Feeling Gooooood
How often and for how long do you allow yourself to feel good?
To be immersed in your pleasure(s)?
To be in the experience of LIFE?
Have you ever been in the midst of something that feels deeply satisfying, a conversation perhaps, an expression of your sexuality maybe, or it could have just been a favorite activity..
you are flowing and jamming, singing, laughing, grinding, then all of a sudden this discomfort starts seeping in, you freeze, and you feel cut off and separate from that thing you were just doing/saying/being?
That, my friends, is your body saying, ¨no more pleasure please!!!¨.
If this has happened to you it does not mean your body is wrong or broken. It simply means that your capacity for feeling ALL has been limited.
Used to happen alot for me. This severance of feeling gooooood. My capacity for pleasure was miniscule. And there were many things in my life that created this way of being for me.
Here are some obstacles I had to overcome to increase my capacity for feeling goooood.
Most of y’all will be able to raise your hand and say hell ya to a few of these thangs reminiscent of your own life
because this experience of not having the breadth, width, or depth to feel good is a shared story for many women.
Examples from my lived life-
I grew up believing my body was flawed. It started early with my mother shrugging off her stint with bulimia, is that a rite of passage? I thought. It seemed popular and necessary, and so I followed in her shadow.
The fashion magazines I paged through showed women with ¨perfect¨bodies due to immaculate makeup and extreme exercise regimes.
I saw my own body in need of constant attention to ¨perfect¨ and because of that it was not a safe place to reside in. I began to distant myself from my own body
from an early age my expression of ¨negative¨ emotions was stunted.
I can not remember a defining moment when it happened but as I entered puberty and beyond I closed in on myself and muted the intensity of my feelings.
Years later, my relationships looked like-not letting anyone get too close(fear of being seen), being embarrassed when I felt like crying, screaming, or even hysterically laughing, not sharing out loud what I really needed, passivity
Turns out, shutting down one side of my feeling states(the ¨negative¨ ones) shut down my ability to feel all the goodness in life as well
Freeing all of my emotions gave me the ability to have opinions, desires, deep connections, boundaries, confidence, and lots of feeling gooooood
Sexuality was a non-subject in my house growing up.
My mother gave us an awkward few sentence ¨talk¨ and I was left with the impression that sexuality was gross, embarrassing, and sticky
and although I had lots of healthy childhood masturbation, there was one experience where I experimented with a friend and when my parents found out I was shamed for it. I carried that shame with me for a long time
in my teens, sex for me looked like getting extremely drunk/high and not remembering anything-in fact, that was how I lost my virginity
moving on to my adult long term relationships, the shame from my childhood showed up as not being able to express how/when I wanted to be touched until I reached the point of not wanting to be touched at all
until I metabolized my shame and repainted my own unique experience of sexuality I could not be set free
My own journey towards feeling goooood has been long and turbulent, and so your’s could be as well.
Social norms, patriarchy, capitalism, conditioning, family values, cultural backgrounds, sexual identities, socioeconomic status, trauma, and many other factors affect your capacity of feeling gooooood.
I would love to leave you with a new definition of Pleasure, and a new way to begin the journey towards feeling goooooood.
Pleasure: an all encompassing sense of aliveness, vitality, and flow
With this definition pleasure can be seen as something that is alive within you. Pleasure is not something you need to work hard for. It is not based on how much money you make, what your body looks like, or who you are as a human.
Pleasure is innate in every one of us. It is our birthright.
~How to start to access your own pleasure:
slow down, notice the nuance and beauty in every moment, feel all the feels-when you widen your capacity to feel the deep, dark, painful you widen your capacity to feel the sweetness, the light, the achingly beautiful
Remember, take your time, go slow, and be compassionate with yourself.
If you are seeking more of an in depth guided tour to your innate pleasure, my coaching package The Woman’s Journey to Embodied Pleasure may be just right for you
