Every morning that I wake up to another day of this earthly existence I set a simple intention — to celebrate the fact that I am alive by doing at least one thing that pleases me.
I can’t lie to you. I’ve had a challenging time adjusting to the slowed down pace of life here on Lake Atitlán. Back home, I craved days of nothing to do and nowhere to be. Or at the very least, more moments of pause throughout my day. Moments that always seemed to escape me, lost to scrolling and sitting in traffic. The breakneck pace of a place like Los Angeles where productivity and busyness are worn as badges of honor takes awhile to detox from.
Upon arriving in the quaint village that I’m staying in I looked around and frantically Googled things to do in the area. In rushed thoughts “Did I choose the right area?” “Should I have done more research?” “Should I have stayed in a more happening village?” I noticed this aversion to stillness, to quiet, to actually hearing my own thoughts. We live such stimulated lives often it takes removing ourselves from those environments to notice just how stimulated we are. How long do we go without hearing ourselves — truly hearing ourselves. I didn’t know much I needed this, but God did.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still writing daily to do lists and notes, I’m still a Virgo after all, but I’m noticing that my compulsion for hurried living is slowly starting to leave my body. I’ve also written on reframing discipline as an act of self care. Both can be true. Walt Whitman writes “Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
As always, this here is an exploration, an excavation. We’re here in search of deeper truths. I’m talking deep down under. Below the layers of societal conditioning. The wisdom held in the body. The wisdom of the Earth. That unchanging part of ourselves. The part that remembers. So, as you continue to read, I invite you to take what resonates and leave the rest.
The Age of Pleasure
On the heels of the Summer Solstice, as the daylight lasts and lasts, there is a collective buzz in the air. Can you feel it? It’s palpable and rich and sweet. It’s Venus in Leo. We’re living in what Janelle Monáe has dubbed The Age of Pleasure. Call it living through several trying years and our systems beginning to crack underneath their already fragile infrastructure — there is a shift underway. Folks are beginning to center joy and play and pleasure like our lives depend on it — because they do. It’s a beautiful renaissance (thank you, Beyoncé), a collective awakening, a remembering, a coming home. Art has a beautiful way of reflecting our present cultural dynamics.
Capitalism sells us the lie that our productivity is inextricably linked to our worth. Working in corporate spaces for the first few years out of college, by leaving I thought I would be escaping its vice grip — I was wrong. Capitalism is deeply entrenched into everything, and I mean everything, that the light touches.
Pleasure as a Tool for Creative Process
As artists, we are conditioned to believe that our output is the sum of our worth. So much of the creative process exists in the unseen realms. Many of us feel like we have something to prove to the world, to our parents, to those asking us when we’re going to give up our art form and “do something with your life” — and ultimately and perhaps most importantly — to ourselves. This online creator put it well. Side note — what do we think about Threads? Add me :)
Last month I had the privilege of sitting with author Fariha Róisín in her quarterly writing workshop ‘Writing with the Rhythms of the Earth’. She opened with these words of wisdom “My advice to writers who want to write is to be in the world more.” To create means to be open, to be spacious, to be a channel. Pleasure is a portal that unlocks creative potential.
Pleasure as a Rebuttal to Self Improvement
Now, let’s turn to examine the wellness world. A space in which I both wholeheartedly embrace and believe in for the sake of our collective liberation AND have major qualms with. Sadly, Western adaptations of ancient lineages of wisdom and practices have led to what many are calling the wellness industrial complex, which I’ve also written about (love that I’m getting to the point where I have a body of work to reference).
The wellness industrial complex sells us the idea that we need the new trending wellness product (dry brush, aura ring, gua sha) or experience (yoga retreat, sound healing class, spa services). All of which are lovely treats that I love to indulge in, however it becomes a problem when people begin to think they need XYZ in order to practice mindfulness, implement supportive habits, and take true and deep care of themselves. In truth, all we need to be well, is free. Our body and our mind and our breath are the only instruments we need. Start there. See what happens.
Another way in which wellness culture can actually become very unwell — and this has less to do with the wellness industrial complex and more to do with the very human desire for things to be neatly packaged and wrapped in a pretty bow — is our attachment to an “ethereal final destination” in our healing journey, as Branden Collinsworth explains. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking or saying I’ll know I’ve healed from X when Y, congratulations, you like the rest of us have bought into the idea that healing has a destination that we will one day arrive to.
Healing is non linear, we know this. It ebbs and flows and takes on new shapes and forms. It sneaks up on you, falls out of the closet in the middle of the night, it’s staring back at you in the reflection of a new lover. Wherever you go, there you are.
It helps me to remember that there is no destination, there is only progress. It’s okay to not always be “under construction”, as my love ever-so-gently reminds me time and time again. It’s okay to have seasons where you make choices just for the plot and for the pleasure of it. Because we’re alive and we’re human and it gets messy sometimes, and that’s okay, in fact, it’s what we came here for. To experience the broad spectrum of what it means and feels like to be human.
It’s a dangerous game we’re playing when our self love and self compassion becomes contingent on crossing this non existent finish line. I’ll love myself when……. Can you love yourself now? Right here, right now? If not now, when?
Get off the hamster wheel of self-improvement, love. I know you’re tired.
In any way, I find myself straddling these two spaces as both a creative and a wellness practitioner and I struggle with how to strike the balance of making a living and democratizing access to the tools and teachings to the people who look like me and need it most. It’s hard out here, y’all. More to come on this soon.
Pleasure as a Portal
For women especially, activating our pleasure center awakens our capacity for creativity, expansion and manifestation. Our pleasure has the potential to magnetize our desires. As women, our vessels contain the power to bring life into this world. Do you know know powerful that is? What then is possible if we learn to harness the power of this divine portal and direct it to our creative ideas, our businesses, our wildest dreams?
All of this is not to discredit the reality of living in a capitalist system. Especially for “people of color and as women, as non-establishment or politically disempowered people” as Alice Walker writes “we face an increasing challenge simply to stay alive on the planet.” I would argue that pleasure is even more important for us and here’s why.
Pleasure is the antidote for capitalism. Prioritizing pleasure says a big “fuck you” to productivity. It screams in the face of the unending tasks that come with the business of being human. It says “I am alive. I will live, I will live, I will live. It beckons a way of living that ascends beyond the dreary existence of bills and taxes. It delineates our worth from our output.
I am worthy. You are worthy. We are worthy.
Can you begin to replace productivity with pleasure? Next time you start to feel guilty for not accomplishing as much as you set out to in the day, take a pleasure break, then come back to the task at hand. Notice how you feel.
I’ll leave you with a few of my personal favorite pleasure practices:
solo and partnered 🌺💦👄🍑🍆 (if long distance, bless the telephone)
a trip to the farmers market, handpicking my produce from the hands of the people who grew them
adorning my hair, face and body with serums, butters and oils post shower/bath
eight hours of sleep
making an “appointment with joy” as shared by Elaine Welteroth in her MasterClass on moving through creative blocks. Literally mark your calendar, take yourself out on a date or a walk or to the ice cream shop. Do something simply for the joy of it.
INVEST in your joy. Set aside room in your budget to invest in the joyful practices and experiences that sustain you. A weekly dance fitness class? Sounds fun. An outing to the museum? Cute. Whatever it is for you, make the investment and watch it pay dividends across every other area of your life.
Pleasure based storytelling (thank me later)
For my readers — Anonymous Sex by Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
For my audiophiles — Dipsea Stories
Sending love and pleasure and enjoyment,
Asha Nia
This one screams you’re in a happy and healthy place lol 🤍 and reminded me of one of my fav quotes: “creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing”
I feel like it’s so true for anyone really, but I feel like pleasure can also open the door for creativity and productivity too (sorry I know we’re anti productivity this week hehe)