Health/Psychology: Sensuality and Joy

Do you take in a big breath of air, notice how blue the sky is when you step out your door in the morning, how the birds are singing, filling your heart with joy? Do you notice and enjoy the cool morning breeze and how it feels on your skin? Do you celebrate the fact that you awoke to find your snoring husband annoying, or do you snuggle closer to him to feel his warm body and smell his morning man musk and take delight in it? Is sensuality reserved for under the covers after the lights are out?

Go barefoot, smell the salt air and let some joy into your life!

It takes quite a bit of stamina just to make it through the day for most of us. Survival and obligations take most of our time. Am I silly to be suggesting that we nurture and develop our sensuality? How the heck is it possible to be sensual while drudging through our daily tasks? She’s nuts, you’re thinking. Should I try to be more sensual as I’m carrying out the garbage or cleaning the bathroom? How in the world can I be sensual while typing up a program for the boss or filing last week’s cases in the file cabinet?

The description of sensuality in the dictionary refers to affecting any of the senses or sensory organs. One of the other definitions points out that sensuality has little to do with anything outside the worldly. I disagree. This definition of sensuality seems to reflect the western world’s disconnected view of life’s aspects. From allopathic medicine, where the body systems are treated as separate entities, to the way typical western cultures separate every aspect into it’s own single little universe without understanding how everything relates with one another, is really unbalanced in my experience.

Like the pebble in the pond, I know that every action creates a reaction; cause and effect. The definition also is quick to point out that spirituality and sensuality are opposites or not related. Well, there’s our problem!

I think this “boxed” way of relating is responsible for many of our various woes and illnesses in our selves and is reflected in different aspects of our society having difficulty relating to one another. I’ll start with us as sensual individuals and then we can expand to it’s relatedness to others around us.

Our senses can ignite strong feelings. The wet tickles of new grass on the bottom of our feet can be a very sensual experience. Carry those sensations a little further. How can you separate what those physical feelings invoke in your heart? You can’t really. In your mind? For the world in which we live? Try to remind yourself how all of these aspects are connected.

The grass under your feet should remind you just how great it is to be alive and walking! Remember that the grass is connected to our wonderful and perfectly balanced earth. Take the feelings that the wet tickly grass invoke, and let them expand outward. Expand your empathy and your love out of yourself. Let that joy expand into love for the world and it’s inhabitants.

By working on expanding your sensuality into every aspect of your life you become more balanced and more receptive to the beauties and small joys that can be overlooked in the hurry and scurry of our lives.

Delight in the softness of your daughter’s hair, and the love and joy will expand. Let joy radiate as you plant your garden, feeling the sun’s warmth in the soil. Take the time to jump into the ocean or creek and revel in Earth Mother’s birth waters. Pull in the vibrating life force that pulses all around us! See the homeless person and let yourself cry for him. Open yourself to it all. Let your senses initiate feelings and let your sensual feelings guide you to a full life.

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