Five Sensous Pleasures

We were running for the train with only 4 minutes to get there. Bags bumping and breathing heavily. We had attended a meetup meeting - on how to run my Shizzle meetup group that I had just created. We were sitting on St Stephen's Green in the centre of Dublin with a dozen people we had never met, talking and laughing in the heat of the evening sunshine, surrounded by other people soaking up the sun, trees, grass, bird song and peace. It was fun listening to the goals of others, creating a community.

We whizzed passed a little Italian restaurant, the little table and chairs out in the waning evening sun and we had the same idea. A glass of wine and a pizza to share. Take time to be with one another in a peaceful place amidst the rush. Another train will come along.

We were born for pleasure and we have an internal compass that is attracted to health and pleasure. Pleasure reinforces what is healthy, so creating it, seeking it and loving it is beneficial to our health. Pleasure builds your sense of self especially when you have been working hard attending to the needs of pleasure of others. There is pleasure in delaying gratification and some of us even find pleasure in things that are initially painful or maybe gross (like that first cigarette, beer or coffee). Pleasure can be shared with others or enjoyed by ourselves.

Strangely though, we are taught to feel guilty about pleasure. Hedonism is view where pleasure is pursued for the self, it is the only good and where that term 'guilty pleasures' came from. It has been shown that guilt can heighten the experience of pleasure, but this makes the enjoyment of the experience short lived.

Eudamonism is where pleasure is linked with purpose - putting greater meaning in your life, allowing a flourishing for the highest good. Giving our pleasure purpose and meaning gives deeper and greater satisfaction in our life. Somehow we have also figured out that work and pleasure are distinctly different spheres. Would it not be healthier to consider that with work being so central to our lives it is surely important to our health that we take pleasure in our work? Imagine a eudamonic job!!

Sensual Pleasure

As I was looking through pictures for 'sensual' I came across all manner of pictures bordering on X-rated. It seems that pleasure using the senses has been hijacked by 50 Shades of Anything erotic.

But pleasure comes through our senses. All five of them. How do you feel about receiving pleasure from your senses? Do you give yourself permission to receive? Are there some senses that you are better at receiving than others? Maybe some parts of your body that are able to receive these pleasurable sensations?

1. Start With Touch: We have C-Tactile fibers in our skin that respond to pleasant slow touch. They just love a certain pressure, speed and temperature. Think of massage or stroking. We can even do this ourselves - it's a neurological 'thing'! How do your clothes and shoes feel on your skin and body? The weight of a lovely coat. The feel of the wind on your face as you bump along the cycle track as you smoothly change gears on your bike!

2. Learn Aromas: Wines, perfumes, oils of aromatherapy. A fragrant rose, or grandma's shortbread. Eat your food with your eyes closed and smell it.

3. Tickle Your Tastebuds: A degustation taste course or the experiences of subtle tastes during a meal. Maybe a sensation or experience of food. Remember the first time that crackling and popping candy went onto the market? Remember that feeling on your tongue. Different flavours of fruit or popcorn! Close your eyes and let the taste be the sense.

4. Discerning Sounds: Try different tempos or styles of music. Let Spotify suggest some new music for you. Live music is always wonderful. Listen to the tones and timbre of people's voices. The innocence of little children as they speak to you. A dog bark - notice how different barks can mean different things to a dog!

5. Sensing Nature: Be naked in a river or the ocean, roll around in snow, sand, the grass. Notice the warmth, cold, itchy, scratchy. Feel the new leaves on a tree, or the velvety petals of a rose. How much pressure do you need from a thorn, to feel the pain? Make cloud shapes as you lie back in the grass and look at the colours and shapes in the sky. Watch the sun sink into the ocean as the warmth drops a bit too. Just notice.

When our senses are combined the pleasure can be even greater. Paying attention to our senses will help them become sharper. By making finer distinctions of our senses, our sensory acuity increases. This increases thinking skills. Just like a baby learns and thinks through it's senses, we can keep learning, increase our sharpness. Everywhere we go, sensual pleasure is all around and can be called upon anytime. Do we get too serious about pleasure? Should it be relegated to special time and places? Could it a pleasurable challenge to find a sensory pleasure, anytime, anywhere?

And this makes us happy!

When we experience pleasure, we add to our happiness. To be happy we need not compare with others as the experience is subjective. What makes somebody happy may not quite do it for you! Yet what may make you sublimely happy may miss the mark for them. And to be happy, you have to associate, be IN it. No use knowing about it but never experiencing the moment. Happiness is also something to create moment by moment. You can't chase it as it is not a 'thing', therefore something that cannot be caught and possessed. Happiness is also those small daily pleasures that add up to a whole. Not one single great big event. It is a process of 'happinessing'.

Happiness is not only the peaks, but the whole mountain range.

So are you getting a good dose of day-to-day pleasure? What do you do frequently that you really enjoy? What can you do more of? What have you done in the past that was really enjoyable? Anything from hobbies, travel, relationships, sex, cooking, pets, games and random acts of kindness. Maybe open air activity - walking after dinner, watching the sunset, listening to birds sing and smelling the cut grass. Perhaps solving problems, the first mouthful of a delicious sandwich, a great book.

Don't forget laughter. Laughing is a wonderful pleasure. Here is the scientific definition of a laugh: 'A psychophysiologic reflex, a successive, rhythmic, spasmodic, expiration with open glottis and vibration of the vocal chords, often accompanied by a baring of the teeth and facial grimace.' Doesn't this just make you laugh anyway! Apart from showing everybody your joy, laughing boosts the immune system and raises the pain threshold. There is evidence too that humour and laughter decrease the levels of epinephrin and cortisol, the stress hormones. Seriously, laugh people! You can be at work and still laugh your way through the day - it is a sign of positivity. Laugh with your pet. Laugh with the kids. Laugh anytime you can. (I was once asked by a 6 year old why I laughed so much!)

'You grow up on the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.' Ethel Barrymore.

And then, at the end of the day what is more pleasurable than sinking into your bed, fresh sheets and fluffy pillow with the prospect of sleep just around the corner. Yes, sleep is a pleasurable activity. And as you drift off to sleep run through your mind the pleasures you have experienced during the day. What did you see that was particularly nice. What did you hear that made you smile or laugh, maybe a good joke that you shared. What did you feel that was just lovely. What did you smell that was divine? And what did you taste that was delicious. What did you experience that may have involved more than one of your senses? Remember those pleasures and allow your brain to search more out tomorrow. But as you drift off to sleep give your brain and body the pleasure of time to rest and repair, create immunity and be in the rhythm of our life. William Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth: Sleep...balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course; chief nourisher in life's feast.

What is stopping your bringing your senses alive? Habits? Attitudes? Programming? Fear or guilt of pleasure? Not even thought about it? Start to get adventurous - give yourself permission to explore and play in a curious way. Let go and relax into it. Learn something new. Use all of your five senses to open doors of perception. Who knows? You may find things unknown. Embrace it. Relish it. Celebrate it.

Our little detour into the Italian pizzeria was delightful. The pizza was particularly good, the wine delicious and the company of my Irish fellow was wonderful. A laugh with the waiter and feeling that evening sun on our faces. I am really enjoying the long days that Ireland gets to experience. To be in daylight at 10pm is a real treat! And to be experiencing this wonderful summer is such a pleasure.