Pleasure

Brett: All right. I'm Brett Kistler. I'm here today with Joe Hudson. 

Joe: Hey, Brett. Good to see you. 

Brett: Yeah, you too. And this is The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. And today we're going to talk about something that a lot of us spend a lot of our lives chasing, and also in many subtle ways throughout our lives we push it away because it's really intense, and that is pleasure. 

Joe: I'm looking forward to this one. This is good. Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. What makes pleasure interesting to talk about? 

Joe: I remember early on in my journey, I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh, and  Thich Nhat Hanh was talking about doing the dishes and how pleasurable doing the dishes was. And I hated doing the dishes. It was like, everybody has that one chore you don't want to do. I have maybe several chores I don't want to do, but one of them was doing the dishes. And you describe this thing as oh, it's warm water. It's soapy. It's like this really enjoyable experience and I went and did the dishes that way and I was like, Oh, wow, this is incredibly pleasurable if I allow it to be. And then I realized that's all of life is incredibly pleasurable if I allow it to be. And so I started experimenting with pleasure a lot. And I have continued to learn a tremendous amount about pleasure through the years.

Like even last year, next year, I assume I'm going to learn a lot about it. But I remember just experimenting and saying, how much pleasure can I extract from life? And the amazing thing about it was that it wasn't what I thought it was going to be, right? I thought it was going to be like having sex all the time or something, right?

Like I would be chasing pleasure, like I'd be doing heroin or something like that. But if you're really chasing pleasure it can't be something that you get when you do X, Y, and Z, because you can't do X, Y, and Z all the time. If you're really chasing pleasure, it has to be able to be extracted from any given moment. Any moment, it's oh, where's the pleasure in this moment? And that's what ended up happening. It was just like, oh, how do I take pleasure in this breath? How do I take pleasure in doing the dishes? How do I take pleasure in this walk? I did this for several weeks, and when I did this, what happened was I just started feeling safer. Like that kind of constant tracking, that constant anxiety, that funny feeling in the back of my head that something's wrong just started dissipating and there's all sorts of studies that show that, we learn faster if we're not anxious that we, I know for a fact that if people are anxiously attached, that they're pushing people away and if you're not anxious and you're just like open to a connection attachment, like more of it comes, a better quality of it comes.

So there's all sorts of benefits that come with having a nervous system that feels very much intuned and not anxious for the next attack and that really it comes from pleasure. Because pleasure is really if you're relaxed it's an incredibly pleasurable state we've all had that moment being on the beach sitting back, sun shining, that soft wind is going through you like and you just feel that like gentle pleasure in life and that's something that tells us oh everything is good. And so if you cultivate that pleasure like, life starts becoming more and more, everything is good. 

Brett: Yeah, something that's really interesting to me about what you just said is, this might even be, a definition of pleasure in this in some sense, which is that you went from a place of thinking that it was something you had to get, to something that you would notice in any moment.

So there was something less active and more receptive in it, or something less graspy or like outcome-based towards feeling a certain way and more towards recognizing what's there. And I'm curious to what extent it's actually that change that creates the safety in the system and increases as a result, the experience of pleasure?

Joe: Yeah I can't tell you what's the chicken and what's the egg. It's a great question. But what I can say is the definition for pleasure that I like the most was Lowen's pleasure, which I'm going to loosely say here, which was noticing the sensations in your body, moving, noticing the movement of the sensations in your body. And that's what it is like it is just like everybody right now who's listening to this podcast can feel the sensations in their body. Maybe it's like the way your ears are hearing this sound that's coming through the podcast or the way your breath is moving in and out of your nose or just the feelings in your internal world having movement inside the body having movement.

That's pleasure. And it's no more complicated than that. It's just that. And so I don't know if it's, the noticing of, that creates the safety or if it's the actual experience of pleasure that creates the safety. But all I know is that there's just a tremendous amount of safety and trust and faith. All those things seem to come with the experience of pleasure. 

Brett: Yeah. What I really love about that is Lowen's definition of, pleasure being the noticing of the sensations moving in the body, there's not a valence or a like positive or negative associated with any of those sensations.

And so there's something that like meditators might be familiar with us, like awareness, actual feeling and equanimity, but not equanimity in an it doesn't matter way, but equanimity in an oh, this is enjoyable. Whatever is happening for right now can feel good and I don't need to go out there and do anything to make that happen. It just can be here with me. 

Joe: Yeah, that's right. That's right. It is not managing the sensations of your body that is pleasure, it's noticing the sensations of your body that creates pleasure and it's like this incredibly simple thing. And I remember like after noticing for the first time when Tich Nhat Hanh had written somewhere about doing the dishes and how enjoyable doing the dishes or how much pleasure you could have in doing the dishes.

And I did it. I remember thinking whoa. This, all the time. I can have this all the time. I can have this in my breath. I can have this in the way that I move. I can have pleasure all the time. And that one blew me away, especially because shortly thereafter, I forgot all about it.

And it was like a month later, I'm like, wait a second, what the fuck just happened? A month ago, I realized that I could be in pleasure all the time and now it's a month later and I did it like once what was that, and that was an amazing thing too because when you really grok it, you're like, oh, this is available all the time and so now there's no need to chase it. It's just always here. And yet somehow, that what happened in my journey was somehow it's like, why am I avoiding this? Because it's the only option. It's the only option. You're avoiding it once you realize you can have it anytime. It's an avoidance. 

Brett: Yeah. So what makes people avoid it? And I'm noticing that for you, there was a time prior to this recognition that you didn't even, you weren't aware that there was pleasure available. On some level maybe you were, but you're consciously you weren't. And I'm curious of two things. One, how does that happen to us? Is that socially conditioned? Is that, family conditioned or is it just something we might eventually develop a deeper capacity for than we had previously? And then the second question is, once you had the recognition what makes the avoidance come back? What would make it be avoided? What has people avoid feeling pleasure? 

Joe: Yeah. I think pleasure, a lot like joy, it's if you're not feeling all this, if you have a lot of stuck emotions then that's where your situation goes like, your body is, mind, state, personhood, is trying to get back to equilibrium.

And if you have a whole bunch of stuck emotions, then it's very hard for the body to do anything besides try to process and get through those emotions. And if you're not feeling the emotions, if you're not allowing those emotions to move, then you're like trapped in these cycles of constant self-abuse or shame or guilt or whatever judgment all the time. 

And so I think that's part of it, it's why we don't experience the pleasure, right? and it's also somewhat why we fall back because what I've noticed is the more that I have emotional fluidity, the more the pleasure just seems to be the natural state of things. There's just more enjoyment and pleasure, joy, that whole thing and so I think that's part of it.

Also, it's really intense. Yesterday we were doing, the people in the year-long program, I did a rapid coaching with some folks and there was multiple people, they're like long enough in the program now where they're starting to feel like this tremendous joy and it's scary.

There's nobody I know who started hitting that joy and pleasure, peace, they are distinct, but where they don't get scared. The experience of pleasure is incredibly expansive. It's so big that it's hard to exist inside of it. I know that's such a weird way to say it, but the felt sense, that's exactly what's happening. If you allow pleasure in this very deep way, it is so expansive, it's like your perimeter, who you are, like your solid boundary starts dissolving. 

Brett: Beyond the reach of the government in the mind of the self, right? 

Joe: Exactly. And so that's very scary because it's where am I going? And how big is this?

And yeah, somebody said yesterday while they were working through this, they were saying it feels like I'm falling. And I said, oh, it never ends. And I was like, what do you call falling that never ends? And she was like flying, being held, like she had all these different words that would, and but what happens is it just feels like falling, until you get used to it.

And so that's, it's actually part of the reason why embracing intensity is so important for this work. It's not only the intensity of, let's say, pain or anger or sadness. It's the intensity of pleasure, which I find to be far more intense than the intensity of joy, the intensity of peace can be far more intense than the intensity of rage, and you lose control in it. You lose yourself in it to some degree. And that's very scary for people. Ask any person who's had like trouble having an orgasm, like sexual orgasm, like you, we've all met someone who's I can't do it unless everything is just right and I feel like I lose control, et cetera, et cetera. This is, it's a very similar thing that happens except for the orgasm is just life itself.

Brett: Yeah. And something I noticed here is that a common misconception or maybe just a conception, no one's definition is wrong, is like pleasure being something distinct from sadness, anger, other emotions. And in this definition we've been using, it is actually all of those emotions being noticed, experienced, and allowed to move and not managed.

And I think one of the things that you're pointing to here is that pleasure, when allowed, will also, if you have other stuck emotions, other stuff that you haven't been feeling, that will come up with it. Because, to be in the state of non-managed pleasure, is to allow all that is there to move. And this is why if we're going to talk about an orgasm, sometimes a really big orgasm will leave somebody feeling a lot of emotions.

There'll be like screaming, but suddenly there may be a little anger in it, or maybe cry after. So it seems like the movement or really rather the experience of pleasure involves the movement of whatever's there. And with that can come a lot of what we don't, of what we're traditionally used to managing. And so in managing that we're managing away the pleasure that comes with it.

Joe: Yeah agreed I think you know something like love does that a little bit more like if we really start loving ourselves, that emotional fluidity comes a little bit more than pleasure but it absolutely comes. It absolutely allows the space for that to happen and there is so much pleasure to be had in getting angry.

There's so much pleasure to be had in being scared. There's so much pleasure to be had in being sad and grieving. And it really changes the way that like all those sensations happen, if you're enjoying them. And taking like deep pleasure and anger or sadness or fear.

There's just a oh, wow, this is amazing. And it just changes everything in it. So yeah, I totally agree. And I think it's really important to note that pleasure, there's no moment when sensations aren't moving through your body. So there's no moment you don't, you can't notice them. And therefore there's no moment where pleasure isn't available.

Brett: Yeah, that puts an interesting lens on some of the work that we do as well, where an anger release or any kind of emotional release that we do, a lot of it is designed so that you can have the experience without creating shame or guilt or self-judgment and maybe even noticing where that's happening and seeing that it's not necessary. Also that you get to experience the pleasure in the emotion, the pleasure that's always been available in it. And as your system learns that, then the emotions become more fluid. 

Joe: Yes, that's right. That's exactly how it works. Yeah. It's funny though, because when we're doing the emotional releases we usually don't say, okay, everybody take pleasure in the anger, right? But instead it seems like it works a little bit better, it's get angry, get really angry and then eventually they notice the pleasure in it. Like right now as you've seen in Master Class, there's all these pictures of people after their anger release, taking pictures of the way the world looks, and how they feel and like their smiles and their contentment after moving anger. And it's if you see those pictures, it's like, they all represent pleasure. But it's interesting in the emotional releases, what I find is that it's important to just go all the way towards the emotional release without shame. And then in that, the pleasure is found rather than to say, do the anger release with pleasure. So it's an interesting, it's more of a discovery. It works better if people use it as a discovery. Because what I noticed is people say, I need to do anger with pleasure. Their whole system gets confused and then they'd find ways to bow out of the anger.

Brett: Yeah. And I think that kind of uncovers just a common limiting belief in that avoidance, which is that this can't be pleasurable or that can't be pleasurable. And we're going to have that belief until we collect enough evidence that's not the case. Yeah. But that, that points to where this pattern might come from where, like, where would we develop a belief that certain emotions that we feel can't be pleasurable and that if we're feeling it, we need to feel shame or judge ourselves or, not be seen, protect ourselves from it being seen. 

Joe: Yeah. I mean if we're punished as kids, obviously if we're punished for an emotion or rejected for an emotion or love is removed because we're having an emotion that's gonna to take away the pleasure of that experience. And the amazing thing, there are definitely things, like I'm pretty confident if I was physically tortured I wouldn't be able to take pleasure in it though I know there's definitely people who take pleasure in BDSM or something.

So I know that there's even some capacity there. But what, as we're talking about it, one of the things I noticed is that I don't want like pleasure to become a morality or a lot of people, when they listen to this, they might take things into an extreme and say, oh I have to feel pleasure all the time or really like you couldn't take pleasure in X, Y, nuclear bomb goes off. There's no pleasure in that. And so I would just say to anybody listening, let go of the extremes and just see how deep the rabbit hole goes. You know what I mean? Just take some moments here and there and say, oh, can I find pleasure in this? Can I find pleasure in this, by noticing the sensations moving?

I think, just note that because I think it's really important that it doesn't become like I am supposed to feel pleasure because, by the way, that will chase all the pleasure right out of the situation that you're in. And as far as your question goes, absolutely, if we are told that we are bad for something and as kids, we think we're bad because love is removed. We think we're bad because we don't get attention. We think we're bad because we get punished. We get shamed. There's lots of things that make us think that we're bad. Those are the places where pleasure is going to be hard to find in those areas in particular. And enough of that pleasure is just going to be hard to find generally, even though it's happening always.

Brett: Yeah. One thing that I noticed there is that it doesn't have to be, it can be, but it doesn't have to be that the pleasure itself is the thing that's not allowed. If anger is not allowed, then pleasure is diminished. Then you still have that, you still develop the limiting belief if anger's gonna get me attacked, if my anger's not okay. Then I can't feel that. So there's some sensation that could be moving in my body that I could enjoy, but I now decide I can't. And so pleasure is limited by other emotions being limited. So a parent out here could be like nobody would ever shame their kids for having pleasure, though that does sometimes happen. But that doesn't even have to be the thing that's happening for pleasure to be diminished. 

Joe: Correct. That's, yeah, that's a beautiful pointer. And yes, obviously there are some parents who'd like any kind of sexual pleasure. They're gonna chastise or guilt the kid, masturbation or whatever. That's all gonna happen. But if you just think about you're having dinner with a seven-year-old and the seven-year-old just starts finding a tremendous amount of pleasure in eating the food. Oh my god, mom, this is so good. Oh my god, these french fries, they're oh. Oh, the salt on these french fries, like you can just I don't know too many parents who wouldn't start getting annoyed, like we're at the Denny's, relax, kid.

Brett: This reminds me of just any, some meals with Tara. 

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. I was about to say, so perfect example, so we're out with Tara, my daughter and her boyfriend are going to meet us for dinner. It's like the first time and I order these bacon-wrapped goat cheese dates or something. I don't like goat cheese. The kids did not like these things. And so they were sitting on the table and Tara arrived and she started eating them and she started doing that, which is how Tara eats. She's oh, the, oh, these are, and we're in like a kind of fancy restaurant, first meeting and she's like making like all this noise and the new boyfriend leans over to Esme and goes, now I know why I can't embarrass you, right?

Which is natural for us to go, oh, that level of pleasure in public is embarrassing. And so it is not something that is societally acceptable. Oddly we might even be more comfortable if we were walking down the side of the road and there's a homeless person who's yelling, god damn it, the government's in my head. As compared to a homeless person, like, laying down, writhing in pleasure. Like which one's going to make us more uncomfortable or maybe even equally uncomfortable. So it is an interesting thing, just how much pleasure can be. And I see it all the time, like we do, we'll do anger releases and when we do some of our live work, it'll be like, okay, here's the anger release. And then we'll often do pleasure right after that. And you'll see people do anger for 45, 50 minutes, and then we're like, okay, pleasure. And like, they'll get into it and five minutes later, everybody has to be reminded like, hey, wait, we're still doing pleasure. It's actually harder for people to maintain like feeling pleasure in their system. 

Brett: Yeah. Something that's interesting about the example you just gave of, the person on the streets, like with an anger or the one writhing in pleasure or Tara, your wife or the kid at the table, somebody who's just like in deep grief, the thought that might occur to somebody who's uncomfortable with that scenario is, wow, this person's out of control.

Joe: Yeah that's what's actually happening. You're actually allowing the food to fully hit you instead of controlling the hit. You're letting life like that's an interesting way to think about pleasure is like letting life fully hit you. It's a very alive feeling. It's you know, it's when you let it fully hit you there's a sensation of it taking over. But the interesting thing is it's such a powerful tool if you, we have a lot of people do gratitude practices and they're now, there's like people on Twitter and all talking about how these gratitude practices are changing their lives and how the way we do it is slightly differently than a lot of gratitude practices that it's not just a head thing, it's a full body sport.

It's a somatic experience. And part of the reason that it's so powerful is because of the pleasure that happens in those moments. And it's also, if you just do a pleasure exercise for 10 minutes a day, it also really, it can really change your experience really quickly, which is the amazing thing.

The important part, if you're doing that exercise, however, is that like pleasure can't become a goal or something you're supposed to do or have to do. It's like it's more of a like noticing or receiving or getting to do because it's just a lot less pleasurable, if pleasurable at all, if it becomes a have to or should or trying or anything like that.

Brett: Yeah, and that, that's something you see also, and there's a lot of practices, like Tantra, for example, there's a way that Tantra can be something that people experience as like I'm allowing the pleasure and there's also some people, some ways that people can get on that path and they're like, Oh, pleasure is the goal. This is the thing. This is what I will now conspicuously demonstrate to show my progress and so not to call out any tantra people here because that's just an example that it can happen in our work.

Joe: Does happen in our work. 

Brett: Yeah. And even with any emotion, you can have a conspicuous, oh, you know what? My anger is okay. I'm going to let my anger be okay, but like actually doing that to avoid really feeling something. And so I'm curious about the pitfalls here. If someone were to take this message and be like, oh yeah, you know what? My pleasure is lovely. My pleasure is wonderful. What are some of the ways that might end up getting steered in a direction of avoidance subtly? 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So if it becomes something that you start reaching for, that's pretty much the easiest way. If it's something that you're like, oh yeah, I get to feel pleasure now, great. As compared to, okay, I'm reaching for, I'm defining myself by I'm, if there's any kind of hunger in getting the pleasure, then that usually is a clear sign that it's become either avoidant or, you're pushing the pleasure away, which is avoidance also pushes the pleasure away.

Like you might get like the bodily sensation of pleasure a little bit, but you're not getting the felt sense of safety that comes with pleasure because it has to be chased. So it's not safe if you have to go find it. Safety is like, Oh, it's that's, this is the way it is that's what creates the safety. Not Oh, if once I do this, then I'll get, that. That is the anxiety. And so I think that's the biggest, that's the biggest tell is that is just if you're chasing it. 

And the other place that I would just be a little bit, I'd be really a little bit careful is, if there's a way that you can do pleasure where it's like detracts from the other emotional experiences instead of amplifies the other emotional experiences and that's another way that you can see that there's some avoidance going on or that pleasure is not being used as a way to feel more alive. It's being used as a way to avoid the full aliveness of your full emotional experience. As an example, if someone's like getting angry at their mom and they're like, okay, I'm going to go to pleasure to like, not have the anger and rather than, oh, I'm feeling anger at my mom. Oh, this is a pleasurable experience. This is cool. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, I have a boundary. Yeah, I'm going to draw this boundary and it's going to send these like shockwaves of fear that my mom might abandon me. Let's see how that feels. That could be really pleasurable. That's a different deal. 

Brett: Yeah, just following along with that emotional journey. You just carve it out or you just lay it out, my system went from the like angry at my mom and something's bad about it and I'm like leaving myself and in her which leads more likely to be an attack, to oh, yeah, I get to have a boundary and then like I experienced that as coming back into my body and from that place is less about the other person and more about what I need which is far less likely to result in me taking a defensive action that's received as attack. 

Joe: Yeah, I've never thought about it that way. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah when we talk about asking for your wants, you can do it in a way that's going to be more likely to be attacked and if drawing a boundary, there's a way of doing it that's more likely to be attacked. Even getting scared there's a way that you're more likely going to get attacked and it's an interesting thing, right? If you're actually having pleasure in it, then you're in your body and then you're not trying to manage the results of it and therefore less likely to be attacked. 

Brett: Yeah, I think there's a distinction there between the pleasure and like some kind of ego gratification. Because, somebody could be, like, sadistically enjoying being angry, and that's different from the definition of the noticing of sensations moving in the body. 

Joe: I have a relative who, every time they shop and buy something expensive, they get this kind of teehee, teehee, look at what I bought, and it looks like pleasure but it's really shame. Like if you feel their system, they've cut off the way their gut feels. And so it is like the pleasure of eating something that you're not supposed to eat that tastes really good, that's going to make you feel like shit in a, like in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes.

It's I think what would be called like a guilty pleasure, right? That's not the pleasure I'm talking about. And that's the interesting thing, if you really feel your life with the pleasure of just breathing and the pleasure of just being in your body, the pleasure of just doing the dishes, then the guilty pleasures become ehh, okay. Yeah. Great. I bought this thing but I could do the dishes. 

I can have the Lamborghini, or I could just like breathe deeply and feel better than most people who have a Lamborghini. So that's interesting. So actually what happens if you're feeling the real pleasure of just aliveness, then these guilty pleasures become and the guilty pleasure is like, it's like having the pleasure of something, but it's also like putting shame next to the pleasure. And I think that generally that happens naturally. And I would like to actually unpack this and think about this for a minute because there's a tremendous amount of people who get taught that pleasure is shameful. There's shame put on sex, there's shame put on buying something good for yourself. There's, like, all these ways in which we get shamed for having pleasure. And my experience of this and I haven't thought this through entirely, but my experience of this is that pleasure is feeling, you feel like this very deep aliveness. It's very expansive. It's very, you lose yourself and that scares people and so they need to put shame in with it.

And so it's not unlike we have this story that I've told many times about if there's a kid crying on a plane, I can stand up, look at everybody on the plane. I can tell you who wasn't allowed to cry as a kid. Because crying overwhelmed their parents, and so they were shamed in the crying. Pleasure is, far more a loss of self than crying.

And so I think a lot of people go, oh, and then they throw the shame in and interestingly, yesterday I was working with somebody on exactly this issue. It was, they were using shame as a way to not see that their life was great and that story is wonderful. It's a wonderful story. This person was telling me how ashamed they were of the fact that they had this golden opportunity job, this wonderful job a head of product for this company, and they got involved in a woman and they let the job slide and they got fired. And they're like, this is, just like they were just so ashamed and beating themselves up for this thing. And I was talking to them, I was like, okay, so let me just understand. So after you got fired, you started your own app. That's now making 150, 000 a week. Why are you not fucking stoked that you got fired? How is that not the best choice that you ever made? Like, how is it that you're beating yourself up for the thing that allows you to be independent and financially like what the right? And in that noticing, he, oh, so that all the shame was doing was preventing him from feeling how good life was because as soon as he saw that, he started laughing and smiling and it just shows that the shame was all designed to stop that emotional experience from happening of feeling alive and the pleasure of what had happened. And that just by the way that is with every somebody be like, there's no way that I would ever feel it. Bullshit. Everybody does. Everybody beats themselves up for something that if they like, draw the line out of into the future has made something great in their life happen today. Every single person is, I shouldn't have done this thing three years ago. I feel shame for the thing three years ago, but if they look at their life right now, they can say, oh, that shit wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for that. But they still feel ashamed of the thing from three years ago. It's an amazing thing.

Brett: Yeah. Something that's been bubbling up for me now has been how it seems that the pleasures that we won't allow ourselves become the things that we actually become fixated on. 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: And for example, you were talking about the Lamborghini earlier. And you might talk about seeing a beautiful member of the opposite sex or same sex, whatever you're attracted to, who is not your partner, and you have a commitment and agreements, and you're like, I'm not allowed to be attracted to that person, or you can be like, oh, yeah, I can absolutely just let myself speed around that entire path of what would it be like if I followed that pleasure.

What would it be like if I got the Lamborghini? And I'm like, okay, cool. I got the Lamborghini. I could have actually gotten this pleasure from the dishes. And if the pleasure is available either way, then it distills down to what do I actually want? And the long termism in that can be present with me. What do I really deeply want? Not just what's going to gratify a thing that I haven't been allowing myself to even feel in a simulated way, or that I wouldn't allow myself and so some part of me is always fixated on going there. That's why a lot, I think a lot of times people take pleasure or what, what we've been talking about ooh, kind of pleasure in any kind of boundary-breaking experience for themselves. Anywhere they wouldn't let themselves go, they're fixated on. And that's an interesting phenomenon for us to have, to be drawn towards what we won't allow ourselves. Almost as though there's just this intelligence in us that wants us to expand until we would allow ourselves whatever is best for us. And then only then could we know that we're on a path that is actually right for us and stay connected with ourselves in it. 

Joe: Yeah, so I think this is the thing that scares people about pleasure. I've had this with a couple clients. What happens is they're like, I'm scared to allow myself to feel pleasure because then I am going to cheat on my husband, then I am going to buy the car that I want, I've always wanted, but that would be financially irresponsible for me to buy. Then I'm going to, then I'm going to, I'm going to be this evil thing if I actually allow myself to feel pleasure, because then I'm going to go after all these pleasurable things, and A, that's not how it works. It's exactly, we do those things because we disallow them, because we're like, because they become kinky, because they become shameful, and we're addicted to that cycle. But also, it doesn't actually require you to do the things. Meaning, just, it's just you feel sexually aroused towards somebody who's not your partner, and they're walking down the street, you feel sexually aroused for them. Most of us will just stop that sexual arousal. Oh no, I'm not allowed to feel that. No. Stop it. You can just feel it. Yeah, look at that. I'm totally feeling it. And you'll just notice everybody can try this. Fully feel it. It's not a fantasize. So it's not you're fantasizing over what's going to happen next and I'm going to, that's a different thing, but you're just going to fully feel that sexual arousal in the moment. And then you'll notice you're not fixated on it anymore. It just comes and it goes. It's literally when we feel that arousal and we cut it, that the fixation starts happening like, oh, no, I'm not allowed to. And then that's where we actually, that's where that behavior drives towards the thing that is destructive for us.

Brett: Yeah. We push the, we push that desire or that impulse down. And then, of course, it's going to rebel. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: That's going to squeak out another way. Okay, if I couldn't have my pleasure there, then later at night when I'm like going to bed or something and I'm tired and my dopamine is a little low, then I'll be attracted to porn or something.

Joe: Exactly. 

Brett: That's another way of not getting what I want, not feeling the pleasure. 

Joe: I think that it's a good thing just to say that how many people are really scared of pleasure for that reason. It's I'm not allowed to. The interesting thing is, all you have to do as a kid is feel good and be punished for pleasure to start being really scary.

Something about the human system, what I've noticed is, getting punished when you don't feel good, is just easier on the system than getting punished when you feel really good. Like having something really good taken from us is harder than, right? So if a kid feels bad about what they've done and you're like, yeah, that was bad, it's useless.

Granted, it's like it doesn't help because then you're like, they're already listening to how bad they feel. But somehow or another, they're like, yeah, but we can all think back to our childhood, at least most of us can think back to our childhood, I was like, but I was good. I was doing the right thing and I got punished. And there's a sting to it that's different. There's like a what the fuck? And I think that's probably also part of the reason that we're so scared of pleasure because the taking away of it is so hard on our system. It somehow stings more than getting punished for other stuff.

Brett: Neuroscientifically we experienced the loss of something twice as much as we experienced the, like a gain. I'm not sure if that's quite the relevant piece here, but just the fact that we experience a loss so deeply, that like loss of pleasure can be a really big hit. 

Joe: Yeah. And especially because pleasure is so high and a loss is so the other side of it, like that contrast sticks in our minds.

But then this interesting thing happens is as you start doing a pleasure practice, you're like, oh, it's available all the time. You can take it away from me for a couple of minutes if you want. They can be taken away for a couple of minutes, but there it is again. I can have it. And so there's something, not logical about it, but there is something very human about it. And I think that's also probably part of the reason that you asked earlier, what makes it that we stopped doing pleasure? It's because it hurts so much when we lost it. 

Brett: And then I'm reminded of your story with your daughter, Esme, where, she and her boyfriend at the end of high school were breaking up and they knew they were going to go in different locations and different colleges or whatever. And she's just in this heartbreak and she's wow, I just never knew it could feel so good. So there is, coming back to that definition without positive or negative valence of just the awareness and the noticing of the sensation moving in the body that even those experiences we have when pleasure is taken away can themselves be deeply pleasurable in a different way when we relax our constraints or beliefs on what pleasure is supposed to be. 

Joe: Yeah. You can't do it as a kid, but you can definitely see that as an adult. As a kid, it's just devastation, but yeah. 

Brett: So I want to leave listeners with any kind of tips or tools or an experiment that they could run in their lives.

Joe: We have a guided audio for how to just like experience pleasure just sitting around. And so you can get that at view.life/experiments and so that's the easiest way to do it. And that'll you can walk through it three or four times. And then after that, you can use it anywhere, anytime, without actually having to listen to it, because you get it, you get the system really quickly of how to take pleasure in just the most simple things. But it's good to have that audio guidance the first couple of times, because what usually happens is people go oh, that feels really good. Okay. Now I'm off to, so it's good just to have. 

Brett: Off to produce some other pleasure that I'm actually pushing away. 

Joe: Yeah, 

Brett: Exactly. 

Joe: Now I'm off to produce some pleasure that I'm actually pushing away. That's lovely. Yeah. So it's just good to have somebody, have the audio to hold you in it for a while. Yeah, it was somebody in Master Class asked for it. So we produced it for them and and just something we can make available to everybody. 

Brett: Thank you, Joe. 

Joe: You're welcome. Thank you, Brett.

Brett: And thank you, everybody, for listening to the Art of Accomplishment. If you want to hear more about how to welcome more pleasure into your life, you can go check out that experiment, view.life/experiments and you can also join our newsletter, or you can check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please share it with a friend, and remember to follow us and rate us in your podcast app. The Art of Accomplishment was produced and hosted by myself. Brett Kistler and Joe Hudson. Mun Yee Kelly is our production coordinator, and this episode was edited by On Replay.