what pleasure actually is
(And what I mistook it for at 25)
What Pleasure Actually Is
(And What I Mistook It For at 25)
I knew how to have a good time. I knew how to order the right wine, stay out too late, fill a weekend so completely there was no room for anything quiet to get in. I knew how to perform enjoyment — the kind that photographs well, that makes a good story, that signals to everyone around you: I am a woman who knows how to live.
What I didn't know was that I was running.
From the stillness. From the feeling that if I stopped moving, something uncomfortable would catch up.
Pleasure was less about receiving, and more about escaping. Less about filling up and more about drowning out.
And it worked. Until it didn't.
I was tired. Exhausted.
It dawned on me that this is a tiredness of a body that has been constantly stimulated, and never actually fed.
I remember lying in bed after nights that should have felt good — should have, by every external measure — and feeling this low-grade emptiness.
That gap — between the thing happening and you actually being present for it — is what I now understand as a capacity problem.
My nervous system had learned to run on adrenaline and novelty. It didn't know how to be with anything slow or small or quiet.
So the pleasure that required presence — the kind that lives in an ordinary Tuesday morning, in the first sip of something warm, in the feeling of sun on your face before the day begins — that kind just passed right through me.
I was technically having experiences. I just wasn't inside them.
Two decades later
Two decades of embodiment practices and coaching, here's what I now know:
The first sip of tea. My body exhales.
An hour in the sauna. Something releases.
A quiet moment to myself. Something settles.
My child's laugh landing in me. Something softens.
That's pleasure. The kind that actually fills you.
On practice — and why the container matters
The practice of pausing, hand on heart, letting something land — you can begin it alone. And you should.
But I want to be honest about something.
There is a difference between practicing awareness by yourself and practicing it inside a container held by someone trained in loving presence. Not because you can't do it alone. But because so much of what we're working with is relational.
Something in the nervous system responds differently when it is witnessed — when there is another regulated presence in the room, tracking you, staying with you as you feel what you feel.
The presence of someone who has done their own work, who can stay steady while you shake loose something old — that is not a luxury. It changes what becomes possible.
Yoga can do this too. Or the gym, or any movement practice — but only when it's done with a particular quality of attention. Not performance. Not punishment. Not music loud enough to drown out what your body is trying to say.
Movement done with the soma, not over it. Eyes soft or closed. No mirrors. No phone. Just the body moving and you actually inside it, noticing what's there.
That quality of presence — brought to the body, sustained over time — is what creates the kind of change that doesn't slide back.
The small moments matter. The daily practice matters. And when you're ready to go deeper, the container you do it in matters too.
Ready to go deeper?
If something in this piece recognized itself in you — I'd love to connect. This is the work.
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