Pleasure … sexual and otherwise
Pleasure … sexual and otherwise
Category | Pleasure & Sexuality,Pleasure means different things to different people. When I talk about Unlock Pleasure, the first question I’m often asked is, “What do you mean by pleasure?” … And sex is what people are thinking of.
The pleasure of our everyday, moment-to-moment lives is what I’m primarily focusing on in this work, and this includes the pleasure of our intimate relations and our sensuous capacities.
But I often wonder about the interconnection between these two realms of pleasure – the everyday and sex. Are they so different? And how do they influence each other? I’m playing with the notion that when we increase pleasure in everyday life, it has a direct and beneficial impact on how we give and take more intimate pleasures.
For instance, ordinary, day-to-day pleasures are body-based, just like sex. These everyday moments fill us up and orient us towards the goodness of being alive. We relax, we open up. In the pleasure state, we’re more able to see opportunities and more inclined to creatively design our lives, doing what makes us feel good, happy, fulfilled.
We get into trouble with sex when we come to the experience expecting too much of it, perhaps starting with the belief – some people call it the ‘demand’ – that we can only feel good through somebody or something outside of ourselves. The idea here is that someone else should be the source of good feelings – and that’s not going to take you very far!
What would your sexual experience look like if your baseline of happiness, goodwill and fulfillment was much higher than that? My sense is you would no longer come to your sexual experiences with that insatiable hunger or demand – whether it’s physical, emotional or spiritual, that threatens to make you a beggar, demanding to be soothed or filled by the other.
Instead, you can bring your full self – content within yourself. Then connection with the other is icing on the cake. You bring your fullness and what delights you into your intimate moments. You come able to give, hold some space for the other, as well as being willing to receive. From this place you jointly expand into pleasure with your partner. That’s when the real magic happens!
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“As I step into the classroom with Madeline, I am aware of a spaciousness that few other facilitators offer, giving adequate time for self-reflection and digestion of the material. The spaciousness is well-supported by experiential learning and practical teachings. Madeline’s work—both within her own life and in facilitating others—speaks clearly through the profound space she holds for learning, and healing, to happen.”