Powered By Pleasure
The Duality of Being Good Versus Experiencing Pleasure
While exploring the topic of pleasure I like to highlight and confront our collective unconscious cultural beliefs or misconceptions about pleasure. Though pleasure drives us we often remain unaware of its full impact on our feelings. Digging into our conscious and unconscious beliefs and feelings about pleasure allows us to be aware of often competing drives working in us that allow us to experience pleasure or not.
One such inner process I want to highlight is the duality between a sense of being good and our right to pleasure. Let me describe this dilemma a bit.
Read more > May 13, 2024Developing Receptors for Pleasure
I’m always grateful when people from my tribe send me poems, articles, or videos on the topic of pleasure. As I’ve been writing this blog of 10 years I also need inspiration on the topic of Pleasure.
Thank you Natalie, a Pathwork colleague, who sent me this really impactful video by Bessel van der Kolk MD, the eminent Dutch trauma researcher, and best selling author of The Body Keeps the Score.
In this short video he talks about the connection between physical and emotional developmental neglect, and the process of brain development. In particular how the brain/body adjusts to what’s available or not, as a survival strategy.
The Power of the Erotic Imagination
Our innate human ability to imagine, to conjure up, to create various scenarios with our minds, in our minds, realities that may never exist in our “real concrete world”, is one of our most potent human capacities. We use this skill to imagine or to create in our mind’s eye, frequently, in all aspects of our day to day life. This ability to imagine is the basis of bringing anything into reality – first we imagine it! You may often have heard the phrase “If you can imagine it, you can create it.” While that may be an overly optimistic idea, in its essence, the phrase holds truth.
Read more > Dec 05, 2023Living with Uncertainty - Building an Anchor Within
I want to draw your attention to the dance we all do between certainty and uncertainty.
We want certainty and we don’t want uncertainty – immediately there a dualistic push pull that takes your energy and causes tension inside. I invite you to notice that tension whenever you find yourself triggered by the need for certainty.
To be human is to live with uncertainty, and …. we can also build tools to live more gracefully with it.
Read more > Nov 21, 2023What does it Mean to Love Your Life?
Lately I’ve been musing about the connection between love and pleasure. Love has many forms and applications, as does pleasure. But self-love, self-compassion are concepts we surely recognize as central to understand and most importantly to practice. I’m always curious why the practice of self-love and compassion is so hard for many to keep on their radar – myself included, at times.
Read more >