Are you overworked and under-pleasured? Do you spend a lot of time giving to your career, business, or family?
Helping others is important for a fulfilling life. However, are you making time for your own joy, pleasure, and sexuality?
In our busy world, our to-do lists are often a mile long, filled with obligations, responsibilities, text messages, phone calls, plus caring for our families, home, job, and others.
Growing up, I saw my parents working hard and rarely resting. As an adult, I found myself doing the same thing. I placed my own pleasure and free time at the bottom of my to-do list.
However, over the years, this strategy failed me. As I passionately poured my heart into my work, I did not take time to refill my cup, and I became exhausted, stressed, sad, and sick. Since my own pleasure and self-care were last on my to-do list, I never got around to them.
Not surprisingly, since I wasn’t slowing myself down, the universe forced me to slow down through a serious health crash 4 years ago. During these last 4 years, I discovered a new strategy, which I now call “Prioritize Pleasure.” As I made time for my own health, pleasure, and even sexuality, I regained my health and became a much happier, stronger person, which meant that ultimately, I had even more energy to give to my work and the people I care about.
If you are making the all-too-common mistake of “too much work and not enough play and pleasure,” the tips below will inspire you to bring back your sanity through sensuality.
What Exactly is Pleasure?
According to the dictionary, pleasure is “a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.” Pleasure helps you enjoy life and stay happy and healthy!
Most people do not realize that pleasure falls into 3 different categories:
1. Everyday Pleasure, which involves thoroughly enjoying the present moment, such as enjoying a delicious cup of hot tea, smiling for no reason, or strolling through a park looking at gorgeous flowers.
2. Sensual Pleasure, which involves being present in your body and engaging all your senses (especially your sense of touch), such as cuddling with a soft blanket, soaking in a relaxing bath, kissing, or enjoying a sensual massage.
3. Sexual Pleasure, which involves enjoying your sexuality and making love, whether by yourself or with your partner.
Are you enjoying all 3 forms of pleasure? If not, which ones are lacking in your life?
All 3 forms of pleasure contribute to your Pleasure Tank. Your Pleasure Tank is an invisible, energetic container within your body that stores the joy and pleasure from your experiences and provides you energy to draw from to fuel your life, similar to a gas tank in a car.
Now that you know the 3 forms of pleasure, let’s look at the 7 Benefits of Pleasure.
7 Surprising Benefits of Pleasure
Enjoying everyday pleasure, sensual pleasure, and sexual pleasure, have these powerful benefits.
#1: Pleasure Relieves Stress
Pleasure relaxes your body and mind and alleviates tension and stress. Whether enjoying an afternoon in nature or making love with your partner, pleasure can calm your nervous system by activating the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) nervous system, instead of the stress-inducing sympathetic (“fight, flight or freeze”) nervous system.
Do you tend to hold tension in your muscles? Do you get worried and uptight about your long to-do list? Enjoy pleasure more often and see how much more relaxed you become.
#2: Pleasure Raises Your Vibration
Although the dominant vibration in society is fear, you get to decide your personal vibration. Prioritizing pleasure is the best way to raise your vibration. It brings you into the present moment and can help you align with the high vibration of your soul.
Something as simple as buying yourself flowers can boost your mood and open your heart. Allowing more pleasure expands your capacity to receive and enjoy more love, joy, and abundance.
#3: Pleasure Fills Your Cup
Although giving can feel good, giving can also drain your energy supply. Enjoying pleasure is the best way to receive and refill your cup. Pleasure is a way that you can give to yourself, such as treating yourself to a massage or decadent meal. Wouldn’t you love to feel energized and give from an overflowing cup, so you can continue making a meaningful contribution in the world?
#4: Pleasure Boosts Your Creativity
Chronic stress and busy-ness tend to block your creative flow. Creating space in your schedule for pleasure creates space for creativity.
When you relax and enjoy pleasure, your body and mind relax, soften, and open. This means you can receive brilliant, creative ideas and intuitive guidance that can improve your life (and even save you time, money, and energy).
My client Ashley wanted to teach a new class. She couldn’t figure out which class topic to teach, even after hours of brainstorming. She started prioritizing pleasure, and one morning, the sound of rain woke her up early. She decided to hop out of bed and play outside in the rain. While playing in the rain, the perfect creative idea popped in her mind for her class.
#5: Pleasure Leads to Productivity
Our society values productivity over pleasure. Yet pleasure leads to improved productivity! Pleasure is just as important as hard work, because it boosts your energy, creativity. Therefore, it allows you to accomplish more in less time with less effort. Pleasure increases your quality of work (ever hear the phrase “work smarter, not harder”?).
Have you ever noticed after going on vacation how much more refreshed and energized you feel the first day back at work? Building pleasure into your everyday life allows you to have that same “after-vacation” effect every day. Woo hoo!
In the never-ending search for work-life balance, pleasure is key. In fact, why not call it work-pleasure balance?
#6: Pleasure Boosts Your Health
Pleasure boosts your health and happiness. Being happy has been scientifically shown to boost your immune system, protect your heart, and reduce pain. Happiness can even potentially increase your lifespan.
Sexual pleasure also has many proven health benefits, including boosting your immune system, improving sleep, reducing anxiety, and preventing long-term chronic health issues including heart disease and prostate cancer.
#7: Pleasure Helps You Get Turned On for Life!
On a daily basis, do you feel dull, rather than passionate and turned on? Your inner light deserves to shine. Pleasure lights you up and fills you with joy, so you have more energy and passion for life. It can help you feel IN LOVE with life itself.
By using these methods and prioritizing pleasure, my clients Samantha and Tom had an amazing transformation in their lives. They owned a successful company. After realizing they couldn’t keep up the fast pace anymore, they cut their work hours to part-time and started prioritizing pleasure.
Samantha and Tom moved from a busy, crowded city to a beautiful house in the mountains where they could enjoy peace and tranquility. Samantha even started working remotely instead of being in the day-to-day work grind.
They made time to for connection and love, and they ended up having a beautiful baby girl. Their financial flow increased thanks to the creative, abundant ideas that came through while prioritizing pleasure. Now their entire family is thriving. If they can do it, you can too!
Now that you know the importance of pleasure, here is a practical action step so you can get started today.
Action Step
Make a list of 10 things that bring you pleasure. Afterwards, pull out your calendar and schedule in a Pleasure Date with yourself in the next 7 days. Then spend that time in total joy or pleasure, however, your heart guides you!
You can have work-pleasure balance, which leaves you feeling happy and energized with an overflowing cup of love and joy.
Originally posted on SoulSpring.org on 13 November 2019
