Her eyes were lowered to the floor, her body crumpled into itself, just the asking of this question carried  weight like a linked metal chain of years old. 

This woman across the sofa from me, was not the first to want this for herself or ask …

How can I allow myself to feel pleasure?

I believe for everything in life we wish to experience fresh and new, we need to begin with taking our focus over what has been “wrong”, for in this focus we only prove our limiting belief to right.  And so it plays out on repeat, creating a rabbit hole of no change.

Our pleasurable experiences expand as our capacity to receive and feel pleasure grows beyond what keeps it restricted and tame.

We want to grow a  “ pleasure muscle” and this is less threatening to our fearful and limited self if we begin with the allowing of pleasurable experiences outside of sex.

In developing pleasure in our daily lives, we establish a container for pleasure. This fuelling of everyday pleasure alters and nourishes our moments of pleasure known in our body and in turn those shared between our lover.

What causes blockages to pleasure? 

Pleasure in all of life is invited “in” as a softening. A physical receptivity of our self, and our body to know, taste, explore and have pleasure.

Moving our blockages to pleasure begins by changing our approach and our language .

If we pause for a moment and consider the feeling of the word blockage, it invokes in us something we think we have to TRY to fix. We believe it to be a thick brick wall, one that may take years to breakthrough . 

We may even hold the belief that we are not capable or are too damaged to experience pleasure.

If we work with the word resistance, already, we can feel a change in our body. Resistance we know and feel to be fluid, it has space around it to move.

If we work with the words “allow” or “moving towards” rather than fix … again we have altered the pressure we are placing upon ourselves and the messages our bodies are both feeling and hearing.

In the adaptation of words, we have something malleable that can change shape and dissolve.

It lightens how we speak to it and shows a message of willingness to meet the resistance.

What stops us from experiencing pleasure? 

Our shame and our self-worth stands as a “body guard” between what we want and the pleasure we allow. 

Shame may be around the messages and the sensations of pleasure we have felt in our body as sinful, bad and/or confusing. These messages may have been ingrained into our body memory in childhood, as abuse, trauma or religion. The shame we feel has an effect on the value we believe our simply being human is worth.

What we believe about pleasure is essential self reflection to take time for, particularly as our messages of shame were informed during our childhood. As adults we can meet them with wisdom and self compassion. We can free ourselves of these core beliefs by asking if this is really true.

Taking small steps towards pleasure.

Allowing ourselves to be free to feel pleasure begins as we notice our language around pleasure. Softening our view of what stands between us and what we desire, as resistance rather than blockage. 

It is also healing for us to notice how we speak to ourselves. Do we speak to ourselves from a place of the past, a place of judgement and criticism or do we speak from a place of choice and self love?

To tune into the simplicity of changing our language, we free ourselves from the story of past experiences and the body becomes more open. 

Enquiring into our beliefs about pleasure enables us to reflect upon what is true, and the untruth we have been living by.

Exploring prompts, such as what do I believe about pleasure?

Do I feel worthy of receiving?

A tender way to enquire is to write to question down and let the answer tumble out. It may be messy, it may trigger, you are writing the story that has limited your birthright to pleasure.

These questions reveal more as you work with them regularly, removing layers, until you come to the deepest untruth.

If writing is not your thing, then take the question out for a walk, or a run, or a swim, or even as you shower or cook your evening meal, let it move as you do.

Daily experiences of pleasure are the magic, the healing, the expanding into …

To have new we need to experience and taste new and in each new feel safe.

Pleasure is naturally joyful, delicious, beautiful, playful, innocent and nourishing to a whole being. It is a main ingredient to being human.

We can support our resistance to pleasure by creating opportunities for pleasure into our lives through the simplicity of daily experiences. Exploring what lights us up.

For example:

Slowing down in the shower, feeling the heat of water on your skin, smelling the soap, being aware of your touch.

Closing your eyes as you take that first mouthful of food and fully being available to the taste.

Listening to the rain.

Feeling the sun of your face.

The scent of fresh flowers by your bed, or clean sheets.

Opening ourselves up to curiosity invokes pleasure. When we observe how children meet the world, they are in wonder and awe. They immerse into the simplicity of being curious about where they are, the colours, the sky, the leaves, the puddles, the bird … we forget to be in awe, we forget to be curious, and it is these simple ingredients to being human the can reconnect and nourish our moments of being alive.

Raising our self-worth. This can be uncomfortable. We can begin slowly to give our self what we wait for permission for or others to give, whether that be an hour to our self, something we would really love to do or have but wait for a “special occasion”. Being comfortable saying no as full sentence. Caring for our self as we respectfully care for others.

Pleasure is not just for sex, it is not as contained or as “small” as that.

But the beliefs, shame, and guilt we have entwined around sex and pleasure do limit our pleasure as part of our whole life experience.

Pleasure expands as we give our self permission to open ourselves to all the flavours of pleasure. When we expand our ordinary moments of pleasure and allow pleasure to permeate all areas of our life, all that we share with our lover has been fuelled to enable us to reach new limits.