Our meditation practice thrives, and we thrive in our lives, when nourish ourselves with pleasure.
Did you wince when you read that? Strangely, the idea that pleasure belongs in meditation, or that opening to more and more pleasure in life, can seem taboo. Welcome this taboo – explore it. Is it the voice your own life-loving nature that tells you life is not to be loved, enjoyed and pleasured with just because? Or something that over time you were led to believe, taught, and encoded. Over time, opening to up more to what your true nature loves, from small to large, becomes a healing practice. There is a plethora of clinical research showing that pleasure can literally wash stress out of the body and has a big role to play in shifting unwanted patterns. Deep down inside, you know what you love about life’s treasures. And to love what you love is your birthright. Start with something small: playing a song that awakens your senses and heightens your emotions, savouring some delicious bites of your favourite food, inhaling your favourite scent, floating in clear water, gazing at the night sky or the drifting clouds, feeling the touch of sunshine on your skin, or enjoying the sensuous inner massage of your own nourishing breath. Even for five minutes. Notice how you feel when you tune into the experience of what gives you as an individual, the feeling of being glad to be alive. Meditation expert and teacher Camille Maurine, author of Meditation Secrets For Women, decribes this as “dilating our senses to receive from life”. When we practice this way, we heighten our awareness and life is more vivid, our senses clearer and we experience the wonderful inner vitality we are all born to have.
