Spring/Summer 2013 ATM Schedule

Awareness Through Movement classes will remain on break until the week of 4/30, when the new spring/summer schedule will begin.  Classes will be Tuesday mornings at 9:00 and Thursday evenings at 6:00 p.m.  New schedule, old prices: $100 for ten classes or $15 to drop in–no one turned away for shortage of funds.  If you want to come and learn and are short on dollars, call, email or talk to Dr. Lisa in person to work something out.

Turning Up the Heat on Trauma Transformation

As many of you already know, I’ve recently returned from a month-long journey to Peru and Costa Rica.  My travels have already brought many blessings, including greater clarity to and amplified enthusiasm for my work here.

The Discipline of Pleasure is an integral approach to transforming trauma into creative power.  My fascination with trauma and healing began with my own experience, with my stubborn, passionate desire to experience a wholeness I had never known and yet somehow sensed was my birthright.  But decades of working intimately with others of diverse ages and histories has shown me that the wounds that once seemed so personal are quite common.  As I continue to expand my understanding of trauma from the individual personal through the familial to the collective, I recognize that there is a very real sense in which almost all of us in the U.S. are survivors of trauma.[1]

Since the culture of the global West/North has spread like a virulent virus for the past several hundred years, and especially as its transmission has been accelerated by technologies of mass communication, the trauma long so pervasive here has become increasingly prevalent in other cultures as well.  We know that trauma passes down—and indeed tends to intensify—from generation to generation, so transforming our trauma into creative potency is critical to the regeneration of life on this planet.    Human life, certainly, but not only human life: because our species has amassed such power to affect the life of all other species here, transforming our trauma may be the greatest gift we can offer to all our relations.

Trauma affects every dimension of our being—physical, emotional, spiritual—so radical transformation calls for an array of tools.  Thus, the Discipline of Pleasure tool box is a large and diverse one.  It contains tools from the fields I have studied in academic contexts over the past twenty five years: chiropractic, massage, Feldenkrais, nutrition, herbs.  It also contains tools from the fields I explore in the course of my own healing: somatic and “talk” psychotherapies, meditation, yoga asana, sound healing, dance, and spiritual technologies rooted in Ifa and other indigenous traditions.  There are as-yet-unnamed tools that, as far as I know, I’ve invented or synthesized.  The creative spirit of necessity calls forth new tools all the time.

Western science increasingly contributes to the Discipline of Pleasure toolkit, as there has been an explosion of scientific attention to trauma in the U.S. and other parts of the “developed” world in the past couple of decades.   Many factors are combining to bring this sustained attention to trauma from the scientific, medical and public health communities.  Some of these include the increasing visibility of veterans’ suffering from the traumatic effects of war and adults who were sexually and physically abused as children, the growing prevalence and devastating social and economic impacts of “dis-seases” like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), which bear some striking resemblances to post-traumatic syndromes, and the growing recognition that traumatic stress is implicated in the development of many, if not most, of the chronic diseases which are not only our most common killers but also sap us, individually and collectively, of much joy in living.

The view of the human being emerging from the interdisciplinary scientific exploration of trauma dovetails nicely with what I have already learned through study and personal and clinical experience.  For example, contemporary trauma literature comes to much the same conclusion that Feldenkrais came to sixty five years ago: the peculiarities of human neurological development make us fantastic learners, for “better” and for “worse.”   We are vulnerable to trauma as no other species is, especially during infancy and early childhood.  Recent scientific explorations affirm what grandmother wisdom has always known: the degree to which parents have digested their own trauma is a powerful predictor of their children’s ability to self-regulate and form stable, nurturing attachments.  Even when parents are not maltreating or abusive, their children faithfully pick up and mirror their unresolved trauma.[2]  At the same time, we are profoundly resilient.  No matter how badly we have been wounded, we retain both the desire and the capacity for positive change as long as we are alive.

Learning is innately and deeply pleasurable for humans, and we are strongly motivated by pleasure.  Individually and as a species, we are possessed by a passion for deepening complexity, greater integration, and finer self-regulation that is almost impossible to eradicate.  Even when it seems that passion has long since burned to ashes, it can and does rekindle unexpectedly.

The scientific exploration of trauma is birthing a plethora of exciting new psychotherapeutic and neurobehavioral approaches to healing.   Unfortunately, the scientific literature on trauma embodies a typical Western myopia: it utterly fails to reflect the reality that other traditions have wisdom to contribute.  From indigenous practices to Chinese medicine to modern disciplines such as the Feldenkrais Method, skillful healers around the world already possess powerful and time-tested tools for transforming trauma. Our collective ability to transform trauma into creative power could be radically enhanced by greater integration between the knowledge emerging from the scientific paradigm and the wisdom long developed within other healing traditions.   To facilitate this integration is one of the key aims of this next chapter of my life..

To this end, I will be writing a book on the Discipline of Pleasure’s integral approach to transforming trauma.  I aim to finish a first draft of the book by this time next year.  Meeting this ambitious goal is the next step on my personal path of transforming trauma into creative power.  Stay tuned here, for much of the book will likely debut as blog posts.  I look forward to continuing to share this journey with you.

Love Yoga More–with Rudolph Steiner?

“We are…faced with a great inner transformation in nature.  The natural gifts, the naturally inherited knowledge, traditional medicines, and so on that have been passed down from ancient times are all losing their value.  We need to acquire new knowledge in order to enter into all the interrelationships of these things.  Humanity has only two choices: either to start once again, in every field of endeavor, to learn from the whole of nature, from the relationships within the cosmos, or to allow both nature and human life to degenerate and die off.  There is no other choice.  Today, no less than in ancient times, we are in need of knowledge that can really enter into the workings of nature.”

–Rudolph Steiner, 1924

I have always been inspired by the great Renaissance man Rudolph Steiner.  When I found this quote on the inside of a biodynamic planting calendar earlier this week, I was struck by the resonance between Steiner’s words and what I feel in my own work—on myself and with clients—these days.

In my observation, it’s not so much that the old medicines and tools don’t work anymore as that they are not sufficient to meet the challenges we face these days.  Necessary, but not sufficient.  For as the Mayan calendar makes vividly clear, this is a new time, with opportunities and difficulties that our species has not faced before.

This morning as I was doing my asana practice, I was reflecting on Steiner’s words in the context of the class series I’m about to begin teaching, where I will share the fruits of the cross-pollination between asana and Feldenkrais that has utterly transformed my body and life over the past several years.

Like almost all of us in the modern and postmodern West, Feldenkrais himself was a mutt, a specialized hybrid: secular Jew, scientist, martial arts master.  His work was informed by yoga, as well as the work of his predecessors in the Western lineage of somatic education: F.M. Alexander, Elsa Gindler, and many others.

While our access to an unprecedented diversity of teachings and practices from around the world continually exposes us postmoderns to the danger of becoming mere “spiritual consumers,” strolling through a packed spiritual supermarket selecting only what offers us superficial, immediate pleasure or nourishment, it also offers us an opportunity to become experimental sites for the development of new medicines, new tools, and new modes of intimacy with all aspects of nature.

If we remember Steiner’s words, if we feel the urgency of the Earth’s quest to, regenerate Hirself, if we take seriously the role that humans must play in this process we can be inspired to bring great discipline and heart to our practice while delighting in the wild creativity of this moment in which we are living.

I am blessed to share this dance with you.  I hope to see you at Solar Hill tomorrow, Thursday 1/10, at 7:15 p.m., for a free taste of this fresh way of entering into the workings of nature.

Schedule Change for Intro to Love Yoga More!

Due to a Comcast snafu, the fabulous Scott Willis of Solar Hill Yoga and I have changed the date for the FREE introductory class for my Love Yoga More series.

The introductory class will take place on Thursday, January 10, 2013, from 7:15-8:30 p.m. instead of Thursday, January 3.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope to see you there!

Postpartum Blues? Not Hardly.

After Solstice came and went and we hadn’t been drowned by mile-high tsunamis or drowned in earth suddenly turned the consistency of molasses by pole shifts or even forced to live without internet or electricity—

After Solstice came and went without the Star Families making themselves known to everyone on Earth or God/ddess descending and instantaneously putting everything we’ve screwed up to rights—

After Solstice came and went without everyday reality rearranging itself in any particular startling fashion—

my stepdaughter Maria, 28, asked us elders if we were disappointed.

No.  My answer is no, hallelujah!

Not hallelujah because disappointment is so terrible I’m glad not to feel it.

Not hallelujah because I dislike disappointment so much I didn’t dare to imagine that something really totally wonderful, something beyond my wildest dreams and imaginings, could happen here on Earth, in an instant.

I did dare to imagine, along with untold millions of others all over the planet.  We’ve been imagining a long, long time.  Our ancestors even longer.

Hallelujah because at last I feel, smell, taste, hear and even see our dreams coming true, after all this time.  Right on time.

Hallelujah, I don’t believe something radical and wonderful happened in the days and weeks surrounding the rare galactic alignment we experienced here at 6:21 a.m. on December 21.  I know it has happened, and is going on.

Picking up momentum.  Growing so fast inside, while appearing to simply sleep a lot.

I know this because I’ve been trained to be a sensitive instrument for registering subtle changes in the Earth of the body.  I know this because I know the Earthbody cannot lie and is not impressed by shiny new ideas someone hatched a minute or so ago.

I know this because I feel changes in my body, in the way I move in/as this Earth, changes unprecedented in twenty years of disciplined, daily practice.

I know this because I sense the same kind of deep changes in the bodies and lives of my kin, my tribe, changes unprecedented in them in the decades I’ve know them.

I know this because I feel it in the bodies, the hearts, the eyes of the kids

I feel us evolving at an incredibly rapid pace.  I feel the medicines for what ails us being carried by children already making YouTube videos.  Alright, so some of them are only five, but still.

Yeah, in some ways, at some times the new world feels pretty quiet.  You can’t even quite tell ze’s there.  People who just had a baby look pretty much the same on the outside (excepting the addition of darker circles under the eyes and a few good vomit stains on just about every article of clothing), but they know they are forever transformed.  This new world is an infant.  And we are both the babe and the mother.

No, the new world did not leap fully formed from the foam or from Zeus’ forehead.  The new world was born the old fashioned way, the Earthy way.   Pushed into the world through daunting pain and tremendous labor.  Born to parents who don’t feel ready, who feel scared.

No, I’m not disappointed.  I’m a new grandma to a baby world.  I’m honored.  I’m thrilled!  I’m not even scared, because I’m the grandma and looking at the generation just below me, the ones who are really going to parent this new world through the first stages of its infancy, I feel joyful.  I feel confident that they’ve got it, y’all.   I’m happy to do my share of the diapers, though.

Hey y’all, there’s an infant in the house!  Infant in the house doesn’t mean everyone gets to lay back and take it easy cause God’s got it.  Infant in the house means everyone’s going to work hard, work beyond where they think their limits are, out of love for that baby.  Infant in the house means everyone gets to find out how much more we are than we think.

Infant in the house—and we are called to be both infant and good parent at the same time.

As the infant, we are so tender, so sensitive, so full of feeling.  So full of wonder.  So open.  So easily hurt.  Learning so fast, so fast, so fast.

As parents, we know this infant needs us to attune to hir, or ze will die.   To be close when ze needs closeness, to move back when ze feels overwhelmed.  Attuned enough to know the difference, in our bodies, instinctually.  Moved by love.  Never knowing enough, always learning.  So fast, so fast, so fast.

I’m flabbergasted at how much more loving and real so many of my everyday interactions—including my interactions with myself–are rapidly becoming.  Have you noticed?

Voices inside have been trained to say, “Oh, so what?  That won’t change the rapacious behaviors of corporations bent on destroying all life for their psychopathic pleasure!”

I say, “How do you know what a groundswell of skillful lovingkindness, a sudden leap forward in our ability to love well, can or can’t change?”

Other voices arise to say, “Yeah, well, we don’t have any time to learn all these great new skills—the planet is burning up, the oceans are dying, the topsoil is blowing away, and by the way, have you noticed what’s happening with clean fresh water?”

I say, “Yes, I know.  I’ve been watching these developments for decades.  I really know how bad it is.  I’ve wept, I’ve raged, I’ve protested, and I expect to go on doing all those things.   Do you know for certain that this period of planetary chaos is NOT the immensely complex living system of Earth moving toward a still greater level of complexity?  Do you know for certain that this seeming disaster is not the prelude to a level of organization, a level of consciousness that will have little trouble responding skillfully to challenges that were beyond the limits of the older, less complex system?  Do you know for certain the role that human consciousness plays in Earth’s evolution?”

We don’t know.  I know I see beautiful changes in my family, the families around me and in my geographically extended clan, beautiful changes in the human family’s heart.

I know, I know in the body that does not lie, that when we feel the deep pleasure of these new/old ways of being together, we will keep moving toward them.  Because true pleasure is irresistible, these new/old ways will continue to spread.

More and more of us will feel better and better, even in circumstances that used to lay us low.  We’re seeing it already.

Infant in the house!  Hey y’all, we’re gonna be short on sleep and long on effort for a bit here.  Hey y’all!  We all get to be in the field of wide-open infant heart, wide-open infant mind, beginner’s mind.  The place where miracles happen, the place where simply being is miraculous.

We’ll be working hard with more skill, more fun, and better results.  I can see it already.  That’s good enough for me.

Learner’s Prayer to Lila

Learner’s Prayer to Lila

Beloved Oh So Good,

Thank you for making a being

for whom learning

is so much fun

for whom continual evolution

is such deep pleasure.

Thank you for making a being

so fantastically adaptable

to assist the Earth

in Hir evolution.

Thank you for making a being

who learns by playing

who plays by learning.

Thank you for making a being

who learns through ease

who learns through difficulty

who learns through pain

who learns through pleasure

until, at last

in the beginning

even in the middle,

the Solstice, when

the Sun

seems

to stand still

All beings

know themselves

as your

play.

Namaste

Ase Ase Ase

Love Yoga More! The Breathing Class, January 19-20 2013

We’ll begin promptly on Saturday morning at 10 with a game to get us moving while learning each others’ names and having fun!

By 10:30, we’ll be sitting in a circle, ready to share thoughts and experiences with regard to breathing.  I’ll be highlighting the differences and similarities between Feldenkrais’ understanding of breathing and learning and yogic approaches to the breath.

By 11:00, we’ll be ready to begin our first Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lesson.  During the lesson, I’ll be asking everyone to identify a place that the breath moves easily and pleasurably, and a place where the breath feels absent, diminished or unpleasant.  We will continue to reference and explore these areas throughout the weekend.

The first ATM lesson will last between 45 and 55 minutes, and then we’ll break.  Breaks between ATMs are opportunities for individuals to rest with and integrate their experience of the lessons.  I encourage people to remain quiet during such intervals while of course attending to biological needs!

We’ll do another ATM lesson and then break for lunch for an hour at about 1:00.

Reconvening at 2:00, we’ll do some work in pairs, sinking into the practice of attuned touch and noticing how attuned touch affects our ability to integrate new possibilities in regard to breathing, moving, feeling, and thinking.

From 2:30 until 3:00 we’ll do another ATM lesson.

I encourage all participants to make space to remain quiet for at least 10-15 minutes after class ends.  It is wise to avoid vigorous and habitual physical practice for the rest of the evening.   Spending time journaling, drawing, meditating or otherwise reflecting in the evening between classes will facilitate integration and promote freshness for Sunday’s adventures.

Sunday we’ll start promptly at 2:00 p.m.  We’ll begin with talking: this is a moment to share questions and experiences from the day before.   It is also a time to address specific challenges in personal practice or teaching related to the breath.

From this process, each person will generate her own “homework,” choosing tools with which to experiment and a disciplined process of experimentation to continue after the class ends.

From 3:30 until 5 we will do another ATM lesson.  We will break it into two parts with a rest in between.  This lesson will present more challenges than the previous ones, and will also point to the connection between our work with the breath and the work we’ll pick up in the next class on twisting, February 8-9 2013.

Love Yoga More! With The Discipline of Pleasure

After almost thirteen years of practicing asana and assisting countless yogi/inis with their practice, I’m ready to experiment with more systematic ways to bring the gifts of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education to yoga students and teachers.  I’m also excited to integrate Feldenkrais’ brilliant insights about human learning with new developments in the neurosciences and the fruits of my long journey with chiropractic, meditation, and trauma healing.

This winter/spring I’m offering a six-class series, one weekend per month (Saturdays 10-3 and Sundays 2-5).  Each weekend we will focus on a single type of movement.  We’ll use Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons to provoke deeper somatic understanding of the habits that interfere with our receptivity to the medicine of forward bends, backward bends, twists, inversions.

Participants will have space to explore their individual passions and aversions with regard to particular asanas as well to experiment with alternatives to their habitual reactions.  Deeper understanding of why we are prone to certain types of injuries in particular types of movement will emerge from the process, as will tools for minimizing the risk of injury and tools for transforming injury into greater wisdom and empowerment.

Rather than go on trying to describe the work generally, in my next post I’ll describe what we’ll be doing in the first class.   It will focus on breathing, and will take place on January 18 and 19.

There will also be a FREE 90-minute introductory class at Solar Hill Yoga on Thursday, January 4 Thursday, January 10th from 7:15-8:30 p.m.  Like asana, The Discipline of Pleasure is primarily experiential, so the best way to see how they could mesh for you is to come and have a taste.

For more details on logistics like cost and location, please see Equilibrium Vermont‘s Facebook page.  The great folks at Equilibrium are handling registration for individual classes or the series as well.  If you have deeper questions about the match between you and this work, please contact me directly.

During this series, The Discipline of Pleasure website will have a private forum where class participants will be able to share experience and draw on group intelligence between sessions.  I will be recording the Awareness Through Movement lessons we do during class, and participants will have access to mp3s of them at no extra cost.  I will also be available for ongoing support via phone, email, or private consultation.

Yes, This Post Is About Sex

If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it!

Adventures with Lelo, stardate 12/26/2012

When I was young, my mother often said, “Why do we have to call brave, bold behavior ‘ballsy?’  I think we should call it ‘eggsy’.”  And for years, we did.

So this is an eggsy story about a sexy little egg, a sweet toy known as the Lelo.  And a bunch of other stuff as well.

Question: Why does it still take eggs for us to write honestly about our sexual experience?

As soon as I put that sleek pink vibrating in egg inside me—

a little more than the two hours minimum required to charge the battery—a little more than two hours after my beloved husband presented it to me in a sleek mostly white, just a little bit of black. shiny shopping bag in the middle of our family Christmas Eve party, yes, right there by the tree—

as soon as I put that sleek vibrating egg inside me, I was enchanted by its myriad possibilities.

Not only possibilities for pleasurable partner play, but also possibilities for solo adventures in healing profound fleshy habits.

Habits born from my personal history: sexual abuse, sexual jealousy, ostracism for being “too sexual” as a teen.

Habits arising from our collective history: embodied memory, bone deep, flesh deep

of the ways women have been still are,

every day, every moment

punished abused mutilated

raped and killed

for the crime of being

female and sexual.

Habits inherited, only partly digested from previous generations: life on earth is suffering/it’s not o.k. to enjoy yourself/too much/around here.  Pleasure’s a rare commodity, let’s not even talk about ecstasy.

Habits of channeling libidinous energy into everything and everything except sexual expression: study, work, writing, dance, song.  Good habits are the hardest to change,

Good habits branded in my flesh with fear are not good enough anymore.

A habit of not being fully present in my genitals except when having sex and sometimes not even then.

Ogun that I am, given a new tool I wanted to get right to work/play (hereafter referred to as plurk) with its potentials.  This morning

I slid the egg inside me, set it on a low steady buzz and did a bunch of mundane prayers: hung laundry on the rack, cleaned my office, checked phone messages and email.

Observing what it was like to do these prayers, into which I have always poured a lot of my love juices while reminded that I have this very sensitive feeling organ called a cunt—or, as she is known in these parts, Madame Pussy:

while my attention was focused on these tasks, the sensation  from the egg did not generate arousal.

Yes, Madam Pussy got wet, wet enough

that the deep squat to lift the large wicker basket full of wet towels and sheets caused the egg to slowly slither into my underpants

not aroused in the sense of desiring and moving toward more intense, genitally focused pleasure.

The completely consensual and enforced attention to my cunt, to my deep insides kept me smiling, breathing a bit deeper and taking all these “chores” a bit more slowly than usual.

Certain movements made the vibrations almost undetectable.  Others brought them strongly to the foreground.  What what what relationships

among the pelvic floor and sacral plexus and the muscles and bones of the hip joints, legs, feet, pelvis and spine?

Then it was time to shower and dress for a long afternoon of a different kind of plurking.

Having observed the strength of my “no” to sexual expression of the sensation of pleasure in my pelvis, the strength of my will refusing to allow me to be distracted from my intention, I wondered how freely could I shift into a “yes”when the moment opened?  How wholehearted and wholebodied could I be in sexual expression given just a sliver of time

for a more overtly sexual dance?

I showered with the egg inside, allowing the breath to deepen, to come down to meet and mingle with the vibrations in my cunt. Taking in the sweet pleasures of hot water and pure soap with lavendar on my skin, my fingers in my hair.  Scratchy towel. Thick cocoa butter lotion soothing

heels calves thighs buttocks belly back breasts arms throat face.

Upstairs, I lay on the jewel-toned quilt my now sister-in-law made for my husband and mewhen we first came together.  We’d been together less than three months when at the first Thanksgiving she said, “I make a quild whenever one of us finds their partner and settles down.”  Three months, and she already knew.

Who says grandmas can’t see quick, move quick?

I lay on my back next to the gray striped cat and

went straight for my clit, stroking in the most familiar, easy way while continuing to bring my breath to meet the sensations the egg elicited inside

tilting the Bluetooth remote control toward the vertical

upping the ante

allowing hips, thighs, buttocks to thrust in rhythm

amplifying the pleasure: yes

now now now

is the time to let pleasure bloom

suddenly, fully

like flowers after the first warm days

of spring.

My sisterfriend, my husband’s first wife sat in her chair on the first floor, just below me in a house known for its absolute lack of sound privacy, very much needing to stay focused on her work which was not feeling much like plurk this morning

moving the remote toward the vertical

upping the ante

wondering

if she could feel the resultant hum

smiling to remember making love in boarding school, my girlfriend and I gently covering each other’s mouths with hands when our breathing became gusty.

Coming quickly—a strong, sure outward flow followed by movement inward, wave and undertow.

Who says a quickie can’t satisfy?

Who says daily bread is boring

or less than holy?

Moving on, I heard a voice say “Congratulations!  Your ‘no’ is very well-developed. You can trust it.  Now you’re safe

to say yes more often, more ways

now you’re safe to say

what you really

want

Without a true no, there is no true yes. Without a true yes, there is no no.

A lot of Tantric practices inherited from previous generations have a strong focus on enhancing our ability to say “no”: to cumming, to making cumming the goal of lovemaking, driving toward the future, missing the present

seeing our sexuality as something “personal,” something that belongs to us, a possession—

something to keep under control

at all times

like your luggage in the airport.

Mastery of the tools of “no” is an essential component of what my friend Isaiah calls “Walking Eros.” http://wakingeros.blogspot.com/2012/12/winter-solstice-2012-what-does-it-mean.htmlh

Mastery of the tools of “yes” is an equally essential and for some of us much less habitual practice.

Mastery of the tools of “yes” requires equally devoted and diligent practice but with some different tools.

Always the breath, always the breath, always the breath and

being able to move hips pelvis spine belly throat eyes breath in purposeful, powerful, exquisite responsiveness to waves of libido flooding the animal body

focus and drive not given up but given into martial artist service to the great Desire, to seeding what It will in the vessel of our love.

How strong is the seed?  How strong is the vessel?  How strong the new life that may be born from our love?

As strong as our thighs, as strong as our spines.

How adaptable is the seed?  Will it survive a drought, a flood, a harsh winter?  How resilient the vessel?  Will it smash the first time we drop it?

As flexible as our ribs, as springy as our feet walking.

While the people of the North are rich in technology, most of us are poor in appropriate technologies of “yes.”

We are the inheritors of generations of the most wanton and sustained neglect and abuse of the animal body/Earth. We are the children of generations who have been able to survive and reproduce despite being weak, stiff, uncoordinated, off-balance and out of tune

and we have all paid the price for this “luxury,” acquired through the rape of the Earth and the enslavement of ourselves and each other.

We know it is time for that to end.

We know lovemaking is a powerful way to bring something new into the world.

Now we need tools that help us re-member how to move in powerful surrender with the Earthanimal.

Stay tuned to find out how The Discipline of Pleasure can help.

Intro to the Discipline of Pleasure

We have been trained to be suspicious of pleasure, especially deep bodily pleasure.

 We have been trained to overindulge in false and shallow pleasures.  We consume ourselves out of our terrible hunger for true satisfaction.

 The discipline of pleasure is an antidote to these personal, cultural, and ecological poisons.

The discipline of pleasure is a process of learning how to learn.  Learning to discern where true pleasure lies, and how to move skillfully with it.

The Discipline of Pleasure is for everyone

As we become more familiar with this process, we become able to experience deeper pleasure in all aspects of our lives.

Nourished by true pleasure, our habits of overindulgence in false pleasures naturally lose their compulsive power.

Pleasure is an embodied experience.  The Discipline of Pleasure thus focuses on tuning the instrument of the human body to discern, trust and receive deeper pleasure.

This is as pragmatic as learning how to feel the easiest way to rise from a chair or sit at a computer.  As pragmatic as learning how to feel comfortable while gardening, washing dishes or playing the violin.

This is as cosmic as physically metabolizing inherited personal and collective habits so that the buck stops with you.  Transforming ancestral karma in the bones and flesh so that we change the way we walk on this Earth forever.

The Discipline of Pleasure is a practice of embodying our hearts’ deepest desire.

 The Disciple of Pleasure is a skillful lover of life.