Relax! – Bad Things are Going to Happen – (but you can still have pleasure)

Mar 22, 2017

Relax! – Bad Things are Going to Happen – (but you can still have pleasure)

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Last week I offered a workshop on pleasure to a group of cancer coaches.  During the day we chewed on the question – in the mix of everything else a person diagnosed with cancer is facing, how would pleasure fit in?  Is it fair to add to their burden, the idea that the person in treatment, should now add finding more pleasure to their “to do” list?  And if it wasn’t cancer it could one of life’s other kinds of crisis - a divorce, being let go from your job unexpectedly, an accident, a failing business, bankruptcy, or some other significant loss. 

Where does pleasure fit in at these times?  One of the premises of Unlock Pleasure is that pleasure is not contingent on outer circumstances.  Nor is it contingent on some one else giving it to us or doing it for us.  Pleasure is an inner state we open to.  Pleasure is a resource that when one learns to make it front and centre, it builds resiliency.  We need resiliency to weather life’s downturns, the unexpected challenges, that will inevitable happen life periodically. 

But in the midst of a crisis - be it a cancer diagnosis or one of the others – when we say – “don’t forget about pleasure, it can help you.”  It can feel like a slap in the face, as if we’re minimizing the significance of the situation.  “What do you mean pleasure – I’m scared to death right now.  I have to deal with this serious problem – I don’t have the time or the mindset for pleasure – are you kidding me!!”

It brings to the fore I think a unconscious belief many people hold that if something really painful or really scary is happening there’s no place for pleasure.  As if pain and pleasure can’t or shouldn’t sit side by side. Often people are shocked when something “bad” happens.  Even though we know a human life is comprised of both glorious experiences and hard ones.  And let’s not kid ourselves - no one’s life is untouched by the reality of pain and pleasure.  It’s a basic duality we struggle to get out heads around - the either or - dark or light, night or day, summer or winter, male or female. The this OR that versus this AND that. 

One way we can work with this challenge is to ask a basic question - Is it really true that I have to be miserable and scared every moment just because….  What would it be like to hold a vision of – yes I have to face this hard situation BUT in the midst of it, why would I chose to deprive myself of the goodness of life (another word for pleasure) – how would that possibly serve me? 

Rick Hansen author of Taking in the Good (2010) offer a great metaphor for our current state of our thinking patterns.  He says our brains are wired like Velcro – i.e. sticks like glue - for pain, fear, stress, and expectations of bad things to happen; and conversely the brain is like Teflon for positive expectations or the goodness of life – slides right off.  But the great news is our brain wiring can be changed – our brains are an ever-evolving substance, that with intention and practice, new neuropath ways and patterning can be established.

And as to those neuropaths ways for the good things of life my simple Pleasure Pause practice can help.  Research offers that one only has to hold a positive thought or action for 30-45 seconds, really taking it in, noticing what is happening in your body as you do, for the firing and wiring needed to build a new neuropath – but it needs to be repeated often.  Those old Velcro thoughts processes have been with us since out cave man and woman days – they are what allowed us to survive back then, but now in our current reality, no longer serving us. 

I’d like to offer two resources that will help in making those shifts. One is a very hilarious poem (I think) from Ellen Bass called – Relax

The other is a poster that you can print out and tack up somewhere you will see often – A reminder to regularly STOP and take a Pleasure Pause.  You can find it in the Resource section of my website. Let me know how it goes. 

Relax

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice–one white, one black–scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

 

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