play and pleasure as medicine
Hi pretty human Lately, it feels like many of us are carrying a WHOLE LOT MORE than usual. Even if nothing dramatic is happening directly in our personal lives, the wider world can often feel like it’s on fire. Tense. Unpredictable. Our nervous system feels it. With everything these men in power are doing and the ongoing devastation and instability in the Middle East, the collective stress load is HEAVY. Fear, rage, grief, uncertainty move through media, conversations, and the emotional climate around us. Many of us, especially helpers, activists, those living in war torn countries, and all the sensitive people, feel this weight somatically. Shoulders tighten. Breath shortens. Systems brace. Nervous systems are holding more than they were designed to carry alone and at speeds that we weren’t evolved to. This is exactly when taking care of ourselves and each other becomes essential, not optional. And this is also why play and pleasure are not trivial. They are a big fuck you to systems that benefit from us being exhausted, numb, disconnected, and easier to control. When we reconnect to our playfulness and pleasure, the brain, nervous system, muscles, fascia, and cells get the message ” right now it’s safe enough to feel, to experience, to be alive”. This is were we come out of survival mode and into more choice, agency, and embodied presence – this is how we interrupt that pattern. We become harder to silence, harder to make feel powerless, harder to polarize,, harder to keep small. Pleasure is activism. Feeling good in a world that wasn’t built for us to feel is radical. It is claiming that we are not meant to be numb but stay connected to ourselves, our bodies, our human hearts, our divine spark, and this mycelium web of connection with all of life. Play and pleasure when used with intention are therapeutic, not an escape from reality. They help us build capacity to be with reality. Pleasure, in particular, is a natural nervous system regulator—especially for female nervous systems. Oxytocin helps us experience being fully alive in the present moment though our senses, to be in stillness without collapse, find rest without overwhelm, and signal to our bodies that we are not alone: “I’m here. I’m present. You are safe enough to move.” Microdoses of pleasure are able to expand the window of capacity, letting the nervous system know it can tolerate activation, stillness, and presence simultaneously. Pleasure is not just sexual, it is any sensation that feels good. It’s a communication between mind and body, nervous system and brain, and it is essential for resilience and regeneration. This Saturday in this month’s Centered in Chaos, our virtual somatic movement ritual space, the invitation is to meet yourself exactly where you’re at, and then, if you want to, lean into play and pleasure. Not as a way to fix yourself or bypass what’s here, but as a radical act of moving in playful feel good ways to come home to your inner power of Self-authority, for both your own and collective wellbeing, together. When we have enough safety, support and space in play, the body experiences activation ( sympathetic nervous system stress charge) in a contained way. We can move and discharge stress energy without overstimulation or overwhelm. We learn we can feel intensity – the fast heartbeat, the fast breath, the muscle contraction, and still stay present and in our bodies. When we microdose pleasure in a contained way we learn we can be in stillness and feel pleasurable sensations without it overwhelming our system and collapsing. Because its only when we feel safe and supported enough to experience direct felt experience ( sensation) in the present moment can emotions and stress cycels complete. It’s like a wave, the erngy rises and eventually it will come down and complete naturally if we have capacity to stay with it – and unfortunately many of us do not YET have enough capacity from experienced trauma, from ongoing systemic violence, from living in this highly overstimulating and overwhelming fast paced post capitalistic and patriarchal world. Stress isn’t bad, it’s life force energy that arises to help us respond, act, protect and adat to life. It’s only problematic when it doesn’t complete and this is predominant in our cultures because so many of us have been conditioned to not trust our body, to disconnect form our sensations/emotions, to live in our heads, to override impulses and instincts, so that charge stays buzzing inside and often we dont even realise it because it feels so normal ( or we call it anxiety). The good news is: the stress cycel completes when we ALLOW the nervous system to do what it naturally wants to do: mobilize energy, express it, digest the experience/emotion, and come back to the mode of healing, growing, and regeneration. . Here’s another cool thing about being playful, it also helps us loosen cultural conditioning and the masks we earned to wear to be safe, to be loved, to belong and feel worthy. The good girl. The always-ready one. The one holding everything together. The one who learned to freeze, shrink, or stay quiet to stay safe. Through pleasure and curiosity, the body begins to slowly thaw and unfreeze. We reconnect to parts of us that we once had to hide, the parts that are spontaneous, expressive, wild, messy, angry, and our inner baddie =) play and pleasure were never luxuries. They were our birthright. But many of us were conditioned, shamed, or scared out of them. As little ones, we depended on others for survival. Connection meant safety. So we learned quickly what kept us loved, accepted, and protected. We adapted. We performed. We became “good.” And sometimes that meant abandoning parts of ourselves. That made sense then. It was intelligent. It was protective. AND we are not that small anymore. Today, there is more choice. More agency. More room to explore with who we are when we’re not only organizing…
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