Turning Toward Pleasure

I took a three day workshop recently that was based on turning toward pleasure. We find the range of challenge, perhaps the edge of difficulty and then draw back into pleasure: in a yoga pose, in a discussion, in life. I was shocked. As a woman in recovery I am suspicious of pleasure. What if I get "hooked" ? What if I indeed crave something that isn't good for me? I nearly felt panic as she used that word, pleasure, over and over. I have just gotten used to turning into my pain! (A topic for another day.)

While I counsel students to find the sweet spot of engagement in yoga poses, I am often fall shy of doing this myself. "I can take it" has been my repeated phrase (I won't use "mantra" as that is a healing term, curative not harming.) And in life, I have been finding more opportunity for contentment and compassion, but pleasure? 

Maybe this is semantic, and I want to be sure I am not over stepping my puritanical origins by finding joy and thus surely falling short of maximum effort. Perhaps the word itself has been defiled by past use and is a trigger word for me. Perhaps I need to tough out feeling GOOD as I am already practiced in feeling bad.

So this moment, perhaps all day, I will practice turning toward pleasure. The danger, as Epstein states below, is the clinging. And maybe the craving.

​be well, have pleasure​

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Clinging—not desire—is where we get stuck, and it’s possible to embrace desire without clinging by infusing it with awareness. Desire, in fact, can be a powerful meditative tool on the path to enlightenment.

—Mark Epstein, "In Defense of Desire"

How to Resist Cravings

Nibbana (Nirvana, not the band, but another word for that place of non- suffering, non- attachment, release from the past and all cycles of life - bliss).  

Craving is suffering, it is attachment, it is the past, and it can be the future. How do we release its hold?  Looking into it, looking into the feeling that is UNDER the craving and addressing that.

Are you lonely, are you tired, are you unsettled, unhappy, unfed?  Do you need to be nurtured in an emotional, physical or spiritual way?  Is the object of your craving (a person, a substance, an activity) really a cover for something that is more difficult to address or perhaps more elusive.

Take five minutes. Investigate your feelings, the condition of your body mind and spirit. It is with practice that we disconnect from the illusion that the object of our craving can help us. IT CANNOT; IT SEEKS ONLY TO SATISFY ITSELF!  Once you 'give in" to the craving - it will ask for more and the pain remains.

How can we address craving?  Not by ignoring it, but by delving deeper and beyond.  After that there is bliss.

Try looking into how feeling gives rise to craving. It's because we want pleasant feelings that craving whispers—whispers right there to the feeling. If you observe carefully, you will see that this is very important. This is where the paths and fruitions leading to nibbana are attained. If we extinguish the craving in feeling, that's nibbana. —Upasika Kee Nanayon, “A Glob of Tar”

Kyczy Hawk 500RYT, 200E-RYT is a yoga teacher and author. She has recently published "Life in Bite Sized Morsels". "Yoga And The Twelve Step Path" was released in 2012.

The founder of S.O.A.R.™ Success Over Addiction and Relapse, she teaches recovery oriented yoga online and in person. Kyczy also leads recovery infused yoga classes online with Studio Live TV. 

Read more on her website: www.yogarecovery.com