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by Lawrence Lanoff
Website: http://www.DigitalRomanceInc.com
Email: support@digitalromanceinc.com
"I love spending time with my friends and family. The simplest things in
life give me the most pleasure: cooking and eating a good meal, enjoying
my friends. Fucking."
The Tantra Rebel
What this has translated into is that you cannot trust following what feels
natural and what feels good. As a result, you keep yourself in check, by
staying vigilantly suspicious of your most basic human desires.
These beliefs about pleasure get programmed in various ways:
The mixed messages you have gotten about pleasure and sexuality in our
society are many. Its no wonder you have a hard time focusing on the
positive and embracing what feels good. You have been taught that
pleasurable things happen only in private and should remain a secret part
of your life.
Therefore, you get to remain ignorant and in the dark about your authentic
sexual desires and those of others. Its not your fault that you are confused
and unsure about how to please a woman! Society has kept us all in the
dark!
You have been taught all kinds of fundamental things about life. How to
brush your teeth, tie your shoes, eat with utensils, be social, but no one has
ever taught you such a basic function of life as how to own your own
sexuality and how to satisfy women.
That is why I feel so passionately about getting this information out to
YOU. And then have you take it to your lovers and friends. Someone has
to be a pioneer and remove the stigma and mystery about feeling good in
your own body! (Check out my YouTube video on the opposite of
pleasure.)
Both of the clients I described to you earlier, because of what they learned
as kids, grew up with major restrictions on how good they were allowed to
feel in their bodies.
They had what I like to call low-pleasure tolerance. Or even fear of
pleasure.
Some examples of low-pleasure tolerance are: neglecting your emotional
needs, worrying excessively, pushing yourself too hard, working mostly to
please others, being stingy with granting yourself timeout for recreational
activities like going out to a movie or meeting a friend for coffee, or
feeling uneasy when things are going too well, waiting for impending
doom to descend.
It can also manifest as withholding love from oneself as well as from
others.
Because of your inherent suspicion of pleasure it can make it hard to
sustain good feelings, causing you to resist them instead.
Take a minute to write down three messages you received about pleasure
growing up from one of your primary caregivers your mom, your dad, a
babysitter, a close relative, a pastor or an influential religious person in
your life. This is an uncomfortable exercise so I want you to do this right
now!
Family Message #1
Family Message #2
Family Message #3
live our lives focusing on making decisions that will help us avoid
punishment rather than focusing on making decisions based on what
would bring us the most joy or pleasure.
You have grown to fear intensely pleasurable experiences because you
believe they will cause you to lose restraint and become completely out of
control, thereby, making the big mistakes that you are trying so hard to
avoid. This is why a lot of sex happens when people are drunk. Its only
through alcohol that people are able to silence this low-pleasure tolerance
voice in their head and do what they know is natural and feels good.
I have worked with clients who, when they first start opening themselves
up to the expansiveness of being OK with their authentic sexuality and
feeling unapologetically good in their bodies, they can only tolerate it for a
small amount of time before they are flooded with a feeling of dread. They
have become so used to the familiar nagging pain of resisting feeling good
about their sexual energy that this unfamiliar experience of expanding
sexual energy seems threatening and dangerous.
This may seem contradictory, but one of the methods I use to teach people
to expand pleasure is to stop focusing on orgasming. One of the ways we
avoid experiencing pleasure with our partner is by being goal-oriented
during sex instead of experience-oriented.
Take, for instance, two scuba divers. Well call them Joe and Lisa.
Neither has ever seen an octopus on a dive, but both are obsessed with
seeing one of these beautiful, intelligent, and shy creatures. They both go
on a dive where they believe they will have a good chance of spotting one.
Joe decides that if he doesnt see an octopus the whole dive will have been
a complete waste of time, whereas Lisa decides to enjoy herself no matter
what. As they float along, Lisa takes in the coral reef, scorpion fish,
marble rays, and the colorful arrays of neon blue, green, and pink fish
swimming by. Whereas, Joe notices none of these things. His head just
darts about looking for that elusive octopus, completely oblivious to
anything else.
After the dive ends, all Joe does is complain about not seeing an octopus,
whereas, Lisa still had a wonderful time and is elated by all the beauty that
lives under the sea. Joe could have chosen to focus on the beauty right
before his eyes, but he chose to be distracted by what he hoped the future
held for him a glimpse of an octopus.
The same is true for sex. When you become fixated on the finish line of
orgasm youre thinking into the future and missing out on the pleasure of
the present moment. Whether or not you achieve the finish line, the
orgasm, then colors your whole experience. If I find myself getting too
concerned about my girlfriend orgasming during sex, I always try to bring
myself back to what it is I am enjoying in the present moment. The feel of
her body against mine, the way she smells, the sounds she is making,
feeling the deep love and emotional connection we share, etc. When I do
this everything just seems to flow, and orgasm actually becomes more
easily accessible, because everyone is relaxed and focusing on the
experience of pleasure rather than any specific outcome.
I dont want you to have to wait for a near death experience to suddenly
wake up and recognize all the things you have to be grateful for in life or
grow old and look back and wish you had let yourself be happier. Many
people come up with imaginary troubles to worry about, believing that
by identifying every worst-case scenario, they are somehow preventing
bad things from happening.
They spend too much energy trying to avoid making mistakes instead of
focusing on what feels good.
Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you werent so
worried about screwing things up and you took more chances
instead?
Who would you be if you spent the same amount of mental energy
replaying the good things that happened and instead replaying the
bad things?
What would life be like if you took the time to imagine every
wonderful detail and savored your success instead of torturing
yourself with your failures?
I am challenging you to make savoring the positive things in life a
conscious decision. This may feel difficult and unnatural at first, but as
you strengthen this muscle, it gets easier and will eventually not even take
conscious effort. You will begin defaulting to savoring the positive and
even finding the positives in what seem like completely negative
situations.
Here are a few specific exercises that can help you savor positive
experiences:
1. Take time to immerse yourself in the pleasure of ordinary activities. I
do this a lot when I am driving. Instead of focusing on the agony of being
stuck in traffic, I use that time to appreciate and savor the natural beauty
all around me: the mountains in the distance, the blue sky, the tall palm
trees blowing in the wind, etc. I guarantee that no matter where you live
there is something you can find in your surroundings that will give you an
opportunity to savor natures beauty, even if it is simply a daisy growing
up from a crack in the sidewalk. You can do this when you are walking,
too.
One day I stopped at a rest stop to take a pee break during a long drive and
was on my way to rush back to my car and continue on to my destination
when I decided to take a detour and walk up to a vista point not far away.
As I was walking, I decided to expand my sensory experience by
heightening my senses using conscious awareness. I took a deep breath in
and the fragrance of eucalyptus trees mixed with a salty sea breeze hit my
nostrils. I had been completely oblivious to their scent until that moment. I
was a little shocked at the fact that I hadnt noticed it before.
Next, I turned my attention to feeling the breeze on my skin. How it gently
caressed my face and blew down the back of my jacket making me shiver
a little. I walked slowly, drinking in all of my surroundings as I made my
way to the vista point railing. The sun was setting, the seagulls were flying
overhead, and the sound of the waves crashing was reverberating in my
ears. I took a moment to notice the flood of gratitude and appreciation for
the natural beauty of the state of California, the lifestyle that afforded me
the ability to travel and be my own boss, and the family that I would be
visiting in San Diego. Life really is beautiful.
Another way you can do this exercise is to take time to relish taking a
shower. Taking a shower tends to be the time where we do a lot of
strategizing about the day, list-making, etc. Next time you are showering,
see if you can expand your sensory experience by using your conscious
awareness of pleasure. Really take in the feeling of the hot water against
your skin, the smell of shampoo and soap, the sound of the water pouring
from the shower head. Let your mind and body relax as you use this as an
opportunity to relish being in the moment and capitalizing on the pleasure
of what you are experiencing. Later, linger over your morning coffee or
pastry instead of just chugging or devouring it. Eating can provide
excellent opportunities to really take pleasure in the moment.
Think about some of the ordinary things you blow through during a day
and which ones you would like to capitalize on by expanding your
conscious awareness of pleasure during these typically mundane activities.
Be creative and think of what would be fun for you to practice the exercise
with.
2. All pleasurable experiences can be heightened by the presence of
another person. Make it a point to reminisce with those you love about
pleasurable times you have spent with them. Whether it was a great
camping trip, gorgeous hike, incredible dinner, or night spent making love,
reminiscing about these events has been shown to increase joy,
contentment, pride, and amusement for those sharing the memories.
3. Make a list of your top 5 most pleasurable life events. Now choose
one and see how much detail you can remember about that event. Really
immerse yourself in the memory, trying to recall the weather that day, any
smells you can remember, what you were wearing; get as detailed as you
possibly can. Notice as you do this what happens in your body. You may
notice your breath slowing or speeding up depending on whether the
memory involved high adrenaline, your blood pressure may drop, you may
feel joy beginning to surge in your chest, or a profound sense of peace and
well-being. These will become your go-to memories. You can reuse them
anytime you need to to switch your state of mind to a more relaxed,
positive state. One of my favorite memories I use to do this is a very
simple one: the memory of being hugged by someone who I know really
loves me. This memory works every time to slow my heart rate and put
me in a relaxed, peaceful mood.
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