Hello Pleasure Activists,

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If I could sit down with my younger self, the version of me who was drowning in purity culture, who believed that her desire was dangerous, and who thought love was something you earned through self-abandonment, I would tell her something simple and radical: pleasure is possible.

 

And more than that, pleasure is a practice.

 

I would tell her that the fire she feared inside her was never meant to be extinguished. The hunger in her body was never sin; it was a signal from her own aliveness. The ache to be touched, to be seen, and to feel alive was not a flaw in her moral character but the pulse of life moving through her.

 

I would tell her that one day she would build a life, a practice, and a community centered around that truth.

 

For a long time, I believed pleasure was an outcome, something that arrived after the work was finished, after the pain was processed, and after I became "healed enough" to deserve it. What I understand now, both through my own journey and the stories that unfold inside The Pleasure Practice, is that pleasure is not a destination. It is a daily discipline of returning to the body again and again, especially when the world has taught us to leave it.

 

When I began studying relational neuroscience, I learned that our brains are not static structures. They are living, breathing ecosystems of possibility. Each time we notice sensation, name desire, or remain present with emotion rather than fleeing it, we reshape the architecture of the brain.

 

Neural pathways strengthen through repetition and attention. When experiences of safety and satisfaction occur often enough, the brain begins to map those patterns as familiar. Pleasure then becomes not only accessible but sustainable. Dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin release in synchrony with the body’s parasympathetic system, reinforcing the link between connection and calm. What begins as conscious effort, breathing through pleasure or grounding during intimacy, gradually becomes instinct.

 

This is why I remind clients that pleasure is not about a single ecstatic moment. It is about the thousand small ones that build toward it. Every breath, every softening, and every honest conversation becomes part of the architecture of liberation. Practice, and all is coming.

 

Years ago, a client of mine stood in front of a mirror for the first time as part of an embodiment ritual we created together. Their hands trembled as they met their own gaze and whispered words of appreciation that felt awkward at first. Within minutes something shifted. Tears came, shoulders dropped, and the body began to believe what the mind could not yet accept: "I am worthy of my own attention."

 

That ritual became the cornerstone of their transformation. Over the following months, their capacity for intimacy expanded. Sex became less about performance and more about presence. They began to live inside their body again.

 

This is what happens when we practice pleasure. The goal is not constant euphoria. The practice is about creating enough safety within the nervous system to stay with what is present in the moment.

 

There is a particular kind of joy that emerges when the practice begins to take root within the body. Over time, what once felt like conscious effort becomes second nature. The breath deepens. The shoulders soften. Pleasure no longer feels like something external to chase but something internal to cultivate.

 

As my clients often discover, this shift from performance to presence is profound. The nervous system begins to anticipate pleasure rather than brace against it. Desire becomes less about seeking validation and more about feeling alive. In this way, self-generated pleasure is not isolation. It is integration. It is the body remembering how to trust itself again.

 

From a neuroscientific perspective, the practice of pleasure strengthens integration between the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in reflection and meaning-making, and the limbic system, which governs emotion and reward. Over time, repeated experiences of embodied pleasure teach the nervous system that it is safe to feel. The brain’s threat responses quiet, the amygdala calms, and the body learns that expansion does not equal danger.

 

This process demonstrates neuroplasticity in motion. The brain’s ability to form new synaptic connections means that every pleasurable experience we consciously allow rewires us toward greater trust, intimacy, and vitality.

 

In my psychedelic-assisted work within The Pleasure Practice, I often witness how medicine journeys accelerate this process. Psychedelics temporarily open a state of heightened neuroplasticity and softening of the brain’s default mode network. This gentle loosening allows new emotional associations to form between safety, connection, and bodily sensation.

 

I remember one client lying back on the couch, tears streaming down their cheeks as the medicine softened the edges of a memory they had spent years avoiding. Where they once felt the icy grip of shame, they now felt warmth, like sunlight filtering into a room long kept closed. The experience did not erase the past; it rewrote the body’s memory of it. When they later spoke of that moment, they said, “For the first time, I felt my body forgive me.”

 

That forgiveness marked the beginning of something profound. It was the nervous system learning, perhaps for the first time, that it could experience truth without punishment and memory without pain. From that place of embodied safety, integration could begin. Because the brain’s pathways are most flexible during and shortly after these sessions, the practices we pair with them, breathwork, touch, self-soothing, and connection, take root more easily.

 

I have watched clients emerge from those journeys with tears of recognition as they whisper, “this is what it feels like to belong in my body.” That sense of belonging becomes the foundation of pleasure.

 

Whether through psychedelic integration or daily mindfulness, the task remains the same: to build new neural pathways through repetition, gentleness, and curiosity. Pleasure is practice, and with each practice, all is coming.

 

I often think about this process through the lens of orgasm. When I first began exploring pleasure with partners, my body did not know how to fully let go. I felt self-conscious, distracted, and afraid of taking up too much space. It required time, patience, and repetition for my nervous system to learn that surrender was safe.

 

Pleasure taught me that orgasm is not a single event but an unfolding process, a conversation between trust, safety, and awareness. Over time, what once required deliberate effort began to flow naturally. My body learned how to open not just once, but again and again, expanding into multiple waves of release.

The same is true for all forms of pleasure. We practice letting go until the body begins to trust the letting go itself. Each repetition deepens the pathways of pleasure, and slowly, we realize that what felt impossible at first was always within reach. Practice, and all is coming.

 

Our cultural systems were designed to keep us disconnected from that possibility. Capitalism rewards productivity rather than presence. Patriarchy seeks compliance rather than creativity. White supremacy thrives on disembodiment because bodies that feel are bodies that revolt.

 

To reclaim pleasure is therefore an act of resistance.

 

It is a refusal to participate in numbness. It is a political choice to root ourselves in aliveness and to declare that joy and erotic vitality are not privileges; they are rights.

 

When we connect to pleasure, we become harder to control. We slow down, we savor, and we listen. From that listening, we begin to imagine a world beyond domination and depletion.

 

In the Pleasure Liberation Groups, I often watch people arrive tense and skeptical. They want to understand pleasure intellectually and fix what feels broken. Week after week, as we breathe together, share stories, and reconnect with the body’s wisdom, something tender begins to unfold. Shoulders soften, laughter returns, and shame loses its grip.

 

The first realization that lands is not “I am healed.” It is “I can feel everything that is here right now, both the sadness and the joy.” That awareness marks a profound turning point. The body is no longer protecting itself from sensation; it is opening to the full range of experience. This is the heart of the practice: to stay with what arises, to meet pleasure and pain with equal presence, and to trust that both are part of the same pathway toward aliveness.

 

If I could return to that younger version of myself again, I would tell her this:

You will spend years untangling what you were taught to fear.

You will grieve the time you spent trying to be small.

You will build a life so wide with love that you will forget what it felt like to shrink.

 

You will make mistakes and repair them.

You will lose people who cannot meet you in your expansion.

You will also find your people: those who see you, celebrate you, and grow with you.

 

One day you will wake up and realize that pleasure has become the air you breathe.

 

That realization will not come because everything is easy or perfect. It will come because you have learned to meet the world with softness rather than scarcity. You will have practiced pleasure long enough for it to become who you are.

 

Your Pleasure Practice

 

Journal Prompt: What sensations in your body tell you that you feel safe, connected, or alive? Describe a recent moment when you experienced even a trace of that aliveness. What made it possible, and what small action could help you return to that feeling again?

 

Somatic Practice: Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Inhale for a count of four, feeling both hands rise. Exhale for a count of six. Notice the shift as your body moves toward parasympathetic calm. This slow exhale signals safety to the nervous system and strengthens the link between relaxation and pleasure.

 

Relational Tool: Share one daily ritual of pleasure with someone you trust. It might be a shared meal, a slow dance in the kitchen, or ten minutes of mutual gratitude before bed. Consistency builds new neural pathways of connection and teaches both nervous systems that intimacy can feel safe.

 

Pleasure is not indulgence. It is intelligence. It teaches us how to listen, how to connect, and how to create. It is the pulse of liberation beating inside us all.

 

Sending All My Love,
Dr. Nicole

 

Dr. Nicole Thompson

Sex and Relationship Psychotherapist

Psychedelic-Assisted Liberation

Clinical Psychology