Pleasure as a feminine superpower
It's more than just those boom-boom orgasms, Sweetheart.
Years ago, when I ran the kitchen at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California, I was sitting outside at 5:30 a.m. enjoying a cup of tea before heading in to cook breakfast.
As I savored my cuppa in the first thin rays of spring sunlight, I caught sight of two little fawns—two Bambis—playing hide-and-seek in the woods across from the dining hall.
The two little deer—presumably siblings—would take turns hiding behind trees and then leaping out when the other would find them.
On and on they went like this, oblivious to my observation, enjoying the woods all to themselves before the hungry humans emerged for their morning meal.
Watching them, I recalled a friend’s words from a keynote talk he created:
“Play is a law of the universe.”
In that delightful moment of watching the fawns and remembering Jon’s words, a secret of youth took root in my being:
I vowed to make fun, play, and pleasure an integral part of my life.
And I must say … such a practice has served me well as I stand at the gate of my seventh decade.
So let me tell you, Dear Reader, about the regenerative power of pleasure for us ladies of a certain age.
Let me tell you why I love pleasure and why you should love pleasure more.
Because we certainly know (don’t we) how pleasure can dry up over time.
As we grumble and gripe about our aches and pains and money woes, joy becomes a faded memory (if indeed we remember at all).
You know enough about the body-mind connection to recognize the deleterious and oxidative effects of such a mindset.
So let’s not linger there, but rather—let’s frolic in the rejuvenation of joy that is the gift of Fawn Medicine and reclaim our feminine birthright of pleasure.
Why does pleasure matter?
A quick search on “pleasure as a feminine superpower” turns up (predictably) a plethora of articles highlighting some technique or some position to have multiple wowie-zowie orgasms.
And that’s all well and good, of course. As that legendary doyenne of desire Mae West would say, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”
But what about just plain old ordinary pleasure?
What about entraining our awareness to the myriad tiny, fleeting joys we experience every day that can make our big O’s—and our life—all the more awesome?
What about, say, belting it out with Nina Simone while driving across the sparkling bay?
Or hanging with your hubs in front of the fire, watching the basketball tournament?
Or your first day walking without a walker after knee surgery?
What about that hot bath, that first morning cuppa, those sassy undies you anticipate showcasing for a new love in your life?
Why does any of this matter?
For one thing, pleasure matters simply because feeling good is the greatest hallmark of vitality. When we feel miserable, we have less life force available to perform all the regenerative functions that keep our body and soul invigorated in present time.
And in a society where sickness is more profitable than health, we must radically take it upon ourselves to create consciously the wellness we desire for our later years. Despite what you see on all those medication ads, happiness just ain’t gonna be waiting for you at the bottom of that pill bottle.
Beyond all that, for us as women there’s one more thing:
Our pleasure, Ladies, is an expression of our power.
Reawakening the Maiden
In the archetypal universe, pleasure is the domain of the Maiden.
When winter’s freeze softens into spring, when daylight emerges from the dark, when sap reanimates the trees’ first tender buds, when there’s lambing and calving and the desire to spring-clean your soul—
That’s the Maiden reawakening you to life.
The Maiden is menarche—our first blood—our sprouting into womanhood.
She’s the process by which we individuate ourselves from our tribe.
In her wisdom aspect, the Maiden is joyful and vital. She has boundless energy. She spins and dances and is silly and energetic. She’s inexhaustibly curious.
In our Maiden years, most of us had heavy lids put on our pleasure.
For as much as we gals love our day-spas and hair appointments, there’s a deeper place where we might feel ambivalent about really dropping down into some serious feel-good.
The degree to which we were encouraged to cut loose in our Maiden years totally conditions how we do or do not relate to pleasure today as 50- or 60- or 70-something women.
How we explored our budding sexuality … how we expressed our bodies athletically … how much ecstasy and revelry we were permitted to experience and express …
All these markers can shape how much enjoyment we allow into our lives as older women.
In a society that is extremely addicted to aggression and warfare, pleasure—especially feminine pleasure—is either weaponized against us or dismissed as frivolity.
Donna, a member of my Women, Food & Forgiveness Academy, is a natural-born artist who recounted to me an episode at age 12 of dancing wildly and singing loudly, in true Maiden abandon, on her mother’s dining-room table.
The ax came down hard on Donna with her mother’s harsh admonition:
“No one wants to hear your big mouth, Young Lady!”
When the tribe denigrates the Maiden in such a way, she can default to becoming a Good Girl—a people-pleasing perfectionist who lives for her elders’ approval.
Falling in line with her mother’s reprimand, Donna silenced her singing voice for decades.
As an adult she became a highly successful director of a nonprofit agency but always felt the echo of her song haunting her like a phantom limb.
If pleasure is indeed a law of the universe, it must be fulfilled one way or another.
So when we feel clipped in claiming the delights we deserve and desire, our addictions step in to provide those “oh-screw-it” compensatory diversions that yield a return of (literally) a pound of pain for an ounce of pleasure.
We shop too much, eat too much, drink too much, and sex around too much, thinking all the while that we “deserve a treat.”
But when the ersatz dopamine high subsides, we’re left emptier than before. Genuine satisfaction—the serotonin of joy—feels farther away than ever.
(If one of your addictions is kicking up drama just as you’re starting to feel good, join my Heroine’s Circle by becoming a paid subscriber. I’ll share with you the resources that have helped my students and clients build the strength to just say no and mean it.)
Pleasure as a feminine superpower
Back to that orgasm: science writer Natalie Angier, in her book Woman: An Intimate Geography, states that the human female clitoris has about 8,000 nerve endings—twice as many as the head of the male penis.
That fact, combined with our vulva’s ability to reestablish blood flow faster than men, allows us gals that unique blessed function of multiple orgasm.
In Angier’s words, we ladies are anatomically engineered “to soar like a raptor on currents of joy.”
She continues to explain that primatologists puzzled for years on the function of the female clitoris.
It must be an evolutionary adaptation of some sort, they postulated. Maybe a vestigial penis.
After all such theories were exhausted, they only conclusion they could draw was that the human female clitoris is the only organ in either the male or female body that exists *exclusively* for a woman’s pleasure.
What makes our pleasure powerful?
The Hawai’ians have a saying: “Wahini happy, everybody happy.”
Another way to put it: “Happy wife, happy life.”
In the Buddhist tradition that I’ve studied nearly four decades, we have a prayer called The Four Immeasurables, and it goes like this:
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness
May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering
May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering
May they dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and prejudice
Following the guidance of our innate anatomical wisdom, how do we women fulfill the ambitious intention expressed in that prayer?
How can we make all beings happy?
We become happy.
This is obviously not the zero-sum “power” of money, weapons, and war.
You’ll never hear a news report that says, “Today a woman and her partner experienced inconceivable great bliss from her seven consecutive orgasms.”
Genuine pleasure of any kind—sexual or otherwise—is attractive.
Creating a field of delight around us attracts people, resources, and circumstances that vibrate the parasympathetic nervous system of the universe and helps us transform sickness into healing, addiction into sanity, and confusion into wisdom.
And how powerful is that?
My challenge to you:
For the next 7 days, spend at least 15 minutes each day engaged in an act of genuine pleasure.
How does it turn back the hands of time in your body and soul?
Feel free to post your comments and feedback. It would be my pleasure to hear from you!
Welcome to the Heroine’s Circle!
Hello Heroine,
Thank you so much for supporting my work by joining the Heroine’s Circle!
My intention in this section is to offer you some of the tools that have most helped my students and clients make the rest of their lives the best of their lives.
I’ll be offering you audios, videos, PDFs, and other tools to create a DIY workspace here where you can reap the benefits of my work at a fraction of the cost.
The main tool I use in my work is Tapping (you might have heard of it as EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Meridian Tapping, or some other moniker).
I like to think of Tapping as positive brainwashing. It’s a simple, gentle self-help tool you can use anytime, anywhere, to reduce the negative emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger stress.
Some folks like to call Tapping “emotional acupuncture,” as it involves fingertip tapping on points at or near the ends of major acupuncture meridians. The tapping disrupts the stress signals that link negative emotions to a particular experience.
If you’re new to Tapping, use this chart to help you get started:
EFT Tapping Audio: “I’m Uncomfortable Feeling Good”
Apropos of our conversation about pleasure and addiction, if one of your addictions is to kick-up drama just as you start to feel good, listen and tap along with this EFT Tapping audio to help you stabilize your drama mania and build the muscle to allow more steadfast joy into your being:
EFT Tapping Video: “I Choose to Feel Good in My Body”
After you’ve worked with the audio a few times, use this EFT Tap-along video from my YouTube channel when you need to quickly reset body shame and get a shot of feel-good about your body.
You can also tap along for 7, 14, or 21 days and see how your perception of your body shifts for the better.
Questions? Big shifts? Still don’t get it? I’m here for you!
Post your comments below and let me know how it goes.
Just finish cleaning out my jewelry cabinet and making a gift. Now I am going to sit, while doing some afternoon reading and maybe a nap. 😀😴😴😴
This is my Sunday morning 15 minutes of pleasure. I feel like I can do anything and you know what….I CAN!