Meditations on Pleasure
It's time to cue the sexy playlist, turn the lights down low, take a break in your day, indulge, whatever feels like pleasure to you.
Whether solo, with a partner, or a group of friends, finding pleasure in the moment is a natural desire. Pleasure is an ecstatic feeling, a slowing down, joyful, and an act of being present. Pleasure has has many definitions as there are people.
This Valentine's Day season we asked a few of our favorite makers about what pleasure means to them.
Nadine Artemis
Author and Creator of Living Libations
Jouissance, a beautiful French word without an English equivalent, perfectly encapsulates my experience of pleasure. Jouissance is the rapture of all the senses, a pleasure without opposite and without equal. It is an exquisite juiciness that lubricates body and soul, bringing dewy freshness to life, creativity, and health. My jouissance joy entails deeply engaging with nature’s elements to regale and revive my being.
Kai Yim
Acupuncturist, Five Seasons TCM
The quest and experience of pleasure is the quest and experience of presence. Be that of your own, or of another. It's bringing depth and height to moments along our travels through seemingly linear time. Unapologetic, unquestionable presence is the foreground to feeling. Much of our time is spent reacting to a chattering mind and navigating the narratives we've so effortfully concocted. In pleasure, we come up for air to a state of simply being. The same amount of energy spent feeding our story of what's yet to come and what's already occured, can rather be channeled into appreciating the majesty of nature, composing a line of music, moving our breath with purpose, petting our dog's head or embracing another. In this state, we allow ourselves to play, to ask questions, to be imaginative...to be fluid. We are able to step outside our normal ways of operating, which tends to involve far too much doing than existing. In a society that programs us to produce and execute (very Yang-type activities), it leaves us with a life experience that often feels emotionally bruising, disorienting, and exhausting. Pleasure here can act as an elixir; a sweet nectar to be savored, reminding us that we're connected to something larger than ourselves. We can find balance through a more Yin-state...where the tempo is slowed and there is nothing more to do but simply subsist.
Jelena Nikolajevic
Founder, Boketto
Cooking for me encompasses all the pleasures through smell and taste. Sharing the thing I love doing with others, cooking a meal for friends and family brings me so much joy.
Abbe
Founder, Zizia
Pleasure for me is...eating fresh fruit, feeling soft touches, sharing and receiving love and kindness, taking a long run, listening to loud music, soaking in bubble baths, seeing exciting color palettes, checking out 20 library books at once, smelling fresh flowers, cooking, and laughing with the ones I love. It is these small moments of everyday life that keep me inspired, grounded, and grateful for life.
Rachelle Robinett
Founder, Pharmakon Supernatural
Pleasure to me is the sensation of a hum. It's a full, body-mind-spirit vibration that signifies deep, thorough wellbeing. It's an electric peace, a harmony, the reverberation of the culmination of all we've done — or not done — colliding in a single moment of perfectly tuned zen. I'm all for mind-bending peak-experience bliss too, but I find that the quiet resonance is no less profound.
Patrick Kelly
Creator, Sigil Scent
Pleasure is answering the call to what lights you up, whether that’s time alone with a favorite sip, a classic film, or time spent in community with the folx who inspire you most, who make you feel at ease or in your purpose.