{"id":372,"date":"2026-10-08T16:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/?p=372"},"modified":"2026-10-08T16:36:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:36:32","slug":"nurturing-pleasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/08\/nurturing-pleasure\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurturing Pleasure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>From Heart of Intimacy: The Six Gateways to Healthy Relationships by Kypris Aster Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once our physical needs are taken care of, the next step to self-love is to support ourselves emotionally. Tending to our feelings by noticing them and caring for ourselves accordingly creates emotional intelligence, the ability to use our emotions as a guidance system and to navigate feelings toward others in a healthy and supportive way. It also helps us to regulate our emotions. Over time, this emotional intelligence creates a happier life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Emotions tend to flow and change like water, shifting easily when we feel good, and getting stuck and stagnant when we feel bad. The more we learn to let emotions flow, by breathing and being compassionate with ourselves, the less likely we are to become stuck in painful feelings and the resulting negative behavior. When we feel bad, we tend to show that in our behavior towards ourselves and our partners. Perhaps this is why the Dalai Lama recommends that we focus on the art of making ourselves happy as one path to spiritual growth. When we are happy, we tend to treat other people well, and this in turn tends to create more positive emotions in them, spreading joy from person to person.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So often the word emotion is associated with all the negative feelings of fear, anger, sadness, and shame. But these feelings are only one end of a spectrum. At the other end are the positive feelings of love, serenity, and joy. As I experienced these positive emotions more often, I began to think of the times when I felt all of them together as a feeling of pleasure. This is not a sexual pleasure, but rather a combination of good feelings moving through our bodies. Part of the work of getting ready for a healthy relationship is learning to nurture a feeling of pleasure in our bodies, independent of a partner. Clearing old wounds and negative feelings that have been running our lives lets us be totally available to healthy relationships and to experience positive feelings more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Heart of Intimacy: The Six Gateways to Healthy Relationships by Kypris Aster Drake Once our physical needs are taken care of, the next step to self-love is to support ourselves emotionally. Tending to our feelings by noticing them and caring for ourselves accordingly creates emotional intelligence, the ability to use our emotions as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyprisasterdrake.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}