The way of pleasure | Rosie Bitts | TEDxVictoria
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQcVHyCdBds Video ID: iQcVHyCdBds ============================================================ when I say pleasure what do you think imagine your lover their body pressed against yours you can feel their heart beating against your chest as you feel their warm breath on your face they lean in and you kiss this is the perfect kiss not too much teeth not too much tongue pleasure or join me in the forest surrounded by trees your nose is filled with the smell of green and Earth as you feel that moist air caressing your skin as you walk along long you allow yourself to feel the trees beside you and you can feel their rough living texture under your fingertips pleasure Audrey Lord was a leading africanamerican poet and essayist who gave voice to issues on Race gender and sexuality in the 1970s and ' 80s she said we tend to think of the AR erotic as an easy tantalizing sexual arousal I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force a force that moves us towards living in a fundamental way friends I want to live in a fundamental way I want what I experience as the otic to move me towards living more deeply I want to experience every moment of this existence the Beauty and the shadow I want to walk this path with you when people come to see me whether as an audience member when I'm doing a sexy strip tease on the burles stage or as a sexology client or as one of the people who comes to my Retreats or my courses what they are looking for is a path to pleasure the pleasure of feeling titilated of making friends with their bodies of connecting to their sexuality and creativity of living a fully embodied sensual life we instinctively know to follow pleasure and yet somewhere along the line we stop we stop believing what our bodies and senses are telling us we stop believing that we are enough and that our innate knowing that has been developed over hundreds of thousands of years is correct we give all of that up for the belief the pleasure is going to lead us into Hellfire and Damnation mhm or at the least is a path to being lazy unproductive people to becoming Jezebels and wanting women we think we should override what we know in our bones to be true for Hustle the accumulation of stuff and the exciting but ultimately ungratifying release of a quick dopamine driven binge fast food has become our go-to rather than waiting for a home-cooked meal and jerking off in 3 minutes or less to an exaggerated fantasy has replaced a sex life that involves the sweetness of a very slow past first Embrace do you want to know a secret I'm not going to tell you unless you want to know okay I am the most want of women surprise you can call me Jezebel anytime I love to eat with my hands and I lick the juice of Life off my fingers I run around Barefoot and I Moon bathe and I sunbathe and I swim naked I always eat the cake mhm I make love for hours and I Savor each moment of my lovers embrace I love with my whole being I luxuriate in this body this beautiful curvy pleasure filled 50-year-old body that's right and I appreciate my yumminess just exactly as I am has anybody ever told you that you're perfect I'm here to do that right now you are perfect yeah in that body all of you too nobody gets out of this you're perfect in that body just as you are not a single thing needs to change [Music] Your Vessel is essentially driven wired for pleasure home for all the best bits that make up you we have forgotten how precious we are or maybe we were never told when one of my students came into my burles classes she had all the mirrors in her home cover she is a glorious and gorgeous human inside and out and yet even after years of therapy she couldn't bear to look in the mirror making friends with your body and allowing yourself to experience pleasure through your sensuality is an act of rebellion and it is transformative she now dances on on the blle stage she takes her clothes off and her sexiness and her Liberation are visceral every single time she hits that stage her mirrors are no longer covered we so often take for granted these miraculous vessels but when we shift our focus and move from here to here pleasure opens up for us I want you to experience this in real time okay you ready to go on a little journey with me this side is a yes they're a hell yes you guys are yet to be convinced okay get comfy in your chairs wiggle around do what you need to do to get comfortable lean back close your eyes stick your hand on your chest okay I want you to get present to how you're feeling in your body right now notice your feet on the floor and the chair underneath you maybe you can feel some heat coming off of the person next to you feel the air on your skin and now you're going to focus on your breath with this next breath you're going to breathe in through your nose and when you exhale you'll exhale through your mouth on a sigh like you have just made love and you are sinking into sleep just like this that's right we're going to do it again and one more [Music] time yeah come on back come on back to me how does that feel better yeah I feel better better I needed that I need that breath was for [Laughter] me even just changing your focus back into your body and doing something as simple as taking a few conscious breaths can open us up to pleasure now some of you are thinking I don't feel better nothing has changed or some of you might even be experiencing some feelings of discomfort or pain as you get present to your body experiencing pleasure does not mean that we get to avoid pain if anything it's the opposite our pain and pleasure Pathways in the brain are very closely intertwined when we lean in to the experience of anxiety and pain we are actually opening up to our full capacity of pleasure pleasure hormones are released as a way for our body to help us to process pain when we shut down pain we are shutting down our full experience of pleasure and this can lead us to having a very muted experience of life or even having something called anhedonia and not being able to experience pleasure at all Dr Nan Weiss says pleasure is not a luxury it is a necessity to our overall well-being let that sink in pleasure is not a luxury it is a necessity to our overall well-being this is from a renowned neuroscientist and sex therapist who has been studying pleasure for the last 15 years there are many people mostly women who have been at the Forefront of this idea for years one of my good friends and teachers Davey Ward Erikson has actually created a government accredited school where pleasure is seen as medicine because truly that is what it is when my body aches and moves without ease I treat it like my beloved I baby it and I rub it and I allow it to rest I don't berate it for aging or changing instead I celebrate every moment I get to be in this precious human body living the most delightful [ __ ] painful estatic complicated human existence because I know that even in the darkest moments of pain there is pleasure and that pleasure helps us to endure it helps us to evolve and it keeps us connected to one another Being Human means that pleasure is available to me at every moment and being human means that there is also often pain and you find pleasure even in the darkest of moments and you find pleasure even in the darkest of moments when I got to the hospital all I knew was that my youngest child was in a medically induced coma they wouldn't stop seizuring so the doctors put them into a coma to give their brain a break there was no talk about whether they would survive or not only that they needed to be in the coma right now and in the morning they would try to take them out of it and we go from there when my son had almost died 8 years previously I was so angry and I was terrified and I woke up sobbing every morning the sobs coming from my chest before my eyes even opened I thought that if I could just research enough or make myself busy enough I could find a way to save him this time I knew that the only thing that I could do for my child was to be completely present with them in whatever state they were in that night I sat behind glass not able to touch my kid so I matched my breath to their breath and we breathed together I wasn't willing to miss even a single breath in the morning when they let me into my child's room I crawled in bed with them and I held them in my arms they were waking up from the coma and they were in deep psychosis and the first thing they said to me my kid who hates to swear and they hate it when I swear they said Mom I broke my [ __ ] brain and we laughed and I held them and I said yeah baby you did those two weeks in the hospital are punctuated in my mind with pleasure either their dad or I were in bed with them pretty much 24/7 they needed to be held and we so needed to hold them my mom cooked and we had the pleasure of sharing Grandma's food my son and his partner bought soft clothes and Stuffies for my kid to wear and hold and when my kid was able to stand again they wrote on the treatment plan board in their room under goals not to die and we laughed so much we laughed when they hallucinated bugs on my face and we laughed when they flirted with the doctors and we laughed when their head was covered in gel and electrodes for the brain scan and bit by bit they surfaced and we let pleasure guide us when we got home we continued to eat yummy food and we cuddled and their friends came over and they made art and they regil their friends with tals from the hospital and it was terrifying and it was sad and it was so hard many truths can exist at once my friends I live a life of pleasure so that I can live a better life life so that I can live in a fundamental way so that I can be deeply present the calm in the storm and be of higher service to my loved [Music] ones and ultimately you are all my loved ones for me pleasure means freedom and Liberation and it always me brings me back to you I have found my healing through pleasure my sincere hope is that you do as well [Music] all