The Power of Vitamin P: How Pleasure Transforms the Practice of Rest
P is for Pleasure
What Is Vitamin P?
Humans, especially female humans are wired from head to toe for pleasure. We have nerve endings everywhere and these nerve endings are attuned to experiencing delight.
Do you give yourself some vitamin P every day?
May I share MY epiphany around "Vitamin P?"
A 30-Year Rest Teacher's Surprising Realization
I'll start here: I've been practicing and teaching rest in its short, long, and teeny tiny forms for 30 years. I create and share ways to find rest in the midst of the busiest days. And I teach how to cultivate rest in the most profound and long-reaching shapes.
"Mindfulness" has been my intention for all these years of restorative yoga, yoga, meditation, life…
and yet...and yet…
The Moment Pleasure Entered the Picture
This past week, inspired by Susan Hyatt’s invitation, for the first time, I framed rest in the context of pleasure...how delicious and delightful it feels to be supported by the blankets and pillows in restorative yoga; how sweet it feels to put my feet up on the seat of a chair and lie on the floor, letting gravity help me relax on purpose for 5 minutes; how soothing and lovely it feels in the middle of a meeting of any nature to sit back against the chair instead of leaning forward, tight, tense, and "attentive" and let myself welcome the sigh of ease that comes to my whole body…
Outside of practicing mindfulness. Beyond resisting thru rest the patriarchal themes of having to earn rest. Outside of the physical, mental, emotional benefits that rest of any form brings to us.
Simply for the pleasure of resting in any way, shape, or form.
You know, tears spring to my eyes whenever I feel I'm standing in my truth. And as I write this, my eyes are filling.
From Duty-Driven Lists to Pleasure-Filled Living
It started with creating a list of things I savor..and I realized that it was almost out of a sense of duty or habit of practice that I was making this list. And I reminded myself "Vitamin P" and lo! and behold, as I lay in my day's restorative pose, an eye pillow shading my eyes, my head and my knees supported by pillows, my torso swaddled in a blanket so that my pelvis would feel safe and loved and free... it hit me:
Sure. I do this and so many other things to bring rest into my body-mind-spirt.
But doing so with the invitation to pleasure? It took my breath away to realize how I had been almost there for so many years, on a good path toward ease, but injecting the element of pleasure? had never entered my mind.
And now, I can't get enough.
NOW, every time my body sighs with the ease that arises in me when I relax my hands on the steering wheel; every time, I feel myself release/land in my body so that the ease washes over and through me as I swim; every time, I surrender to the strategically placed blankets and pillows for 20-30-40 minutes of softening, I see and let myself feel the pleasure inherent in this rest that I've practiced for so many years.
Talking About Transformation
Shall we talk about transformation?!?!
I have been compiling a list of things that I enjoy for many years...but, curiously, without the sensation of or identifying them as pleasurable, as pleasure-bringing.
So, I'm rewriting this list and adding quickly to it as I identify the pleasure in each. Not the should, nor the practice, nor even the identifying of each touches that core within me without first giving myself permission to experience the pleasure that comes from each. The "frisson" (shiver) if you will that slides easily from one place to another when it's invited and received.
IT IS AMAZING HOW THIS ONE 8-LETTER WORD HAS SHIFTED ME/IS SHIFTING ME.
My list is too long to include here, but this one element -- rest--done with pleasure rather than out of duty or health or habit or intellectualizing or anything else is transforming everything for me.
Your Invitation: Create Your Own Pleasure List
I encourage you to write YOUR list of things—big, little and in between—
that bring you pleasure—
in your body, in your mind, in your spirit—
and to FEEL as your write, and then as you live them,
the pleasure that moves in to your body-mind-spirit.
Let me know, please, how YOU experience this Vitamin P.
blessings,
paula.
Photo is of Athena and me on our summer morning coffee date after we played in the water (watering plants and trees before the brutal sun hits) and letting the softness of the light, the breeze, the warmth before it becomes stifling…
