Photo: SimplyAbbey

“Electric flesh-arrows … traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.” ~ Anaïs Nin

“What would it be like to live your life full out, allowing the rich juiciness of who you truly are… to ooze, to ripple, to burst forth in all its glory? I feel exhilarated just typing that question. Heart racing, blood pumping, vivid imagination soaring off into all kinds of dazzling places. Take a breath …

Are you in that delicious place in your life, living in technicolor? Or do your days feel like a series of one mundane experience following another? My desire is for you to dwell in the first land, but if you are simply existing in the second, I extend my hand and invite you to cross the line that divides one from the other.

How to do that, you ponder?

The first step is to recognize that you were born with senses that drink in the wonders of the world around you. What you don’t use, you lose; our sensory apparatus, like any other tool, gets dull or rusty if we let it sit around for too long. When was the last time you entered into a day seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and hearing what surrounded you? Tomorrow morning, when you awaken, do a check-in … what is the first thing you notice with each of your senses? You may even want to journal what you observe. Make it a daily practice.

The next step is to be aware that you deserve pleasure.

Long ago I gave up the idea of ‘guilty pleasure’, knowing that what I experience guilt-free benefits me far more and serves as an example to others. Recently I heard the song “What’s So Bad (About Feeling Good)?” by singer-songwriter Ben Lee, and the chorus shares, “No guilt. All pleasure.” Love it! It’s my new theme song.

It’s also important to recognize that we experience pleasure from three perspectives. The first is in anticipation. Think about something on your horizon that really excites you. Feel that adrenaline, those butterflies in the stomach, that “yes!” resonating through you. Imagine the experience as if it is occurring in this very moment. Breathe into it. Then move to the second perspective, which is the experience itself. Be totally present in it, keeping those lovely senses alive to it all.

For example, if in the presence of a lover, refrain from thinking about the laundry, the bills to be paid, and the lawn that needs mowing while that person’s body is wrapped and enraptured with yours. Lastly, we experience pleasure in memory. All it takes to evoke the feelings is to mindfully recall them; like magic, our bodies’ innumerable talented receptors and cells help us facilitate the experience of pleasure over and over again.

Attune your body to the key of ‘O’ as you live an orgasmic life. Orgasm is far more than a physiological response to sexual stimulation. Experiment with walking through your day in that state.

What turns you on? It could be dancing, wearing clothing that floats over your body, allowing massaging hands to caress your skin, watching the sun dapple through newly green leaves on a gorgeous early spring day, smelling the aroma of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies wafting from the kitchen followed by the sweetness of the chocolate melting on your tongue, or listening to the voice of a beloved whispering in your ear. Those are some of my favorite delights from my ever-expanding list. I am sighing as I call them in.”

10 years ago, I would have been uncomfortable sharing those thoughts.

Not that I was prude, mind you, but rather, I was concerned about what the ‘propriety police’ would have thought about me. Would people be shocked?  For many years, I worked in a setting in which it would have felt risky to align myself with people whose lifestyles were more radical sexually than my own.

I have friends who I joked ‘play way deeper in the pool than I do,’ until a lover-friend commented a few years ago that I shouldn’t kid myself and think that being more sexually wild or adventurous made them any deeper swimmers than I was. He then tapped my heart and commented that “You play deep here.” I am grateful for that observation and treasure him all the more for it.

Even so, on the job, I was the one to whom other clinicians would refer their patients to talk about subjects that were uncomfortable for them or were out of their realm of knowledge. Being a sex educator made it professionally acceptable to talk about intimacy on the emotional and physical level. I’m teaching more classes lately that touch on those subjects, daring people to go deeper, as I am willing to do so, with heart trembling, but knowing this is part of my purpose and path in this lifetime.

Earlier in the year, I had some renovations done in my house and one of the rooms was my bedroom. A bookshelf contains many of my tomes on the subject; some clinical, some just plain juicy and fun. As I was moving furniture for the painters to come in, it occurred to me that I had better pack and hoist those page turners myself, lest they raise their eyebrows and ‘heaven forbid!’ get the ‘wrong impression of me.’

I’m learning that the more transparent, genuine and emotionally buck nekkid I am willing to be, the deeper the connection with the people in my life, and the juicier this 50-something-wildwoman-zen-goddess-mama-faerie-bitch gets to live her wondrous life.