Seven Reasons to Start a Pleasure Practice
The word 'masturbation' literally means 'to defile'. It's time that it got a rebrand. Pleasure practice is much better. (Psst! The article is free to read with audio for paid subscribers)
Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist and Somatic Sex Coach Sarah Ward. This is intended as general advice. If you’d like a personalized guidance, I’d be honored to connect with you in a discovery session.
When I was 16, I started to teach piano lessons in my community in Vancouver, Canada. One of the fundamentals in learning a new instrument, or skill, is to develop a practice. To play piano, that means doing scales and rudiments to warm up. When it comes to a pleasure practice, you have your own instrument to warm up—your body.
If you want to get good at something, it’s important to dedicate time to practice. It’s why we practice yoga, or chords on the guitar, or shooting hoops on the court, or pirouettes in the dance studio. It takes time to develop muscle memory.
The same can be said for having a pleasure practice.
Pleasure can mean a lot of things, though it comes back to the sensate experience in the body. We feel pleasure through the senses:
Feeling the warmth of the sun on skin
Seeing a stunning sunset
Hearing the laughter of your loved ones
Smelling the scent fresh baked bread wafting out of the oven
Tasting the juices of a ripe peach
Pleasure can be sensual and it can be sexual. It’s time to reclaim our pleasure.
We’ve absorbed a lifetime of shameful beliefs about sex that are deeply encoded in our cells. It’s an all-too common experience for children to be shamed by their parents about exploring their bodies with curiosity. Our society is deeply uncomfortable with sex which sends it underground to be carried out secretly.
This is something I know all too well.
I routinely found myself in confession when I was a teenager, since my religion told me that touching my body to produce feelings of pleasure was a sin and wrong. While I walked away feeling absolved, these experiences taught me that the only way I could feel worthy was to confess my sins to an older man. The worthiness was outside of me.
Little did I know that my curiosity about sex and my so-called-misbehaving were a healthy part of the human development process.
What I have learned in my healing journey is that pleasure is medicine. Here’s seven reasons to start a pleasure practice today.
Pleasure is your birthright. It is a native way of being. Every single person on the planet is capable of experiencing pleasure. And we have been made wrong for wanting it. In our society with its Judeo-Christian puritanical roots, we’ve had pleasure wrestled away from us. As a Mormon woman, I didn’t have access to my body until I was married and could experience it through sex with my husband.
These wounds don’t heal overnight. You may be able to intellectualize the idea that pleasure is your birthright and yet still feel stuck in old limiting beliefs. This is an opportunity to begin to embody this through a pleasure practice. You begin to heal through your embodiment practice.Pleasure is medicine. Pleasure is the great facilitator in the healing process. If you are undergoing deep healing in your life, adding pleasure helps the body to relax and receive the changes that it is undergoing. Think of it as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
A pleasure practice will rewire your nervous system to feel even more pleasure. It’s an accumulative effort. As you pay attention to the sensations that you experience in the body as pleasurable, you’ll expand your brain and body to feel more. Let me tell you, pleasure gets better as you age. I’m having the most intense orgasms I’ve ever had.
Back in July for National Orgasm Day, I wrote: Anytime you experience peak states of pleasure during sex, consider this an orgasm. This is a way to change orgasm from being a singular event to an orgasmic way of being.Pleasure is a great way to release stress from your body. In a world that is full of deadlines, and to-do lists, stress is a near-constant. Stress also will distract you so heavily that you won’t want to engage in sex or pleasurable activities. Which is why you need it even more!
The point isn’t to bring yourself to orgasm. (You may not have time to get yourself there.) The point is to feel pleasure to ground the nervous system. Touching your body creates oxytocin and helps your organism to return to a regulated state.Pleasure practice reveals what you like. A few years ago I attended a women’s retreat in the Cascade Mountains where the keynote was delivered by a sex therapist. During the Q&A, one of the anonymous questions she received was, “How do I know what I like?” You figure it out by experimenting on yourself. You get to be the sexy science experiment!
Pleasure practice gives you a safe place where you can explore what is possible in your body. If you’re curious about experiencing g-spot orgasms for example, try it with yourself. It’s a chance for you to figure out how your body responds before you introduce it with a partner. This helps your brain to wire new pathways.If your body doesn’t get enough pleasure, you begin to seek is in unhealthy, destructive ways. There are plenty of natural ways to feel good: eating a croissant, soaking in the healing waters of a bath, languid kissing, exquisite orgasms...
There are even more unhealthy ways that give you that feel-good that are addictive and compulsive: drinking, drugs, overworking, shopping.
Fill yourself up with healthy pleasures.You don’t have to rely on another person to feel good. Pleasure is available to you at your own fingertips. If you aren’t in a relationship, you don’t have to rush into sexual relationships with new partners.
For those of you in a relationship, you can become dependent on another person for that rush of oxytocin which associates feelings of pleasure with them. The feel good is in you, my love.
As you are integrating more pleasure into your life, you may want to start sensual before you delve into sexual pleasure. You could start by applying decadent moisturizer onto your skin and giving yourself a sensual massage.
Through this process you may begin to feel your body respond in a way that would welcome sexual touch. Exercise consent with yourself so that you aren’t rushing yourself into something you aren’t ready for.
I highly recommend integrating a Breast Massage Practice into your pleasure practice.
In a future post, we’ll go deeper into pleasure practices.
Listen—Pleasure has the power to change your life. It hopes you will let it.
Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist, Somatic Sex and Relationship Coach and Wardrobe Stylist, Sarah Ward. She spent the last 20 years studying human sexuality and is certified in the VITA™ Methodology with Layla Martin and as an Erotic Blueprints™ Coach with Jaiya. For personalized support, schedule a free discovery call with Sarah.
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Thirsty for more?
Nine Ingredients for a Pleasure Practice
A pleasure practice is a way to map the terrain of your sensual pleasure. It’s a way to meet yourself. To explore what you like. It’s a reminder that you are a self-sustaining organism. That the feel-good is inside of you. Plus, pleasure is medicine so this kind of consistent practice is deeply healing.
Turn Yourself On
Hello love, I’m Sarah, your resident Sex and Style Coach. I’m on a mission to help you feel as good as you look, and look as good as you feel. Welcome. The Pleasure Collective is one week away! This six-month group coaching container was born out of the question, “Is there more pleasure for me here in this moment?” The simple answer?
What a delightfully insightful post. We all tend to have an uncomfortable relationship with pleasure, and this is such a helpful reframe. ❤️
This was very wonderful to read Sarah. The way you broke down the reasons and articulate your points well really hooked me. Looking forward to reading more of your work.