Good morning everyone, happy Friday.
Yesterday, I hosted an Instagram Live with Carol Sicbaldi, my With Pleasure! retreat co-host. It was wonderful to learn about the relationships she has with the different artisans and producers we'll be visiting in Tuscany, and to hear her speak about her intentions as she developed our itinerary (my favorite part of the conversation is getting her take on the relationship Italians have to 🌻pleasure🌻).
Have a listen here and reach out with questions! The retreat is half-full <3
As a reminder, I’m hosting a FREE Italy Retreat Open House this coming Wednesday, July 12th, from 5-6pm PST. There will be a guided visualization, journaling, conversation, and I’ll answer all your questions about joining us for With Pleasure! in the fall.
In addition to all the excursions Carol has planned for us, there will also be retreat programming based around the topic of pleasure and joy in recovery. Much of this will be centered around somatics practices, and discovering deeper levels of embodiment. Come to the Open House to learn about my approach and the entire “why” behind this retreat.
Bring your friends and your pets and your neighbors and all the peoples. Hope to see you!
💥 Events 💥
FREE VIRTUAL EVENT: Italy Retreat Open House this Wednesday, 7/12, from 5-6pm PST. This event will feature grounding meditation and visualization, some reflection journal prompts, and give you the opportunity to ask any and all your questions about With Pleasure! my sober retreat happening this fall. Let’s be together and you can discern if this event is a good choice for you <3 To register, click here.
VIRTUAL EVENT: July Writing Workshop is live! Join us Sunday, 7/30, from 10am-12pm PST. Workshops feature two writing prompts, and a (zero-obligation) option to read aloud and receive non-critical feedback. This workshop is appropriate for all levels. For more information and to register, click here.
INTERNATIONAL EVENT: SELF MADE presents With Pleasure! —a seven-day alcohol-free retreat in Tuscany happening this October 7-14. I’ve partnered with Carol Sicbaldi, founder of Carol’s Moveable Feast, with the intention that you reclaim joy and pleasure, relish in your five senses, and soak in the richness of your surroundings. To learn more and make a deposit, click here.
❓Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Something that happens not infrequently for us sobernauts is getting to a place in our recovery practices where we look around and things feel really flat. This usually comes after we’ve stabilized—after we’ve traded the constant churn of chaos and drama for lives defined more by structure: lemon water first thing in the morning, increasingly earlier bedtimes, healthier relationships, and coping skills that bring us back to center rather than careening us off the nearest cliff. It’s a big deal to get to this place. A miracle, even. It takes time, effort, attention, and so much discomfort. We look at our lives and there’s space, and ease. Maybe even some quiet.
And though we’re clear that we absolutely do not want to return to where we were before (our bones remind us that the lows far outweigh those fleeting highs we used to chase), something is missing. Eventually, it hits us: because we’re actually far more accustomed to operating between aforementioned extremes of epic highs and soul-shredding lows, occupying this softer center where the inner pendulum sits mostly still is super uncomfortable, not to mention utterly lacking in even the tiniest sliver of excitement.
We look around and ask ourselves, “is this it?”
🤔
No longer at mercy of extremes, resting in a calmer center, there’s so much more space. We are not used to this. So we move faster, add more to our plate, try to hack, optimize, and otherwise turn up the dial on “self-care.” But because we have familiarized ourself enough with the part of ourselves that is quick to point out the ways we fall short—perhaps we’ve befriended this part, even—we understand that working harder, going faster, doing more does not a sustainable life make. This is where curiosity is so helpful. We begin to ask ourselves: what if, instead of trying to fill, or distract myself from all this space, what if I turned my efforts toward creating something new and different inside it?
For many of us in recovery, the pursuit of pleasure can feel like a final frontier. Sure, we feel peace and calm. We’ve accepted the fact that removing the lowest lows also means being equally suspicious of the exultant highs.
But do we feel good?
Instead of pursuing more—more fitness, more productivity, more spirituality, more fill-in-the-blank, can we learn to find joy in the mundane—of routine, and early mornings, and secure relationships, and staying out past sober midnight (aka 10pm) maybe a few times a year? Can we prioritize seeking out these quotidian pleasures and delights alongside all the other everythings clamoring for our attention, given the reality of being a human alive on the planet at this moment in history?
Is satisfaction possible? Do we even know what that feels like?
🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷
Pleasure. What comes to mind when you hear this word? Is it the erotic? Is it the rush of adrenaline after an extreme physical feat? Is it the excitement of seeing your favorite band live in concert, or the thrill of lurching around on a roller coaster? Is it the first taste of black sesame ice cream in a fish pastry cone filled with red-bean paste from your favorite Japantown ice cream shop?
(The word pleasure is not without its charge. It might even be activating for some of us. If you get stuck on the word <you are not alone>, try replacing it with ease, or, goodness).
Pleasure might be all of these things. But it can also be so simple:
🌷 Stumbling upon a patch of dahlias with blooms as big as your head, crowding up a tiny piece of dirt otherwise surrounded by concrete
🌷 Following the focused gazes of other urban hikers only to spot a Great Horned Owl just kicking it all chill on a low hanging tree branch in the light of a weekday afternoon
🌷 PIZZA
🌷 Stopping to let your dog, whose name is Tater, play with a neighbor’s dog, whose name is Oreo, and marveling at the wonder that is animals named after foods while the little dum-dums wrestle about on the sidewalk
🌷 Keeping a lover’s T-shirt nearby so you can breathe them in when they’re not around
🌷 Getting bougie as hell with some smoked salmon and crème fraîche on fancy rye bread as a snack, OK
🌷 Discovering in adulthood SO MANY foods you never ate growing up that you’re now obsessed with, like RYE BREAD
🌷 Bright-eyed, clear-headed early mornings
🌷 Ordering take-out from the same place every single time and hanging around your kitchen table wearing sweatpants with your two besties who also showed up wearing sweatpants
🌷 Discovering a song you CANNOT will NEVER get enough of and listening to it so many times
We begin to train ourselves to scan for that which brings us closer to feeling good. And the rad thing is that feeling good is available to us—generally speaking—at any moment.
🌷
With Pleasure! is most definitely an invitation for celebration, and it’s objectively going to be a delightful experience. And, as I was designing the retreat, I knew that I wanted to offer programming aimed at developing participants’ capacity to cultivate pleasure and joy not only when it’s easy (i.e., on a curated, bespoke tour), but also, when it really matters, which is to say, all the moments that are not happening under a Tuscan sun.
In addition to the excursions, and downtime at the villa, we’ll be developing skills that will develop our ability to offer ourselves positive reinforcement, which is another way to say feeling good. Instead of scanning for and evaluating “what’s wrong,” we’ll practice noticing “what-is” by connecting to our immediate environment, via the five senses. Practices will be experiential, incorporating the beauty of our surroundings. We’ll engage in somatic practices to connect to the Three Centers of Intelligence: head, heart, and body. All of this will be supported by plenty of downtime, and experiments with creativity.
Cultivating pleasure and joy will not make our problems—or the world’s problems—go away (if only!).
And, this is not a superfluous undertaking.
In recovery, we are liberating ourselves from all binaries. No longer beholden to the extremes of ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, we are learning to live inside the messy middle. It is this middle place where our lives—rather than an *idea* of our lives—actually happen. In the middle, either/or disappears. What emerges is the possibility and potential of both/and. When we develop our capacity for joy and delight, at any—and I mean it, any—moment, we develop our capacity to stay engaged. And if you’re reading this, I bet this is a topic on your mind more often than not.
If this speaks to you. If you are called to explore your own embodiment, to develop your capacity for joy and pleasure as a gateway to being more awake, alive, and engaged in the world. If you suspect that there is so much more available than you are currently tapped into—come to the open house this Wednesday. No pressure to do anything. I’ll share more about this approach, and we’ll practice a little, and be together.
Recovery is rebellion. Cultivating pleasure and joy, in the midst of, in spite of, well, everything, is a radical act.
Let’s be wild, awake, and ALIVE together 🤘🏽
Sign up for the (free!) retreat Open House on July 12 👇🏽
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and step boldly into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA.
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