Today we will be spending a little bit of time with the mycelium network and hidden pathways to pleasure.
Just to paint a little bit more of a picture of how awesome your body is,
How much your body is made for pleasure.
So what if I told you that deep beneath your feet,
In the soil of forests,
There is an invisible network,
One that allows trees to communicate,
Share resources,
And even warn each other of danger.
This hidden web,
Known as the mycelium network,
Is what keeps entire ecosystems alive.
And the craziest part?
Your body works the same exact way.
Right now,
You have pathways of pleasure inside you that are waiting to be activated.
Pleasure just isn't accessible to you.
But what if I told you that like mycelium,
Your body already has the connections,
It just needs the right signals to wake them up.
So we're going to explore how the secret world of fungi can teach us how to access more pleasure,
More connection,
And a deeper relationship with our bodies.
I'm going to introduce you to the world beneath the forest floor.
Threats,
And even help weaker trees survive.
Gorgeous.
Totally gorgeous.
If one tree is struggling,
Nearby trees will send it nutrients through the mycelium.
If a predator starts eating the leaves of one plant,
The others receive chemical signals to prepare their defenses.
The mycelium network ensures that the entire ecosystem thrives,
Not just individual trees.
So what does this have to do with pleasure?
Oh my gosh,
This is such a powerful metaphor for pleasure.
Your nervous system operates in the exact same way your whole system your self-organizing system has this same mechanism.
There's networks of sensory pathways throughout the body connecting your skin,
Muscles,
Deepest tissues to pleasure.
And just like when one of those trees is in trouble,
The forest reallocates nutrients,
Your body does that exact same thing.
So if you are not feeling safe or respected in your house and your home,
Your body will reallocate your resources away from pleasure.
So a really important piece to tying this entire metaphor together is that pleasure and reproduction are the last priority on the evolutionary ladder of your body.
And so if other things are off,
Your body is going to knock pleasure off the list first.
It's going to knock reproduction off the list first,
Which is why when we go into a sexual healing container,
We really need to nurture the whole system,
The whole body,
All of the awareness so that your body can feel like it's safe and logical to send resources to your erogenous zones,
To your pleasure and to your joy.
So here's what happens.
When we experience chronic stress or continuous sexual shame or a lack of attunement in our lives or our relationships,
Our nervous system and our whole body organizing system will prioritize what it understands as survival.
I'm gonna bring a metaphor in here that my beautiful teacher Katie Saraw.
Shared with me during my sexological bodywork training program when she was describing what shame feels like to the body.
Imagine a mouse running through the forest,
A tiny,
Tiny mouse,
That mouse knows that if it differentiates itself,
If it stands out,
If it makes a loud noise,
That mouse is going to die because it will alert predators that it's there and they will attack.
And so that's what shame feels like to our bodies.
Shame is like knowing deeply in our bodies,
Not cognitively,
But feeling deeply that if we differentiate ourselves,
If we share an opinion that is different to the people surrounding us,
It feels like we do so under the threat of death looming over us.
So it really is like a true survival mechanism.
And it's not something that you consciously decide.
It's something that your body feels and makes the decision.
To either cloak your truth,
Your true expression,
Or to flee.
And so if we live with sexual shame,
Or we live with anything in our daily lives that's going to feel not aligned with our thriving,
Our systems will prioritize survival,
Which means that pleasure is going to get knocked off of the priority list.
And so this metaphor of the mycelium network can illustrate really well what I mean when I say over and over again,
And I may have said this in every episode so far,
That your body is a self-organizing system.
It will regulate.
It has a logic.
Just like the network underneath the soil,
It will reallocate resources,
It will bring more awareness to different plants,
Depending on how it feels it needs to respond to the environment around you.
And so how do we do this?
How do we foster that network allocating resources to our pleasure?
So often people think at this point,
Oh,
I just need to relax more.
I need to learn the right breathing to relax.
I need to go to the right yoga class to relax.
And what I actually create space for in my sessions at this point is not trying to appease the system of the body by distracting it into relaxation or coaxing it into relaxation.
That's not what we do at this point.
What I have found to be way more effective and transformative for the people that I work with is what we do is we actually support and encourage whatever survival technique is happening in your body at that time.
So let me explain what that means.
So let's say that we are attempting to repattern your response to intimacy.
Let's say when a spouse is proposing sex and trying to initiate sex with you.
And what you notice is your body gets real,
Real,
Real tight and closed off.
What we do is we don't try to breathe through that tightness.
We don't try to loosen your body up.
What we actually do is we support that tightening and that closing because the body needs to know that the signals that it is sending to you are going to be listened to and respected and loved and allowed to do their job.
Maybe the fetal position like totally closing up.
And this body work is helpful then,
Hands-on work.
I can even add to the pressure on your back to make it feel like you're even more in a cocoon.
And then your body realizes and feels and knows deeply that it's allowed to defend itself,
It's allowed to It's allowed to say no.
And it's allowed to complete the cycles of intimacy that it needs to have.
And it always goes in cycles.
We open and we close and we open and we close and we are activated and then we follow the wave back down into regulation.
And so we have to learn how to ride those waves of the system.
And the best thing to do when they're happening is actually to support them,
Not to try to coax the system into relaxation.
We need to treat our bodies like they have the intelligence of that mycelium network underneath the ground because they really,
Really do.
And the more we can work with them.
Instead of against them,
The more that they're going to feel like partners to us and the more of the wisdom that will be revealed to us along the way.
That's your dose of body truth and pleasure science for the day.
If your nervous system's humming,
Good.
That's the point.
