Words Shape Our Relationship to Our Lived Experience

In the previous post, Chris wrote to you about how her avoidance of discomfort and pain led to disconnection and isolation. She shared about needing to learn to be with all of the sensations in her body, and emotions in her heart, and how that became a doorway into belonging, connection, and deeply nourishing pleasure. 

While reading her words, I realized that while my family operated in some similar ways – my dad’s mantra was, ‘happiness is a choice’ – the impact on me was different. Rather than trying to move away from pain and discomfort, I came to assume that pain was simply the way life was, and no one could do anything about it. I dismissed the experiences I was having, and chose to be happy – or at least to make it look like I was – and felt so very alone.

A decade in high-level gymnastics reinforced my capacity to dismiss pain; to no longer see it as pain, but instead to rebrand it as discomfort; to smile and perform on pulled muscles, sprained ankles, and stress fractures. I learned that pain that wasn’t causing damage was to be worked through, and it wasn’t causing damage until proven otherwise. I also learned to wait until I was completely debilitated before seeking out support or assistance. 

Something hurt. All the time. And I learned to deal. 

Over the last decade, I’ve had many moments of reckoning around pain. I’ve learned (and I keep learning because this is so deeply rooted in me) that while pain can’t be avoided, I can attune to and address it.

How we are taught to label and refer to things matters. Words shape our relationship to our lived experience. For Chris, ‘pain’ was bad and to be avoided. For me, ‘pain’ was unavoidable, no one could do anything about it, and I had to suffer alone. 

These associations deeply curate our embodied experiences and powerfully impact our intimate relationships with pleasure. What happens when we are given the opportunity to move back in time to question these labels, and therefore the embodied experiences that have felt like second nature to us, up until now? What happens when we are given the chance to question our felt, lived experiences and all the associations we have diligently woven around them? We begin to find some room to relate with the world and ourselves in a different way.


In our upcoming online program, Reclaiming Erotic Pleasure, we will explore exactly this. With a little education on the autonomic nervous system – the physiology of our felt, lived experience – and a whole lot of experiential practice to explore our subconscious relationship with erotic pleasure, we will support an inside-out reworking of our capacity for nourishing embodied states of wellbeing.