How to Invite More Pleasure into Your Life
Living a life of pleasure means living a life where you feel most alive. So in this blog, when I refer to pleasure, think of it as aliveness, presence with all that is.
The feminine essence in each of us longs to be ravished by life and the senses, so we can give ourselves that opportunity by creating pockets of aliveness in our day-to-day, starting small.
I was recently reflecting on how different my life looks now, how much more I’ve been able to enjoy life and embody peacefulness and luxury in my days. I want to share the ways I’ve created this for myself with you here.
Ultimately, pleasure is unique to everyone so take these as starting points to explore and define what pleasure means to you. The more you practice and experiment with what brings you joy and aliveness, the more you’ll find you’ll appreciate life and enjoy it to the fullest.
I know that with this sense of pleasure-filled living, I’m able to appreciate the challenges and be present with them, opening to what they have to teach me, instead of avoiding them. Pleasure-based living doesn’t mean forgoing negative experiences and bypassing them, it’s about being fully aware and present with every lesson and moment.
To me, that’s what living authentically and in integrity looks like. Living with this awareness of pleasure, and embodying it, has allowed me to receive more in all areas of life, create more memories, and find pleasure in the small, mundane routines.
Create white space
Living with a focus on pleasure means being present enough to enjoy life. It’s not possible to be present if you’re booked back to back with activities, calls, and tasks. When you intentionally create white space in your schedule, you can let your senses acclimate to everything around you and let your intuition guide you to what would make you feel most alive in that moment.
I have found that the days where I let my intuition guide me, have led me to exactly what I needed in that moment. Having time to decompress and sit with everything alive in us so necessary to feel at peace. Start to define what activities you can remove or decrease in your schedule, and slowly start to remove them, one by one, vs all at once.
Make yourself a nice meal or beverage
Cooking seasonally helps you enjoy the season you’re in and it’s a sustainable way of living as well. Throughout the process of preparing a meal, notice what senses come alive when you’re searching for a recipe, chopping vegetables, or measuring ingredients.
When eating, notice the tastes, smells, and sensations, and textures. This skill alone has shown me how much I can allow myself to enjoy the present moment. Using fresh ingredients, like fresh herbs, and noticing those elements of taste & texture is something that brings a sense of aliveness.
Elevating my beverages has also brought more enjoyment and pleasure in my routines. I invested in a milk frother so I make my own caffeine free lattes using dandelion powder or cacao for hot cocoa. I also have syrups I use with flavors such as hazelnut which is my favorite. I’m an avid tea collector and drinker, so choosing different loose leaf teas based what mood I’m in has also brought richness to my day to day.
At night, I like to enjoy a seltzer based drink that I concoct, like a cranberry pomegranate mocktail. This allows me to pause and enjoy the moment, savoring the deliciousness that I’ve created, customized to whatever mood I’m in.
Incorporate textures and scents
Adding textures to your living space, and even wardrobe, is one way of elevating your day to day and inviting in more pleasure to experience. Soft blankets, linens, and fuzzy items come to mind. You may already have some of these items, but taking a moment to really feel and receive the pleasure of these textures and how they feel against the skin is a way you can invite more of this pleasurable sensation into your life.
I also like to include scents. Before I dive into scents I want to specify that I’m referring to natural scents, like essential oils, essential oil based candles, and incense.
I’ve found that these are the most impactful, because they come from the natural plant materials and are processed in a specific way that concentrates the scent. This allows you to shift your emotions and state of mind, elevating your daily routines, without dulling your senses, which is exactly what synthetic scents do to you.
I like to diffuse essential oils in my kitchen, and mix a few drops in my body lotion after showering. I purchase or make essential oil based candles and incense whenever possible. Starting the day with a vibrant citrus oil blend and ending the day with cozy oils like vanilla and cedarwood helps to create a mindful transition throughout the day.
Spend time outdoors & bring the outdoors indoors
I always feel most grounded and myself when I can access nature and connect to the Earth’s energy. I’ve found that by intentionally finding ways to spend time outdoors, whether on a hike or picnic, sitting on my balcony, that I’m able to slow down and appreciate everything nature has to offer.
This gets you away from screens, and into contact with nature, where everything is alive and buzzing in its ecosystem. Another way of bringing the outdoors to you, is filling your home with plants and flowers.
Having plants oxygenates the air so that’s a benefit, but ultimately it’s the energy of having these living things surrounding you that I find brings the most aliveness. I also like to get fresh flowers too, even dried ones, and notice the difference in how I feel when I incorporate this.
Practice pleasurable movement
Movement brings us into contact with our surroundings and inner world, and finding movement that is pleasurable to you allows you to process and release all that’s alive for you. By being present in your practice, you are fully immersed in what you’re sensing, maybe a tight muscle or powerful, strong movement, you’re aware of it all.
Find something that you look forward to, that you notice the lasting effects after, and that you fully immerse yourself in. For me that’s tennis, yoga, walking, and pilates. Experiment for yourself to find what movement you enjoy yourself most with.
Listen to music based on mood
As someone who is passionate about learning and bettering themselves, I have found that I can easily over do it on podcasts and audiobooks. Once I started realizing this, I started to intentionally find new music and choose specific songs and playlists to play instead.
Our minds need a break, even with this incredible output of inspiring content. Listening to music I’ve found helps to shift my state and become more present, as I enjoy the music and the feelings it evokes. To bring more pleasure into your life, listen to music that influences how you feel doing mundane things, like cleaning the house, washing dishes, or getting ready in the morning.
Play and do an activity that fully engrosses you
A puzzle, painting, craft, playing a musical instrument, baking, these are all activities that require a lot of your attention, and therefore bring you into the present moment and aliveness that is always here. I get lost in writing. I also love working on fun home craft projects that are influenced by the seasons, such as making a spring wreath for my door, or painting glasses with flowers, you get the idea.
Learning a new skill can fall under this category too. I recently took an abstract painting course that gave me the skills I was seeking to incorporate into my painting.
Play also falls under this category, and that can include playing with your children, a loved one, a pet. You can play games, dress up, wrestling (like I do with my dog) and fetch. Starting my day by playing with my pup brings me so much joy and helps me feel alive, this sense sticks with me for the rest of the day.
Nurture Your Relationships
Be fully present in your relationships, by enjoying a phone call with a friend, a meal with a partner, or a shared activity with family or friends. This takes intentionality and planning, I’ve found that the more I pour into my relationships this way, the more enjoyable life becomes. It’s a balance, and what I’ve found is that quality matters over quantity. Spending precious time with those we love matters more than spreading our energy thin with superficial relationships.
Living with Pleasure at the Forefront
These are all ways you can start to bring more pleasure, aliveness, into your life. Ultimately, pleasure is about how you approach each of these activities, and how you allow yourself to fully experience the moment with all of your senses. You’ll find that it can be a lot of sensation to hold and be present with, especially if you’re used to subtle numbing behaviors such as overusing technology, over working, over socializing, and overbooking yourself.
There’s a lot of conditioning in society that’s in direct opposition to this idea of pleasure: see hustle culture and capitalism. Especially if you’ve experienced trauma, pleasure can actually feel unsafe at first as there is a lot of sensation involved. There may be resistance and blocks to allowing yourself to receive so much and feel so much goodness. It’s a practice, and a skill you can continue to build.
Pleasure is a skill that I teach and support in embodying, in my 1:1 program.
Start to incorporate each one of these in baby steps, and you will start to see your ability to experience more goodness and hold pleasure in your life expand.
With love,
Emily Grace
Want to dive deeper into learning feminine embodiment as a coach? Download a free curriculum - I am a proud affiliate for The School of Embodied Arts.
