The laughter behind someone’s eyes or the black body of a bird silhouetted against the perfectly blank blue sky arise outside of the personal sphere. To witness Beauty is to long. Since we all long, beauty is a human condition making the experience of Beauty universal, although the objects of our longing shift along personal and cultural lines. (Six Names of Beauty,) And so it stands to reason that we can only long for that which we cannot have. Having, I mean to be defined as owning or possessing. I believe that to reap the full rewards of Beauty, which is to say become a creature of Beauty yourself, you must be strong enough to stand in the fire of un-sated desire without buckling to the urge to capture, box, define, own (even a little sliver), ravage or exploit the object of your Beauty.

Beauty has the power to make a jealous, greedy, ravenous villain out of the average person. Beauty demands moral fiber and strength of character. To be in integrity with the character of Beauty we must collaborate with and honor the object of our desires, otherwise we must abstain from it all together. Once you or I cross over into feasting indulgence, we enter into a different relationship with the object of our desire. We are consuming it. The fires of sensual pleasure have consumed too many Beauties tragically leaving tattered rags of destruction smoldering in her place. You know what I mean. As a woman I can imagine that you yourself have at one time or another been the smoldering pile of rags.

Weaving the “unobtainable fiber” into the fabric of your own beauty profile is critical. To be “unobtainable” you must reserve a part of yourself. Under lock and key, the deepest and most precious, tender, humorous, vivacious, and liquid parts have room to grow, mature and solidify before they ever reach the world. This is the place where your creativity lives. Under no circumstances, ever do you violate this place. I have done it – over and over again and I bring a word of caution, opening these places in yourself to the world bleaches them out, desiccates them and leaves you wide open to abuse. It takes years to heal from just one improper exposure.

Being “unobtainable” is not a ruse and cannot be pulled off playing cat and mouse. Being coy is not the same and has very different consequences. Coy is taunting and immature, unobtainable is confident and solid. Coy says she wants a chase and dangles her cargo, unobtainable knows the precious nature of her belongings, concealing them and avoiding confrontation all together. Coy gets in trouble, Unobtainable wards it off.

What this all means basically , is that finding the beauty in a yoni is a very personal, inward, courageous journey to be taken by mature women and not for the feint of heart.  It is especially hard to find the beauty in our yonis, when we are brought up believing they are haunted places that shouldn’t be spoken of.  The Yoni is for all practical purposes “she who shall not be named”.

As women, how do we force ourselves to find the beauty then?  Can’t see it, don’t really want to smell it, I can tell you how I have learned to approach it.   Acknowledge it, but don’t look straight at it, squint a little and allow the sweetness to come slowly.  The yoni, like the crone, holds the beauty of power and wisdom – sometimes it is too much to look at.  Avert your eyes and listen.

When my daughter turned 13 I began anticipating her moontime.  We were living in a co-housing community at the time, which had a very sweet tradition of honoring young women as they came of age.  The newly initiated girls would dress in sexy, little dresses and fancy shoes showing off all their new and shiny parts; rosebud breasts, long skinny legs and fresh faces, while seated in a circle of women and girls.  The initiate was smudged with sage, offered gifts and poems and adorned with a crown of flowers while women told stories of bleeding and power, embarrassment, cramps and having babies.  I longed for this ceremony.  No one said as much but it was a ceremony to honor the yoni, and the power and the blood of being a woman.

Summer rolled around, and in a spontaneous awkward leap of faith we decided to travel for a year and we left the nest of our community.  Addy started 2 weeks after we left.  I panicked while trying to honor the timing of things.  After much deliberation I decided to make our own ceremony.  Every year we met as a community in the Utah desert for a campout in October and I decided that as a family we would join them as part of our travels.  The campout happened to fall on the full moon and everything seemed perfect.  I organized a full moon hike across the canyon lands and created a scrapbook to document the occasion.  Gifts would be welcome.  I emailed my friends.

On Friday, the day of the ceremony, at 7:30 pm the sky clouded up, pouted and it began to rain.  I panicked.  Her face fell.  It kept falling.  After a beautiful day, the sky began to spit flickers of lightning and let loose a blasphemous downpour 30 minutes before we were due to leave camp.  We huddled under the kitchen tarp and I talked with my girl friends – like women do, we rallied, dawned raincoats, made hot tea and forged onward.  We walked out of camp in the pouring rain – 15 in all women towing girls towing women, bound for our full moon hike in the blinding darkness.  The rocks were slick and very quickly I realized that our hike held an element of actual danger.  I stepped up the intention and pulled in the reigns, as it shaped up to be a real initiation rather than a celebration.  Cliff edges and deep cracks canvassed the terrain, falling into deep blackness and the wet surface made it harder to maneuver.  We took off our shoes, to better feel the surface and walked close together to stay in the beams of several headlamps.  The situation was scary and serious for a while as we struggled to make sense out of what we were doing and if we should be doing it.  I thought that the experience of walking in the blinding rain on your full moon hike, while ironic, was akin to some experiences of being a woman.  By the end of the hike the clouds broke and revealed a beautiful full moon and starry night.  We laughed, told stories and stayed up until we could barely feel our toes in the cold wet shoes and then we had a good deep sleep and woke to a bluebird/ redrock day.

I have thought often about the perfection of her moontime initiation, walking blind in the wet darkness along cliff edge and crevasse only to have the clouds part and reveal the full moon shining down to light the way home.  In short that has been the bliss of being  woman – that is the power of the yoni:  wet, dark, cliff edge exploration parting to reveal the light of the full moon.

I got up close and personal to a core element of my work and I want to share it.  There is some healing to be done – for others and me in the judgments wrapped up around the character qualities of concealing and revealing.

I reveal.  I hear all the time how admirable my “transparency” is.  I am open and honest.  It is easy to know where I stand.  Why?  Because I reveal it.  I literally wear my inner workings in my style and appearance.  Whatever is on the inside of me comes out in a kaleidoscopic display on the outside of me.  (Madonna is an example of one who reveals)  I am animated and expressive.  You don’t have to guess a thing about me because my image is a testimony to it AND if you can’t see what is going on inside of me, by what I am wearing – you will know by what I am saying and how I am saying it.

The upshots of revealing:

Revealing has all kinds of positive qualities associated with it.  As I have mentioned above: transparency, openness, honesty, audacious, colorful, daring, eccentric, exotic, forward, gutsy, original, outrageous, progressive, radical, rare bird etc.  That is good stuff.  And I love all of these things about myself.  My beauty is prominent and stands out.

The downside or limitations of revealing:

My tendency to reveal everything right off the bat gives people the impression that they know everything about me.  I am an open book – if they don’t like what they read… they move on immediately.  The biggest limitation is that by revealing everything all the time there is absolutely no mystery.  People do not have to move toward me to find out all about me AND sometimes they feel compelled to take a step back.  Revealing can be pushy and brazen, broadcasting like a megaphone through personal image and words and expression.  Revealing sometimes lacks respect for other.  It only cares about expressing itself.

The Art of Spiritual Styling (TAOSS) teaches that qualities are just that qualities.  It is what you do with them that counts.  Each character quality has positive and negative expression.  TAOSS illustrates how core qualities like concealing and revealing show up in your personal image and style.  The power is in knowing that you can literally transform or fashion your life by consciously understanding that connection.

My work is based on 4 continuums.  One of them is Concealing and Revealing.  As a woman, as a culture, you lie somewhere along the continuum.

To be honest, I know little about the positive or negative effects of concealing but I am learning and I will give it a shot.  Please share with me your own positive and negative experience of concealing.

The upshots of concealing:

The image is one of fitting in, nothing too eye-catching allows this beauty anonymity in a crowd.  Blending and rolling – moving with the crowd.  Concealing creates mystery.  Concealing creates an air of silence and peace.  Concealing is reserved, poised, it commands respect and has it together.  It is appropriate, available, gentile, graceful, respectable, and up standing.  It is proper, relaxed and neutral.  Concealing beauty is integral and unified.  It is inviting and warm.

A concealed position is a place of protection.  A cocoon to nurture that which is not ready to be seen by the world.

The downsides or limitations of concealing:

It can be secretive, lacking expression and hiding behind untruth.  The truth of the individual can be concealed behind a barrier or mask of normalcy.

There is so much more here to be discovered and explored.  I would like to hear your thoughts.

I just took the delicious time to do it again and I discovered a whole new level of power in the exercise.  Let me tell you, it is HOT SH*T.  By hot I mean it proved to be an exercise that I can literally feel pulling me into my ideal future – REAL TIME – now.

Let me see if I can relate this in a way that can be useful.

Part I – Writing (or visioning) the ideal scene is this dreamy, blissed out place in the future, where anything is possible.  It is a happy place and it is sooo easy for me to get all caught up and lost in creating that world.  Yummy!  I am a dreamer and a visionary.

Here is the quirky glitch… over the long run my own vision for the future has the potential to cause me great pain and anxiety.  Why?  Because of the perceived disparity between then (way out in the future) and NOW.  I get caught up in thinking of the Beauty that I could have “if only”, and I forget to flex my NOW muscles and make it happen NOW.

We all know that Goals have to be followed up with actions to come about.  Right?  So if the goal is a blissed out happy, juicy life with all the detail you can muster.  It is your job to follow up with actions to make it a reality.

Find the places in your life currently that match, look like, resemble, or have the potential to be those future moments and BLAM!  Make it happen now!  Instant manifestation.

Take this empowered, direct approach to your life and let me hear examples of how it worked.

Enjoy!

xo
Shannon

It went something like this… I woke feeling a bit racy (it reminded me somewhat of the later stages of labor [except pain-free]) I had to get something out – I went digging around in the mist… and almost immediately I found a concept – Artist and Activist living in me, side by side with The Art of Spiritual Styling as the animating, unifying force between them.

I turned on the light and scrambled for a pencil. It was one of those frustrating occasions when the lead and wood were neck and neck leaving spotty trails across the page… I forged onward trying to understand what was coming out – holding the pencil at an extreme angle to make it happen.

RAW FORM: The Art of Spiritual Styling is an actual physical practice that ignites the Artist and Activist into a power-house for positive change. Every day it is woman’s tool.

COOL

RAW FORM: Feminine power comes alive through the art of spiritual styling because a woman’s intention and purpose are forced to collide with the creative force and fashioned into an image of Real Beauty every day.

Her image steps out into the world and spreads a Beauty that originated inside of her on her own behalf.  That kind of Beauty is a force for positive change. That kind of Beauty eradicates violence. That kind of Beauty is real.

6 months ago Embody Real Beauty was a dream.

Today it is a reality.

A million thanks to all of you who have been instrumental in bringing this work into the world.  You know who you are!

Please join forces with Embody Real Beauty and The Art of Spiritual Styling to Empower Women using Beauty and Styling.

• Stay connected.
• Comment on the posts- speak your voices on the matter of Beauty and Women
• Take the analysis to find out what impact your unique beauty has on this world.

Together we will create a Feminine Revolution and reclaim the true essence of beauty from the static ideals of perfection that dominate and dis-empower women .

In this practice, self-Esteem, self-image, confidence, self-discipline, purpose and passion are restored through the same mechanism by which they are stripped away from us as women:  BEAUTY & the expectations placed upon us as women.

In Beauty,

Shannon

Let me try and paint a clear, concise picture of the situation.  When Beauty arises, it surprises and delights us – it puts us in touch with a feeling of exaltation – lifting our spirits in gratitude of life itself.  (This is the good news.)  Because it feels soooo pleasurable, the knee jerk reaction is to try and capture it -  BOX IT IN!  Because it might not come back – CLING TO IT!

Once we capture it, what we possess is a static replica of the once dynamic, living breathing experience of Beauty.  What has been created in the likeness of Beauty is a static Ideal of Perfection – a relic (which can still elicit feelings of exaltation in the mind and spirit).  So what do we do?  We exalt the relic.  We do this because we recognize the inherent value in beautiful things and we want to preserve them.

What happens though, when you preserve anything?  It becomes static – frozen in time.  Candied, jerked, smoked.  When beauty is captured it becomes frozen and cut off, antithetical to the very essence of Beauty. As we have determined authentic beauty is evidence of life and connection, beauty is present and fluid.  Beauty is alive.

In the act of trying to preserve that which we all instinctively recognize as inherently critical to our well-being we miss the Beauty Mark.  In our desperation we try and grab beauty and we freeze it.  We put it in a million boxes and freeze it over and over and over again creating these static ideals of perfection. We try and replicate it and sell it in particular forms and flavors – Christie Brinkley beautiful, Kate Moss beautiful, Tyra Banks beautiful, the list goes on and on.

This is where we derail.

Snapshots of beauty abound.  Once it has been captured and marketed to us, we lose curiosity and stop being open to the experience of Real Beauty.   We forget all about the nebulous experience of Beauty and shoot for the sure thing – the relic.  We turn over completely our power to determine for ourselves what is beautiful and we begin to mimic the cultural standard.   I suppose that if we surmise that we can just replicate the relic than we are safely situated in a life worth living.  Right?

Wrong.  In this quest for Beauty we are missing the mark, in fact we are aiming at the wrong target entirely.  Achieving Real Beauty becomes impossible when we are no longer open to it.

Have you ever tried to meditate?

Twice a week I listen to a guided meditation.  I love it because it sets a structure around something that I find quite difficult –sitting to calm my mind.  The meditation begins with instructions on finding a comfortable upright position and guides me into a practice of watching and returning to my breath.  Thoughts arise, naturally, because that’s what the mind does – it thinks.  Just like the ears hear, or the eyes see.  No harm, no fowl, just return to the breath to find the center, to find the calm.

HERE COMES THE RELEVANCE TO BEAUTY.  STAY WITH ME.

I realized this morning that the Art of Spiritual Styling is a practice that serves the exact same function… it teaches you how to return over and over to your own beauty.  As women, we are IMMERSED in a cultural milieu that tells us over and over and over again what beauty is.   Just like our singular minds create thoughts, the cultural mind produces ideals, because that is what culture does – produce ideals, values and norms.

So, I realized, just like meditation teaches you that you are not your thoughts, The Art of Spiritual Styling teaches that you are not a pawn in the cultural ideals of beauty.

How?  The same way that meditation teaches you to gently return to your breath. The Art of Spiritual Styling teaches you how to find, focus and gently return to your own beauty, using a custom Daily Image Practice. Over and over again you return to your own beauty through styling techniques that take you to your own center.  From there you create your own beauty everyday in a styling practice.

In Beauty,

Shannon

The Art of Spiritual Styling swiftly and effectively got me out of my rut and into the flow.  Shannon showed me how to bring the same kind of intention that I had with yoga and writing to my beauty routine.  Suddenly the daily tasks of taking care of myself were alive with meaning and opportunity.

I felt like I had found a big loophole! You mean the things I do everyday like showering and putting on makeup can bring ritual and focus to my life? Genius.  This is a powerful, lasting gift that allows me to consciously create my life every single day.

Shannon also helped me uncover some seriously limiting beliefs I had about myself and my ability to be a self-driven entrepreneur.  She is straightforward, no-nonsense and unwaveringly compassionate.  Her grace and humor will open the door to your authentic, beautiful self.

When you are ready to go from dreaming to doing, gift yourself with this process.  If you let it, it will launch you to anywhere you want to go!

Amelia

Because of your gift, I’m taking more time in front of the mirror and that’s providing me with more connection with myself.  I’m loving what I find…..inside and out.  And loving myself more is grand!  And this loving place is more abundant with choices!!

I became aware that when I purchased my reading glasses, the purchase was totally from a place of what they look like.  It had no relationship to what I would look like as I wear them.  Interesting………  I love connecting with the awareness of loving myself and my relationship to others…..and how I present myself to the world……. and the interconnectedness!

I wore jeans for the first time in 3 or 4 years!    It actually felt a bit scary, odd, unfamiliar and reminds me that habits feel familiar and we call that familiarity comfortable when in the reality of empowered living, being all of who we are is what’s most comfortable.  And I’m guessing that staying connected to all of who we are, and the full capacity of meeting our needs as well as the needs of others is the ultimate comfort!  And engaging with the beauty of me……….and others in our world is bringing me closer and closer.

With love & gratitude!
Fran