Your Sexuality Is Your Garden, Your Will The Gardener

I meet women every day who want something more in their lives when it comes to their relationship with their own bodies. They feel shut down and turned off when it come to their own sexual selves. They describe to me a general feeling of numbness, lack of sexual desire and this feeling that someone just turned off the switch "down there". And yet they call me, because they know that deep down, their own bodies tell them there is more for them to have. The fear and excitement in that initial outreach is palpable. This letter from a 60 year old woman tells the tale: "After years of disappointing sexual experiences (thanks to disowning what I now know were my own legitimate sensual/sexual/intimacy needs, at a very young age) there is still juiciness inside me, and the possibility of satisfying, even ecstatically transcendent sensuous sexual spiritual experience (by myself, and with a partner) for the rest of what I expect will be a very long life! So sending this email is my first big risk-taking reaching-for-the-moon of 2014 (maybe even scarier than jumping out of an airplane, running a marathon, and climbing 10 mountains when I was 40)."

During our first sessions, many of the women describe to me a feeling of stomach upset and resistance - as if their genitals are saying something to them like "Leave me alone! Go away! I don't want to wake up! Why are you doing this to me?"

The fear of "reunion pain" when a woman gets to not only make peace with her genitals but finds the capacity to meet her genitals again in pleasure feels terrifying.

There can be the fear of regret which can sound like this: "I can't believe how amazing it is to finally be in touch again with my sexuality" which dissolves into tears and the lament, "Why did I wait so long?" The fear of reunion pain is real, the struggle women are facing between their own resistance and their desires for reuniting with their bodies is extraordinary. It's almost as if years of sexual rejection from partners, or messages from society, have created a place in a woman's body where her own genitals are saying; "Fine, you didn't want me when I wanted to be wanted - so now I don't want you."

The good news is that women are breaking through this wall and finding out that their bodies were just as scared as their minds. Once we move past that initial terror of; "I can't, I'm stuck, Nothing works, I'm ugly, I'm old, My hormones are a mess and nobody wants me anymore" - pleasure can happen and that changes everything.

Do you recognize yourself here? I promise you, that you are not alone.

Here are some tips for gently easing yourself back into a healthy relationship with your own sexuality:

1. Dignify your own desires: Spend some time thinking about what it is you want in your own personal relationship to your body and sexuality. Get to know what you truly desire. Write it down. Speak it to somebody such as a close friend, partner, therapist or sexuality coach. Speaking your desires can be powerful and life changing.

2. Prioritize pleasure in your life. Create a "Pleasure Plan". Start to look at even the smallest moments of choice in your life as a possibility for pleasure. Do you want that salad because you think you should have it, or because eating it will give you pleasure? Notice the pleasure choices you are making. Making pleasure a conscious choice every time you are choosing something can change your experience of even the smallest decision.

3. Activate your ability to receive. The extent to which you are able to receive pleasure and kindness in your life has a direct influence on your ability to love and feel your body. Oftentimes women are great givers, but really don't know how to receive or take for themselves. Look at where you are pushing away pleasure, kindness and support. Try saying "Yes, I would." instead of, "I'm fine."

So many woman have put fences around their sexuality garden and they may have been put there for good reason. There may have been a feeling that this part of you needed protecting and just wanted everyone including your own self to keep out. But it's possible that you are hearing this tiny voice in your head that is urging you to do something about these fences for a very good reason.

You know deep inside that there are riches to explore, and you just don't know how to get started.

Listen to the little voice. 

If your sexuality is your garden, then your will is the gardener. You are not too late.

What to Do After Reading This Article:

Please take a moment to "Like it" "Share it" and give it a Tweet! And comments are always a pleasure!

Are you curious about Pamela's "Back to the Body Retreats For Women"? Check out the website here.

Do you want to know more about Pamela's journey back to her own sexuality and healing her body when she put her big toe into the mid-life? Read "Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner" (Rodale, 2011).

 

 

 

 

Are You in An Addictive Relationship With Yourself?

When therapists and coaches talk about "addictive relationships", they are usually talking about a relationship with another human being.  But have you ever considered that you could be in an "Addictive Relationship" with yourself? An addictive relationship is basically one that causes you pain, embodies a love/hate dynamic, and is frequently blown apart by drama, conflicts, and dissatisfaction.

It's called an addiction because even though you may be aware of how dysfunctional and destructive the relationship is, you keep doing the same thing over and over again. You keep participating in the conflict and the dynamics.

I think that way more of us are in destructive addictive relationships with ourselves then with other people.

Five Symptoms That You Are In an Addictive Relationship With Yourself:

1. You Talk Body Shame All The Time: You are never happy with your appearance. Whether it is your weight, your style, or your various body parts.

2. You are sure that you are not worthy of love. That there will never be the right partner out there for you because you are simply not enough. And you stick with a relationship that you know deep in your heart is not right for you, because you think that it can't get any better. After all, aren't you lucky that you "landed" this relationship at all?

3. You have repetitive negative thoughts about other women, and always feel like you need to compete or be better than they are.

4. You feel disconnected to your own sexuality while you have repetitive thoughts about how you "think" things could be better. You stay stuck in the constant thinking - but you never try anything new.

5. You are always reading self help articles and books looking for an answer to your own pain, but never seem to find it.

The only way out of this destructive, addictive cycle with yourself is to change your behaviors and take a good strong look in the mirror. I mean it. Go look in the mirror and ask yourself these questions.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Seeking to End an Addictive Relationship With Yourself:

1. What are you willing to put up with? Would you hang out with a friend that treats you and speaks to you the way you are treating yourself?

2. Can you name the ways in which you are abusive to yourself?

3. Do you pretend that you are not hurting yourself so that you don't have to change?

4. Can you entertain the possibility that you could love yourself right now - just as you are. Could you possibly believe that change can only come from a place of self love and allowing yourself pleasure? Can you name how you love yourself now?Your relationship with yourself reflects the best of who you are, and what you can get out of life.Take a good hard look. Are you in a destruction addictive relationship with yourself? Ignoring it won't make it go away. Pretending that you are not in an addictive cycle of self hate talk will not create the pleasure in your life and fulfillment that most of us seek.Instead you may find yourself stuck in anger, anxiety, depression, low libido and sometimes isolation.

You are the one who is stopping yourself from making changes that will improve your life, your options, your reactions and ultimately your future and every present moment in your life. How do you move out of this cycle?

1. Acknowledge the clearest truth about what you are feeling, what you are thinking, and what you want.

2. Stop worrying about what others might think about your feelings. Stop judging. Try accepting where you are right now and then decide what action you want to take next.

3. Acknowledge your own uniqueness. You have your own way of being. Your own views and opinions. You walk in the world your own way. See yourself with your own loving eyes - not through the eyes of others.

4. Write down how you would like to express yourself in your own greatness.

5. Take the next step. Make the choices and take actions that reflect who you know yourself to really be. Do not treat yourself with anything less than you deserve and don't let others as well.

Ultimately, it's really up to you. If you are addicted to emotional anguish, and never getting what you want - you can stay right where you are. But there is a world full of beauty, support, adventure and pleasure. You have to choose it.

You need to find the courage to not only move towards that reality, but to stay with it once you put your big toe in it. This may mean moving out of your comfort zone and staying there for a while. The familiar is comfortable even if it is painful. It's yours after all. You know it well.

Only you can choose to give up this tired old addictive relationship with yourself and the pain that can come with it. Are you ready?

Loving you from here,

Pamela

PS. I would love to help. I am offering a "Letting Go of Addictive Self Hatred and Creating a Pleasure Plan" Package. Curious? Email me at Pamela@BacktoTheBody.com and put "Time For Change" in the subject line. What could be a better plan for 2014?

The Importance of Having a Pleasure Plan

 

So, do you have a "Pleasure Plan"? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I spend hours everyday “channeling the Goddess” in women, and sometimes their partners. What I have learned, is that everyone needs a “Pleasure Plan” and often that means reaching out of the box.  How do we feed ourselves pleasure? Perhaps it’s not the story book romance that we thought we would have in our lives. Or our marriage beds have cooled, or there isn’t a partner at all. Or maybe we just want something more or different? What then? Do we simply crumble and find ourselves in a very long season of discontent?

Screw that. Do you want more pleasure, fun and adventure in your life? Then create the plan. Take out the calendar and start planning your own “Year of Pleasures”. Start a journal about it.  Start a Pleasure Plan Blog. How can you bring pleasure into your life?

It just doesn't look one way. And without support you are as likely to drop your Pleasure Plan as the next Green Diet Cleanse!

I am dedicated to living a life filled with pleasure, and I love to inspire pleasure appreciation in others. It’s my work, and it’s my passion. Pleasure is my creative rocket fuel for all the parts of my life – and it can be yours too.

It’s okay to go digging in your 401K for pleasure. You are never too young or too old to transform your relationship with pleasure.  January1st is just around the corner. Why not begin to plan for a new kind of New Year’s Resolution? How about declaring your own “Year of Pleasure”?

Here are some possible starting places:

1. Consider doing a coaching series with me! The Queen of Pleasure! Let me help you tap into what you want, and let figure out how to get it.  Set up a free consultation to talk about setting up a "Pleasure Plan" for yourself.

2. Layout your calender and your finances! Put aside a budget of time and money. Give generously to your plan. Your life will transform. Really, the new whatever can wait!

3. Consider taking a “Pleasure Retreat”. I try to have one every two months for an extended weekend. I plan for it. I pull every drop of pleasure out of that time. There is the pleasure of anticipation and planning, the actual event, and the after glow where I can roll it around in my mouth for weeks after! Go somewhere you have never been before. Figure out the food! What is your pleasure? Experiment. Your pleasure could be visiting gardens, it doesn’t have to be sex!

4. Explore workshops! There are lots of awesome workshops in the sexuality realm! If you are a woman – consider joining me, Ron and Neal at our May "July 3rd Back to the Body Retreat  limited to only six women.

5. Consider a private retreat with a hands on practitioner, and go on your own Shameless Journey……and yes…..of course I can help you there too!  I can help you plan a private mini retreat for yourself, working with me and a Sexological Bodyworker. We also create private mini couple's retreats. Email me, we can talk about it!

Don't know what I am talking about? Read my book! Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner!

Face your life, and look to your desires, leave no path untaken.

The point is to make a plan. These are some ideas to get you started, and an offer of help.

Wanna talk about a Pleasure Plan? Send an email to Pamela@PamelaMadsen.org  and we can set up a free consultation.

Loving you from here…..

Pamela

Do I Need Lipstick?

I love this Rumi most of all:  "Forget Safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be Notorious.

Not a big surprise, if you know anything about me. But it is something that I choose over and over again. I choose it when I wrote "Shameless".  And I am choosing it right now, simultaneously writing a book of erotica and a self help book at the same time.  I kept being drawn to both - "The Arousal Principle" and "The Surrender Games". And I worried that no one would take "The Arousal Principal" (the self help book), seriously if I wrote erotica (which for me is part memoir anyway!). So, I kept putting down "The Surrender Games", because I am a SERIOUS FEMALE SEX COACH! Right. And then I decided once again to follow my heart and my fingers and I am forgetting safety. Right now again, I am living where I fear to live. I am writing self help and sexy stories. I am running retreats for women that are so magnificent and out of the box, that they couldn't even imagine the box when Will, Ron and I created "Back to The Body".

Oh yeah. I might destroy my reputation. Who knows....I may be notorious already. Isn't that kind of wonderful?

I feel great. I am right where I should be.

What about you?

Can you let yourself forget safety? Can you live in that place of low vibration arousal where you have this tingle of anticipation that starts in your pelvis and rolls up through your body throughout the day?

Can you let yourself feel what it is to live where you fear most? You say you want to live with an open heart, and destroy the old patterns. You read all of us "self help" Goddesses to you are blue in the face. How many pictures with new age expressions can you "LIKE" in one day on Facebook?

Let me kick your ass. You can discover yourself anew and it will be risky. It always is. You may spend your fortune on your quest. You may break you heart a thousand times over. But you will fall in love. You might change the world.

Stop holding back.Really, I may be just like you. I have all of the fears. I have insecurity. I worry about scarcity. Sometimes I allow my ego to get in the way and have incredibly strong feelings of jealousy. Sometimes, I just worry if I'm pretty enough to get out there and rock this world.

Do I need lipstick?

You found me, this blog and perhaps my Shameless Community which is filled with people who want to create change in their lives and in some ways the world. Soak it up. Breathe in my intensity and make it yours. Dance. Sing. Write. Get Sexy. Fall in love with yourself. Hang out with your friends and love on each other with unbridled support. Laugh until your ribs hurt.Let yourself feel. You can do this.

We can do this together. Soak it in. And if you like, put on lipstick. I do.

The Arousal Principle: How To Put Passion Back Into Your Life

Strap yourself in. I want to talk about female sexual arousal. I believe that it's the secret source of every woman’s power. It’s the ignition switch of the female erotic engine, that potent driver of sexual energy that is life force itself. It propels every aspect of a woman’s existence-- pleasure in all its expressions, relationships (from mother-daughter to lover to her own body), education, creativity and success in business. The Arousal Principle is a new way of understanding and harnessing female sexuality. It stops being about merely the orgasm, the lover, the marriage or the commodity for sale. The Arousal Principle explains how core female sexuality is the fuel that lights up a woman from within.

When she’s in an aroused state, when the erotic engine is humming, mind and body collude to give her that instantly recognizable and enviable show stopping ability. Think Cleopatra or Michelle Obama. Marital status, age, sexual preference, body size or health issues just don’t matter. This is for all women. When women learn how to tap into and access their arousal they rediscover or perhaps find for the first time that hotbed of energy to unleash each woman’s full potential.

It all starts with the vagina, and a little basic science. Walk with me into the land of the controversial and understudied. And I’m distilling the research to what is core to the Arousal Principle.

When we stimulate the vagina (and yes, I mean all of the parts) we stimulate the production of dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for sexual arousal. In an aroused state our senses are heightened, we are more focused, flushed with creative energy, self- confidence, highly motivated and just plain sexy.

We tend to race past this fertile and delicious state in hot pursuit of the orgasm. The “Big O” is something that we’ve been brainwashed to think is the only successful outcome every time we go near our genitals. In the mad dash to climax, we get gypped of a free, organic state that doesn’t require anything other than giving your vagina attention.

Learning to access and use arousal is the beginning of becoming whole. Throughout history, women have been severed, often violently, from their sexual energy, preventing them from using it for anything other than the service of men. When the circuit is disrupted, severed, shamed or abused, women numb out.

The uniquely female life force, turned back on itself shorts out the vagina-heart-brain circuit. With the wires fried, women often find themselves disconnected from their own desires on the most basic of levels. Some women make themselves sexually invisible, consoling themselves with addictions (shopping, food, alcohol), or tumble into depression and anxiety. Many of these women are leaders in so many parts of their lives. CEO's to Supermoms, it doesn't matter. When this circuit disrupts, the break down is often private and unseen to the casual observer. Too many women are still faking it on the deepest of levels when it comes to their relationship with their bodies. They cover up numbness and fear often with either compliance or anger.

So while the Arousal Principal's primary focus is not about how to have great sex, you will. As one of my coaching client's said: “My boyfriend has not changed his techniques. Nothing looks different really from the outside, but damn - sex is hotter than it’s ever been in my life.” That's what I am talking about.

So how do you get started? The reclamation begins in the simplest of ways. For many of us that means we need to by-pass The neo-cortex, hand-slapping, nay-saying part of the brain, and dive right into the pelvis. You need to put your attention on your genitals.

Start slow and easy, when you’re alone and there’s privacy. Wear your clothes or don’t. Whatever makes you comfortable.

In a comfortable seated position, feet firmly on the floor, cup your vulva, palm up, from the front with your fingertips pointing back.

With eyes closed, start rocking your pelvis back and forth.

Focus your attention on the sensations generated by your vulva filling your hand , your muscles clenching and releasing, your pelvis rocking

If you’re feeling adventurous, throw in some Kegels, squeezing and releasing your pelvic floor.

As your awareness of sensation increases--and it will-- let yourself move and lean into the rock.

KEEP BREATHING

When you feel heat rising, when you start to feel pleasure, you’ve arrived in that juicy activated known as arousal. And you’ve done it without any of the usual agendas -- no imperative to reach orgasm, pleasing a partner or satisfying a fantasy. This simple exercise can begin your journey of connection to your own body. It can mark the end of numbness.

One of my clients, we will call her Sarah was so disconnected from erotic engine that she couldn't identify pleasure in any parts of her life. She was sexually non functional, depressed and on heavy medication. She kept telling me that she couldn't feel her genitals, that there was no pleasure there at all. So fully clothed, (we were working through video Skype) I asked her to cup her vulva and begin to softly rock her pelvis while learning forward . I coached her to allow her vulva fill to gentle fill her hand. We did this exercise quietly for about five minutes. When I saw that she was very relaxed and into her own body, and that her face was beginning to flush. I asked her is she could feel anything?

Sarah opened her eyes and tears begin to flow. " I feel heat. I can feel my body!"

It was as simple as having her put attention on her genitals in a way that didn’t have to lead to anything other than feeling erotic energy.

Moment of awakening. The first step in getting the engine cranked and it’s so simple. It's all about the Arousal Principle.

What To Do After Reading This Article:

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What to start exploring this in your own life? Check out Pamela's "Back to The Body Retreats for Women" and her coaching practice.   You don't have to do this alone. Support is available!

Will I Be Safe? Exploring Hands on Sexual Healing

I talk to literally hundreds of women that are exploring cutting edge humanistic sex therapy, somatic sex education or more simply stated - hands on sexual healing and exploration. The number one question is "Will I be safe?". That's the most complicated question to answer, because there isn't a straight forward response! What does being safe mean to you? Of course you will not be harmed in any kind of physical or emotional way. That is the hope whenever we see a professional holistic practitioner that we trust with our care. But safe? A part of me wants to answer..."Of course not! And isn't that the point?" Is that why you are truly showing up? Or are you showing up to push your boundaries and comfort zones? To feel things that you have only read about in books? To explore and heal places that perhaps you could not get to through pills, shakes, and Dr. Oz?

Going deeper into your body and mind can be really challenging. Sometimes, it can really make you feel uncomfortable because you are touching all kinds of new and old feelings. So, no, you will not be safe from any of that. Sometimes, you may feel like you want to run away. That is a challenge any time that we want more in our lives. It's about digging in, and getting terribly real with ourselves. That's what hands on therapy provides.

It's an opportunity to explore your sexuality, desires, and body image in a way that is all about you.

Step-by-stiletto step, it can feel exciting, eye opening, earnest, pleasure filled, and magical. On your journey you will be flipping the switch on your erotic engine in ways that you never thought was possible. That’s the powerhouse motor fueled by sexual energy that propels every aspect of a woman’s life--sexual pleasure, relationships (from mother-daughter to lover to her own body), education and even success in business.

Safe? Will I be safe?

Well, it all starts with you. Your body. Your humble vagina and your precious pelvis. Every woman’s got one. The problem is it’s only the rare woman who knows how to access and use its magic powers for self-transformation.

That's what hands on, somatic practice is offering. An opportunity to explore this place in yourself and learn how. The goal is to power up, rediscover or perhaps to find for the first time that hotbed of energy and harness it to unleash each woman’s full potential.

Do you want to feel integrated, powerful, sensuous and seen? Do you want to look at your sexuality through a different lens then you ever have before? What if sex is not just there for attracting men, orgasms or making babies? And what if you could have all that and the secret sauce too if you wanted it?

Naomi Wolf has taken on the subject of the vagina-heart-brain circuit in her inevitably controversial treatise and NY Times bestseller, “Vagina: A New Biography.” Though it’s met wild adulation and bitter criticism, the message is compelling. When the circuit, a dopamine-oxytocin-opiate loop in physiological terms, is intact and uninterrupted, women are in a state of genuine well-being: capable, confident and sexy. When that loop is disrupted, severed, shamed or abused women numb out. They get depressed, anxious, have low libido and dare I say it, suffer “hysteria.” While Wolf’s analysis may be bitterly contested by some, her understanding and defense of the genital-brain connection is one that we've studied and established empirically.

What she didn’t explain in any great detail is how to acknowledge and complete that circuit so that we women are steadily charged, activated, open to and ready for life. That’s what this is all about.

Will you be safe? Is perhaps forever changed safe?

Yes....you will be safe in the deepest sense of the world. And you will also be busted open, and alive like you have never been in your entire life.

Do you want to know more? Contact me for a free "Curious Critter" session. Just send an email to Pamela@beingshameless.com and put "Curious Critter" in the subject line!

The Guts To Do Something Different

I know, I have talked about doing something different before. I will again. Because it is such a big, important skill set to learn. It takes guts to do something different.  In somatic sex education (through the body) we talk a lot about re-wiring neural pathways to sexual pleasure. That is what can happen when you do hands on work with a somatic sex practitioner. It is an amazing experience.
But there is also another piece to the puzzle on sex and relationship, and that is reprogramming our emotional neural pathways. What happens when you begin to feel restless, unsettled, anxious? Can you stop a minute and notice the hotness? That moment when you instantly grab for something? You know the something....that thing that you do when you are in one of those moments. Do you constantly threaten to leave your relationship? Do you withdraw? Abuse a substance? Throw things? Is it the same thing that you do repeatedly? Does it get you anywhere different? My guess, is that it doesn't. Think about doing something different ahead of time. What do you want to feel? How do you get there?

When you feel it coming on, just stop for a minute. And bring in your pre-planned new pattern of behavior or wing it! It can be really hard to do this. We want to reach for the familiar because even in it's dysfunction - it comforts us. Ask for support for this change in response from your friends, lovers, partners, therapists and coaches. It is through this constant paying attention and witnessing of our own emotional reactions that we can create the sexy, playful, beautiful experiences that we want to fill our lives.

 

Surviving The Relationship Roller Coaster

Maybe it is my age, or the age of my friends. But we all seem to be going through exactly the same stuff - just in different forms. We take turns talking about lovers, husbands, partners and how we are able to take care of ourselves while we ride the roller coaster of relationships.

We talk about the intensity; our the desires and the pain. The questions about whether or not to go forward and how do you let go. We worry about regret and how to take care of others while taking care of ourselves.
The problem seems to be in assuming that there is one truth, one deep authentic truth, about a relationship... and whether people admit that or not they tend to hold onto a universal wonder that sounds something like this:  "I will never truly know how he/she feels in his heart about me".

Well, most likely, neither will he or she.  We don't settle on one truth forever. Emotions move and flow, and if you think you can keep them in a box, forget about it. They will never stay the same.

Real life  is much more nuanced and paradoxical . Plus the deeper the relationship, the more obvious the extremes.

Think about some of your hottest relationships. You may experience ongoing waves of emotion. One day yes, one day no.  Sometimes, you can swing between these extremes for months and months and months.

This, to me, is not a sign of vacillation or weakness but a keen observation of how it works to be human.

To my eyes and heart, the highs are in intimate lockstep with the lows... it's like pushing a child on a swing, back and forth... the swing can't go further forward without also going further back...

Once I stopped believing this should be different than it is, I fell into the most amazing peace... embracing the highs and lows as they come.

Come on, I have shared with you here a  that secret most people would never believe: that there's an intimate connection between pleasure and pain... more intensity in one brings more intensity in the other.

It's the same here with emotions and "truth". Pulling back allows a deeper penetration... separating sets the stage for merge...

Sometimes, we have to suck it up, breathe through it, surrender to the simple truth of it. The essence of passion is paradox. The essence of comfort is predictability. What do you want?

This is simply how the process works.

If you feel like you are drowning in your relationship. That the high and lows are flooding your soul, I am here to say that you are not drowning. Whatever you choose will be perfect. These deep karmic relationships have a life of their own and people make up stories about why they make the choices that they do. But this is waaaay beyond rational choice or even emotional choice at times. Trust your body. You will know when to step forward, and when to step back... your body is telling you... now that you have opened your body, it can be your guide and compass.  You are doing the work. Now you can fire on all cylinders.

Enjoy the waves.
Loving you from here,

Pamela

A Year of Pleasure: Do You Have a Pleasure Plan?

It's an interesting question, isn't it? I spend hours everyday "channeling the Goddess" in women, and sometimes their partners. What I have learned, is that everyone needs a "Pleasure Plan" and often that means reaching out of the box! How do we feed ourselves pleasure? Perhaps it's not the story book romance that we thought we would have in our lives. Or our marriage beds have cooled, or there isn't a partner at all. Or maybe we just want something more or different? What then? Do we simply crumble and find ourselves in a very long season of discontent? Screw that. Do you want more pleasure, fun and adventure in your life? Then create the plan. Take out the calendar and start planning your own "Year of Pleasures". Start a journal about it. Blog it here in the community. How can you bring pleasure into your life?

I am dedicated to living a life filled with pleasure, and I love to inspire pleasure appreciation in others. It's my work, and it's my passion. Pleasure is my creative rocket fuel for all the parts of my life - and it can be yours too.

It's okay to go digging in your 401K for pleasure. You are never too young or too old to transform your relationship with pleasure.  January1st is just around the corner. Why not begin to plan for a new kind of New Year's Resolution? How about declaring your own "Year of Pleasure"?

Here are some possible starting places:

1. Consider doing a coaching series with me! The Queen of Pleasure! Let me help you tap into what you want, and let figure out how to get it. Learn about Coaching with "The Pleasure Doula" here!

2. Layout your calender and your finances!Put aside a budget of time and money. Give generously to your plan. Your life will transform. Really, the new whatever can wait!

3. Consider taking a "Pleasure Retreat". I try to have one every two months for an extended weekend. I plan for it. I pull every drop of pleasure out of that time. There is the pleasure of anticipation and planning, the actual event, and the after glow where I can roll it around in my mouth for weeks after! Go somewhere you have never been before. Figure out the food! What is your pleasure? Experiment. Your pleasure could be visiting gardens, it doesn't have to be sex!

4. Explore workshops! There are lots of awesome workshops in the sexuality realm! If you are a woman - consider joining me, Will and Ron at our winter "Back to The Body - A Sensuous Retreat For Women" limited to only six women! The timing is perfect for a New Year's Kick off for a year of pleasure or an early Valentine's gift to yourself.

5. Consider a private retreat with a hands on practitioner, and go on your own Shameless Journey......and yes.....of course I can help you there too! Don't know what I am talking about?

Read my book! Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner!

Face your life, and look to your desires, leave no path untaken.

The point is to make a plan. These are some ideas to get you started, and an offer of help.

Wanna talk about a Pleasure Plan? Send an email to Pamela@beingshameless.com and we can set up a free consultation.

Loving you from here.....

Pamela