Why We've Forgotten How to Feel Pleasure and How to Get It Back

Most of us have a complicated relationship with the word pleasure. On one hand, it conjures images of warmth, delight, and satisfaction—the simple goodness of a delicious meal, a captivating book, or a comforting touch. Yet, a life dedicated solely to pleasure is often viewed with suspicion, as if it were a wasted existence. Why is that? The word itself is weighed down by fears that pleasure will lead us astray, making us forget our duties and responsibilities, pulling us into a chasm of indulgence.

Modern culture often champions the ego over the body. The primary values revolve around acquisition and achievement; "to own" has replaced "to be." This pursuit leaves us with a fleeting sense of control, haunted by the persistent fear that it will all disappear. Here lies the paradox: pleasure remains one of our deepest motivators. We imagine that once we achieve some ambitious goal, a profound sense of pleasure will automatically follow. But until that distant day arrives, all pleasure is postponed. This is an exploration of the other kind of pleasure—the simple, daily kind that can fuel you, right now, on the path toward your goals.

The Art of Total Presence

The main condition for experiencing pleasure is complete self-surrender in any activity. Partial involvement only creates a separation between you and the action, leading to tension. A Buddhist monk famously told his students, "When you eat, just eat." One day, the students saw him reading a newspaper during a meal and questioned him. The monk simply replied, "When you're eating and reading a newspaper, just eat and read a newspaper."

Children are masters of this. They have an innate ability to surrender completely to play. When a child says a game was "fun," it doesn't just mean it was amusing. It means he was in it with his whole being, lost in an imaginary world, and derived immense pleasure from that total immersion. Through this self-expression, children tap into the creative impulse inherent in the human personality. The ease with which a child can invent and imagine speaks to the richness of his inner world.

We adults often look back on that time with longing, seeing it as a cloudless period free from worry. But the past, like the future, is a fantasy. Only the present moment is real.

The Process is the Prize

Consider the filmmaker David Lynch, a master of the unconscious who seemed to be on excellent terms with his own shadow. For him, life and work were inseparable. His film Lost Highway famously begins with the line, "Dick Laurent is dead." This wasn't a line born from a brainstorming session; one day, a stranger buzzed his intercom in real life and uttered those exact words. Lynch, with his vibrant imagination, was so intrigued that he wove it directly into his art.

This is what it means to work for the process itself, not just for the result. When you become carried away by the act of creation, new ideas emerge, and you get a natural high from the process. If you don't love the process, perhaps you should be doing something else. Are there any 100% happy people? It’s hard to say. But one thing is certain: our lives should be more than a struggle for achievement. They should be filled with pleasure and joy.

The Body in Exile

At the heart of any experience of joy is the bodily sensation of pleasure. For two millennia, Western culture has treated the body like a shameful secret. With the dawn of the scientific era, the body was further marginalized, reduced to a mere mechanism—a collection of chemicals without a soul or intrinsic value. The gap between mind and body widened. Culture glorified intellectual achievements while ignoring the body's intuition and natural wisdom.

This created a world of false opposites: body against spirit, sin against innocence, animal against divine. As a result, the body became a source of shame. We lost the joy of free movement and became entangled in psychosomatic illnesses, indifference, addictions, and obesity. We risk ending up in a world where the body is obsolete, replaced by a cold intellect detached from life.

But this isn't the only possible future. Proponents of body-centered therapy see the body not as a burden but as a sacred temple of transformation. Through breathing, vibration, sounds, and rhythms, they open a path to working with our shadow, freeing it from the captivity of the rational mind.

Your Body Keeps the Score

Many believe the shadow is an elusive concept hidden in the corners of the unconscious. It is there, but it’s also much closer. Those who study body language know that the shadow is imprinted in our muscles, tissues, and bones. Our personal history is etched into every movement and every point of tension. Dancers, athletes, and anyone accustomed to trusting their body will not be surprised by the idea that it holds a key to our awakening.

You can see this principle in everyday life. Watching a skilled carpenter, you notice the pleasure he takes in the coordinated movements of his body. His actions seem effortless, light, and natural. If his movements were clumsy and forced, it would be hard to imagine him enjoying his work. The point isn't about being a master craftsman. Even a simple action like cooking or cleaning can bring pleasure if you listen to your body and respond to its natural rhythms, from your breath to your fingertips.

A person seeks therapy when life ceases to be enjoyable. The complaints vary—depression, anxiety, self-sabotage—but the root is often the same: an inability to derive pleasure from life. This problem cannot be solved by a purely mental approach. It must be addressed on both psychological and physical levels.

The Breath of Life and the Grace of Movement

A person disconnected from their body breathes more shallowly. The more fully they breathe, the more life they embody. As we get older, we might sadly discover that our breathing, like other bodily functions, deteriorates. Only when it becomes difficult to breathe do we realize it’s a matter of life and death. Pay attention to your breathing right now, and you'll likely notice how often you hold it. A person with shallow breath can seem cold and lifeless.

A healthy breath is whole and unified. The inhale begins in the abdomen as the diaphragm contracts, creating a wave of expansion that moves up through the chest. Deepening the breath can cause vibrations to spread through the body, starting from the legs. A healthy personality is a vibrating personality. A healthy body pulsates. When people say they need a "good shake-up," it’s often the body's attempt to do just that through involuntary vibrations—to break free from rigid habits.

Confidence is the ability to express yourself freely. Spontaneity and self-control are not enemies; they are allies. Real self-control isn't about mechanical suppression but about releasing tension. This is what creates grace—freedom from chronic tension. Graceful people move easily, as if dancing. In contrast, a shy person often seems to be watching their body from the outside, losing contact with themselves. This creates an alien stiffness. If you don't feel your feet firmly on the ground, you aren't grounded. To live in the body means to feel it from within, not to perform for an imaginary audience.

The Traps of "Someday" and Hollow Victories

In our collective consciousness, success is what distinguishes a person from the crowd. We say of a successful person, "He made it, and now he can finally relax and enjoy life." This leads to what's known as "delayed life syndrome"—a sacrificial rejection of all present pleasures for the sake of a distant, large-scale goal that will supposedly change everything. People come to believe they aren't living a "real life" now but are merely preparing for it.

Intellectually, we know that success has no magical properties. Emotionally, however, we are conditioned to strive for it. From the moment we enter school, life is framed as a series of successes and failures. To advance, we must achieve sequential goals, a model that carries into adulthood. Goals are not the problem. The problem is making success itself the primary objective. For example, if a writer’s goal is to publish a book, achieving that is a success. But in the public mind, true success only comes if the book becomes a bestseller.

Consider a talented musician, praised by critics for his originality, who feels an internal void of confusion and insecurity. He lives in his imagination, having long lost touch with his body. Though his work brings him recognition and satisfies his ego, his life is devoid of pleasure. How many stories do we know of talented, famous people who, at the peak of their careers, end their own lives? External validation is not a substitute for internal fulfillment.

Pleasure, Pain, and Wholeness

You’ve probably met people who aren't gurus or celebrities but have sparks flying around them. They exude a special energy, a kind of vibration you can feel. This gets to the heart of what we might call sexuality, which is about far more than physical attributes. It’s about aliveness, soul, and presence.

In his book The Soul of Sex, Thomas Moore argues that the historical separation of spirit and body is a neurosis. In ancient Hebrew, there was no separate word for "body"; a person was a living nefesh, a body-spirit unity. To touch someone physically was to touch them spiritually. If we do not enter into an intimate act with our full presence, we don't truly meet the other person.

This brings us to a final truth: people avoid pleasure because they are afraid of pain. As we grow, we learn to cope with hardship by suppressing our grief, fear, and anger. In doing so, we also diminish our ability to love, rejoice, and experience pleasure. By closing ourselves off from pain, we inevitably close ourselves off from pleasure. It is impossible to restore the capacity for joy without reliving our sadness. We can’t feel true pleasure without moving through the pain of rebirth.

In some rare cases, this integration takes radical forms. The psychological mystery of masochism, for instance, hints at this complexity. How can pain and pleasure coexist? For some, pain becomes a paradoxical source of pleasure because it offers a way to accept themselves completely, dark sides and all. Accepting suffering—our own and the world's—is one of the fundamental tasks on the path to becoming whole.

To integrate your shadow is a sure path to pleasure. Try a small mental exercise: picture someone who, in your opinion, truly gets pleasure from life. Describe them in detail—how they move, talk, and think. Then, try to live just one day as that person and observe what you feel. Where attention goes, energy flows. Let's direct our attention back to pleasure.

References

• Lowen, Alexander. Pleasure: A Creative Approach to Life. (1970).

  This foundational work of bioenergetic analysis explores how modern individuals suppress their feelings and lose their natural vitality. Lowen argues that reclaiming the body's capacity for pleasure is essential for emotional health and creativity, linking chronic muscular tension to repressed emotions.

• Moore, Thomas. The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love. (1998).

  Moore reframes sexuality not as a mere biological act but as a profound spiritual and soulful experience. He critiques the historical split between body and spirit, suggesting that true intimacy and pleasure arise from integrating the sacred and the passionate in all areas of life, thereby healing a core cultural neurosis.

• Jung, Carl G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, Vol. 9i). (1969).

  The chapter titled "The Shadow" provides the definitive explanation of this key psychological concept. Jung describes the shadow as the "dark side" of our personality—the repressed and disowned parts of ourselves. He explains that confronting and integrating the shadow is a crucial and morally necessary task for achieving self-awareness and personal wholeness.