Joy and The Body
This course is an opportunity to return to the joy of the body & the richness of life. How we feel about our body is never in isolation to how things outside appear to us. Our body is our world, so let’s fill our world with joy.
hosted by Aisha Paris Smith
Module 1Module 1: Embodiment & Connection
An introduction to root us in a place of embodiment and connection through somatic practices. Start to unfold your unique experience of being in a body, in your body.
Module 2Module 2: Empowered to Want
To trust our bodies and open to what feels good we must be willing to acknowledge our desires and more than that, to voice them. In this class we will discuss what obstructs desire-based action and create permission to please ourselves first. You will evaluate your joy ethics and unravel the beliefs that c...
Module 3Module 3: Meaning & The Body
The body is a place of projection: self-worth, identity, capability. What associations do you have with your body and bodies in general? In this class we’ll explore how you categorise yourself and others, and how to build new associations.
Module 4Module 4: Pleasure as a Resource
Mindfulness-based pleasure is an untapped resource. In this class we will experience pleasure as way to positively change our body and mind.
Module 5Module 5: Body Shame Be Gone
An opportunity to confront body shame, conscious or unconscious to further unlock our ability to compassionately be with ourselves just as we are, which ironically frees us in a transformative way.
Module 6Module 6: Build Your Capacity To Receive
The amount of pleasure anyone can have in their life is infinite. Learn how to expand how much joy you can hold in your body through simple somatic practices. Attend ready to express yourself through your whole body.
The human body has an incredible capacity for pleasure that most of us are not accessing. Instead, people struggle to relax and enjoy being in their body, which becomes a struggle to engage with life. Unable to identify what they like and want, people live without joy, stumble upon it randomly for short periods or derive joy from doing things that make other people happy. The body’s pleasure pathways must be unblocked through the senses to increase our capacity for joy and to reclaim our personal guidance system.
When we touch a body, we touch upon the memories, emotions and thoughts encased within it. Touch allows us to bring a tactile experience of care and attention to places that may never have received it. When the body feels under-resourced to process an experience or feeling, it is repressed and seemingly buried inside the flesh. Touch can gently recall those experiences to the conscious mind.
With safety, relaxation, self-awareness and somatic fluency, the body will naturally begin to unwind and turn on. Receptivity will begin to sprout like a young seedling, bringing life back to our pleasure pathways and shaking off the outgrown skin that we are ready to expand beyond. It’s less about being taught something new and more about being prompted to find the permission to access and act upon an intelligence that was always there.
To return to the joy of the body, we will come together to connect with our bodies on every level. Working together means working not just in a group but in a community upheld by clear agreements and fused by a shared intention. Every week we will step into somatic awareness, explore body-based practices, and observe the openings, shifts and releases they facilitate. This is not about manipulating or getting the body to be a certain way. It is a chance to begin a new way of relating to your body, creating new levels of intimacy and understanding, and creating an internal and external environment for it to flourish.
Read about the core questions of this course here, and watch our conversations with Aisha Paris Smith here (transcript) and here (transcript) to preview how you will learn with this joy-led teacher.
- Deepen your understanding of pleasure and come into conscious relationship to it so that you can live from a place of self-created joy more often
- Increase your capacity for pleasure, sensation, receiving and self-expression
- Begin to identify your boundaries, desires and internal compass towards what it wants and away from what it does not
- Discover your personal shadows and how they have been holding you back
- Explore your body in a sex-positive space with measured exercises that support you staying in a place of healthy, functional embodiment
FacultiesLearn more pre, during & post
hosted by Aisha Paris Smith
