On Pleasure, Death & Being Born
Recently, I have begun to embrace death. Not because I want to die or because I’m even ready, but because I know that fearing it, resisting it in my mind and body will cause more distress. Perhaps the masochist in me is speaking when I say “bring it on, death, let’s see how this goes.”
But in a self-pleasure practice recently I decided to play with the energy of “le petite mort”.
“Little death” is a French expression for the state of consciousness post-orgasm. And what is an orgasm but a sudden release of built up sexual tension. Even as a metaphor, death could be just this: the effect of a lifetime of built up tension releasing from a human body.. Muscles that held on for dear life, bones that broke and mended back together, organs that swelled with blood and pumped for years, and tissues that finally let go once and for all. Wow! What an orgasm death would be!
But generally, I am not someone who experiences the fear of death as pleasurable. In fact, pleasure itself is something I have to practice, probably a big reason why I’ve made it my job to practice pleasure, nerd out about sex, and build up a life that is deeply erotic in ever-expanding ways. I have to orient myself towards pleasure, daily, moment by moment, otherwise I go to my default: pain, discomfort, agony, stress. My brain has been extraordinarily good at attaching to those states.
For me it’s also connected to sexual trauma, where my body learned to clamp down and endure suffering in order to survive. Where it learned to couple pleasure with danger, and forgot what feeling “okay” was like. It’s also older than this body: it comes from my ancestors who faced the threat of death daily in pogroms and concentration camps in what is present day Lithuania and Russia. My genes are primed and ready for genocide, catastrophe, the worst!
And you don’t have to have experienced any kind of trauma to also have this experience. As humans, we are easily dispositioned towards unpleasant feelings, sensations, experiences, and thoughts. There’s even a term for it, negativity bias: our tendency towards noticing and dwelling on the yuck, the hard, and the unpleasant, even when something equally as pleasant is available.
“The negativity bias provides an evolutionary advantage, as it is more critical for survival to avoid a harmful stimulus than to pursue a potentially helpful one,” says Catherine J Norris, a neuroscience researcher and faculty member at Swarthmore College. A super smart thing to do, especially when, as a species, we were (and sometimes still are) at daily risk of attack or death.
However, surviving is very different from thriving. A fellow Somatic Sex Educator, Birth Doula, and Holistic Perinatal Consultant, Stacey Ramsower, shared “orienting towards pleasure is a requirement towards our evolution.” In a recent pleasure mapping class she led, she guided us in gentle movement from fetal position to pushing out into the world, effectively remapping early gestational choreography. This is where we first learn to move from survival towards what we want: connection. It is why we strive to keep going, to express that which is deep within ourselves, because we all know life is more than just effort and hard work.
“When you say ‘no’ to something, you are saying ‘yes’ to something else.”
Stacey reminded me. And vice versa, saying ‘yes’ to one thing is a ‘no’ to another. And how you choose, my teacher, Caffyn Jesse says, is always more important than what you choose. Are we saying ‘yes’ to something because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings but actually we are a clear ‘no’? Are we saying ‘no’ because we fear the possibility of something good or is it because we feel a deep feeling inside our gut that knows it’s too much. Our felt sense can guide us to knowing what is right for us, what feels good.
Pleasure is all about our source of connection, it’s how we can tell we are connected to ourselves, each other, the earth, Spirit. It’s that deep knowing in our gut that says “yes, it’s safe to feel here”. It’s the part of us that can tell we are worthy, and more specifically, worthy of feeling good.
Without pleasure, we might not have a lot of reasons to live. And I don’t just mean pleasure like eating cake and ice cream or the high buying things gives you, tho those things are worthy in moderation too. I’m speaking of the type of pleasure where your body thanks you: a laugh out loud smile, a quiet mind and relaxed body, a belly breathing full and empty at the same time, a feeling of timelessness, effortlessness, and deep presence. This flow state, as some call it, can happen in sex (partnered or solo) or while sitting on your front porch. It’s happening for me as I write this. All of me is here, on my sofa with soft music playing, a breeze from the front door wide open, a sun glistening reflection on the windows and pillows hugging my naked body as I type effortlessly on the keyboard about a topic that is dear to my soul.
When I set the intention to “die” in pleasure, I didn’t know what would happen. I purposely welcomed the unknown. With a blindfold on, a yummy smelling oil, some soft caresses, and deep breaths, my intention sent my entire body into undulations and waves from my toes to my crown. I was in it, not wanting it to end and feeling the end was near, I cherished each second. I welcomed the feeling of being hugged by a huge black spider; death washed over me in orgasmic pleasure. My eyes filled with teary stars as every cell in my body relaxed. A deep letting go.
There have been some pretty sweet ripple effects of this pleasure death. One, I feel more keen to come back to playing wjth energy orgasms, sexual-spiritual practices, and sex magic. I am remembering just how powerful these practices can be. Even something as simple as holding an intention while climaxing, or turning over your pleasure to a Higher Power - wow!
Also the chronic pain I experience daily, while it hasn’t gone away completely, has less of a grip on my daily thoughts. I seem to have accepted the worst (my fear of dying from the pain) and even convinced my body that death might actually be pleasurable. I feel pain but I am no longer associating it with dying. Coincidentally a friend sent me a song from The Bengsons latest album, titled “Dying”. The lyrics are: “You think you are dying but you are being born”. I’ve decided this is what is happening, and my body is following along.
I’ve continued to practice ‘dying’ in my pleasure practice and it turns out, it really turns me on. It seems to contradict my tendency to hold on for dear life, and that is a huge relief.
When something dies, something else is being born.
This corresponds to my recent deep dive researching the relationship between pleasure and pain. Stay tuned for reflections from my focus groups, practice studies, and research on how pleasure might be one of our greatest allies for chronic pain.