The purpose of pleasure

Summer is in session for me and with that comes another round of adjusting to a new schedule. The teaching semester is over and I’m looking for jobs again, but in the meantime have been immersing myself in client work through my one-on-one Bloom Mentorship. Expanding my curriculum design and experience in the art of holding space has been very delightful and feels like a nice contrast to the teaching environment of a large university.

Each week, I create a booklet for my clients to support their integration work and studies after our sessions. Today, I decided to expand on one of those booklet entries where I wrote about the importance of pleasure. It is excerpted below.

What is pleasure?

Dawn Sierra in the anthology The Care We Dream Of wrote, “at a basic level, pleasure is about aliveness. It's the part of us that makes us feel connected to something. It's a way for us to be in our bodies. Pleasure only ever exists in the now. It requires us to arrive and is an opportunity to feel into the edges of what it means to be us… Pleasure is another way of truly being with sensations, questions, and opportunities our bodies are offering us.”

This is one of my favorite definitions of pleasure thus far. It highlights how pleasure is one route towards mindfulness that puts us in touch with ourselves in a way that reminds us of our connection to a greater world. 

The Mind Illuminated, a Buddhist meditation guide, describes mindfulness or sati as the process of being fully conscious, moment by moment, of everything happening in our worlds (mind, body, world around us). It is the practice of opening ourselves back up to all the levels of experiences available to us with the understanding that everything is fleeting and transient.

When thinking of pleasure in this lens, it feels profound and expansive. It pulls us out of ourselves, out of our ego, and out of the idea that we are an isolated individual. Here pleasure does not serve as a distraction or a tool of avoidance but rather supports us attuning to the realities around us on both a micro and macro scale because again pleasure only ever exists in the now.

We are often taught that pursuing pleasure is selfish or that it only exists as a luxury but I think that has more to do with how pleasure and desire get conflated. Desire is a beautiful albeit different phenomenon, which would need to be a separate entry… but with pleasure, what I am interested in is how we can find moments of ease, connection, and joy and how these moments can be a reminder of the many opportunities available to us so that we do not lose sight of our options or the ability to make choices that are aligned with our values. 

I remember many months ago encountering infographics that stated something of the sentiment that giving up or falling into a space of defeat right now is a privilege, especially when we are being asked to show the fuck up, demand a ceasefire, and be an active participant in creating changing conditions where people all around the world have access to the ultimate safety and aliveness that I’m talking about here. And while I absolutely do agree, getting the nervous system on board is a different story and the things we might be quick to label as trivial or unnecessary are actually resourceful opportunities to support us in responding to this call of action.

Bloom and the work I do in my Pleasure Ceremony practice is informed by a politicized somatics with the goal of building resiliency. Staci Haines, the founder of Generative Somatics, describes this as “the ability to somatically, holistically renew ourselves during and after oppressive, threatening, or traumatic experiences. We are able to shift ourselves, physiologically and psychologically from traumatic hyperalert states to calmed cohesive states. It is the ability to regain a sense of hope and imagine a positive future.” 

Our ability to be resilient is determined by our window of tolerance, which is the place where our nervous system is in its optimal state and experiences relative safety while also still being mentally engaged. The experience of excessive trauma and stress can cause this window to dwindle making it easier for things to send us to the hyperarousal or hypoarousal state of the nervous system faster.

One way of building this window of tolerance is by being actually present to pleasure. Every time we experience a moment of awe, wonder, and joy with our whole body and actually sink into that experience without distraction is a hack to the nervous system. Now imagine finding a moment for that every day. For those of us who are able, I think it is absolutely important we increase our somatic awareness and embodied knowledge to nourish ourselves for the long run. So if we are working with pleasure, let it be the fire to sustain us.

In just two days, I’ll be leading an eco-somatic class at hex house. I’ve taken a lot of what I’ve shared here and allowed it to guide a practice we will self-resource and find mindbodyspirit support while working with dandelion as an herbal ally. No experience is necessary. I recommend bringing a yoga mat if you have! Suggested donation with it all being pulled to support helping Ahmed's family escape gaza's hardship.

In other news, on May 24th at 7pm I’ll be sharing the evening with four live ambient sound acts for tender alchemy. At the infamous LSD loft in Greenpoint. I’ll be doing a performance to accompany awryly on (sound). Snow, Ximena Bedoya, and Sobolik will also be sharing sounds.