Why is there such a lack of pleasure in the lives of men and women? By using our five senses, we can all accept the gift that is pleasure. We are also conscious of sensations felt from inside the body, which have the potential to feel enjoyable or unpleasant. It is through our sense of touch that many of us connect with the pleasure we receive. Even though touch is such a common thing, many people are not in tune as much with their pleasure as they could be, with some being challenged to enjoy touch at all, and others struggling to connect with feelings and sensations. This goes for both giving and receiving.
What is Pleasure?
The dictionary definition of pleasure describes it as being 'A feeling of happy satisfaction or enjoyment', 'An event or activity from which one can derive enjoyment', and 'Sensual gratification'.
Go further back in time and the word pleasure has origins in the Old French word 'plaisir', which means 'to please'.
It Isn't as Easy as it Seems
Many people can find themselves filled with fear, anxiety, and worry when confronted with feeling arousal in their bodies.
Both men and women can struggle to experience a healthy balance of pleasure, often falling into one of two extremes: overindulgence or avoidance. With a history and culture based firmly on well-established Christian doctrines, modern Western society still places much shame on the human body and pleasure. It is this embedded stance on feeling pleasure through the body that weighs huge chunks of the population down with feelings of anxiety and embarrassment from doing something wrong or dirty.
There is a Benefit to Pleasure
Being able to feel pleasure, bliss, and delight are some of the most powerful and natural healing tools the human body has available to it. Pleasure helps us as a healing aid, it makes us feel complete and gives us an energetic boost to help us overcome the symptoms of illness or trauma.
Pleasure, and by extension sexual energy, are seldom taken into serious consideration by modern medicine and healthcare professionals. This is a peculiar position for the medical industry to take because pleasure and energy are key components of disease treatment, as well as dealing with illness and suffering.
About Male And Female Sexuality
It is at the time when people take their initial steps with sex and sexual exploration that the first experiences of pleasure limitation are encountered. It is the limitation on pleasure, or at worst a lack of pleasure altogether, that is rampant in the modern world, especially among young adults.
The effects of problems with pleasure can become evident in many ways, ranging from lack of feeling, numbness, lack of enjoyment, heightened sensation, addictive impulses, or even total evasion.
If problems are to arise, they often manifest when we are being intimate with our partners.
Both men and women may find themselves out of their bodies and struggling to remain conscious during lovemaking. A common fix is to retreat into the mind and drift off into the world of images, thoughts, fantasies, and fetishes.
Men can find themselves suffering from erection difficulties, premature ejaculation, addiction to frequent masturbation, or even obsessions with pornography. Women may find their vaginas are not as soft and open to sensations as they used to be, and numbness and pain may be present when penetrated. Whilst men may grow addicted to masturbating and rapid-fire ejaculations, women may struggle to even orgasm at all.
It is not at all usual to find there is a relationship between restricting sexual pleasure and the lack of pleasure we feel in our lives.
Reasons For Lack of Pleasure
Believe it or not, people are often guilty of limiting or restricting their pleasure because they either do not know or lack the confidence to ask for what they want or need. The fear of rejection or of being mocked sways greater power than the need to ask for what they most want.
How many times have you heard stories about people placing the needs of others before their own? You may have even done this before. The reasoning is that if we think of ourselves, our wants, and our needs, over that of other people, then we are egotistical and selfish.
Other people are the opposite of this. They believe they are not worthy of pleasure and nice feelings they decide they don't deserve delight and joy.
Also, most of us are simply not well-educated enough about the human body's facilities for embracing pleasure, or how to develop it and enhance it.
The Struggle With Arousal When Anxiety Strikes
When people suffer from anxiety when they are in positions where they will feel pleasure, they often react this way because the touch and sensation triggers have been programmed to respond to sensations of arousal, enjoyment, and pleasure with feelings of anxiety, fear, and shame. As a result, they make a connection between it and a lack of safety. This occurs from repeated unsatisfactory experiences that create a negative feedback loop.
Examples of this might be a woman who is continually subjected to hard and rough sex or experiences pain during intercourse. A man may find himself the brunt of jokes or remarks about the size of his penis – big or small – and then struggles to get or maintain an erection.
The more this type of feedback loop keeps spinning, the more problems a woman will have with enjoying sex and a man will have with his erections. Once the human mind creates that relationship between anxiety and arousal (and ultimately sex) in this way, then arousal, excitement, and even orgasms will become more difficult to experience and enjoy fully. At its worst, arousal and desire may disappear, or a person may not be able to feel anything at all.
The human mind and body react to events based on a plethora of previously stored information. As a result, a super-sensitive nervous system may begin to respond to arousal as if it were an external source of danger. The good news is that this negative response can be unlearned and the mind and body untrained.
Using Tantric and Kundalini Bodywork to Promote Healing
Working across several sessions, clients are guided and educated on how they can open themselves up to embracing new experiences of being able to be aware and conscious of pleasure feelings in their body again. This is achieved across a variety of exercises from conscious breathing, movement, sound, and bodywork all performed in a safe container of compassion and understanding.
It is through these Tantric and Kundalini exercises that people can be assisted with working through any stored feelings or mindsets surrounding fear, guilt, shame, trauma, or anything else that may be holding them back from their full experience.
The added benefit here is that clients are in a fantastic position to be able to begin to nurture their ability to not only connect with and stay with their pleasure but to also develop more pleasure from within themselves, instead of requiring other people or external sources (porn) for their arousal triggers.
The information contained above is provided for entertainment purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice on your personal situation and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. The Writer and this Website disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
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