Hello, love buns this week we're going to talk about pleasure. The pleasure ceiling, a term I saw coined on the Internet, and then recently looked into, and it is something that is referenced on Psychology Today. If you couldn't already intuit what it is, it is like our personal, energetic limit for pleasure.

The reason why this is so important, and why I am so interested in pleasure as a practice is because it's only when we feel pleasure or feel happiness, or joy, or calmness, when our bodies can go into a healing state.

Do you know me and know what I do for a living? It is to help people heal and when our bodies are in a parasympathetic response, the side of the nervous system that's called rest and digest or feed and breed. This is also where we can allow our bodies to repair and heal.

The body is actually always inclined toward healing it just needs the problem to conditions to do so. When we're constantly in the sympathetic nervous system which is a fight or flight, response, then it's difficult we can't ever actually go into a repair state this is why, it's important to get you know good sleep at night, or have moments of rest and daydream in the middle of your day.

This is why practices like yoga and Reiki and breath-work and massage are actually really powerful for helping to heal the body.

There's plenty of research behind this but I won't super get into that today. But I will tell you that you know there are plenty of studies that show that when in a meditative state our DNA repairs, that telomeres on the end of our DNA which actually break off in stressful situations and cause aging they actually repair and lengthen even. So I've told people that, you know, if you want a good anti-aging remedy, you know, maybe take up a meditation practice.

But that is besides the point. Today we are talking about pleasure and pleasure as a practice, and how that can actually heal our bodies and heal our relationships to ourselves and to each other.

So, about a year ago I had a session, with one of my long-term clients who I've been seeing for a few years, and they were recently in a new relationship, and it was going so lovely and this person seemed so incredible, and I actually had the pleasure of meeting them and getting to work with them as well.

Yet there was still something in my client that was just saying, “No, this is wrong danger. Get out,” and I thought that was incredibly fascinating, and was curious to learn more about what was going on in the energetic body.

So when we went into the energetic body I was able to see how kind of in my mind's eye it looked like. These wires had been crossed in youth and but really what was happening is that certain things had to wired together things that fire together wire together. Maybe you've heard that before, and so what had been happening when they were younger is that their body would be receiving certain signals, either signals of neglect or lack of care.

But the mind would be being told like, “No you're loved and like look at all these ways in which I love you.”

So there was a wiring together of this feeling of the body, feeling a lack of love, and a lack of presence and of total acceptance by their primary caregiver. Yet in the mind they were being told no you're loved look you have a home, and you're being fed every day, of course you're loved. So now when the body was approaching a situation where it feels loved and cared for it the opposite was coming up. The mind was like well this can't be true, because that's not what we experienced before what we were being told before is that when the body feels one way.

The truth is actually whatever is in the mind and so there was this, like literal resistance to being able to accept that things were actually good, and things were safe for this person part of the reason why this happens is because our minds are these beautiful predictive I'm gonna use the word machine for lack of a better term? Right now I think I want to use miracle that's like way better. They are very, very good at creating predictions because that's what's helped us survive in the past and to further that our society holds predicting things.

We really have an issue with leaning into the unknown or opening, or having a sense of curiosity about things. So what ends up happening is that whatever one has experienced as a child's in their youth, or through maybe a really traumatic experience, then it starts to become duplicated outside of that experience? Because what's happening is that the mind is trying to protect you from a dangerous situation.

So this is where ideas of self-sabotage might come in, and I just don't subscribe to that school of thinking. I in my studies of internal family systems and neuroscience what actually seems to be happening is there's no part of the Self that is trying to sabotage you that like in my mind. Doesn't even make sense. What seems, to be happening is that there was something that helped you to survive and make it through your younger years, or whatever the situation was. And then, for whatever reason like that has persisted and so now it's no longer serving you, and it just means you have to learn a new way.

In Buddhism they talk about how like certain practices are like a raft, and you can use the raft to get across the river. But once you're across the river it doesn't make sense to carry the raft around on your head, the it makes more sense to put it down so we can start to observe where this is happening for us.

When we have a resistance to certain things, one way in which I have observed this in myself, and it is so sneaky. You guys like these protective mechanisms are so sneaky, and you know rightfully, so like how intelligent is our mind and body, you know, to try to protect us like how incredible! But with awareness and presence and curiosity and love we can start to observe, like what's going on with us.

So for myself, and this might help some of you who are either figuring out your avoidant attachment or an anxious attachment person trying to figure out their avoidance partner. I lie more in the camp of of weight and attachment. Basically, what this means is that my bringing consisted of inconsistent care. And so what that feels like or has looked like for me as an adult is this inability to kind of grow deeper with somebody.

Because what will usually end up happening is that when I am, you know, having a really good time with someone usually romantically, and we're starting to grow close and let's even say like we make like a certain kind of commitment to each other, all of a sudden I will start to feel completely what's called deactivated, and not want to be around this person.

I will want my personal space. I might even start to think like, “This person is gross wire, they are showing so many feelings. Why are they showing so many emotions like they're too much They want too much from me.”

It's a lot, and I push it away, and I've actually seen this replicate itself in many situations where, when things start to get too good, I find a way to back, and it will be some sort of very convincing reason to pull back, and what's even crazier is society tells me that's great, because I'm independent and I do what I want, and I think for myself, and I don't need anybody but that's an incredibly lonely place to be. And so it has been such an interesting practice to be curious about what is coming up.

So being in a situation where I start to feel really good my body's feeling really safe, I'm relaxing and then, feeling that inclination it could even be an inclination to just want to go get a tea or go do something else with my time, or my mind. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as you know, wanting to push a partner away.

This is a mechanism in my own body mind that is set up to protect me, because when I was young, when I was very soft and vulnerable, and needed more emotional depth and intimacy for my primary caregivers, when they couldn't get it to me, or it even came out in types of abuse or violence. Then I had to learn how to reel that in and lock it up, and so I essentially started to treat myself the way that my parents were treating me. I absorbed that in our caregiver, and I repressed my own emotional self, and I lacked a sense of emotions.

This has been an ongoing practice for me for ages and I didn't even know it was all related to one another that I'm seeing how it just is completely woven and it it comes out in stages, and insights. And so what is happening here now with me is that when I start to observe this resistance to the pleasure and to happiness and fulfillment and joy, and connection, I actually give myself two options, and then my my Buddhist teacher just gave me another option to work with which I'm going to start doing this week.

But the first one is maybe like, allow myself to get the space that I want, because if I keep pushing myself to be in this situation with someone or something and my body is giving me signals to escape now i'm just throwing myself into an extremely stressful situation, which again is not where I want to be. I don't want to be throwing myself into a sympathetic state, because that is causing more harm to my body and my mind.

So maybe it makes more sense in this instance to to get some space really, consciously to communicate it with whoever is in front of me, letting them know it's not about them. This is something that's going on with me I'm then going to get my space and allowing my nervous system to re-regulate another option.

If I'm feeling good and safe about it then I can start to be with the feeling, and just let it know that it actually is safe, if it is a safe situation, because we don't want to teach ourselves to be feeling safe in situations that aren't. But if you are in a really safe situation maybe it feels good to take a few breaths and breathe around the feeling that's arising and allowing that feeling to be there. Also have a little conversation with it, and say, “This is a safe situation. We're not in harm's way it's okay, let's be curious. Let's be open.”

So that's another thing and if you feel really comfortable with the people that you're around at the time. You can let them know what you're going through so that maybe they can, you know, give you that same kind of energetic space.

There is a healing that happens when we are seen by another maybe I'll do a longer podcast on that. But Bessel van der Kolk talks about it in The Body Keeps the Score, and there literally is a healing mechanism that happens when someone sees us in full. And there is a trauma response that happens when someone shuts down the way that we feel. So your emotional self is just as important and valid as any other part of yourself.

The final thing that was giving to me by my teacher last week, and I will be practicing with it the next time. This comes up doing a loving-kindness practice with this part of me. With this pleasure ceiling like, it's so wild I can literally feel it in my body like I'm hitting a wall.

And when this happens, instead of being like, “You need to change,” or “We're going to expand you,” or you know whatever whatever judgment might come up. Instead she offered me this. I could say, there are many different loving-kindness phrases, you could say, but I could say, “May yyou be happy, may you be safe, may you be loved, and me you live with ease,” and just allowing it to be there and to be loved, and to understand that it is a part of ourselves. It has been trying to protect us, and has successfully done so for a long time, and that we're not antagonistic against ourselves, and we see it we see it in full, and so maybe when we see it in full, it can relax, and it can heal.

So this is why cultivating a sense of spaciousness and awareness, and curiosity and love is also important, and like it's happening at so many different layers, because we have to be able to offer that to ourselves and when we offer that to ourselves, and we change within ourselves. We can then offer that to the world by our way of being. And, as you will see me write and talk about, I really truly believe that the most powerful way that any one of us can change the world. If that's what you would like to do.

It's by healing your relationship to yourself and becoming this person, this vessel that can experience more love and more pleasure and more connection, a sense of safety a sense of self because when we think about somebody who is operating from this place it's very unlikely that this person is going to cause massive amounts of harm out in the world.

I mean no one is perfect. So sometimes it's going to happen. When I think about people who have really practiced love and compassion, and have integrated that into their being just being around them is a healing experience and that's so fu*king beautiful, because in that way they are just living a life that feels really good from the inside.

And then it just spills out outside. There is some science behind this, too, like mirror neurons our mirror neurons do fire when we're around somebody. And so we actually start to sync up with the people we're closest to or in closest proximity with, and that can really change somebody.

If somebody has a really strong sense of self, and love and awareness that reverberates out, and maybe you've been around one of these people, and you've actually felt that I mean same is true for somebody who is feeling really stressed out and angry and upset like if we're not well, resource, or in a good place to hold space for that. Then it's kind of easy to get caught up in in that feeling. And perhaps this person is, you know, gonna act like not super nice to us, which also is going to affect the way that we experience the world again.

We shouldn't expect anyone to be super pristine in the perfect, and all of this the world is you know wild. It's beautiful, but it's also wild the media that we consume regularly, in the United States at least, is very, very much about keeping us in a stressed out state and in that fighter flight response.

So it's okay you know if like things take time or you're not always feeling amazing, or 100% that's not even what this is all about.

Actually, when we cultivate more compassion and love for ourselves and we're able to experience more pleasure, it gives us the resourcefulness to hold that when it's not like that it actually creates a space for that all to just kind of be absorbed. And so then we can start to actually experience what might be called, or more difficult emotions, and even a more peaceful and loving way.

I also find that the way that we talk to ourselves is the way that we talk to others the way that we treat ourselves is the way that we treat others the way that we feel like we've been treated is maybe how everybody should be treated. And so when we start to change these things we will shift the entire way that we create community and society together.

And that's the real timeline shift for those of you who into that kind of thing is that when

We're caught in these karmic loops because they make us feel safe, even though we feel maybe miserable or trapped, or stressed or sick inside of them. We know what's coming, what ends up happening when we embrace more love and pleasure and happiness and connection is that we assert to create create new neural pathways and also space space for something new, to be created something unknown to be created more opportunities to do something differently can arise.

And this is something that is so powerful and so amazing. I am curious if you have experienced it yourself or you know if you're interested in experiencing something like this is like you're in a situation. Maybe you are in a situation that is not amazing. But you are willing to jump into some sort of unknown future to see what could happen.

I think this is called the Kierkegaard, "Leap into faith," not leap of faith.

And I love this because it also reaffirms the the Buddhist idea that you don't just have faith. But faith is something that is built like a muscle, and the idea is that you have an inkling or knowing. Or maybe you saw something in someone, or you read something somewhere, or maybe even you just have a feeling inside the something could be different.

And you choose differently. You decide to do something a little bit differently, even though you don't know where it's going to take you, and by leaping into faith you start to get information about how that leap went and hopefully, like what part of my job is, and a lot of other people on this planet who are trying to help us heal and shift is to give you some to jump and to jump in a really beautiful direction.

We don't know what's going to happen but I fully believe that if we do it from a place of love and in connection with others, and in community with others, we that it's going to be incredible and I don't need to know what that incredible is in order to welcome it in, because if I did i'd be stuck in the same old spaces.

I think we talked about this last time in the dream podcast is that we can only dream up, or logically dream up, what we have been fed. Meaning like what we've been taught to expect and that's either through experience or someone telling us or us watching it happen. So to create something new we have to use something different, and we had to have the bravery and the courage to receive it and to receive.

We have to be soft and open because we can't receive if we're feeling hard and on edge pushing away.

So that is my little take on the pleasure ceiling this week. Hopefully that was helpful to you, let me know what you'd think, or if you have any questions or anything, I am excited to continue doing this little experiment, as I'm calling it right now.

One thing that I think would be interesting is like, if anybody would like to come on here and like, have you know, some of their questions answered like kind of like an advice column. I think that could be really fun, and I will do my best to give advice from kind of a big sister, Reiki witch place, and not as any sort of like, you know, psychology, professional, but as someone who may have a little nugget for you.

I think that could be fun and really helpful for some people, because I give a lot of examples about things that have happened to me, or I have happened to you know clients of mine.

But I am really interested to hear what is going on with you.