Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler explore pleasure as a practice of noticing sensations moving in the body rather than chasing external gratification. Joe shares his journey of discovering pleasure through Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing about dishwashing, realizing that pleasure is available in every moment — from breathing to walking to mundane tasks. This realization brought a profound sense of safety and reduced his baseline anxiety, though he also noticed how quickly he forgot and stopped practicing.
The conversation goes deeper into why pleasure is so intense and scary — it dissolves the boundaries of the self, creating an expansive experience that feels like falling until you get used to it. They discuss how pleasure isn’t separate from other emotions; anger, grief, and fear all contain pleasure when fully felt without resistance. The key distinction is between genuine pleasure (noticing sensations moving) and “guilty pleasure” (pleasure mixed with shame), and how shame is often used unconsciously to prevent feeling how good life actually is.
Joe and Brett also explore how suppressing any emotion diminishes pleasure, how the things we won’t allow ourselves to feel become fixations, and why the fear that pleasure will lead to destructive behavior is backwards — it’s the suppression of pleasure that drives compulsive behavior. They close with practical guidance: pleasure works as a discovery, not a goal, and becomes counterproductive when turned into a “should.”
Key Concepts
- Pleasure is noticing sensations moving in the body
- Pleasure signals safety
- Pleasure dissolves the boundary of self
- Shame blocks feeling how good life is
- Suppressing pleasure creates fixation
- Pleasure is available in every emotion
- Guilty pleasure is pleasure mixed with shame
Key Quotes
“The experience of pleasure is incredibly expansive. It’s so big that it’s hard to exist inside of it… your solid boundary starts dissolving.”
“Pleasure is noticing the sensations in your body moving. Noticing the movement of the sensations in your body. And it’s no more complicated than that.”
“There’s no moment when sensations aren’t moving through your body, so there’s no moment you can’t notice them, and therefore there’s no moment where pleasure isn’t available.”
“If you really feel your life with the pleasure of just breathing and the pleasure of just being in your body… then the guilty pleasures become okay.”
“We do those things because we disallow them, because they become kinky, because they become shameful, and we’re addicted to that cycle.”
“All the shame was doing was preventing him from feeling how good life was.”
Transcript
the experience of pleasure is incredibly expansive it’s so big that it’s hard to exist inside of it I know that’s such a weird way to say it but the felt sense that’s exactly what’s happening your solid boundary starts dissolving today we’re going to talk about something that a lot of us spend a lot of Our Lives chasing and also in many subtle ways throughout our lives we we push it away cuz it’s really intense and and that is pleasure I’m looking forward to this one this is good yeah yeah what what makes pleasure interesting to talk about I remember early on in my journey I was reading titn Han and titn Han was talking about doing the dishes and how pleasurable doing the dishes was and I hated doing the dishes I like it was like the you know everybody has that one chore you don’t want to do I have maybe several chores I don’t want to do with one of them uh one of them was doing the dishes and he described this thing as like oh it’s warm water it’s soapy it’s like this really enjoyable experience and so I went and did the dishes that way and I was like oh wow this is incredibly pleasurable if I allow it to be and then I kind of realized well that that’s all of life is incredibly pleasurable if I allow it to be and so I started experimenting with pleasure a lot and and I have Contin to learn a tremendous amount about pleasure through the years like even last year NE next year I assume I’m going to learn a lot about it but I remember just experimenting saying how much pleasure can I extract from life and the amazing thing about it was that it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be right I thought it was going to be like having sex all the time or something right like I would be chasing pleasure like I’d be doing heroin or something like that but if you’re really chasing pleasure it can’t be something that you get when you do X Y and Z because you can’t do X Y and Z all the time if you’re really chasing pleasure it has to be able to be extracted from any given moment any moment there it’s like oh where’s the pleasure in this moment and so that’s what ended up happening it was just like oh how do I take pleasure in this breath how do I take pleasure in doing the dishes how do I take pleasure in this walk and when I did this for I did this for several weeks and when I did this what happened was I just started feeling safer like that kind of constant tracking that constant anxiety that funny feeling in the back of my head that something’s wrong just started dissipating and you know there’s all sorts of studies that show that you know we learn faster if we’re not anxious that we you know I know for a fact that like if people are anxiously attached that they’re pushing people away and if you’re not anxious and you’re just like open to it connection and attachment like more of it comes a better quality of it comes so there’s all sorts of benefits that come with with having a nervous system that feels very much in tuned and and not anxious for the next attack and that really comes from pleasure because pleasure is really if you’re if you’re relaxed it’s an incredibly pleasurable State we’ve all had that moment being on the beach sitting back sunshiny in that Soft Wind is going through you’re like ah and you just feel that like gentle pleasure in life and that’s something that tells us oh H everything is good and so if you cultivate that pleasure like Life Starts becoming more and more everything is good yeah and some something that’s really interesting to me about what you just said is this might even be you know sort of a definition of pleasure in in this in some sense which is that you went from a place of thinking that it was something you had to get to something that you would notice in any moment so there was something less active and more receptive in it or something less graspy or like outcome based like towards feeling a certain way and more towards recognizing what’s there and I’m curious to what extent it’s actually that uh that change that is that like creates the safety in the system and increases as a result the experience of pleasure yeah I I I I can’t tell you what like what’s the chicken and what’s the egg it’s a great question I think the but what I can say is the definition for pleasure that I that I like the most was loan’s pleasure which I’m going to Loosely say here which was noticing the sensations in your body moving noticing the movement of the sensations in your body and it and that’s what it is like it is just not like everybody right now who’s listening to this podcast can feel the sensations in your body maybe it’s like the way your ears are hearing this sound that’s coming through the podcast or the way your breath is moving in and out of your nose or just you know the feelings in in your internal world having movement inside the body having movement that’s that’s pleasure and and it’s like it’s no more complicated than that it’s just that and so I don’t know if it’s you know the noticing of that that creates the safety or if it’s the actual experience of pleasure that creates the safety but all I know is that there’s just a tremendous amount of safety and and trust and faith like all those things seem to come with the experience of pleasure yeah what what I really love about that is you know the the loan’s definition of you know pleasure being the the noticing of the sensations moving in the body there’s not a veilance or a like positive or negative associated with any of those Sensations and so there’s something that like meditators might be familiar with as like awareness actual feeling and equinity but not equinity in it doesn’t matter way but equinity and they like oh this is enjoyable the whatever is happening for right now can feel good and I don’t need to go out there and do anything to make that happen it just can be here with me yeah that’s right that’s right there’s there it is not managing the sensations of your body it’s pleasure it’s noticing the sensations of your body that creates pleasure and that’s and it’s it’s like this incredibly simple thing and I remember like after like noticing the for the first time um when titn Han had you know written somewhere about doing the dishes and how enjoyable doing the dishes how much pleasure you could have in doing the dishes and I did it I remember thinking whoa whoa wait wait whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa I this all the time I can have this all the time I can have this in my breath I can have this in the way that I move I can have pleasure all the time and that one blew me away especially because shortly thereafter I forgot all about it and it was like a month later I’m like wait a second what what the fuck just happened like a month ago I realized that I could be in pleasure all the time and now it’s a month later and I did it like once like what what what was that you know and that was an amazing thing to because when you really grock it you’re like oh this is available all the time and so now there’s no need to chase it it’s just always here and yet somehow you know that what happened in my journey was somehow I was like why am I avoiding this because it’s the only option it’s the only option you you’re avoiding it once you realize you can have it anytime it’s an avoidance yeah so what what makes people avoid it and and I’m I’m noticing that for you there was a a Time prior to this recognition that you didn’t even you weren’t aware that there was pleasure available on some level maybe you were but you’re consciously you weren’t and I’m curious of two things one how does that happen to us is that socially conditioned is that family conditioned or is it just something we might eventually develop a deeper capacity for than we had previously and then the second question is once you had the recognition what what makes the avoidance come back what what would make it be avoided what has people avoid feeling pleasure yeah I think pleasure a lot like Joy it’s if you’re not feeling all this if you have a lot of stuck emotions then then that’s where your situation goes like it you know your body is mind State personhood is trying to get back to equilibrium and if you have a whole bunch of stuck emotions then it’s very hard for the body to do anything besides like try to process and get through those emotions and if you’re not feeling the emotions if you’re not allowing those emotions to move then you’re like kind trapped in these cycles of constant self-abuse or shame or guilt or whatever judgment all the time and and so I think that’s that’s part of it it’s why we don’t experience the pleasure right and it’s also somewhat why we fall back because what I’ve noticed is the more that I have emotional fluidity the more the pleasure just seems to be the natural state of things there’s just more enjoyment and pleasure joy that whole thing and so I think that’s part of it also it’s really intense you know yesterday we were doing uh the people in the year program I did a a rapid coaching with some folks and there was multiple people that you know they’re they’re like long enough in the program now where they’re starting to feel like this tremendous joy and it’s scary and there’s nobody I know who started hitting that like joy and pleasure peace they’re they are distinct but where they don’t get scared you know expansive it’s like and and when it’s so big that it’s hard to exist inside of it that’s I I I know that’s such a weird way to say it but it the felt sense that’s exactly what’s happening like if you allow pleasure in in this very deep way it is so expansive it’s like your perimeter your who you are like your solid boundary starts dissolving beyond the reach of the government in the mind of the self right exactly and it just and so that’s very scary because it’s like well where am I going and how big is this and yeah somebody said yesterday while they were working through this they were saying it feels like I’m falling and I said oh you know it never ends what and I was like what do you call falling that never ends and she was like flying being held like she had all these different words that would and but but what happens is it just feels like falling until you you know until you get used to it and so that’s it’s actually part of the reason why embracing intensity is so important for this work it’s not the intensity of only the intensity of let’s say pain or anger or sadness it’s the intensity of pleasure which I find to be far more intense than than the uh you know the intensity of Joy the intensity of Peace can be far more intense than the intensity of Rage or and you lose control in it you you know you you lose lose yourself in it to some degree and that’s very scary for people I mean ask any person who’s had like trouble having an orgasm you know like sexual orgasm like you we’ve all met someone who’s like I can’t do it unless everything is just right and I feel like I lose control etc etc like this is it’s a very similar thing that happens except for the orgasm is just life itself yeah and something I noticed here is that a a common misconception or maybe just a a conception no one’s definitions wrong is like pleasure being something distinct from sadness anger other emotions and in in this this definition we’ve been using it is actually all of those emotions being noticed experienced and allowed to move and not managed and so I think one one of the things that you’re pointing to here is that pleasure when allowed will also if you have other stuck emotions other stuff that you haven’t been feeling that will come up with it because to be in the state of non-managed pleasure is to allow all that is there to move and you know this is why if we’re if we’re going to talk about an orgasm sometimes a really big orgasm will leave somebody feeling a lot of emotions they’ll be like screaming but suddenly there maybe a little anger in it or maybe like cry after so I it seems like the movement or the really rather the experience of pleasure involves the movement of whatever is there and with that can come a lot of what we don’t of of what we’re traditionally used to managing and so in managing that we’re managing away the pleasure that comes with it yeah agreed I think you know something like love does that a little bit more like if we really start loving ourselves that like that emotional fluidity comes a little bit more than pleasure but but it absolutely comes it act it absolutely allows the space for that to happen and absolutely man there is so much pleasure to be had in getting angry there’s so much pleasure to be had in in in being scared there’s so much pleasure to be had in being sad and and and grieving and and it really changes the way that like all those Sensations happen if you’re enjoying them and and and taking like deep pleasure in anger or sadness or fear there’s just a like oh wow this is amazing and it just changes everything in it so yeah I totally agree and I think it’s really important to note that pleasure there’s no moment when Sensations aren’t moving through your body so there’s no moment you don’t you can’t notice them and and therefore there’s no moment where pleasure isn’t available yeah that puts an interesting lens on some of the work that we do as well where you know an anger release or any kind of emotional release that we do it’s a lot of it designed so that you can have the experience without creating shame or guilt or self- judgment and maybe even noticing where that’s happening and seeing that it’s not necessary also that you get to experience the pleasure in the emotion the pleasure that’s always been available in it and as that as your system learns that then the emotions become more fluid yes that’s right that’s a that’s exactly how it works yeah um you know it’s funny though because when we when we’re doing the emotional releases we usually don’t say okay everybody take pleasure in the anger right but instead it seems like it works a little bit better it’s like get angry get really angry and then eventually they notice the pleasure in it like right now like as you’ve seen in Master Class there’s all these pictures of people after their anger released taking pictures of the way the world looks right and how they feel and like their smiles and their contentment after moving anger and it’s like if you see those pictures it’s like they all represent pleasure and but but it’s it’s interesting in the emotional releases what I find is that it’s important to just go all the way towards the emotional release without shame and then in that the pleasure is found rather than to say do the do the anger release with pleasure so it’s an interesting you know it’s it’s more of a discovery it works better if people use it as a discovery because what I notice is people say I need to do anger with pleasure their whole system gets confused and and then they like find ways to bow out of the anger yeah and I think that kind of uncovers just a common limiting belief in in that avoidance which is that this can’t be pleasurable or that can’t be pleasurable right and you know we’re going to have that belief until we until we collect enough evidence that that’s not the case yeah but that that points to where this pattern might come from where like where would we develop a belief that certain emotions that we feel can’t be pleasurable and that if we’re feeling it we need to feel shame or judge ourselves or you know not be seen protect ourselves from from it being seen yeah I mean that if if we’re punished as kids you know obviously if we’re punished for an emotion or rejected for an emotion or love is removed because we’re having an emotion that’s going to to to take away the pleasure of that experience and and the amazing thing I there are definitely things like I’m pretty confident if I was physically tortured I wouldn’t be able to take pleasure in it though I know there’s definitely people who take pleasure in BDSM or something so I know that there’s even some capacity there but what what as we’re talking about it one of the things I noticed is that I don’t want like pleasure to become a morality or like you know a lot of people when they listen to this they might take things into an extreme and say oh oh I I have to feel pleasure all the time or um really like you couldn’t take pleasure in X why nuclear bomb goes off there’s no pleasure in that um and so I would just say to anybody listening like let go of the extremes and just see how like deep the rabit Abit hole goes you know what I mean like just take some moments here and there and see oh can I find pleasure in this can I find pleasure in this by noticing the sensations moving I think I just note that because I think it’s really important that it doesn’t become like I am supposed to feel pleasure Because by the way that’ll Chase all the pleasure right out of the out of the situation uh that you’re in and as far as your question goes absolutely if we are told that we are bad for something and as kids we think we’re bad because love is removed we think we’re bad because we don’t get attention we think we’re bad because we get punished we get shamed there’s lots of things that make us think that we’re bad those are the places where pleasure is going to be hard to find in those areas in particular and enough of that pleasure is just going to be hard to find generally even though it’s happening always yeah one thing that I I noticed there is that it doesn’t have to be it can be but it doesn’t have to be that the pleasure itself is the thing that’s not allowed if anger is not allowed then pleasure is diminished then you still have that you still develop that the limiting belief well if anger is going to get me attacked if my anger’s not okay then I can’t feel that so there’s some Sensation that could be moving in my body that I could enjoy but I now decide I can’t and so pleasure is limited by other emotions being Lim limited so so a parent out here could be like well nobody would ever shame their kids for having pleasure though that does sometimes happen but that doesn’t even have to be the thing that’s happening for pleasure to be dimin diminished correct that’s yeah that’s a beautiful pointer and yes I mean obviously there are some parents who like any kind of sexual pleasure they’re going to they’re going to chastise or guilt the kid you know masturbation or whatever that’s all going to happen um but if you just think about like you’re having dinner with a seven-year-old and the seven-year-old just starts finding like a tremendous amount of pleasure in eating the food oh my God Mom this is so good oh oh my God these french fries they’re so oh oh oh the salt on these French Fri like you can just I I don’t know too many parents who wouldn’t start getting annoyed you know like like we’re at the Denny’s relax kid um I mean this this reminds me of just any you some meals with Tara exactly yeah I was about to say it so perfect example so we’re out we’re out with Tara um so my daughter and her boyfriend uh are going to meet us for dinner it’s like the first time and I order these bacon wrapped goat cheese dates or something I don’t like goat cheese uh the kids did not like these things and so they were sitting on the table and Tara arrived and she started eating them and she started doing that which is how Tera eats she’s like oh the oh these are and we’re in like a kind of fancy restaurant you know first meeting and like she’s like making like all this noise and the new boyfriend leans over to Esme and goes now I know why I can’t embarrass you right which is like natural for us to go oh that level of pleasure in public is embarrassing and so it is it is not something that like is like societally acceptable like you oddly like we we might even be more comfortable if we were walking down the side of the road and there’s a homeless person who’s yelling God damn it the government’s in my head as compared to like a homeless person like laying down ring in pleasure like like which one’s going to make us more uncomfortable or maybe even equally uncomfortable so it is an interesting thing just how how much pleasure can be and and I see it all the time like we do you know we’ll do angry releases and when we do um some of our live work it’ll be like okay here’s the anger release and then we’ll often do pleasure right after that and you’ll see people do anger for 45 50 minutes like and then we’re like okay pleasure and like well they’ll get into and five minutes later everybody has to be reminded like hey wait we’re still doing pleasure play wrot more pleasure like it’s like it’s a it’s actually harder for people to maintain the exist like feeling pleasure in their system yeah something that’s interesting about the the example you just gave of you know the the person on the street like with in anger or the one writhing in pleasure or terara your wife or the kid at the table somebody who’s just like in deep grief the the thought that might occur to somebody who’s uncomfortable with that scenario is wow this person’s out of control yeah that’s that’s what’s actually happening you’re actually allowing the food to fully hit you in instead of controlling the hit you’re letting life like that’s the an interesting way to think about pleasure is like pleasure is like letting life fully hit you it’s a very alive feeling it’s you know it’s like and and when you let it fully hit you like it it kind of there’s a sensation of it taking over but the interesting thing is it’s such a powerful tool if you like it changes you know we have a lot of people do gratitude practices and like you’re there now there’s like people on Twitter and all talking about how these gratitude practices are changing their lives and and how the way we do it is slightly differently than a lot of gratitude practices that it’s not just a head thing it’s a full body sport it’s a it’s a sematic experience it’s and part of the reason that it’s so powerful is because of the pleasure that happens in those moments and it and it’s also if you just do a pleasure exercise for 10 minutes a day it also really it can really change your experience really quickly which is the amazing thing um the the important part if you’re doing that exercise however is that like pleasure can’t become a goal or something you’re supposed to do or have to do it’s it’s like it it’s more of a like a noticing or a receiving or a getting to do because it’s just a lot less pleasurable if pleasurable at all if it becomes a have to or a should or a trying or anything like that yeah and that that’s something you see and there’s there’s a lot of practices you know there’s like Tantra for example there’s a way that Tantra can be something people experience as like um allowing the pleasure and there’s also some people some ways that people can get on that path and they’re like oh pleasure is the goal this is the thing this is the this is what I will now conspicuously uh uh demonstrate to show my progress and so not to be not to call out any any Tantra people here CU that’s just an example and it can happen in our work too and does happen in artw work yeah yeah and even with any emotion you can have like a conspicuous oh you know what my anger’s okay I’m going to let my anger be okay but like kind of actually doing that to avoid really feeling something and so I’m curious about like the the pitfalls here if someone were to take this this message and be like oh yeah you know what my pleasure is my pleasure is lovely my pleasure is wonderful what are what are some of the ways that that might end up getting steered in a direction of avoidance uh uh subtly yeah yeah so if it becomes something that you start reaching for that’s pretty much the easiest way like if it’s something that you’re like oh yeah I get to feel pleasure now great as compared to okay I’m reaching for I’m defining Myself by I’m like if there’s any kind of hunger in getting the pleasure then that usually is a clear sign that it’s become either avoidant or or you’re pushing the pleasure away which is kind of avoidance also kind of pushes the pleasure away like you might get like the bodily sensation of pleasure a little bit but you’re not getting the that felt sense of safety that comes with pleasure because it has to be chased right so that it’s not safe if you have to go find it right safety is like oh that this is the way it is that that’s what creates the safety not like oh if I once I do this then I’ll get you know that that is that is the anxiety and so I think that’s the biggest that’s the biggest tell is that is just if you’re chasing it um and the other place that I would just be a little bit I’d be really a little bit careful is if it’s if like there’s a way that you can do pleasure where it’s it’s like it detracts from the other emotional experiences instead of amplifies the other emotional experiences and that’s another way that you can see that there’s some avoidance going on or that pleasure is not being used as a way to feel more alive it’s being used as a way to avoid the full aliveness of your full emotional experience as an example it’s like if someone’s like getting angry at their mom and they’re like okay I’m going to go to pleasure to to like not have the anger and rather than oh I’m feeling anger at my mom oh this is a pleasurable experience this is oh cool like yeah look at that like yeah I have a boundary yeah oh I’m going to draw this boundary and it’s going to like send these like shock waves of fear that my mom might abandon me let’s see how that feels that could be really pleasurable like then that’s a different deal yeah just just following along with that emotional Journey you just carved out or you just laid out I my system went from the like angry at my mom and not all like something’s bad about it and I’m like leaving myself and in her which leads more likely to be an attack to oh yeah my I get to have a boundary and then like I I experiened that as coming back into my body and from that place is less about the other person and more about what I need Which is far less likely to result in me taking a defensive action that’s received as attack yeah I’ve never thought about it that way that’s yeah it’s that’s exactly right yeah when we talk about like asking for your wants you can do it in a way that’s going to be more likely to be attacked and if you know drawing a boundary there’s a way of doing it that’s more likely to be attacked and there’s even getting scared there’s a way that you’re more likely going to get attacked and I and it it’s an interesting thing right if you’re actually having pleasure in it then you’re in your body and then you’re not trying to manage the result of it and therefore less likely to be attacked yeah I think there’s a distinction there between the pleasure and like some kind of ego gratification because you know somebody could be like sadistically enjoying being angry and that’s different from the definition of the noticing of Sensations moving in the body I have a a relative who every time they shop and buy something expensive they get this kind of like look at what I bought and it looks like pleasure but it’s really shame like you like if you feel their system they’ve cut off the way their gut feels and so it’s like it is like the pleasure of like eating something that you’re not supposed to eat that tastes really good but you know it’s going to make you feel like shit in a like in 10 20 30 40 50 minutes it’s it’s like what I think what would be called like a guilty pleasure right it’s like that’s not the pleasure I’m talking talking about like the and that’s the interesting thing if you really feel your life with the pleasure of just breathing and the pleasure of just being in your body the pleasure of just you know doing the dishes then the guilty pleasures become okay yeah great I bought this thing but I could do the dishes yeah you know yeah I can have the lamb or I could just like breathe deeply and feel better than most people who have a Lamborghini so that’s an interesting so actually what happens if you’re feeling the real pleasure of just aliveness then these guilty pleasures become right and the guilty pleasure is like it’s like having the pleasure of something but it’s also like putting shame next to the pleasure and I think that generally that’s that happens naturally and I don’t as we I would like to actually unpack this and think about this for a minute because you know there’s a tremendous amount of people who get taught that pleasure is shameful so you they’re shame put on sex they’re shame put on like shot buying something good for yourself there like all these ways in which like we get shamed for having pleasure and I and my experience of this and I haven’t thought this through entirely um but my experience of this is that that pleasure is feeling you feel like this very deep aliveness it’s very expansive it’s very you lose yourself and that scares people and so they need to like put shame in with it and so it’s not unlike we have this story that I’ve told many times about if there’s a kid crying on a plane I can stand up look at everybody on the plane I can tell you who wasn’t allowed to cry as a kid right because crying overwhelmed their parents and so they were shamed in the crying well pleasure is you know far more a loss of self than crying and so I think a lot of people go o and then they throw the shame in and and interestingly yesterday I was working with somebody on exactly this issue it was they were using shame as a way to to not see that their life was great and and that story is wonderful It’s a Wonderful story so this person was telling me how ashamed they were of the fact that they had this golden opportunity job this wonderful job a head of product for this company and they got involved in a woman and they kind of let the job slide and they got fired and they’re like this is you know just like they were just so ashamed and like beating thems up for this thing and I was talking to them I was like okay so like let me just understand so after you got fired you started your own app that’s now making $150,000 a week why are you not stoked that you got fired how is that not the best choice that you ever made like how is it that you’re beating yourself up for the thing that allows you to be independent and financially like what the right and like and and in that noticing and oh so that all the Shan was doing was preventing him from feeling how good life was CU as soon as he saw that he started laughing and smiling and it like that and it just shows that the shame was all designed to stop that emotional experience from happening of feeling alive and and the pleasure of what had happened and that I just by the way that is with every somebody be like there’s no way that I would ever feel everybody does everybody beats themelves up for something that if they like draw the line out of into the future has made something great in their life happen today right every single person is like ah I shouldn’t have done this thing three years ago I feel shame for the thing three years ago but if they look at their life right now they can say oh that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for that but they still feel ashamed of the thing from three years ago it’s an amazing thing yeah something that’s been kind of bubbling up for me now has been how it seems that the pleasures that we won’t allow ourselves become the things that we actually become fixated on correct and like for example you were talking about the lamb Lamborghini earlier and you know you might talk about like seeing seeing a a beautiful member of the opposite sex or same sex whatever you’re attracted to who is not your partner and you have a commitment and agreements and you’re like I’m not allowed to be attracted to that person or you can be like oh yeah I can absolutely just let myself speed run that entire path of what would it be like if I followed that pleasure what would be like if I got the Lamborghini and I’m like okay cool I got the Lamborghini I could have actually gotten this pleasure from the dishes and if the pleasure is available either way then it just Stills down to what do I actually want and and the the long-termism in that can be can be present with me like what do I really deeply want not just what’s going to gratify a thing that I haven’t been allowing myself to even feel in a simulated way or that I wouldn’t allow myself and so some part of me is always fixated on going there like that’s why a lot I think a lot of times people take pleasure or what kind of what we’ve been talking about like ooh kind of pleasure in any kind of boundary breaking uh experience for themselves any any anywhere they wouldn’t let themselves go they’re kind of fixated on and that’s that’s an interesting phenomenon for us to have to be drawn towards what we won’t allow ourselves almost as though there’s just this intelligence in us that wants us to expand until we would allow ourselves whatever is best for us and then only then could we know that we’re on a path that is actually right for us and stay connected with ourselves in it yeah so I think this is the thing that scares people about pleasure I’ve had this with um a couple clients where what happens is they’re like I’m scared to allow myself to feel pleasure because then I am going to like cheat on my husband then I am going to like buy the car that I want I’ve always wanted but that would be financially irresponsible for me to buy then I’m going to then I’m going like I’m going to be this evil thing if I actually allow myself to feel pleasure because then I’m going to you know go after all these pleasurable things and a that’s not how it works it’s exactly we do those things because we disallow them because we’re like because they become kinky because they become shameful because and we’re addicted to that cycle but also it doesn’t actually require you to do the things meaning just it’s just like so you feel sexually aroused towards somebody who’s not your partner and they’re walking down the street you feel sexually aroused for them most of us will just stop that sexual arousal oh no I’m not allowed to feel that and they’ll stop it you can just feel it yeah look that I’m totally feeling it and and you’ll just notice like everybody can try this fully feel it don’t it’s it’s not a fantasize so it’s not you’re fantasizing over what’s going to happen next and I’m going to CH that’s a different thing but you’re just going to fully feel that sexual arousal in the moment and then like you’ll notice you’re not fixated on it anymore it just like comes and it goes it’s it’s literally when we feel that arousal and we cut it that the fixation starts happening like oh no I’m not allowed to and then that’s where we actually that’s where that behavior drives towards the thing that is destructive for us yeah we push the we push that desire or that uh that impulse down and then of course it’s going to Rebel yeah it’s going to start to squeak out in other ways exactly that’s okay well if I if I couldn’t have my pleasure there then later at night when I’m like going to bed or something and I’m tired and my dopamine is a little low then I’ll be attracted to porn or something right exactly that’s just another way of not getting what I want not feeling the pleasure like right I think that it’s a good thing just to say that that how many people really scared of pleasure for that reason it’s like I’m not allowed to you know the interesting thing is all you have to do as a kid is feel good and be punished for pleasure to start being really scary something about the human system what I’ve noticed is getting punished when you don’t feel good is just easier on the system than getting punished when you feel really good like having something really good taken from us is harder than right so if a kid feel feels bad about what they’ve done and you’re like yeah that was bad it’s useless granted it’s like it doesn’t help because then you’re like they’re already listening to how bad they feel but somehow or another they’re like ah yeah but we can all think back to our childhood at least most of us can think back to our childhood I’m like but I was good I was doing the right thing and I got punished and it’s like there’s a there’s like a there’s a sting to that that’s different there’s like a oh what the fuck and and and I and I think that that’s probably also part of the reason that we’re so scared of pleasure because the taking away of it is is so hard on our system it somehow stings more than than than getting punished for other stuff neuroscientifically we we experience the loss of something twice as much as we experience the like a gain uh I’m not sure if that’s quite the relevant piece here but just the fact that we experience a loss so deeply that like loss of pleasure can be a really big hit yeah and especially because pleasure is so high and a loss is so the other side of it like that contrast sticks in our minds yeah but then this interesting thing happens is as you start doing a a pleasure practice you’re like oh it’s available all the time like you can take it away from me for a couple minutes if you want like you know what I mean like it can be taken away for a couple minutes but there it is again I can have it and then and so there’s something you know not logical about it but there is something very human about it and I think that’s also probably part of the reason that you asked earlier what makes it that um we stop doing pleasure it’s because it hurts so much when we lost it and then I’m reminded of your story with with your daughter Esme where you know she was uh she and her boyfriend at the end of high school were breaking up and they knew they were going to go in different locations and different colleges and whatever and she’s just in this heartbreak and she’s like wow I just never knew it could feel so good so there is you know coming back to that that definition without positive or negative veilance of just the awareness and the noticing of the sensation moving in the body that even those experiences we have when pleasure is taken away can themselves be deeply pleasurable in a different way when we relax our constraints or beliefs on what pleasure is supposed to be yeah you can’t do it as a kid but you can definitely see that as an adult as a kid it’s just devastation but yeah exactly so I want to I want to leave listeners with any any kind of tips or tools or an experiment that they could run in their lives we have a a guided audio for how to just like experience pleasure just sitting around and um and so you can get that at view.life experiments and so that’s that’s the easiest way to do it and that’ll kind of you can walk walk through it three or four times and then after that you can use it anywhere anytime without the without actually having to listen to it because you get it you get this the system really quickly of how to take pleasure in just the most simple things um but it’s good to have that audio Guidance the first couple times because what usually happens is people go oh that feels really good okay now I’m off Tu so it’s good just to have like some other pleasure that I’m actually pushing away yeah exactly now I’m off to produce some pleasure that I’m actually pushing away that’s what lovely yeah um so it’s just good to have somebody you know have the audio to hold you in it for a while um yeah it was uh somebody in Master Class asked for it so we produced it for them and um and just something we can make available to everybody thank you Joe you’re welcome thank you Brett yeah thank you everybody for listening to the art of accomplishment if you want to hear more about how to welcome more pleasure into your life uh you can go check out that that experiment view.life/experiments and you can also join our newsletter or you can check out our courses at artofaccomplishment. if you enjoyed what you heard today please share it with a friend and remember to follow us and rate us in your podcast app the art of accomplishment was produced and hosted by myself Brett Kistler and Joe Hudson mon Kelly is our production coordinator and this episode was edited by on replay