That’s what I am, what I have been for a long time. Practice is the foundation. And what am I practicing now?

Basic basic basic skills.

Now, I am enrolled in a very non-basic study, I’m learning EroSomatic Touch from Amina Peterson, planning to merge my coaching skills with bodywork when I (re-)launch my practice.

And it’s wonderful! I am learning so much. But the challenge in my life right now isn’t studying pelvic floor dynamics or the transition points between the chakras. It’s the basics of pleasure –

Breathing deeply,

Finding comfortable sitting positions,

Identifying what it feels like when I’m aroused,

Releasing my pelvic floor and then releasing it further,

Noticing when I feel anxiety and tending to it,

Reaching for myself when I’m upset,

Celebrating the body…

I am recovering now, from burnout, from numbing myself, from over-exercising my inherited capacity for tolerating discomfort,* from not being inside my purpose, from bouts of paranoia, from literally losing my mind about it all, and I did lose my mind, or, it lost me. It spun itself up so high and down so low that my spirit was untethered and confused.

So some basic skills were lost, or, some of them I never had. And I have been trying to step into elevation for a while, to move from surviving to thriving.

Here is the * . Discomfort is beautiful. Indeed, I have taught outreach workers about how to identify the difference between discomfort and danger. Indeed, I know that my own growth requires discomfort, not just once, but repeatedly, that there is no endpoint at which we do not experience discomfort. However: you cannot live there.

You cannot set up camp. You are a traveler, a guest. It is necessarily a temporary state.

I was raised by two people-pleasers (this isn’t a call-out, they already know), so I didn’t have to build the psychology to make constant compromises without being asked to, I copy and pasted the behavior like any child does. And now I have the ghost of habitually making do, making it work, dealing with it.

In today’s world, these are necessary skills and there is even value in teaching them. But when you live there, you are cutting yourself off at the knees.

So learning basic pleasure skills like breathing deeply –

And if you find you cannot take a full deep breath easily, you have identified a top priority for experiencing pleasure.

That’s what I’m enrolled in right now!

Big love to all beings,

k.