Pleasure is your birthright. If you weren’t born to have pleasure you would have been born of wood, steel, or glass. If you are reading this, you were born with skin and it’s your largest sensory organ as a human being. Think about how it feels to walk in a breeze, to jump in the cool ocean on a hot day, to get into a warm bath or be kissed passionately on your neck! Regardless of your age, a commonality we have with one another is a desire to be happy and experience all kinds of pleasure. After all, if you aren’t happy, what are you? If you are not experiencing pleasure, what are you experiencing?
At PleazeMe.com our mission is to increase the world’s happiness quotient, one member, at a time by supporting their access and connection to pleasure, intimacy, and sex. As human beings, it is critical that we have private access and permission to anonymously explore our relationship with ourselves, our body, our sexuality, our intimate relationships and our desires. In hopes to enrich your life, we reached out to one of our social Channel owners, Laurie Handlers who is a world-renown author, educator, and intimacy coach. Her best-selling book, Sex & Happiness: The Tantic Laws of Intimacy, takes the reader on a journey of discovery and pleasure through practices and principles that can be applied to all aspects of our lives to create more joy and bliss. We interviewed Laurie and asked her to share some nuggets of wisdom on how to achieve sex and happiness and every age.
PleazeMe: Why do you think sex and happiness are connected?
Laurie Handlers: In the Yogic chakra system the sacral center is the center for pleasure and also pain. Happiness is tremendously dependent on how much pleasure you can allow yourself and how much pain you are willing to let go of. Pain equals trauma, memories, fears, and shame. Pleasure equals everything else. Everything that the universe has…Do I want power, sex, and money? Do I want beautiful things? Do I want beautiful love? Do I want to be healthy and have vitality? Do I want to create? Am I an artist, a painter, a poet, a speaker, a business person, a decorator, a fashionista. All of these are connected to the sacral chakra. So Sex and happiness go hand in hand.
Various powers in our world have sought to control sex because they knew how powerful it is and how it is connected to creation, personal empowerment, and happiness. In order to control the population to follow orders and rules, sex has been shamed and controlled. It is literally the seat of everything creative. Housed in that center is procreation. There is a mysterious thing that happens. A sperm fertilizes an egg, and it is 40 quadrillion to 1 that any of those eggs will be fertilized, and then the miracle of life happens. Procreation and the creation of anything gets the spark of creation in the sacral (creation) chakra. Most humans think that we create everything in our heads. However, If we open up that portal, the flow of body~mind is much more powerful than just using your left brain. Let yourself breathe and let sexual energy flood your body and creation will happen.
Laurie’s Sex & Happiness Tips By Age
30s - Set boundaries and speak your truth! No one can please you if you don’t know how to please yourself. Explore your body and learn how you experience pleasure and orgasm and communicate your experience.
40s - Practice emotional release and learn to make love in the unknown.
50s - Please yourself - Find out what brings you pleasure and give it to yourself.
60s - Your vitality is connected to your pleasure. Practice intentional sex and radical self-care.
Sex over 60?
Check out Laurie’s Face to Face interview, in which she talks about sex over 60 — how it only gets better!
Pleazeme: Why did you write the book Sex & Happiness?
Laurie Handlers: I saw how important sex was to happiness but I also saw people were blundering. They were making terrible mistakes, boundary violation mistakes based on assumptions. So I wrote this book based on what I learned from teaching and what I saw was missing in the world. When I first started studying sacred sexuality it had just come to the West. There were only a few people teaching it. I saw that people were not setting clear boundaries or overtly talking about what they needed. The laws like honoring your anger, confronting people, speaking your truth, practicing emotional release, being honest, please yourself. No one is going to please you if you don’t know what you like. At the time my station manager for my podcast show told me the two most googled words were sex and happiness. I understood they were inexplicably tied together yet they weren’t being correlated because the narrative about sex was being negatively controlled and vilified. Sexual happiness was missing in the world and it was time for the truth on how to have it!
Now I am writing Sex and Happiness over 60: It only gets better because over 60 in my circles, women become invisible, like they are no longer seen or desirable and it is their biggest fear. Men over 60 are placed in the category of creepy. When 60+ men come to a workshop the people in their 20s or 30s look at them like OMG he looks just like the guy that diddled me. These two groups of people over 60 become marginalized because the Pepsi generation still rules. I say don’t stop having sex with yourself or with a partner because that is going to keep your vital life force going and you are going to occur as vital. I’m 73. The reason I appear as vital when I walk into a room and young people are all over me and around me is because I am vital. They love me. There is a vitality, there is a generating that takes place when we continue to please ourselves physically, emotionally, and materially. All women and men over 60 deserve to feel what I feel. People need to not stop on themselves. They will shrivel up only if they let themselves. I think people should have pleasure and sex into their 90s and 100s.
PleazeMe: What do Sex and Happiness classes do for participants?
Laurie Handlers: I have Sex & Happiness classes for singles and I have classes for couples. I have week-long retreats and I have online classes and my book is on audible and paperback. I give people very easy tangible practices. That is exactly what it is “a practice” and if they do the practices just like they brush their teeth, just like they would practice the piano or do yoga the gift comes soon. Physical practices produce things, like working out at the gym produces muscles. My exercises produce expanded awareness which produces shifts in one’s thinking, in one’s speaking and behaving and it doesn’t take long. They are fast. It’s not like a diet. I give permission to have things. I don’t take away things. To me, if you’re alive and you’re breathing you should practice how to breathe, listen to sound and experience movement. When their awareness shifts all of the sudden they wake up and go oh, my life has shifted. I can see clearly now.
PleazeMe: What would you say to people who are 40, 50, and 60 that are not experiencing sex and happiness because they have core belief conflicts or upbringing restrictions who never felt like they had permission to explore this part of their life?
Laurie Handlers: I would just say get a hold of my Book if any of this calls to you. If you’re puzzled, stumped, concerned or scared get my book or go to my website and send me an email. I’m concerned with your quality of life and I’ve worked with many people, thousands and thousands of people, who were brought up just like you. Who said no I shouldn’t be talking about this. I shouldn’t be in a class like this because of my religion, my parents, my public opinion in my head. My internalized public opinion said no I shouldn’t do this and yet something was missing in my life and it’s so simple, it’s been there all along.
Here is a brief self-assessment to see if you have any areas that can be improved by the tantric laws of intimacy and the critical practices found in the book that will breathe awareness and vitality into your life.
Honestly rate yourself for each of the following questions.
1- Rarely, 2-Occasionally, 3-Frequently
- Do I feel vital and super alive?
- Am I honest about my needs with myself or my partner?
- Do I experience desire and arousal?
- Are your sexual functions still working? Erections, Lubrications, Libedo?
- Do you prioritize your intimate pleasure?
- Do you enjoy sex & self pleasure?
Now simply add up your answers and check out your results!
Your Score Was between 6-9:
It’s likely that you are rarely happy but the silver lining is you have much to look forward to as you explore your potential for greater happiness and pleasure.
Your Score Was between 10-14:
You are on your way and likely happy occasionally. The great news is you have the opportunity to be happy more frequently if you make your pleasure more of a priority.
Your Score Was between 15-18:
Congratulations to you for making your pleasure and happiness a priority! Keep up the great work. Laurie says if you keep up your practice you can enjoy sexual pleasure and have vitality well into your 90s!
More about Laurie Handlers:
Laurie Handlers is an educator, author, and Sex & Happiness Coach. As a speaker and facilitator, she has taught transformational workshops since 1978 covering topics like how to heal the body, releasing past emotional trauma, stopping the aging process, and reducing stress. Our philosophy is to give yourself permission to fall totally in love with yourself and embrace everything about you, even desire. Then you are able to define your personal integrity. We find that integrity allows you to stand strong in your life in the face of complete fear, anger, judgment and resistance.
Be sure to follow Laurie’s Channel on PleazeMe: https://pleazeme.com/channel/SexandHappiness/
Laurie’s Website: www.lauriehandlers.com
Have you checked out PleazeMe.com? It is a social media platform where adults can be adults. We created the 7 Worlds of PleazeMe so that every person would have a place to privately explore their sexuality with like-minded people.
We believe in love, sexuality, and the power of inclusion. People of all shapes and sizes, colors and ethnicities, genders and sexualities are valuable and deserve to feel included. Everyone should have a safe place they can go to connect, discover and express themselves without fear of being judged, censored or discriminated against.
Take Me There!
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