Transformation, Pleasure, Power.

I celebrate Grace Lee Bogg’s wise words that invites each of us to “transform yourself to transform the world”*. Many of us are sitting with the knowing that we desire a better and brighter future for ourselves, our communities, the planet. We become what we practice, and it is my feeling that by inviting more pleasure into our lives, we practice inviting more joy, feeling, rest, connection, slowness, contentedness and healing into our lives. Further, the world becomes what we practice, meaning that when we invite more pleasure into our lives we invite more joy, feeling, rest, connection, slowness, contentedness and healing into the world.

My work is build from a foundational desire to support folks as they explore what’s working and not working in their own lives: with sex, pleasure, boundaries, selfhood and relationships. To create an opportunity to invite more of what we want into our lives, to move towards what we long for.

For me, choosing pleasure means inviting more of our yes’es into our lives, more of what fills our cups. And, this certainly isn’t simply about sexual pleasure. Pleasure means naps. Pleasure means art and handiwork. Pleasure means sex. Pleasure means singing. Pleasure means gardening. Pleasure means meals with friends. Pleasure means writing. Pleasure means activism. Pleasure means dancing. Pleasure means cuddles with pets. Pleasure means walks. Pleasure means long showers. Pleasure means a good spanking. Pleasure means sitting in silence with a cup of tea. Pleasure means music. 

We are all taught constrictive and limiting beliefs about the acceptable and unacceptable pleasures we should enjoy, and when to enjoy them. As a result, many of us are left with feelings of suffocation, lifelessness, being broken, wrong, ‘not enough’ or ‘too much’ - yet it is also an undeniable truth that our current social system is fundamentally pleasure negative and disinterested in honouring the multitudes of the human spirit. Perhaps it’s time to take matters into our own hands and massage life and light into the artful complexities and hungers of what it means to be human.

After all, as Oscar Wilde (might have) said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power”. I firmly believe that when we explore pleasure and our root selves, we’re actually exploring much more. That an embodied relationship with our sexual voice and choice is an embodied relationship with our power. An aware relationship with our libido - our sexual energy - is an aware relationship with our life force energy. Cultivating mindful and pleasurable practices with ourselves is cultivating mindful and pleasurable practices with our local and global communities and planet.

*learnt via adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism