In a room of 100 people, Joe can guide them through 45 minutes to an hour and a half of sadness or anger with full engagement. But when he says “now experience pleasure,” half the room dissociates within five minutes. We have more resistance to pleasure than to pain.
Practicing pleasure is therefore a uniquely effective emotional fluidity exercise. When you give yourself permission to feel pleasure, whatever you’ve been suppressing rises to block it — and then you can process that and return to the pleasure. It’s a self-revealing practice.
Joe also connects emotional fluidity to the body: allowing emotions increases capacity for physical pleasure, changes sexual experience, and transforms the relationship to addictive substances. When he fully allowed his anger to become fluid, marijuana became completely uninteresting. The substance was managing what the emotional fluidity now handled naturally.
“You have full permission to feel pleasure and you’re like ‘ah’ — so that’s another thing.”
Related Concepts
- Emotional fluidity is feeling all emotions without resistance
- Pleasure signals safety
- Presence is pleasure
- Pleasure is available in every emotion when fully felt
- Emotional development follows predictable stages