What do we mean when we talk about giving ourselves permission to feel pleasure? Join me on today’s solo episode as we continue our conversation from last week with my friend and colleague, Robyn Spens. I want us to lean into the feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment or sensual gratification as they related to our sensations and emotions. I also want to take you back to the last time you felt pleasure as the result of one of your intimate relationships. How did that feel? What emotions did you experience?
Many of us will give ourselves permission to have a successful career or begin a family with our partner, but we forget about carving out time for ourselves — to meet our body’s wants and needs. So, what exactly do we mean when we talk about giving ourselves permission to feel pleasure? According to my sources, pleasure is defined as “...a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment, an event or social activity from which one experiences enjoyment and sexual gratification.” For the purposes of today’s episode, I really want us to lean into the feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment or sensual gratification as they related to sensations and emotions.
I want to take you back to the last time you felt pleasure as the result of one of your intimate relationships. How did that feel? What emotions did you experience? I have also struggled with the concept of pleasure all my life. It is a tricky subjective, hedonic quality to capture. Join me on today’s episode as we continue the conversation that we started last week with my good friend and colleague, Robyn Spens.
Interested in learning more? Listen in to learn more about the importance of protective and healing authentic pleasures, how honesty can open ourselves up to a life that is abundant with pleasurable experiences, and ways in which we can engage in transparent, authentic, and open conversations that meet our body’s needs.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach, and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality. And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you. And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
[00:01:11] Hello everybody. It's Dana here, your host, I'm coming to you this week. So. To continue the conversation. We started last week with my colleague and friend Robin Spence permission for pleasure. This is a deep well of many conversations for women, and I really just couldn't let it drop bare with the conversation starter and last week's episode.
[00:01:34] And I'll be honest and confess that I've actually struggled with the concept of pleasure all my life. And this doesn't mean that I don't have fun or I have zero pleasure points because I have certainly lived a magnificent life and I have a very strong self care routine. You all know I'm blessed with my family.
[00:01:53] I have five kids I've been married for almost 32 years, and I'm lucky to have amazing friends scattered around the globe. I was able to live on three continents and traveled to every continent minus, and Arctica, I have lived a full life, very thankful for that as well. We've had our ups and downs, but you know, really it's been a full life, but I want to say permission to pleasure really isn't about the things that we've done or accomplished, or even the amazing people in our lives.
[00:02:26] Nope. We've got to go deeper. What do we give ourselves permission? For? Most of us will give ourselves permission to have a successful career, to have a family and a partner. Some of us will give ourselves permission for self care and a healthy lifestyle and good health. But few of us will give ourselves permission for the deeper inner longings the life we have or the life we want.
[00:02:55] Pleasure. As long as it doesn't interfere with my roles and responsibility, the only after hours pleasure, which means almost never if you're a woman, because we're almost always on the clock in service to someone or something else, pleasure, as long as it fits into the society, cultural and familiar norms.
[00:03:16] So what is pleasure anyway? I looked it up and it's defined as a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment and event or social activity from which one, derives enjoyment and finally sexual gratification or sensual, I should say both, but for the purposes of our conversation, I really want us to lean in to the feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment or sensual gratification.
[00:03:46] You know why? Because both relate to sensations and emotions. Please don't go looking for pleasure in your thoughts, because it can not be found there. That's simply a narrative created by the ego and unconscious mind, really sensations and emotions are where pleasure is found. Pleasure sensations. Any emotions elicit a strong cascade of hormones that are released.
[00:04:18] They are protective and healing, physiologically and neurologically true, authentic pleasure results in a healthy body and mind. When we talk about feeling younger while growing older, we want all those feel good hormones to be filling our time. And this brings me back to my experience with pleasure. Now I could be wrong, but as long as a woman's nest is full and that could be it's full with children or a super powered career or both, it's easy to use the kids.
[00:04:53] I've certainly done this and career. I've done that for internal justification for fewer pleasurable. Time and people we care about are the barriers to allowing pleasure. Stay with me here. We bypass inner longings and desires, or we settle for something, some feeling less than we desire because well, it's for the kids or I love my job.
[00:05:20] Literally, all resources are beautifully placed at the alter of our roles and responsibilities. I'm going to repeat that all resources are beautifully placed at the altar of our roles and responsibilities. I'm not saying that's wrong or maybe I am. I wrestle with this? Do you? I hope I'm not the only one.
[00:05:45] We definitely receive a significant amount of pleasure I have from our families, our intimate relationships and our roles and responsibilities. I want you to take yourself back to the last time you felt pleasure as the result of one of your intimate relationships. Now I ask myself the same question and you know, it was Sunday night, just a few days ago.
[00:06:09] It was actually the whole day. I spent the whole day with my husband and we don't actually, even though our nest is empty, we don't get a lot of time together. And we spent the whole day together. We had such a great day. We went biking. I think we biked 16 miles. We stopped for coffee. This really lovely place called under the mango tree.
[00:06:30] We had this, I have the superfood latte. That was amazing. We chatted, we looked at one another, we rode our bikes. We came home. We just had such a lovely day and we entered it. With a really nice nightcap at this super cool place called the surf club on Miami beach. And we had oysters and a drink. We just had a lovely conversation and connection.
[00:06:55] Anyway, I want you to remember back, how did it feel? What were the emotions you had? What were the sensations? Maybe it was connecting long distance on a phone call with someone you love a wedding, a new birth, a graduation and invitation. I bike ride a shared experience and intimate embrace. These are all pleasurable experiences and I'm not discounting them.
[00:07:20] I absolutely loved my Sunday with my husband. I'm simply inviting you to consider where have you denied yourself? Pleasure. Do you know what gives you pleasure, sensually? Do you need to Uplevel your communication with your partner about what feels pleasurable and what does. Where do you have barriers to pleasure?
[00:07:43] The one person you can be transparent with is truly your self telling ourselves the truth about our real time pleasure experience is the beginning of our very own sheroes journey. Now you will know pleasure because it feels like inner ease in the body. It feels like ease with the breath. There are no muscles that are constricted.
[00:08:09] As opposed to muscles being turned on, breath, being arrested and shallow restriction in your joints, tension in the shoulders, tension in the facial muscles, hands, feet, and hips. Sometimes we know what it feels like by understanding what it doesn't feel like. I promise no one is listening, but you and your soul.
[00:08:30] So you are free to tell yourself the truth. Honesty is how. We open ourselves up to a life that is abundant with pleasurable experiences and relationships. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. It can be scary. I have to admit it can be scary that something that we've accepted for a long time as normal, no longer feels aligned.
[00:09:04] And from there, we usually have to engage in transparent, authentic, and open conversations. Navigating those conversations is not easy. I know it I've been in the thick of it, but you know what you were made for this, you know why I know that. Your body mind and energetic system wouldn't have been hardwired for pleasure.
[00:09:27] If you weren't made for this, think about it. We are hard wired so much to the point that physiologically we are rewarded with good, or I would say, feel good chemicals that pulse through our blood when we experience true, authentic pleasure. It is pretty amazing to think of. This is why, you know, all those wonderful.
[00:09:55] Experiences we have with our family and our friends. Sometimes we're in the middle of those things. We're experiencing something that externally looks like pleasure, but we are struggling on the inside. We're processing something and we're not present. And so we're actually not getting all the beautiful hardwired benefits of those beautiful experiences.
[00:10:17] But when we are connected in and we are right there present, like I felt on Sunday. We actually are getting those feel-good chemicals pulsing through our blood, improving our immunity, improving our physiology, improving our longevity. When we get clear about how we feel, when we're experiencing a situation or relationships, we will find the courage to make necessary shifts.
[00:10:45] And I want you to stay curious about this denial of pleasure. Well, my precious mom, I do love her so much. I know I've talked about her in the, on this podcast. She really, I saw her as a slave to the tyranny of the urgent. I remember when I learned that term, I think I was in high school, in a psychology class.
[00:11:06] I had this brain burst and realize, oh my goodness, that's my mom. I understood her better. And I tried in contrast. I tried to devote myself to not being a slave to the urgent matters, but in real lifetime, I learned it's not that easy. I have so much more compassion for my dear mom today than I did when I was younger, wink, wink to being wiser.
[00:11:28] When our thinking that I was wiser when I was younger and learning that as I grow older, I really know nothing, but I do believe that she was a pleasure denier. I never thought I was until I experienced a few crises in my life, which led me to dig deeper for insights. And I discovered I wasn't always telling myself the truth.
[00:11:49] About my experiences and my pleasure, I'll tell you it's been a decades worth of truth-telling more than a decade actually. And relearning what I thought I already knew. And life is funny. That way we really never arrive and it's a cliche, but it's totally true. It's about the journey that journey for many women begins right around the time of.
[00:12:13] When the nest is empty or nearly empty, and we have more time for ourselves that inner voice begins to whisper. And we have an invitation to peek at what's been brewing underneath the surface while we've been very busy with our roles and responsibility. 'cause why we finally have more time. This is the gift of menopause, or as Dr.
[00:12:35] Christian Northrup says the wisdom of menopause, we finally have time to get real raw and honest with ourselves, or we don't. Some women lean in others will not, and this is the beauty of choice and free will. I know for myself, there are times I'm leaning in and there are times I'm like, Ooh, that just feels a little bit too risky.
[00:12:55] No judgment for either choice. And you know, I've learned not to judge myself when I'm ready to lean in. I know I will. I invite you. It is time that we decide if we will be pleasure, deniers or pleasure seekers, the pleasure seekers. I'm really trying to lean into this. Everybody. We are going to grow older feeling.
[00:13:16] And chances are actually no chance. We're going to be more active, more resilient. We're going to be flexible with our body and mind, and we're going to honestly be more enjoyable to be around. So will you join me this year and be curious about your own pleasure, track, those pleasure points. Gather your own data.
[00:13:36] Be transparent, authentic, and open with yourself and let your partner and intimate peeps know if you need to shift the dynamic. What is it going to take for you to pursue pleasure as if your life depended upon it? Because honestly, I believe it does your immunity and long-term health will be the beneficiary.
[00:13:59] I'm making a commitment to you to pursue pleasure in 2022. Are you with me? I'd love for you to email me. If you're with me, let me know dana@danafrost.com. Thank you so much for joining me on the solo episode. And as all these I am streaming love from my heart to yours.
[00:14:23] Thank you for joining me on the Vida U podcast. If you like it, please spread the love with the review and share it with your friends as a thank you. One reviewer each month will be selected to win a sleeve of Ian patches. Life waves, Ian anti-inflammatory. Moves the nervous system from fight and flight to rest and heal.
[00:14:44] Experience the power of the patch on your journey of feeling younger. While growing older, to be entered to win, leave a review, screenshot your review and send it to dana@danafrost.com or pop it into a direct message on Instagram at Dana frost vitally you don't miss a vitally you episode drop sign up for my newsletter on my website or Instagram, LinkedIn.
[00:15:08] Until next time streaming love from my heart to yours. .