IN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE // Nourish Your Beauty
You'd be living under a rock not to recognize that self-care has become trendy. This idea that women, yes mostly women, are perpetually lacking in the tools to take care of themselves has really become quite the marketing trend.
It is true on many levels that women are bound to the pressures of being mothers, entrepreneurs, lovers, homemakers, and consummate pleasers. Coupled by the physical pressures that women have to 'maintain'. All that pleasing leads us down the road to guilt. Never quite living up to all the expectation, and certainly never focusing on pleasure.
Instead of gazing into your phone comparing one woman's daily yoga practice, daily spa visit, endless quaffing of green juice, and tonic sipping life to our own - why not consider how you can bring yourself more pleasure.
What if pleasure is the missing piece? And by pleasure we mean letting the f**k go.
I'm not saying that a yoga class, or that a delicious glass of green juice or a vegan meal or anything touted as holistic isn't pleasurable. No doubt it absolutely is. We find great pleasure in participating in these things daily. If your interested in feeling better and living better there are many tools out there to help you do so, and you can seek them out! You will find pleasure in them. But my message to myself, and what I consider a healthy balance that I have achieved in my 30s, comes from allowing myself daily pleasures and shunning guilt. My mother's advice to me, and what I hope to pass along to my own daughter is that "Guilt is a wasted emotion". Of course assuming you haven't done anything terrible - but for the most part the things we feel guilty about are super lame. And we're afraid of pleasure! Afraid of taking that bite or sip or whatever it is without going overboard. That headiness leads us to being in our brains so much that we actually don't know how to experience real physical or mental pleasure. (Google stats for female orgasm and get ready to be shocked!) We seem to be hell bent on over complicating it.
Let's take it a little further and say we aren't conditioned. Nor are our nervous systems strong enough to experience real pleasure. We are too busy focused on being neurotic, obsessively being in our heads- and fixated on whatever insignificant concern we've created to destroy being in the moment.
One trend that I see constantly in health in wellness is this constant 'need' for self improvement. Your never quite spiritual enough, flexible enough, and pure enough to compete. Ah! I find myself gravitating towards the opposite just to get grounded. We do only live once, and we are only in so much control.
That "glow" that we are all so anxious to achieve comes from a happiness within. It comes from letting go and breathing more. Allowing ourselves to experience pleasure. To be in the moment, and experience it as the most pure bliss.
The most conclusive thing that we can come up with is striving to enjoy life, and stay curious about it all. When you look at cultures who truly thrive - they take breaks, they socialize, enjoy art, have sex, most definitely find time for a cheer, and live in the moment!
xx
