Through the healing process of my divorce, it became clear that I was deeply pleasure deprived. While I always had an active sex life my awareness of my own pleasure was offline. I had to learn to reconnect to pleasure so I could have the abundant, exciting, fun, and vibrant life I have today. I want to teach you what I learned so you can connect to your pleasure center. 

This post is about getting in touch with your sensual pleasure. Before we do, there's a difference between sexual and sensual pleasure. Sexual pleasure refers to the body’s physical response to sexual stimulation. In our society, it is often defined by orgasm. However, once you start exploring sensual pleasure you will notice other ways to experience sexual pleasure. Sensual pleasure refers to your body’s response to input from all your five senses. This includes how your body responds to sounds, sights, textures, smells, and tastes. 

Many people also experience a sixth sense referred to as intuition. You can also get pleasure from this sense if you are tuned in to it. With sensual pleasure, you are paying attention to and guiding your body towards enjoyment. You are saying “yes” to whatever feels good to you. Notice what you feel like in your body when you read that last sentence. 

Go back and read it again and write down in a journal what it feels like to consider pursuing your pleasure. You might have some negative thoughts and resistance coming up. I completely expect that because so many of us were told to put our pleasure aside. We learned to think of other people’s pleasure first before our own especially if we are from a marginalized group. 

Before you can start embracing the value of pleasure you need to challenge some assumptions that might get you stuck. Remember that we all come to our relationships with sensuality in our own way. None of us planned to be resistant or uncomfortable. Accept where you are and consider the possibility of being able to change it slowly. 

Now, answer the following questions in your journal: 

• What was your first experience of sensuality? This is not the same as sexuality.
• When did you feel your senses present and detecting things around you?  
• What did you desire before society told you to do something else?
• How did people in your environment respond to your desires from your five senses?

Take some time with these questions. Really examine your relationship to your own pleasure using the journal prompts above.

Once you have spent some time writing try these three steps this week to increase your sensations of sensuality:

• Eat a meal slowly and intentionally. Notice the sensations of eating. Notice the ways different textures feel in your mouth.
• Give yourself a hand massage. Focus first on what it feels like to receive the touch from your one hand and then focus on what your hand feels like to actually do the massage. Keep shifting back and forth between these two perspectives of touch.
• Remember those Coca Cola and Pepsi taste tests? Try this with smell. Choose three smells this week and take a whiff. Ask yourself which you like and why. 

With these exercises, you will be honing in on your sensuality and learning how to tune in to your desires. We need to know our desires to create the best living, loving, and working situations. Enjoy this adventure and let me know in the comments what you learned about yourself this week. 
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I can’t wait to hear.

How many times have you been told, “there is no point in talking to them about it because they won’t change?”

You may have chosen to distance yourself from friendships when you felt disappointed or hurt. Alternatively,  when you feel hurt, upset or angry at a friend you might have pushed feelings down and ignored them hoping they would go away. When you have a disagreement with a friend you don’t have to either disconnect or repress your feelings. You can express your feelings to them which often leads to even more connection. 

I know how hard it can be to tell a friend when something is bothering you. Recently one of my friends said something that rubbed me the wrong way. I noticed after we spent time together that I felt tight in my chest, my heart was racing and I was sweating. My emotions were running high because I was hurt by the interaction. While I was walking away from her I had a moment of clarity where I thought, “you have two choices, you can do what you have been taught and keep walking finding a way to push the feelings away and move on OR you can turn right around and tell her how you feel.” I took a deep breath, turned around and walked back towards her house. I decided to be brave in the moment and shared that our interaction had left me feeling awful and I needed to let her know. We spoke for a few minutes about the interaction and what had occurred. She was kind and thoughtful and we cleared the air.  I felt proud and walked the rest of the day with a bit of a spring in my step. Saying how I felt to a friend was a wonderful way to honor myself.

For many of my clients the hardest part of telling someone how their behavior impacts them is not knowing how to share without sounding cruel. For example, my client Rachel’s mother was a loving person who always wanted the best for her daughter, but she also worried a lot about her. When Rachel told her mother about a snag that came up with her divorce agreement her mother panicked. Rachel’s mom started asking her rapid fire questions about her lawyer, her preparation for the meeting, and the repercussions of the snag. While Rachel’s mother was trying to help, all Rachel felt was that she was being blamed. She told me she quickly got off the phone with her mother and hadn't not spoken to her since. Her mother tried to reach out a number of times over the past week but Rachel was avoiding her calls. 

I hear a variation of this in my office weekly. Rachel was hurt by her mother’s behavior, but was not sure how to communicate this without hurting her mother’s feelings. I explained to Rachel, as I do to all clients, that telling someone we are angry with them and need them to behave differently is hard. It is especially hard since we aren’t often taught how to do this.

​I taught Rachel what I teach all my clients, the “sandwich technique” for having difficult conversations with others. Here is how it works. First you start with an appreciation of the person (slice of bread). It is important that the appreciation is genuine. Do not make something up just to make the other person happy. Find something specific you appreciate them for.  For example, Rachel might say, “I appreciate how much you check in with me mom and how involved you are in the details of what is going on.”  

Next you say clearly what you need (the meat and veggies). In Rachel’s situation she said, “I feel overwhelmed when you ask me a lot of questions about a situation I have not yet figured out myself. I would prefer you ask me what  I need when I call you rather than assuming.” 

Lastly you add another appreciation (2nd slice of bread). In Rachel’s case she said, “I know and trust that you have my best interest at heart and want to help. I so appreciate you for that.” With this sandwich approach Rachel was able to tell her mom what was bothering her while staying connected within their relationship.

Rachel’s mom told her she was grateful that Rachel told her how she felt and would always prefer to know how to help rather than be ignored for a week. Rachel told me a few weeks later that her mother had been asking her what she needed more often and her overall frustration with her mother had decreased.

Like all new behaviors, telling our friends how we feel is a skill that will take time to perfect, but it is so worth it.

Dr. Elizabeth Cohen and Associates
CEO and Clinical Director
drelizabethcohen.com 

In the last two hours of childbirth you enter a phase called "transition." If you ask most mothers who have delivered naturally I think they would have a few other, less neutral, names for it. You can feel your body splitting open- the rupture, the loss of control, the fear that you might not make it out of this moment in one piece. The pain is so intense that you finally stop thinking, are totally consumed by feeling, and find yourself desperately grasping for the strength to harness that pain and turn it into power...

My son turned eleven this spring, sheltering at home, eyes wide to a world that is changing. He is a child of multiple ethnicities, and part of a family made up of many nations. Yet, here in the country of his birth he may find himself marginalized, denigrated, accused, or murdered simply because of how he looks. People frequently ask us "Is that your child?", "Is she your mother?" - because despite him being built by, of, and inside my body, our skin is not the same color.

The pain we are feeling right now in our families, in our communities, in our countries- let it not be for waste. Let the tears fall, let the anger burn, and let us affirm that the freedom to breathe is a basic human right, not a privilege. Let our pain become the power that gives us the strength to bring a new world into being- one that allows a boy to just be himself, no matter what he looks like.

A birth is always messy, and chaos is always necessary for creation...breathe and PUSH.

I had the great honor of doing my first podcast with Jennifer Sanfilippo, check it out: ​https://www.jenderator.com/podcast/coping-through-covid-a-conversation-with-life-and-career-coach-amy-bloustine/