November 16, 2022 • 24 mins
In this prelude episode, educator and author Dr. Emily Nagoski argues that pleasure is the bedrock of sexual wellbeing. Emily is joined by writer and organizer adrienne maree brown, who offers advice on how to reconnect with pleasure and make it a lifelong practice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I want you to think about your day so far.
You woke up and then what Maybe you took a
shower and paused for a moment to savor the sensation
of warm water on your shoulders. Maybe you bit into
(00:38):
a carrot and it was like you had never tasted
a carrot before, an astonishment of crunch and sweet and
earth and rain. Maybe you were writing in line somewhere
and a song came on that just happened to be
exactly the song that captured your current mood, and in
(00:59):
that moment you felt like the whole universe had your back.
This is pleasure, Oh my god, I mean so many
things are pleasurable, Honestly, just laying down with my boyfriend
in bed, listening to music I love asmr at the beach,
(01:22):
at the park, reading a book, just being in nature,
making ceramics or cooking, or painting my nails and doing
face masks, like pampering myself. What if every choice you
made about your sexuality was about following that feeling, that
(01:43):
feeling of yes. I'm Emmilinagaski. I've been a sex educator
for over twenty five years. I'm the author of two
best selling books. Come as you are and burnout, and
my purpose in life is to help people live with
confidence and joy in their bodies. And this is that
(02:08):
Come as you Are podcast where I answer your questions
about sex with science. Hi there, I am. I have
a question for you. I have a question regarding six
draws orgasm. How can I increase my spontaneous desire again?
(02:33):
So I'm just a little confused on that, and I
kind of point your advice. I would love some, hope.
I get questions every day from people all around the world,
and they're amazing, important questions that deserve great evidence based answers.
So that is what I'm going to be doing on
(02:56):
this podcast. Every episode, I'll answer your questions and bust
myths and misconceptions about sex. But before we even get
into talking about sex, we first need to talk about pleasure.
Whether you're having sex with yourself, with partners, or not
(03:16):
having any sex at all. Finding your genuine pleasure is
the bedrock of everything I'll be talking about on this show,
and it's relevant to everybody. In my quarter century as
a sex educator, everything I've learned can be summarized in
one statement. Pleasure is the measure Pleasure is the measure
(03:37):
of sexual well being. It's not about how much you
crave sex, how often you have it, or who you
do it with, or where or in what position, or
even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not
you like the sex you are having, whether it's genuinely
pleasurable to you. And you can only get to pleasure
(03:57):
if you know what pleasure feels like for you in
many different contexts, and if you practice accessing it. And
you may be saying, Emily, how am I supposed to
remember what pleasure feels like in this post row capitalist
(04:18):
healthscape where our democracy is failing and we're teetering on
the edge of climate crisis and totalitarianism. Good question. It's
a question I've been asking myself over the past few years,
no surprise, and to answer it, I've had to get
really specific about what pleasure is and how to practice it.
(04:38):
I've had to relearn my own pleasure pathways and reconnect
to pleasures small and large in my own life. To
help introduce the life changing exercise of pleasure, I've asked
for help from a pleasure activist, writer and organizer, Adrian
Marie Brown. Pleasure it's not something that just happens to
(04:59):
you in the same way, like no one's ever just
going to ride in on a white horse and scoop
you up and take you off to Loveland. You know,
pleasure is a practice. Adrian's written half a dozen books,
including this gorgeous m dream of a book called Pleasure Activism.
My copy is highlighted, written all over, and filled with
(05:22):
page markers. It is a practical and poetic guide to
accessing greater pleasure. You ask in Pleasure Activism for readers
to consider who taught you to feel good? Yes, what
pleasure activism really is is reclaiming our right to have
pleasure and contentment from the myths of supremacy and oppression.
(05:47):
And for pleasure activism, the lineage is really Audrey Lord,
who as a black feminist poet and organizer. In nineteen
seventy eight, she published this essay called the Uses of
the Eroticus Power and same thing she really talked about
what it means to be satisfiable and satisfied. Audrey Lord
(06:08):
is the origin story of understanding the connection between pleasure
and social revolution. I could spend hours talking about her work,
but I'm just gonna say if you haven't read it,
or honestly, even if you have. The uses of the
erotic is on YouTube, read by Audrey Lord herself. After
(06:31):
you listen to this episode, take a break and give
yourself a gift. Sit outside or lay in bed with
your eyes closed, and listen to Audrey's powerful message. She
has the best definition of erotic I've ever heard. The
(06:52):
erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense
of self and the chaos and power of our deepest feelings.
It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once
we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. Once
we actually experience true erotic awakening to yes, to living
(07:17):
our lives, to a full yes, it becomes impossible to
settle for suffering. In touch with the erotic, I become
less willing to accept powerlessness, all those other supplied states
of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair,
self effacement, depression, self denial. It feels like she gave
(07:41):
us this key. It's like, Oh, if you have experienced oppression,
or if you're experiencing oppression, part of what's been taken
from you is the idea that you could be satisfied
in this lifetime and that you could have contentment and
small pleasures. There's so much about being a body in
this world that trauma happens, and life happens, and oppression happens,
(08:02):
and then you reclaim yourself And what does that mean?
That I say, of course, is extremely important to anybody
who does this kind of work, including me. I quote
it extensively. And one of the most powerful things for
me is the idea that erotic is not sexual. Erotic
(08:23):
isn't even necessarily pleasure itself. It is aliveness. It's aliveness
as someone who is in the process of menopause, aging
and disability and chronic pain. Recognizing that the discomforts of
my body when I can turn towards those with kindness
and compassion, patience and a welcoming that acknowledges their passage
(08:49):
through me, it increases my sense of like, I'm alive,
That sensation is there because I am alive, which is
really good practice for me to recognize pleasure when it
comes to recognize its passage through me. It's my aliveness.
(09:09):
More after the break, I'm Emilinagosky and this is the
very first episode of the Come as You Are podcast.
(09:29):
It's a prelude an introduction to the most important concept
of all pleasure. I know a lot about the science
of sexual well being, but science has its limits. In fact,
the science of pleasure is very limited. Sometimes the thing
(09:51):
that really helps us to connect to our sexuality our
aliveness is not science. It's poetry, and that's Adrian's specialty.
I believe in the power of science. I think it's
going to be a necessary part of how we make
the world a better place. And also the distance science
(10:11):
has gotten me as a sex educator is pleasure is
the measure of sexual well being. It's not how often
you do it, or who we're with, or even how
many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you enjoy
the sex you are having. But you get all the
way to pleasure is freedom. Yes, pleasure is the measure
of freedom. That's right. Was such a more expansive vision. Yeah, well,
(10:34):
I mean it's related, right, It's all related. So freedom
is what my orientation is as a black liberation oriented person.
Right that I'm like, I was born into a context
in which my freedom was curtailed. My freedom was like
I knew that I should be freer than I was
(10:55):
allowed to be, and both in race, but also in sexuality,
in gender, and all these other ways. You know, Like
I was like hold up, I can feel inside myself
a different reality than what the world is telling me.
Even though my job is teaching people how to find
pleasure themselves, I sometimes struggle to practice pleasure myself. Too
(11:20):
often I fall into the trap of centering my life
around productivity, or what Audrey Lord refers to in uses
of the erotic as a travesty of necessities. The principal
horror of any system which defines the good in terms
of profit rather than in terms of human need, or
(11:40):
which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic
and emotional components of that need. The principal horror of
any such system is that it robs our work of
its erotic value, its erotic power, its erotic life appeal
and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty
(12:02):
of necessities. My producer Moan taught me the term chorgasm.
It apparently describes the feeling you get when you cross
the last thing off your to do list. Ach orgasm
can admittedly feel great, and we live in a world
that defines the good as making a profit instead of
meeting human needs. So it rewards us for being productive
(12:24):
and punishes us for our aliveness. So I, like everyone,
have fallen into the trap of focusing on my productivity
and forgetting to notice my aliveness. I know a ton
about the brain mechanisms underlying access to pleasure, and that
doesn't mean I always have access to pleasure. What happens? So, like, I'm,
(12:49):
you know, writing a book. Yeah, and it's a book
about sexual pleasure. Yes, But I'm like so focused and
so stressed and so busy that I can't let go.
And there is a certain pleasure and joy in disappearing
into a work project God knows. But like, I have
a relationship, but a person I would like to feel
(13:11):
glad is with me. Yeah, that's right. I think there's
this piece, this journey from understanding stuff theoretically into the
being in the practices of it. There's this quote from
Octavia Butler in the Parables where she says, belief initiates
and guide's action, or it does nothing. And many of
us are socialized to be in states of obligation with
(13:34):
each other, states of polite lying. We are trained to
overdo everything in the spirit of capitalism, and we're trained
that our value is only about what we can produce,
which is very unsatisfying, you know, because you can never
produce enough. I say that as someone who's like I'm
like producing as much as I can, and I promise
(13:55):
you there's no like clique. Yes, that was enough, That's
not where satisfaction comes from. We will all be tempted
by the transient reward of being productive. And that's exactly
why Adrian is reminding me that we all need an
intentional practice of pleasure. Pleasure will take our hand. It
(14:16):
will show us how good it is to be alive
right now. It will remind us that we are already
enough and unlike the fleeting, fickle, shallow rush of productivity.
Once we start practicing pleasure in our everyday lives, then,
(14:39):
and really only then, can we find our sexual liberation.
It's not enough for me to just believe that I'm
sexually liberated and to build a whole system of beliefs
around how I should be, but it has to initiate
and guide my action. So at various points in my
life that has meant different things, right, but one of
them is I have a consistent practice of orgasm, for instance,
(15:03):
and not just orgasm. It's really broadened to just self pleasure,
because sometimes I'll find that the most healthy thing for
my day is actually to masturbate, but not to have
an orgasm, right to masturbate and just feel the pleasure
and feel connected to myself and deepen my breath and
notice what is generating desiring me in that day. And
(15:26):
sometimes it's a poem is pounding at the door of
my mind or the door of my heart, and I
could try to hold it off, or I could release
it and really feel the satisfaction of like, fuck, I
got it onto the page, Like that's so good. I'm
always asking myself how to make justice and liberation the
most pleasurable things we can do, the most pleasurable experiences
(15:46):
we can have as humans. So how do we bring
our attention back to like this gorgeous planet we've been given,
that it's facunned, and like we can just go lay
in the grass and receive sunline on us, and like
that is an orgasmic experience. One reason I wanted to
talk to Adrian is because I wanted her advice. During
the pandemic, I was working from home day every day,
(16:12):
so I spend the entire day writing in my office,
and then I emerge at six pm feeling productive but
drained and disconnected from my body. I find myself struggling
to get out of the headspace of productivity and planning
and into the headspace of pleasure, aliveness, and connection. Adrian
(16:36):
had a suggestion for helping me get into that different headspace.
You also might want to give yourself like a transition window,
you know, because I think sometimes that's the thing for me,
is like when I finish a piece of writing, or
if I do a big event, right if I'm doing
like a big event, and especially now in the pandemic,
it's like you might do like a massive event, but
(16:56):
you're still sitting in your house, in your potamia. But
I'm still like okay, but my whole system is flooded
with the energy of what I was just doing, and
so I need to take five minutes to you know,
for me my energy, It's like sometimes I'll go and
just put my feet on the dirt outside if it's warm,
and just like run that energy down into the earth
before I try to interact with anyone. Sometimes I need
(17:18):
a full like I need to take a bath, and
then I'll be a good human for other humans. Yeah, well,
thanks for solving that problem for me. I got it,
I got you. Anything else we need to attend to?
I mean that is like the fundamental circling question of
my life is how do I both do a job
I love and be a person around people I love? Yeah,
(17:44):
every day, at the end of the day, I do
a gratitude practice. And what I'm offering gratitude for is
what pleasure was I able to experience in this day.
Gratitude is a major theme in Adrian's work. One of
my favorite passages in Pleasure Activism is a poem titled
Radical Gratitude Spell. Radical Gratitude Spell a spell to cast
(18:13):
upon meeting a stranger, comrade, or friend working for social
and or environmental justice and liberation. You are a miracle walking.
I greet you with wonder in a world which seeks
to own your joy and your imagination. You have chosen
to be free every day as a practice. I can
(18:37):
never know the struggles you went through to get here,
but I know you have swum upstream and at times
it has been lonely. I want you to know I
honor the choices you made in solitude, and I honor
the work you have done to belong. I honor your
commitment to that which is larger than yourself, and your
(19:03):
journey to love the particular container of life that is you.
You are enough, your work is enough, you are needed,
your work is sacred. You are here, and I am grateful.
(19:27):
It's always radical to me that even on the worst days,
and even in the days where I'm like, I don't
understand this world and it's filling me with grief and despair,
but even on those days, there are small pleasures. And
even in my deepest grief, sometimes the only pleasure I
have is thank you for giving me something I loved
(19:48):
so much that I grieve it. But even on those days,
there's something I can notice. And that's the practice. It's
so simple, right, You think of one experience of pleasure
you had today, and you say it out loud, you
express gratitude for that experience of pleasure. But I've been
doing this or months now, and it has kind of
(20:14):
changed everything. It's not just that it makes me more
aware of the pleasure in my life. It makes it
so that it is so much easier for me to
get to pleasure so that in that moment at six
o'clock when I blearily step out of my office, I
transition into my aliveness so readily, and the world seems
(20:37):
so much more vivid to me. I walk past the
window where the aglianema is growing, and I see the
new leaf that is starting to unfurl. I see my
husband in the kitchen, cooking dinner for us, and literally
he looks more beautiful to me now because I am
(20:59):
training my brain to find pleasure more easily, to dwell
in a state of pleasure, beauty, joy, and love. Highly
recommend it. In the rest of the series, I'll be
answering your questions. Are you supposed to have six when
(21:22):
you get that old? What I'm saying, if you want it,
I do want it? How can I increase my spontaneous
desire again? On the podcast, I'd love to hear your
thoughts about sex after divorce, and as always, I'll be
joined by my producer, mo Hi mo Hi. Emily, you
want to plug the hotline before we go, do I?
(21:45):
If you have a question for me, call my hotline
six four six three nine seven eight five five seven,
or send a voice memo to Emily at Pushkin dot Fm.
Tell me your pronouns and name. Take a name, any name.
Your question might be answered on the show Commas You
(22:10):
Are is a production of Pushkin Industries and Madison Wells.
It's hosted by Emily Nagosky. You can find Emily on
Instagram at e Nagosky and on Twitter at Emily Nagosky.
You can also sign up for her newsletter at Emily
Nagosky dot com, where she writes about everything from the
clitterest in your mind to orgasm after having hysterectomy. It's
(22:32):
an incredible newsletter, Highly recommended. This show is co hosted
and lead produced by me Mola Board. You can find
me online at Mola Board and on TikTok at podcast
dot slut, Sorry mom My. Co producer on this show
is the fabulous Brittany Brown. Our editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan.
(22:53):
Sound design and mix by Anne Pope. Executive producers are
Mia LaBelle and leetal Malade at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Fane,
Carly Migliori, Sophie Crane, Courtney Guarino, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton,
John Schnar, and Jacob Weisberg at Madison Wells thanks to
Kylie Williams, Elizabeth Goodstein and Gg Pritzker. Additional thanks to
(23:18):
Rich Stevens, Lindsay Edgecombe Frolic Media, and Peter Acker at
Armadillo Audio Group. Original music for this series was composed
by Ameliagosky and arranged and recorded by Alexandra Kalinovsky. Additional
music from Epidemic Sound. You can find Pushkin on all
(23:39):
social platforms at Pushkin Pods, and you can sign up
for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. If you love
this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to
Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers
bonus content in uninterrupted listening for only four ninety nine
(24:00):
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or at pushkin dot fm. If you subscribe to Pushkin Plus,
you can hear Come as you Are and other Pushkin
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show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.
(24:20):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen
Pushkin. I want you to think about your day so far.
You woke up and then what Maybe you took a
shower and paused for a moment to savor the sensation
of warm water on your shoulders. Maybe you bit into
(00:38):
a carrot and it was like you had never tasted
a carrot before, an astonishment of crunch and sweet and
earth and rain. Maybe you were writing in line somewhere
and a song came on that just happened to be
exactly the song that captured your current mood, and in
(00:59):
that moment you felt like the whole universe had your back.
This is pleasure, Oh my god, I mean so many
things are pleasurable, Honestly, just laying down with my boyfriend
in bed, listening to music I love asmr at the beach,
(01:22):
at the park, reading a book, just being in nature,
making ceramics or cooking, or painting my nails and doing
face masks, like pampering myself. What if every choice you
made about your sexuality was about following that feeling, that
(01:43):
feeling of yes. I'm Emmilinagaski. I've been a sex educator
for over twenty five years. I'm the author of two
best selling books. Come as you are and burnout, and
my purpose in life is to help people live with
confidence and joy in their bodies. And this is that
(02:08):
Come as you Are podcast where I answer your questions
about sex with science. Hi there, I am. I have
a question for you. I have a question regarding six
draws orgasm. How can I increase my spontaneous desire again?
(02:33):
So I'm just a little confused on that, and I
kind of point your advice. I would love some, hope.
I get questions every day from people all around the world,
and they're amazing, important questions that deserve great evidence based answers.
So that is what I'm going to be doing on
(02:56):
this podcast. Every episode, I'll answer your questions and bust
myths and misconceptions about sex. But before we even get
into talking about sex, we first need to talk about pleasure.
Whether you're having sex with yourself, with partners, or not
(03:16):
having any sex at all. Finding your genuine pleasure is
the bedrock of everything I'll be talking about on this show,
and it's relevant to everybody. In my quarter century as
a sex educator, everything I've learned can be summarized in
one statement. Pleasure is the measure Pleasure is the measure
(03:37):
of sexual well being. It's not about how much you
crave sex, how often you have it, or who you
do it with, or where or in what position, or
even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not
you like the sex you are having, whether it's genuinely
pleasurable to you. And you can only get to pleasure
(03:57):
if you know what pleasure feels like for you in
many different contexts, and if you practice accessing it. And
you may be saying, Emily, how am I supposed to
remember what pleasure feels like in this post row capitalist
(04:18):
healthscape where our democracy is failing and we're teetering on
the edge of climate crisis and totalitarianism. Good question. It's
a question I've been asking myself over the past few years,
no surprise, and to answer it, I've had to get
really specific about what pleasure is and how to practice it.
(04:38):
I've had to relearn my own pleasure pathways and reconnect
to pleasures small and large in my own life. To
help introduce the life changing exercise of pleasure, I've asked
for help from a pleasure activist, writer and organizer, Adrian
Marie Brown. Pleasure it's not something that just happens to
(04:59):
you in the same way, like no one's ever just
going to ride in on a white horse and scoop
you up and take you off to Loveland. You know,
pleasure is a practice. Adrian's written half a dozen books,
including this gorgeous m dream of a book called Pleasure Activism.
My copy is highlighted, written all over, and filled with
(05:22):
page markers. It is a practical and poetic guide to
accessing greater pleasure. You ask in Pleasure Activism for readers
to consider who taught you to feel good? Yes, what
pleasure activism really is is reclaiming our right to have
pleasure and contentment from the myths of supremacy and oppression.
(05:47):
And for pleasure activism, the lineage is really Audrey Lord,
who as a black feminist poet and organizer. In nineteen
seventy eight, she published this essay called the Uses of
the Eroticus Power and same thing she really talked about
what it means to be satisfiable and satisfied. Audrey Lord
(06:08):
is the origin story of understanding the connection between pleasure
and social revolution. I could spend hours talking about her work,
but I'm just gonna say if you haven't read it,
or honestly, even if you have. The uses of the
erotic is on YouTube, read by Audrey Lord herself. After
(06:31):
you listen to this episode, take a break and give
yourself a gift. Sit outside or lay in bed with
your eyes closed, and listen to Audrey's powerful message. She
has the best definition of erotic I've ever heard. The
(06:52):
erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense
of self and the chaos and power of our deepest feelings.
It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once
we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. Once
we actually experience true erotic awakening to yes, to living
(07:17):
our lives, to a full yes, it becomes impossible to
settle for suffering. In touch with the erotic, I become
less willing to accept powerlessness, all those other supplied states
of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair,
self effacement, depression, self denial. It feels like she gave
(07:41):
us this key. It's like, Oh, if you have experienced oppression,
or if you're experiencing oppression, part of what's been taken
from you is the idea that you could be satisfied
in this lifetime and that you could have contentment and
small pleasures. There's so much about being a body in
this world that trauma happens, and life happens, and oppression happens,
(08:02):
and then you reclaim yourself And what does that mean?
That I say, of course, is extremely important to anybody
who does this kind of work, including me. I quote
it extensively. And one of the most powerful things for
me is the idea that erotic is not sexual. Erotic
(08:23):
isn't even necessarily pleasure itself. It is aliveness. It's aliveness
as someone who is in the process of menopause, aging
and disability and chronic pain. Recognizing that the discomforts of
my body when I can turn towards those with kindness
and compassion, patience and a welcoming that acknowledges their passage
(08:49):
through me, it increases my sense of like, I'm alive,
That sensation is there because I am alive, which is
really good practice for me to recognize pleasure when it
comes to recognize its passage through me. It's my aliveness.
(09:09):
More after the break, I'm Emilinagosky and this is the
very first episode of the Come as You Are podcast.
(09:29):
It's a prelude an introduction to the most important concept
of all pleasure. I know a lot about the science
of sexual well being, but science has its limits. In fact,
the science of pleasure is very limited. Sometimes the thing
(09:51):
that really helps us to connect to our sexuality our
aliveness is not science. It's poetry, and that's Adrian's specialty.
I believe in the power of science. I think it's
going to be a necessary part of how we make
the world a better place. And also the distance science
(10:11):
has gotten me as a sex educator is pleasure is
the measure of sexual well being. It's not how often
you do it, or who we're with, or even how
many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you enjoy
the sex you are having. But you get all the
way to pleasure is freedom. Yes, pleasure is the measure
of freedom. That's right. Was such a more expansive vision. Yeah, well,
(10:34):
I mean it's related, right, It's all related. So freedom
is what my orientation is as a black liberation oriented person.
Right that I'm like, I was born into a context
in which my freedom was curtailed. My freedom was like
I knew that I should be freer than I was
(10:55):
allowed to be, and both in race, but also in sexuality,
in gender, and all these other ways. You know, Like
I was like hold up, I can feel inside myself
a different reality than what the world is telling me.
Even though my job is teaching people how to find
pleasure themselves, I sometimes struggle to practice pleasure myself. Too
(11:20):
often I fall into the trap of centering my life
around productivity, or what Audrey Lord refers to in uses
of the erotic as a travesty of necessities. The principal
horror of any system which defines the good in terms
of profit rather than in terms of human need, or
(11:40):
which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic
and emotional components of that need. The principal horror of
any such system is that it robs our work of
its erotic value, its erotic power, its erotic life appeal
and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty
(12:02):
of necessities. My producer Moan taught me the term chorgasm.
It apparently describes the feeling you get when you cross
the last thing off your to do list. Ach orgasm
can admittedly feel great, and we live in a world
that defines the good as making a profit instead of
meeting human needs. So it rewards us for being productive
(12:24):
and punishes us for our aliveness. So I, like everyone,
have fallen into the trap of focusing on my productivity
and forgetting to notice my aliveness. I know a ton
about the brain mechanisms underlying access to pleasure, and that
doesn't mean I always have access to pleasure. What happens? So, like, I'm,
(12:49):
you know, writing a book. Yeah, and it's a book
about sexual pleasure. Yes, But I'm like so focused and
so stressed and so busy that I can't let go.
And there is a certain pleasure and joy in disappearing
into a work project God knows. But like, I have
a relationship, but a person I would like to feel
(13:11):
glad is with me. Yeah, that's right. I think there's
this piece, this journey from understanding stuff theoretically into the
being in the practices of it. There's this quote from
Octavia Butler in the Parables where she says, belief initiates
and guide's action, or it does nothing. And many of
us are socialized to be in states of obligation with
(13:34):
each other, states of polite lying. We are trained to
overdo everything in the spirit of capitalism, and we're trained
that our value is only about what we can produce,
which is very unsatisfying, you know, because you can never
produce enough. I say that as someone who's like I'm
like producing as much as I can, and I promise
(13:55):
you there's no like clique. Yes, that was enough, That's
not where satisfaction comes from. We will all be tempted
by the transient reward of being productive. And that's exactly
why Adrian is reminding me that we all need an
intentional practice of pleasure. Pleasure will take our hand. It
(14:16):
will show us how good it is to be alive
right now. It will remind us that we are already
enough and unlike the fleeting, fickle, shallow rush of productivity.
Once we start practicing pleasure in our everyday lives, then,
(14:39):
and really only then, can we find our sexual liberation.
It's not enough for me to just believe that I'm
sexually liberated and to build a whole system of beliefs
around how I should be, but it has to initiate
and guide my action. So at various points in my
life that has meant different things, right, but one of
them is I have a consistent practice of orgasm, for instance,
(15:03):
and not just orgasm. It's really broadened to just self pleasure,
because sometimes I'll find that the most healthy thing for
my day is actually to masturbate, but not to have
an orgasm, right to masturbate and just feel the pleasure
and feel connected to myself and deepen my breath and
notice what is generating desiring me in that day. And
(15:26):
sometimes it's a poem is pounding at the door of
my mind or the door of my heart, and I
could try to hold it off, or I could release
it and really feel the satisfaction of like, fuck, I
got it onto the page, Like that's so good. I'm
always asking myself how to make justice and liberation the
most pleasurable things we can do, the most pleasurable experiences
(15:46):
we can have as humans. So how do we bring
our attention back to like this gorgeous planet we've been given,
that it's facunned, and like we can just go lay
in the grass and receive sunline on us, and like
that is an orgasmic experience. One reason I wanted to
talk to Adrian is because I wanted her advice. During
the pandemic, I was working from home day every day,
(16:12):
so I spend the entire day writing in my office,
and then I emerge at six pm feeling productive but
drained and disconnected from my body. I find myself struggling
to get out of the headspace of productivity and planning
and into the headspace of pleasure, aliveness, and connection. Adrian
(16:36):
had a suggestion for helping me get into that different headspace.
You also might want to give yourself like a transition window,
you know, because I think sometimes that's the thing for me,
is like when I finish a piece of writing, or
if I do a big event, right if I'm doing
like a big event, and especially now in the pandemic,
it's like you might do like a massive event, but
(16:56):
you're still sitting in your house, in your potamia. But
I'm still like okay, but my whole system is flooded
with the energy of what I was just doing, and
so I need to take five minutes to you know,
for me my energy, It's like sometimes I'll go and
just put my feet on the dirt outside if it's warm,
and just like run that energy down into the earth
before I try to interact with anyone. Sometimes I need
(17:18):
a full like I need to take a bath, and
then I'll be a good human for other humans. Yeah, well,
thanks for solving that problem for me. I got it,
I got you. Anything else we need to attend to?
I mean that is like the fundamental circling question of
my life is how do I both do a job
I love and be a person around people I love? Yeah,
(17:44):
every day, at the end of the day, I do
a gratitude practice. And what I'm offering gratitude for is
what pleasure was I able to experience in this day.
Gratitude is a major theme in Adrian's work. One of
my favorite passages in Pleasure Activism is a poem titled
Radical Gratitude Spell. Radical Gratitude Spell a spell to cast
(18:13):
upon meeting a stranger, comrade, or friend working for social
and or environmental justice and liberation. You are a miracle walking.
I greet you with wonder in a world which seeks
to own your joy and your imagination. You have chosen
to be free every day as a practice. I can
(18:37):
never know the struggles you went through to get here,
but I know you have swum upstream and at times
it has been lonely. I want you to know I
honor the choices you made in solitude, and I honor
the work you have done to belong. I honor your
commitment to that which is larger than yourself, and your
(19:03):
journey to love the particular container of life that is you.
You are enough, your work is enough, you are needed,
your work is sacred. You are here, and I am grateful.
(19:27):
It's always radical to me that even on the worst days,
and even in the days where I'm like, I don't
understand this world and it's filling me with grief and despair,
but even on those days, there are small pleasures. And
even in my deepest grief, sometimes the only pleasure I
have is thank you for giving me something I loved
(19:48):
so much that I grieve it. But even on those days,
there's something I can notice. And that's the practice. It's
so simple, right, You think of one experience of pleasure
you had today, and you say it out loud, you
express gratitude for that experience of pleasure. But I've been
doing this or months now, and it has kind of
(20:14):
changed everything. It's not just that it makes me more
aware of the pleasure in my life. It makes it
so that it is so much easier for me to
get to pleasure so that in that moment at six
o'clock when I blearily step out of my office, I
transition into my aliveness so readily, and the world seems
(20:37):
so much more vivid to me. I walk past the
window where the aglianema is growing, and I see the
new leaf that is starting to unfurl. I see my
husband in the kitchen, cooking dinner for us, and literally
he looks more beautiful to me now because I am
(20:59):
training my brain to find pleasure more easily, to dwell
in a state of pleasure, beauty, joy, and love. Highly
recommend it. In the rest of the series, I'll be
answering your questions. Are you supposed to have six when
(21:22):
you get that old? What I'm saying, if you want it,
I do want it? How can I increase my spontaneous
desire again? On the podcast, I'd love to hear your
thoughts about sex after divorce, and as always, I'll be
joined by my producer, mo Hi mo Hi. Emily, you
want to plug the hotline before we go, do I?
(21:45):
If you have a question for me, call my hotline
six four six three nine seven eight five five seven,
or send a voice memo to Emily at Pushkin dot Fm.
Tell me your pronouns and name. Take a name, any name.
Your question might be answered on the show Commas You
(22:10):
Are is a production of Pushkin Industries and Madison Wells.
It's hosted by Emily Nagosky. You can find Emily on
Instagram at e Nagosky and on Twitter at Emily Nagosky.
You can also sign up for her newsletter at Emily
Nagosky dot com, where she writes about everything from the
clitterest in your mind to orgasm after having hysterectomy. It's
(22:32):
an incredible newsletter, Highly recommended. This show is co hosted
and lead produced by me Mola Board. You can find
me online at Mola Board and on TikTok at podcast
dot slut, Sorry mom My. Co producer on this show
is the fabulous Brittany Brown. Our editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan.
(22:53):
Sound design and mix by Anne Pope. Executive producers are
Mia LaBelle and leetal Malade at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Fane,
Carly Migliori, Sophie Crane, Courtney Guarino, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton,
John Schnar, and Jacob Weisberg at Madison Wells thanks to
Kylie Williams, Elizabeth Goodstein and Gg Pritzker. Additional thanks to
(23:18):
Rich Stevens, Lindsay Edgecombe Frolic Media, and Peter Acker at
Armadillo Audio Group. Original music for this series was composed
by Ameliagosky and arranged and recorded by Alexandra Kalinovsky. Additional
music from Epidemic Sound. You can find Pushkin on all
(23:39):
social platforms at Pushkin Pods, and you can sign up
for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. If you love
this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to
Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers
bonus content in uninterrupted listening for only four ninety nine
(24:00):
a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions
or at pushkin dot fm. If you subscribe to Pushkin Plus,
you can hear Come as you Are and other Pushkin
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(24:20):
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