Pleasure Mechanics

Seeking Sexual Freedom with the Woodhull Freedom Foundation

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If you are concerned about the state of sexual freedom, reproductive rights, access to health care and wondering how you can still get horny when the world is on fire, you are not alone!

Join us in conversation with the Woodhull Freedom Foundation about how we can all step up and take action to generate more freedom, pleasure and connection for us all.

Then, come out for the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit! Immerse yourself in community and join us as we come together for three days of stimulating education and celebrating our hard-earned erotic freedom! The event is Aug 4-7, 2022 in Alexandria, VA – join us!

Thanks to our episode sponsors for being part of our global team of Pleasure Partners:

The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit brings together people from every corner of the sexuality advocacy world – educators, activists, advocates, and lawyers – to be in conversation with one another, strategize and learn together, troubleshoot challenges, and celebrate successes. Attendees come to the Sexual Freedom Summit each year to get inspired, develop new skills, gain access to resources, and recharge among other sexual freedom advocates. When they return home attendees are ready to take action to advance sexual rights in their communities. Register now!

Connect year round with the Woodhull Freedom Foundation for resources, local connections and ways you can step into being a Pleasure Activist in your daily life and home communities.

Continue The Conversation: Speaking Of Sex Episodes

Releasing Erotic Judgment

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Practicing non-judgment is at the core of mindfulness and our approach to Mindful Sex. Learning how to recognize and release judgment serves to bring us deeper into our present reality, align us with our values and create connection with others.

But like so many essential skills, developing the attitude of non-judgment takes time and practice.

Thanks to our episode sponsors for being part of our global team of Pleasure Partners:

Ready to experience more Mindful Sex? Enroll in our online course and practice pleasure with us!

Continue the Conversation with more Speaking of Sex Podcast Episode:

Cultivating Non-Judgment With Mindful Sex Practices

In this podcast episode we explore how we can befriend our own judgment to create more freedom within us and relationally by practicing the attitudes of non-judgement and discernment instead.

To explore this practice and process:

  • We become aware of our own judgment 
  • We explore where this judgment comes from
  • We ask ourselves, is this judgemental thought your own, or is it from intergenerational sources, like family, religion or capitalism? 
  • Do you agree with this thought or does this thought align with your current values?
  • We ask what is right for me, right now?

Through these inquiries we can choose a different response to our judgemental thoughts. 

We explore swapping judgment for the slower process of discernment. Discernment is a practice of perceiving the present moment without judgment. Discernment encourages a little more space between our thoughts and actions than our reactive judgmental thoughts. In the practice of discerning, we can pause and choose to get curious, and ask the question: what is right for me right now?

If we can release even a little bit of our own judgment we can make space to experience our lives with less suffering and more freedom, pleasure, joy and connection, for ourselves and those around us.

Reclaiming Pleasure with Dr. Holly Richmond

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Join us in conversation with the ever wise somatic psychotherapist Dr. Holly Richmond, author of Reclaiming Pleasure: A Sex-Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life.

We all can practice reclaiming pleasure, in big and small ways, throughout our daily lives. In this interview, Dr. Holly Richmond guides us in understanding the ongoing process of reclaiming (or discovering for the first time!) our own authentic eroticism, agency and embodied joy.

Thanks to our episode sponsors for being part of our global team of Pleasure Partners:

Explore More With Dr. Holly Richmond:

Continue The Conversation With These Speaking of Sex Podcast Episodes:

* please note some links on this page are affiliate links, and if you choose to make a purchase we will receive a small percentage as thanks for the referral. We only link to resources we know, trust and love!

Pleasure Praxis Resources

This resource has been compiled by Chris Maxwell Rose as a freely shared resource for students, therapists, counselors, educators, bodyworkers and other care professionals. 

It is a living, emergent collection, in conversation with the community that it serves.

All links and resources are offered as threads into vast territories of knowledge on an ever changing internet, we apologize for broken links and welcome community contributions to maintaining this resource page.

All resources offered as starting points, enjoy being active in your own educational process and where that takes you!

Foundational Theory

The Nervous System

Frameworks

Practicing Towards Liberation

Somatic Sex Education: Our Lineage

Interoception Research

Research on Pleasure, Touch & Connection

Placement of Erotic Attention

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Mindful Sex invites us to practice paying attention, on purpose, with empathy, during states of high arousal. But “paying attention” isn’t always so easy, especially in the charged realm of sexuality.

There is plenty to pay attention to during sexual encounters – how you feel, how it feels to be with your partner, on the arousal inside your body or the many points of physical connection with a partner. It can be overwhelming enough to know where to place attention during sex, plus there are so many potential distractions pulling our attention away from the pleasure.

In this episode, part of the Mindful Sex series, we focus on the skill of erotic attention – and how to manage all the erotic distractions that inevitably arise during arousal and erotic connection.

Thanks to our episode sponsors for being part of our global team of Pleasure Partners:

Ready to experience more Mindful Sex? Enroll in our online course and practice pleasure with us!

“Love is the placement of attention” is something Pleasure Mechanics founder Chris Maxwell Rose has been saying for over 20 years now, in respectful reverence for the importance of choosing what we pay attention to. The practice of curating our attention and devoting our erotic attention is one that brings boundless opportunities for welcoming more pleasure, joy and connection into our lives.

Wisdom On The Intimate Importance of Attention

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

― Susan Sontag

Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.

― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

In the end, just three things matter:

How well we have lived
How well we have loved
How well we have learned to let go
― Jack Kornfield

Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.

― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time