Over the last six months, I've been feeling uninspired with my tantric practice, because I was hitting a wall with physical exhaustion. Between working full-time, building a relationship, raising children, maintaining friendships and coaching women on how to heal their relationship anxiety – I felt like I could hardly keep my eyes open at the end of the day.

As you can imagine, this has left very little room for practicing and crafting new pleasure and radiance practices for myself and other women.

However, after giving myself permission to rest and reset, I've discovered that in my intensive focus on my practice, I’d lost sight of what these practices gave to me when I first discovered them – safety, ease and real pleasure.

If you're in a similar place and have been fixated on ‘doing the work’ to heal your nervous system, you’re going to love this post. I’m sharing three new pleasure practices I’ve been trying.

Hint: There's also one practice that I'm giving up for now, despite the fact that prominent teachers, like my own teacher, have experienced great results with it.

Can you guess what it might be? Read on to find out.

Why is Experimenting with Pleasure So Important?

You may think that you have your personal development all figured out, and you don't need to be messing with a formula that you’ve been promised will give you earthshattering results, like a specific pleasure practice or reading that specific book on relationships.

However, after working with dozens of burned-out, anxious women who long to feel more confident, more magnetic and to contribute in bigger ways in the world, I've discovered that you might be sabotaging your own ability to do this without even realizing it.

When A first came to me, she wanted to work on her own past patterns that were keeping her from the romance she wanted so badly. She was reading all of the self-help books, questioning the honesty of her own motives, wanting to do deeper and deeper work on her subconscious patterns to break free from a cycle of attracting unavailable men.

Through working together, we were both surprised to discover how much she already knew about herself, and how much time she had already spent ‘doing the work.’ By trying some of the techniques outlined in this post, she began dating men who were more available for a long-term relationship and even attracted a relationship where it’s so easy for her to show up as her best self. No uphill battle, no endless soul-searching.

Want a similar shift? You're in luck! I just launched my intensive eguide: Healing Anxious Attachment through Pleasure, where I teach you these new practices in depth.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who gets to benefit from my long, intense route of healing anxious attachment (and a heaping dose of religious trauma!). I’ve smoothed out all the kinks and shared the wisdom that I wish someone had shared with me.

Let's get into the three things I've been trying in giving my nervous system more pleasure, more expansion, and more ability to show up for my partner, my kids, my friends, and all the women longing to love the world in the way they are made to.

#1. Try Less: The Lazy Woman’s Guide to Pleasure

As ambitious perfectionists, we are often prone to assuming that the more we try, the more we give and the harder we work, the faster we will see results, both in ourselves and in the people we love.

I know for me that means avoiding things I’m not good at. Like… being patient with the unfolding of things or giving myself grace to enjoy the moment.

Do you see how this sabotages feeling alive and expansive?

That's right, by hitting the accelerator on trying, I'd been holding myself back from being and feeling, the keys to unwinding anxiety.

Instead, perfectionists have to learn that to have a beautiful relationship, or make an impact in the world, or feel more confident on a date, trying can be counterproductive. We have to detach from the outcome. If you’re addicted to trying, what happens when you get the relationship? Are you able to surrender into enjoying it? Doubtful. If you’re not careful, you’ll keep finding little problems (a lot of which don’t even exist) in order to give yourself the permission to try at something else for a while.

Next time you feel burned out and anxious, why not try asking yourself, “What is something pleasurable I can prioritize today that has nothing to do with the outcome I want? Just for its own sake?”

For me, this meant that rather than push myself to do my practices at the end of each day, which was beginning to feel like another form of work, I decided to read a novel. Sometimes I know that my practice will be the resource I need. Sometimes, it’s cuddling up with a movie with my daughter. Or playing video games with my partner.

I was able to expand my sense of pleasure and resource myself by not trying so hard.

#2. Balance Your Energy: What Are You Deficient In?

I know, just like you, I have been rolling my eyes whenever one of my girlfriends tells me that yoga changed her life. Or when another friend told me that she had to get away from being in front of her computer screen all the time.

Thankfully, a dear friend of mine called me out on my resistance to living in the physical world, and I felt I finally needed to invest a lot more time in my body and out of my head.

Yep. I was very resistant. I was like, “I have a background in MMA. I move my body all the time. I teach embodiment to women.” But what I realized is that after the time I spend being intellectual (a lot of time these days – being a product designer and business owner will do that to you), even my hobbies were based around my mind being clever.

How can I find the patterns in Muay Thai?
How can I learn to leverage breathwork to help clients release pent-up anger?
How can I really work with my preteen’s emotions to build our relationship?

All. In. My. Head.

So I began prioritizing balancing my intellect (natural-leaning) with being in my body.

Here's what I discovered when I started walking daily, doing yoga, playing outside with my kids and doing five-senses meditation:

My mind is more clear
I have a sixth-sense for relationships – far more so than when I was reading all the books
My pleasure in every day is heightened, all the time.

When I used to be a stay-at-home mother, the opposite balance was desperately needed. Every day was so physical. Changing diapers, cleaning, cooking, playing on the playground. I was famished for intellectual stimulation. That’s why my tantric practice and my work were a godsend. And now, I’m bringing things back into balance again.

If you look at the scope of your day, what balance do you need to bring? If you run anxious, ditching the relationship books and getting far more in touch with your body will be a game-changer for you.

#3. Play: The Secret Pleasure Sauce

Silly to think that a pleasure and empowerment coach would sometimes neglect her own pleasure, but here I was exhausted, cranky, and serious, with no idea how I was going to access the lightness and enthusiasm for life that I’d felt a few months earlier.

It dawned on me that I'd started putting all of this energy into teaching other people how to tap into their radiance while neglecting my own.

I sat down with my own material on healing anxiety. Thank goodness, I made it simple enough for even me in my foggy, worn-out state to understand.

Anxiety, lethargy, a lack of impact and a lack of confidence all happily breed in an environment that is sucked dry of play and fun. What is the goal of having a passionate relationship? A beautiful family? A career that lights you up? The service you want to give to the world?

Is it for things to feel heavy, serious, existential, all the time?

I doubt it. The reasons we want these things is that we believe it will bring us, and the people we love — joy, pleasure, happiness, purpose, abundance, healing.

But when we treat these things as projects to be completed or weights to be carried, we sap them of their lifeforce.

It only took me a few days to reorient my perspective. And now I ask myself throughout the day one of my favorite questions to ask clients: “How can I create a great time, right now, with what I’m doing?” The more you can bring play, wit, sarcasm, humor – into the things that give you anxiety, the more they magically fix themselves.

Fast forward to today, and I’m happy to say that I am once again living from that sense of agency and pleasure that I work so hard with my clients to help them create.

Bonus! I've Given Up On Strict Practices

Here’s what I’m not doing anymore.

Through my work with healing anxious attachment, I’ve discovered that no anxious woman works well under strict pressure. It is a natural trigger for her deep-seated feeling that she will never be enough until she does… something.

I started my intensive somatic and tantric training to liberate my nervous system and teach me how to tap into my pleasure and purpose in the world. And it opened up a life for myself that I would have never thought possible. And after a time, I noticed I was turning it into a religion for myself:

If I want to continue learning and growing, I can’t miss a practice. If I’m not feeling inspired, I must be wrong or broken or bad.

This put me right back into the cycle of anxiety that I was trained into by evangelical Christianity. And I was done with it.

So now, this means that I’ve given up on anything that I have to brow-beat myself into.

There is enough stress in healing an anxious nervous system without creating more burdens for people to carry.

The best way to bring about permanent change is to follow what feels resourcing in your body and fits your life compass.

Mine is: “My body feels alive, supple and healthy. I live in such a way that I am proud of my choices, and to leave others better-loved than when I found them. My mission is to help people tap into their innate worth and follow their own guidance.”

Key Takeaways

You can make the most progress in finding your magnetism and voice when you pick a few strategies, give them a spin, and see how they work for you. And if one strategy isn’t a good fit, you’re better off finding one that is better suited to you.

Your life. Your rules.

There are so many ways to feel radiant, happy and safe, and I hope this post has given you some new ideas to try as you heal.

Is there a main takeaway that was especially groundbreaking for you? Let me know in the comments here or on Instagram. I’d love to hear from you!

Here at Fearless Relationship, I’m all about empowering women to build the relationship of their dreams on their own terms and to feel pleasure while doing it.

Want to know more about using pleasure to radically change your love life? In Healing Anxious Attachment through Pleasure, I teach you how to create the love you desire over six weeks – not through a list of tips and tricks, but through deep, pleasure-based practices to retrain your nervous system from the ground up.

3 New Pleasure Practices I’ve Been Trying (and One I’m Giving Up)