Flirting with your Pleasure (Guided Ritual + journal prompts to increase your pleasure!)
As priestess, I chose to walk the path of service. And experience a fuck ton of pleasure. I am doing every single thing I can to learn physically, spiritually, and scientifically, the keys to pleasure and actually enjoying your life in a profound and powerful way. Because to be quite honest, I sometimes find it hard to feel.
Partly due to conditioning from a religious upbringing, and partly because sometimes it is really hard to tune into joy and pleasure when life gets hard, when the world is up in flames, and when you are doing deep work with yourself. And partly because we have created a culture that represses joy in a major way. In a world where you are supposed to be productive, happy, focused, secure, and stable all the time, how are we supposed to take time to integrate, process, and find what brings us pleasure and joy?
Thousands and thousands of years and cultural conditioning has told us that pleasure is hedonistic, it is wrong, that sacrifice and doing without is noble. Add in constant advertisements saying you’re not good enough, to actual people online telling you that you’re not good enough, to thousands of years of sexual repression, to having to be “on” and “go” all the time… and if you’re like me, and experience anxiety and depression, pleasure can seem really far away.
Here’s the thing — pleasure is an absolute necessity. It is not self-indulgent. It is not an option. If we want to survive in this world, we have to tune into what turns us on. It is necessary to show up in the world with strength, it is necessary to heal and restore our nervous system. So how can we find our pleasure?
It is not just in sex. Although sex is great. It is in our bodies. It is in the mundane tasks of your day to day, as long as you breathe into it. It is in starting to come back home to yourself, slowly but surely, and maybe not every day, but some of them. It is feet on the ground, smelling your favorite candle burning, sipping a cup of tea. It is in your unique rituals that allow you to feel okay on this planet, even if it starts out for just a moment.
To find your pleasure, flirt with it. Take it on a date. Ask it questions. Be with it, even if it is a total stranger to you right now. You can start with these journal prompts:
What are the small things that comfort me?
Think shows, like Golden Girls and the Barefoot Contessa (maybe that’s just a me thing), scents, showers or baths, your favorite blankets, your most comforting songs (cheesy 70s easy listening is mine), and try and create that for yourself.
What are the things that allow me to feel grounded?
Maybe it is routine, or the smell of dried herbs on a piece of charcoal, or cooking, or going for a run, or jumping up and down, or singing, or being around friends. Think of the things that make you feel at home on this earth.
What are some memories you have of being in your pleasure?
They don’t have to be big moments at all — for me, most of them are around a dinner table. Belly laughs over red wine and big vats of pasta. And also, the moments that I feel completely alone, but not isolated, like when I’m driving by a mountain range, or sitting on a beach at sunset.
What body movements make you feel pleasurable?
Try moving your body in this way, whether it is rolling your neck around, or laying on the floor and deep breathing, or moving your body in a sensual, serpentine way, or shaking your hands out, or stretching your face muscles out, or whatever way your unique body can move, try it now. Experiment with yourself.
Go through all of the senses — what is your favorite thing to Feel? See? Hear? Taste? Smell?
Write all of these down — and these are going to lead to our ritual.
RITUAL
And here is. a pleasure initiation ritual from my heart to yours! So for this ritual, you're going to need something to activate each one of your senses - so something to taste, smell, look at, touch (oils or feathers or something to commune with your body) and I will provide the hearing part! This one is going to help you get more granular with the experience of pleasure!
Tune in and flirt with your pleasure so you can start building a relationship with it. Grow together. Get to know each other. Be in each other’s company for a while. Besides — how could you expect to be close to anyone you don’t make time for? Have fun my loves! ;)
And hey, if you dig this and want more, check out the membership! Where you get recorded rituals, live rituals, cozy connection calls with the community, a forum, journal prompts, playlists, poems, and so much more.
You can learn more and join here!