Pleasure doesn’t just come from getting everything we want, and or in just the way we think we need it. Some pleasure comes from facing challenges or difficult things, finding our strengths and building confidence. Read more >
Feb 21, 2016Last weekend I gave a workshop on the connections between pleasure and authenticity. My participants really rose to the topic, and here’s why. Read more >
Dec 18, 2015As 2015 draws to a close will you give your self the gift of appreciating yourself? What if you looked back over the year and acknowledged everything you have done, been, given, received and created! And sit down and savor that feast. For me this is part of letting the current year go. I like to gather the harvest of my life and whole-heartedly take it in and give thanks. Read more >
Oct 05, 2015Just back from three weeks in Italy – part holiday, part work. The mechanics of travel don’t feel ‘risky’ to me, but I admit getting on a jumbo jet to be flung across six times zones and two continents is an incredible leap of faith. The risk for me in this trip was the work piece. My spiritual community holds an international conference every three years and communities take turns hosting the event – Mexico, Brazil, and the USA have had their turns recently, so it was time for Europe, and the Italians picked up the challenge. This event allows us to share what we do and how we do it around the world, track the evolution of our collective development as a community and to deepen our understanding of the teachings we follow. Members are invited to propose ideas for workshops and facilitated processes. Read more >
Sep 24, 2015In late August I offered my first poetry concert. I took a risk and stepped into new terrain. The concert involved speaking 14 poems from memory and from my heart. I was accompanied by cello music. While speaking in front of an audience comes easily to me from my teaching and facilitation, stepping into a creative offering was new. Read more >
Sep 24, 2015Pleasure means different things to different people. Last month when a canoe camping trip was being planned, one woman in the group wrote to say: “Nope, I won’t be there. Camping in a tent does nothing for me.” I love to hear people say clearly what does or doesn’t work for them. If you feel like pleasure is a bit of a mystery to you, or that it’s hard to get, here are two things I’ve learned. You have to take the time to really explore what gives you pleasure. You may notice some tried and true things that light you up, and some of those things will change over the phases of your life. You have to be willing to let go, to let yourself change, to be open to new possibilities. Read more >
Aug 05, 2015This summer my friend and colleague, Lorie Carson, invited me to commit to 100 days of creativity. Creativity is one of the most potent doorways to pleasure. So this invitation made me say YES immediately. The only instructions were to do something creative for each of the next 100 days and to try to contain the practice to specific activities. Read more >
Apr 07, 2015The mission of Unlock Pleasure is to support you in deepening your capacity for pleasure. The starting point for this is to make contact with your body. Pleasure is inherently a ‘felt’ experience, so your connection to your body and your experience of pleasure are interactive and mutually supportive. In my last blog, I invited you into the practice of the pleasure pause – taking moments throughout your day to tune into the world around you, find something that’s pleasurable to you, and to focus on it. The most important aspect of this is bringing your experience down from your head and into your body where it can register on your nervous system to create a calming, settling effect. This practice, if done on a regular basis, will form a new habitual response, so that whenever you’re over-stimulated, stressed or strung out, you can slip down into your ‘feeling body’ and allow the pleasure pause habit to take over. Read more >