When I was 17 I read Seventeen Magazine religiously. Truly any magazine I could get my hands on. Tiger Beat, Cosmo, whatever was laying around. I felt intoxicated flicking through glossy pages with the promise of quizzes that would determine whether or not I was going to have a summer romance, or pages telling me the latest beauty trends for the ultimate summer glow-up.
Then I would proceed to rip a page out of my journal ever so slightly so it wouldn’t be obvious I stole a page, and write out the ultimate summer glow-up list.
When I look back now through my giant tote of journals I’ve kept since I was 7 years old, I find scattered loose pages of teenage summer glow-up lists but now I find them disheartening. They all had one thing in common: a giant list of physical things I wanted to change about myself.
Toned abs for summer.
Whiter teeth.
Better hair.
Smaller waist.
Clearer skin.
Women Glow Differently When They Feel Alive
I am a firm believer that wanting to enhance your beauty isn’t vain when it’s coming from the right place. But what does it say about our culture when such a large amount of women’s money goes toward beauty enhancement without doing the inner work that actually makes women glow differently?
When I sit with women, yes maybe at first glance I notice the exterior. But I’m not leaning in because she doesn’t have wrinkles or because her lips are lined perfectly. There’s something else. Something in her energy. Her aliveness. (I’m drooling just thinking about it)
Aura, to me, is energetic, physiological, emotional, sensual.
The real glow isn’t having the perfect exfoliation routine or the perfect Pilates body. I notice this in my own relationship with the world too. Especially once I stopped centering men so heavily and started being in relationship with life itself.
When I glow differently, life feels like it’s flirting with me.
I’m horny for life and life wants to seduce me back. But truly, that’s what it feels like. A flirtation. A seduction. A feeling that I’m alive and in relationship with life itself. And the more alive I become, the more life responds back.
That’s what summer amplifies.
There’s this juicy energy to summer that radiates.
Plump.
Ripe.
Alive.
Sticky skin from sweat and ocean air.
More community-centered activities.
More laughter.
More desire.
More presence.
Maybe instead of preparing for summer with a list full of expensive beauty treatments, we need to get back to tending to our actual aura.
And listen, I’m not against Botox, nails, filler, or beauty rituals at all. I love beauty. I love glamour. I love enhancement. But that’s not actually the core thing enhancing a woman’s magnetic field. (And we will touch on these things as well hello fascia tending.)
As I mentioned before, when I say aura this is what I mean:
Energetic.
Physiological.
Emotional.
Sensual.
You can feel someone’s aura before they even speak. You can feel when someone is deeply insecure but packaged beautifully. You can feel when someone is desperate for validation. You can feel when someone is disconnected from themselves. You can also feel when a woman is deeply embodied, safe in herself, nourished, playful, sensual, emotionally alive. The aura is constantly communicating.
Women spend so much time trying to perfect the visual aspects of attraction while neglecting the energetic field transmitting underneath it all. The nervous system is always speaking like a signal. A woman in chronic survival mode carries a very different aura than a woman whose body feels safe enough to soften, laugh loudly, flirt with life, make eye contact, receive pleasure, take up space, rest, and actually be present.
This is why two women can wear the exact same outfit and one woman radiates magnetism while the other feels almost invisible.
Aura is not just beauty. It’s the coherence of a woman’s connection to self. When the body, emotions, energy, and sense of self are all communicating in the same direction, women glow differently.
People can feel when someone is trying to become desirable instead of actually being connected to desire itself. The aura sharpens when women become more alive. This is why some of the most magnetic women aren’t necessarily the most conventionally beautiful in the room. They’re often the women most connected to sensation, pleasure, creativity, humour, depth, presence, emotional range, and life force itself.
Which is why I think summer can become such powerful medicine for women when we let it not because “hot girl summer” gives us permission to be hotter for consumption, but because summer naturally invites the body back into sensation.
Sun on skin.
Cold fruit.
Salt water.
Music.
Movement.
Community.
Long evenings.
Bare feet.
Desire.
Play.
All things that actually nourish the female nervous system and bring the aura back online.
Summer Is Medicine for the Female Nervous System
Women are seasonal beings. Our hormones, neurotransmitters, energy levels, even the way we socialize and relate shifts with light, temperature, and the seasons themselves. Summer naturally boosts dopamine and serotonin through sunlight, movement, novelty, pleasure. Oxytocin rises through closeness, touch, laughter, flirting, play.
Summer is basically bees to honey for the female nervous system.
And sensations are one of the core ways I guide women back into relationship with their nervous systems. Back into their bodies. Back into their erotic blueprint and aliveness through sensation itself.
we often reduce sensuality down to sexuality when sensuality is actually about being deeply connected to the senses. A woman connected to her sensuality is often the most powerful and “regulated” woman in the room because she knows how to let eros move through her instead of gripping herself so tightly trying to be composed all the time.
Summer is one of the easiest portals into that.
As my sensational muse Anne of Green Gables would say, summer provides so much “scope for the imagination” but honestly I think summer provides even more scope for the senses.
Sweat collecting between your boobs on a hot summer day.
Ocean water dripping from your hair down your spine.
The first bite of a ripe peach with juice all over your fingers.
A sunburn you absolutely knew was coming but accepted anyways because the lake day was worth it.
Music vibrating through your chest at a festival.
Making out with someone slightly toxic but spiritually necessary for character development.
Making love in the middle of the day with the windows open and absolutely no plans after.
Summer pulls women back into sensation.
Longer days mean more time outside, more accidental social connection, more movement, more moments where the nervous system gets to unclench from survival mode and remember there’s actually a world outside productivity and emails and optimizing yourself into oblivion.
Historically women gathered outside in summer.
Markets.
Harvests.
Festivals.
Communal baths.
Long evenings spent feeding one another and talking for hours.
Bodies were designed for this.
And after winter’s contraction both literal and emotional the body naturally craves expansion.
The body wants to spread out.
To take up space.
To wear less clothing.
To stay outside until 10pm on a Tuesday.
To laugh so hard your stomach hurts while someone feeds you watermelon slices.
And I think there’s something deeply regulating about the nostalgia summer brings forward too.
There’s a reason we romanticize teenage summers so heavily.
The saturated colour grading of memory.
Sun-bleached tees.
DIY bikinis.
Overly bright nail polish.
Gas station snacks.
Disposable cameras.
Bike rides.
Staying out too late.
Blasting music with your girlfriends while getting ready even though nobody actually knew where the night was going.
For me summer always felt like freedom.
And after over a decade of working with women I’ve noticed seasons themselves become extraordinary nervous system containers because they give women permission to change tempo.
Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine both honour summer as expansion.
Warmth.
Circulation.
Yang energy.
Aliveness.
Or in less clinical terms:
Summer wants women a little more feral.
Aura-maxxing this summer calls for swimming until your lips are salt-stiff.
Flirting more.
Laughing harder.
Eating fruit slowly.
Kissing someone under string lights.
Letting yourself experience pleasure without needing to justify why you deserve it first.
Nostalgia isn’t always escapism or longing for what once was…. I often feel it’s a mirror holding up a reflection of using romanticism as a portal of longing for what we need in our current season of life. (or at least that’s what I told myself as I added jelly shoes, and aquamarine coloured clothing items to my shopping cart for my summer wardrobe)
The sensory memories of summer tanning oil on shoulders, sand stuck to your feet, the sour sweetness of a gas station slushy anchor the nervous system back into play, safety, sensation, and aliveness.
Teenage summer rituals were actually messy little masterclasses in embodiment.
I think a lot of women need that version of themselves back.
Recreating these rituals in adulthood isn’t regression… so I dare you to…
Make a summer bucket list that reads like a sensory prayer. Steal a sunset with friends. Buy the cheap candy you used to eat before wellness culture convinced everyone a blue raspberry slushy was the devil incarnate. Blast music so loud the speakers crackle a little. Try roller skating again even if you’re terrible at it. The point isn’t to look young again. It’s to let the body remember what openness feels like.
The Physical Aura: Fascia, Lymph & Fluidity
Now for the physical aura…
Because glow is physiological too.
And I need you all to note this now because I’m calling it early:
the same way everyone and their distant cousin suddenly became a nervous system expert is exactly what’s about to happen with fascia over the next few years. So if you want the elite intel on glow-up wellness secrets start tending to your fascia now, lovebug.
Fascia is essentially this connective tissue web running through the entire body and it stores so much more than people realize. Tension. Stress. Emotional holding patterns. Posture. Trauma. Constriction. When fascia becomes tight and dehydrated the whole body starts looking braced against life.
And lymph? Oh babe when lymph gets stagnant you can FEEL it.
Puffiness.
Heaviness.
Dullness.
Low energy.
That “why do I suddenly look exhausted even after sleeping?” feeling.
Which is why I honestly think the things that make women look the most alive aren’t always the super expensive beauty treatments. It’s the things moving tissue. Moving fluids. Moving energy. Moving emotion.
A fluid woman is so HOTTTTT.
There’s something deeply magnetic about a woman whose body looks supple instead of clenched. A woman who moves like life is actually flowing through her instead of looking like she’s one inconvenience away from a nervous breakdown.
And no you do not need to spend $350 every week on a lymphatic drainage massage. (Although if a wealthy man wants to fund your wellness rituals, who am I to block divine intervention?)
But genuinely some of the best things for your glow are painfully simple.
Dry brushing before a shower while music plays in the background and sunlight spills through the bathroom window does more for some women’s aura than another overpriced serum. Walking daily. Twisting your body. Stretching lazily in the morning. Actually hydrating yourself properly instead of surviving off caffeine and cortisol. Lymphatic massage while oiling your skin after a shower. Sweating. Dancing. Breathing deeply. Letting your body stop being so frozen all the time.
And if you want something more guided my friend and client created a lymphatic drainage nervous system reset and honestly… after doing this work consistently for a few months the results speak for themselves. Less puffiness. Brighter skin. More softness in the face. More energy. More aliveness. Women underestimate how much of their glow is trapped in stagnant tissue and exhausted nervous systems.
Move the fascia.
Move the fluids.
Hydrate the cells.
Support the nervous system.
And the outside starts reflecting the inside.
Happy fascia happy life.
Happy lymph happy life.
Oxytocin, Girlhood & The Return of the Girly Hangout
under the category of physical aura-maxxing I think oxytocin is one of the most underrated medicines for women.
Female friendship is co-regulation in action.
Modern adulthood has starved women of third spaces and while yes therapy is beautiful and journaling is beautiful and your little morning routines are beautiful sometimes a bitch simply needs to cackle with her coven while watching old rom-coms or maybe go rave until 2am.
Healing alone can only go so far.
Some things only heal in relationships.
A sauna with girlfriends where nobody is performing. A living room sleepover where everyone braids each other’s hair. A beach day with shared fruit and terrible pop songs. A “getting ready” night where makeup, gossip, perfume, and music become ceremonial.
The sacredness of someone rubbing sunscreen onto your back.
Someone saying “that colour looks SO good on you.”
Laughing until your stomach hurts.
Messy makeovers.
Cheap wine.
The intimacy of being known.
Bring back the girly hangout.
Not because it looks aesthetically pleasing online but because women genuinely glow differently in the community.
I know I do.
I glow differently when I’m surrounded by women I deeply love.
The Mysticism of Aura
Now for my favourite section because I think modern nervous system conversations sometimes become so clinical they lose the soul entirely.
I love Polyvagal Theory. I love understanding physiology. But sometimes wellness culture becomes so obsessed with “regulation” that it forgets mysticism. It forgets eros. It forgets the soul.
Aura-maxxing that actually lasts is messy. Embodied. Emotional. Sometimes wildly unglamorous.
Becoming truly magnetic often requires a Persephone journey. Becoming the queen of your own underworld. Meeting the parts of yourself you’ve abandoned. The rage. The desire. The grief. Sensuality. The hunger. The truth.
To be hot.
To be erotic.
To be alive.
Requires knowing yourself.
And I know “know thyself” sounds philosophical and abstract but honestly I think the doorway starts much simpler than people realize.
It starts with sensation.
What makes your body soften?
What expands you?
What drains you?
What makes you feel warm?
What makes you feel alive?
What makes you feel more like yourself?
Women are taught to override sensation constantly.
Ignore hunger.
Ignore exhaustion.
Ignore intuition.
Ignore desire.
Ignore pleasure.
Aura-maxxing at its core is really just becoming intimate with yourself again.
And unraveling through sensation might be one of the most luxurious places to begin, my love.
So this summer let’s be less interested in becoming a curated fantasy and more interested in becoming alive.
Less optimization.
More aliveness.
Less performing wellness.
More living.
Your body wants joy. Community. Beauty. Pleasure. Play. Messy rituals. Permission to be ridiculous.
The real glow isn’t a list of enhancements.
It’s the feeling of widening into your own life until life widens back.
xx ally
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