing. I'm not sure if this is an actual term, but it's what I am calling the chronic sensory overload. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. The constant noise, the constant needing, the constant visual clutter, and the physical contact. All of these things can create this overstimulation that happens on a chronic basis. And as a highly sensitive person myself, I experience this probably to an extreme degree. And what happens naturally in our brains to this sensory overload is that it starts to naturally numb the sensory input as a coping mechanism. It's great that this is a natural reaction 'cause it helps us survive those situations, but there's also collateral damage that occurs as well. So what also happens when our brain starts to numb our sensory input is it doesn't just numb the input that feels bad to us and overwhelming in a negative way, it also blocks our ability to sense joy and pleasure and beauty and deep connection And to me, that means it also impacts our relationship with our sense of aliveness because these things are all key to how alive we are actually feeling in our lives. And these things like joy, and beauty, and pleasure are really needed for us to be able to exit survival mode, because these things signal safety to us. For example, beauty asks us to slow down, to notice, to pay attention, and to participate, and it signals safety, and that there is more to life than just functioning and surviving. Beauty and pleasure and engaging in our senses really helps us to open our hearts and to drop into presence, which is what I think we all really want as mothers, is to be deeply present with not only our kids, but in our own bodies and in our own lives And summer focuses on these things. The energies of summer are all about beauty and pleasure and joy and aliveness and our senses and our sensuality. So I feel like summer is gently reminding us, like it's tapping us on our shoulder and saying, "Hey, hey, remember, this is your summer too. You get to feel fully alive. This is for you too." And one of the ways to do it is to take in all of this life around you with your senses, to notice what you hear, to really taste that juicy strawberry you're tasting, to really smell the flowers as you walk by them, to really notice the beauty in your backyard and notice how it gently awakens your sense of being here and present and your sense of being alive. That brings me into the next part of what I wanted to share with you, which is some practices that I think can really fit pretty seamlessly with minimal effort into your day to remember the energies of summer and to respond to the invitations to really let them into your experience in your life. So first is the sun. The sun is the master of summer. It's the one that brings all the light and the warmth. So if you're feeling off or disconnected or overwhelmed or adrift, I invite you to return to the sun as your guide and as a resource. Our bodies and spirits are nurtured by the summer light and the energy of the sun. So if you're feeling any sort of way, I invite you to take a moment and step outside in the sunlight, to maybe close your eyes, tilt your face towards the sun, outstretch your arms, and just invite the warmth and the light and the radiance of the sun to fill up your body. And just take a few breaths there. And then maybe ask yourself, "As the sun is shining on me, what can I now see that I need?" Or maybe what does this sun, this burning ball of fire energy in the sky inspire in me right now? And let yourself fill up. Let yourself feel re-energized And then maybe take action on what you heard the answers that you got. And the other thing I like to do is when I'm particularly feeling tense and constricted and tight and like I am maybe gripping with control, is to step out in the sun and envision I am this, like, hard block of ice and feeling the sun's rays on me like warm water just slowly bathing me, softening the hard parts, releasing the tension, melting the constriction. And just breathing with that and just letting the process happen and letting the Earth and the sun hold me as I relax into their energy. And the second aspect of nature I invite you to tune into this summer is water, and how water brings this energy of flow and cleansing and replenishing and refreshing. So there's a few ways you can do this. You could use water like you're immersing yourself in water, whether that's swimming or bathing or even misting yourself with water, and using this as a reset when you need it. Feeling the water on your body cleansing you and purifying you and cooling you off, and noticing how it can bring a fresh perspective and point of view to things. And you can also use this reset while you're drinking water, and using drinking water as this kind of trigger point in your day to remind you to get present, and engage your senses to help you do so. So maybe you put your water in a beautiful glass this summer, and you look at it and notice the beauty of it when you're going to drink your water. Maybe you notice how the cup feels in your hand, and then you notice the temperature of the water as it hits your lips and your tongue, and how it feels as it flows down, down your esophagus into your stomach. Maybe you add some lemon or raspberry or lime or cucumber to your water, or mint, and notice the smell, and notice the taste of that water. And just play around with making water this sensorial experience that helps you to return to presence in your day. And the third thing is play. This often resets my kids, and it resets myself when I remember the fun and the play of playing in water, especially in summertime, and you get the sprinklers out or the splash pad or the little pool or just a washbasin. My kids have so much fun in a washbasin. And remembering that the fun and the play is there for us too. So go play in the water with your kids, or at least be present and watch the joy and the fun that's being had by your kids and really experience that secondhand. Both work tremendously to really help us reengage with the, the aliveness of summer. And the third aspect of nature I want to talk about is flowers and using these in a similar way to we talked about with drinking water as this sensorial experience to really get us present and in our bodies and in tune with our aliveness. So perhaps bringing bouquets of flowers into your home this summer on a regular basis or perhaps using them as, like, a trigger point into presence when you're out on a walk, when you are in your yard, when you are Getting in and out of your car if you have flowers along your driveway like we do, and really tuning into all of your senses when you are engaging with a flower. Noticing the colors, noticing the, the expression, what it actually looks like, the shape. Noticing its smell, and really letting yourself drink the smell in, and pausing and breathing it into your nose, into your lungs. Noticing the texture of the leaves, and really just spending a couple moments with the flower. It can be an absolutely wonderful, awesome experience to just sit with a flower and take in its beauty and its scent and its fullness, and how it unabashedly blooms. It opens to life and blooms, and doesn't hold itself back, and trusts its timing, and is its own unique expression. No two of them are alike, and some of them are extremely wild. And how life celebrates that and accepts it and welcomes it into its belonging, and how we can do that for ourselves, too So I'd love to hear if you decide to invite any of these practices into your daily life this summer and how it's going for you. It would bring me so much joy to hear about your experience. And before we go, I want to tell you a little bit about Radiant Mama Ritual. I mentioned this a little bit last time on my podcast, and I am opening doors to this offering next week. Radiant Mama Ritual is something I created for you in these past several weeks because I've been realizing how important my sacred daily practice has been with reconnecting me with my sense of aliveness, with my body, and with my soul. I've had a sacred daily practice for years and years that I've done on and off in many different ways. However, it was only when I became committed to showing up consistently day in and day out, and also designed it to fit not only my unique needs and current season of life, and made it very doable to show up to, but also did things within my practice that evoked the feelings I really wanted to feel, not just in that practice itself and when I was really taking care of myself, but also in the rest of my days and my life outside of the time I was doing my practice, that things in my life began to shift. And I began to be able to step out of that sense of being numb to life and on autopilot and disconnected and just chronically depleted, and began to sense my own aliveness again. And my, the color literally began to return to my life. My closet itself has now changed from being consistently forms of beige and muted earth tones to wild color. I mean, I'm wearing these wild teal green and aquamarine and sapphire pants with specks of pink right now, and they are extremely extravagant. And I am in love with them. Anyway, so I believe that having a daily sacred practice of some kind that is extremely doable for you to do and also leaves you feeling very nourished and filled up and lit up by it is very important for you to then be able to feel that feeling in the rest of your life. Because the daily sacred practice acts like this foundation, like this home base that you return to day in and day out, and remind yourself of not only your own importance, the importance of yourself and your own needs, and desires, and care, and tending, but also gets you into the energetic frequency of how you want to feel in the rest of your life. And as I did this, I began to see how then it became easier for me to access that frequency, that energy, that feeling in the rest of my life over time. I'm not saying that this is the end-all be-all, but I do believe that it's vitally important for us to have a place like this, a time like this set aside for ourselves consistently that we are committed to, to really tuning into our needs, our body, our desires, and how we want to feel in our days and, and being able to cultivate that. Because life will run us down and leave us exhausted and depleted if we don't set this time and space aside for ourselves. I know. I've been there, and I know I'm not unique in this. So Radiant Mama Ritual is a one-time, one-hour session with me where we will sit down together and get real about your current season of life and any limitations, whether it's time or space or whatever you might have that might get in the way of you having something like this for yourself. And then together we will co-create a ritual for you that you can do each day that feels so doable that it's impossible to fail at, and that leaves you feeling deeply nourished and replenished and lit up and the way that you want to feel in the rest of your days. And we'll weave in your unique sensory preferences, like your favorite scents or textures or movements into this customized daily practice for you to bring into your daily life. This won't be like a typical coaching session. We're gonna spend time really dropping in together and getting present in ourselves, in our bodies, and with the present moment, and with each other. And we are really going to get out of the analytical planning that we are so often in as moms and into this effortless, luxurious, and flowing connection with our bodies and souls. Because you deserve to feel fully alive, radiant, awake, anchored, and present, not chronically depleted, overwhelmed, or on autopilot. Your aliveness isn't gone, but it needs space in your life to come back, and it needs attention. And that's what Radiant Mama Ritual is here to help support you to create in your own life, the time and space for you to reconnect to your body and to your soul So signups for those on the wait list are open now. If you'd like to hop on the wait list and get the signup link for these sessions early, send me a DM over on Instagram at sarah.schott or an email at rootandrise.life@gmail.com, and I will send you the link to sign up as soon as possible. And then the link will open publicly next week. I am so excited to bring this to you because creating practices like this lights me up to no end, and I want other moms to feel lit up to no end in their days, too, and to feel alive because we deserve it. So if you want to feel more alive this summer and experience your radiance and feel more of what you want to feel, then let's co-create your custom ritual, your unique to you sacred daily practice together. I can't wait to sit with you and do just that, and thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We'll chat again soon Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Wild Return podcast. If today's message spoke to you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you know who might want to tune in too. Come find me over on Instagram @sarah.schott and check the show notes for ways we might work together. I'm sending you so much love. I'll see you next time