386: The Art of Pleasure: Rediscovering Healthy Indulgence at Midlife w/ Laini Gray

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
Are you living a life that is rich in pleasurable and joyful experiences, or are you robbing yourself of those things and then escaping through fleeting pleasures? Well, in this episode today of the Grace and Grit podcast, I am going to be joined by my dear friend Laini Gray, where we explore why joy and pleasure are such important parts of the health equation, and we are going to specifically talk about how seeking out pleasure at midlife especially can really radically improve your health, your happiness, and even really enhance your longevity. So if that sounds good, stick around, because that is where we are headed.

Courtney Townley 0:44
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life indispensable action, steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 1:11
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast. I am your host. Courtney Townley, as always, I am so delighted to have you here, and today I am joined once again, by the wonderful Laini Gray. If you don’t know who she is, she is a frequent guest on the show. She happens to be one of my nearest and dearest friends, and she is a really just a health genius, like she really has a strong background in all things health related, specifically to midlife women. And we always enjoy having a lot of conversations, and we, early in the year, just decided we should record a lot of those conversations and share them with you. So this is one of those.

Courtney Townley 1:47
Today we’re going to be exploring the art of pleasure at midlife, and this is a topic that I feel like is rarely addressed in the realm of midlife women’s health, but it is so important on so many levels, and I really see women who don’t have joy and true pleasure in their life. I really look at that as malnutrition, and it has a lot of health consequences.

Courtney Townley 2:13
So Laini, you can tell me how you kind of see this as well, but I often find that a lot of my clients are in one of two camps when it comes to pleasure and joy. They either completely disconnect from it. They don’t have time for it. They always say, you know, put it on the back burner. They always negotiate their way out of it. They just don’t have it in their life. Or they find themselves over indulging in what we call false pleasures, the things that immediately gratify us but also don’t have any lasting benefit, and in fact, have a lot of long term consequences when we’re constantly engaging with them. So I’m going to circle back to you here in just a second. Let me finish by saying this.

Courtney Townley 2:57
Today, in this conversation, we’re just going to unpack why this happens, and how reclaiming healthy indulgence at midlife can actually be really revolutionary for your health. Yeah, so what do you what do you think? Like, what comes up for you in this conversation? Like, just hearing that?

Laini Gray 3:13
Well, I think it’s really interesting, because for the last probably, oh gosh, 5, 6, 7, years, especially where I’ve been working with women in midlife. We’re going through all of their health struggles and wanting to lose weight and wanting to feel better and wanting to have more energy and all of these things, and we get through their protocol, and then I’m like, and what are you doing for self-care? And they’ll say, Oh, I exercise. I’m like, That doesn’t count.

Laini Gray 3:36
What do you do for self-care? What do you do for joy? And they literally cannot, they can’t name it. They can’t name it. They don’t remember, Oh, I go. I spent here with my family. I’m like, besides your family, you can’t say family or church. What do you do for joy? Right?

Laini Gray 3:52
Because they’ve become so overwhelmed with all the things they’re doing. And then they, as you said, they get into other habits and behaviors that are not serving them, and then they come in feeling like a hot mess. And I’m like, what do you do for joy? And they’re like, I don’t have time for it. They don’t even know what it is. And I feel that women are so disconnected from simple joy in their life or feeling pleasure on a daily basis that it’s really sad. So it is. It’s a nutrient deficiency. Just as you said,

Courtney Townley 4:18
I love the way you brought like mentioned all of that, I especially love the word disconnect, because I feel like that’s exactly what it is. There’s such a disconnection in so many midlife women where, because I hear the same thing, I don’t even know what I would do for fun. I don’t even know what I would do Courtney if I had white space or an afternoon, just to myself and to me, that’s a huge indicator that they have strayed pretty damn far from things that actually nourish like I always call it putting more life into your life. What are the things that put more life into your life that are not prescribed, not the supplements, not the food, not the exercise, but the things that actually make you want to bounce out of bed in the morning and get the day started? That’s what we’re talking about,

Laini Gray 4:58
completely especially. When we talk about kids graduating and being empty nesters, that’s a big time. When they’re like, What am I going to do with myself? Like, what do you mean? What are you going to do with yourself? Yeah, and they literally don’t have not had joy in their life. First they’ve had joy. I don’t want to say nobody’s had any joy, but everything’s been conditioned. It’s a condition of whether they’re with their children or whether they’re at a sporting event, or whether they’re doing something for work. Do you know, there’s always a condition to the joy? Yeah,

Courtney Townley 5:24
there’s always a condition or there, oh, it’s almost through obligation, right? They’re planning an event for someone or they’re it’s in contribution to someone else’s health and happiness rather than theirs. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So interesting. What comes up for me too is, you know, obviously I travel alone a lot, and I love it. It’s such a form of nourishment. We’ve talked about that on the show before, but it’s interesting when I encourage a client to, like, maybe have a staycation, where they just go to a local hotel, or they just go maybe an hour from home to spend a day with themselves. And the response is, often, that freaks me out, because I don’t even know what I would do, and I’m like, like, what I mean you?

Courtney Townley 6:06
I don’t care if you sleep, I don’t care if you go to the spa or you go for a hike or you just go to a restaurant and have a delicious meal. It could be anything, but if that is your response to that exercise, it’s all the more important that you do it, because you by spending time with yourself on that level, you do start to notice more easily, what does put more life into your life? And it doesn’t always look the same.

Courtney Townley 6:31
Let’s start with talking about the science of pleasure a little bit, because pleasure isn’t just a nice thing to feel. It actually has far reaching health benefits. And Laini, for those of you listening who may not be super familiar with the work that she does in the world, Laini is a Functional Diagnostic practitioner, so she does a lot of lab testing to help her clients optimize their chemistry. So she has a brilliant mind when it comes to all things biochemical.

Courtney Townley 7:02
So in this the science of pleasure, I think we forget that pleasure is deeply rooted in biology. It’s a motivator. We would not have made it this far as humans in evolution if we were not motivated to seek out pleasure, right? We wouldn’t procreate. We wouldn’t go hunt for food. We wouldn’t do anything. We wouldn’t go pick Aries. We wouldn’t go be active nothing. We would just like dissolve. We would have dissolved within the first I don’t know what, 90 years probably wouldn’t even made it that long of humanity. So when we experience pleasure, our brain releases a cocktail of neurotransmitters. I think this is really important to understand. And those some of the big players in that, of course, are dopamine.

Courtney Townley 7:47
We hear a lot about dopamine, which signals the brain to as kind of a reward pathway. It signals a reward pathway and motivates us to repeat pleasurable experiences. But other players that maybe are a little bit not as active as dopamine, but still really important are things like serotonin, which regulates mood, and oxytocin, which really is, we know, is the love hormone, right? The bonding hormone, definitely all good, feel good hormones, but this is interesting, and I you, I’m sure you know more about this than I do, but when we start losing estrogen at midlife, it affects dopamine and it affects serotonin and it affects oxytocin. So can you, can you talk about that a little bit?

Laini Gray 8:32
So we’ve talked about this before, but there’s no neurochemicals or hormones that are independent from one another. They’re all intertwined, yeah. And so estrogen, for example, is right in the middle of serotonin. I mean, it’s part of that pathway, so it’s really interesting. So as we have these declines or these shifts, it makes sense that it’s going to have a decline or a shift in other areas of the body. And that’s especially to when it comes to neurochemistry, women will start to feel like they’re more depressed or more anxious, or they’re moody, or they don’t feel the same. They feel blah. A lot of times they’re like, I just don’t feel like myself. They feel flat, right? Totally.

Laini Gray 9:12
Because these hormones add a little more life to the neurochemistry, if you will. So we have to really understand what triggers those neuro chemicals. Yes, they’re hormone related, but you could do a lot of things to trigger them naturally, right? Which we’re going to talk about. What we do that’s not good to trigger some of them sometimes, but it is. It’s really interesting that women will start to feel a lot more changes in the brain, because estrogen has a big impact in the in the brain, and so totally so not just memory or word finding, but our mood, the way we seek after pleasure, or don’t seek pleasure at all, or even recognize pleasure, like everything shifts. It’s like everything is totally different. And that’s when we have that conversation about, what do you find joyful or where do you find pleasure? What. Women are really in this place where, like, if they didn’t know what it was before, they’re really kind of lost. Like, how do I find it now? Because now my neurochemistry is even a little bit

Courtney Townley 10:08
yeah, and we’re going to get much deeper into this. But I do just want to mention here that we’re living in a world that is selling us all these very like, fleeting pleasures. So the sugar, the shopping online, the Netflix shows, right? All of those things. And at midlife, I know I’ve noticed this. I know you went through a phase of this too, where it’s like, we don’t have as many resources on board. Like I don’t feel because I don’t sleep as well, because I have more responsibility, I don’t have a lot of extra to apply effort to seek pleasure that actually serves my well being, right?

Courtney Townley 10:43
Because it’s more effort filled. And that’s what we really have to understand, is we this is the kind of effort we need to lean into, on purpose to enhance our health. It’s not, you know, like exercise is a really basic example. Obviously, me going out for a walk today for 20 minutes, even, or 10 minutes, is going to be more effort filled than walking into my kitchen right now and putting a piece of chocolate in my mouth. So while those two things are both very simple, one requires more effort, and my midlife brain is like, Hell, no, we’re not going for the walk. Let’s just eat the chocolate. Like, kind of right,

Laini Gray 11:21
yes, yeah, completely right. And then, like, to your point, dopamine is that drive to get things done, right? And so the things that you just mentioned are all getting us to try to get a dopamine hit. Like, stay on Instagram, watch this show, try this workout, try this quick thing, all of this pursuit of pleasure. They’re trying to tell, you know, hit our dopamine responses to get us excited about something. Yeah, and it works a lot of time.

Courtney Townley 11:47
Yeah? Well, it doesn’t. That’s the problem. It doesn’t work. Quicker

Laini Gray 11:51
hit. Chocolates, a quicker hit, right? In order to go for the walk, I have to decide, am I really going for the walk? Do I have to put on shoes? Do I have to get dressed? Where am I going to go? Is it raining? The weather like, right? Sunscreen, bug spray. I mean, it’s a lot just to go for a walk, right? When you’re not thinking clearly already,

Courtney Townley 12:07
yeah, absolutely, yeah. So I learned, I always learn something new when I get ready for these podcasts, but I did not know, like, I’ve always called it true pleasure and false pleasure, right? Or pleasure that serves my wellbeing and pleasure that robs me of my wellbeing. But there’s actually words for this, and I was so excited to learn this today. So hedonic pleasure is immediate gratification, right? Things that give us an immediate hit of dopamine, again, a lot of the things that we just mentioned, right? The processed carbohydrates, the alcohol, the Netflix, these kinds of things, and eudaimonic. Eudaimonic pleasure is meaningful satisfaction. And I love that, right? Because it’s like, okay, well, there’s, there’s actually words that define these two different categories of pleasure.

Courtney Townley 12:56
And while we all love immediate gratification, Dear God, we are conditioned to love immediate gratification, because it is so at the ready. It’s everywhere around us, where health and well being is, of course, born, where our longevity is actually enhanced, is in the things that actually help us to create that meaningful satisfaction. So both, both ignite the reward pathways. But I think it’s just important to kind of discern between the difference of those two things. So I think for simplicity sake, we’re going to call it false pleasure and true pleasure for the rest of the podcast. But I did just want to throw it out there because I thought it was an interesting thing to know.

Courtney Townley 13:32
So defining false pleasure, I will just say, are activities that promote momentary relief but create longer term harm. So we’ve given you lots of examples already. I won’t dive into that too much, but I think it’s important to recognize that there’s a cycle to false pleasure, and this is where our health gets really depleted because we feel crappy, and then we want pleasure because we want to stop feeling crappy. We reach for something that artificially changes our chemistry, the sugar, the alcohol, the scrolling on the cell phone, whatever that thing is, we feel better for a brief moment or two, and then when what however high dopamine rises is how far it has to crash, right? So it’s like a teeter totter.

Courtney Townley 14:23
This is something I learned from Dr. Anna Lembke, the Dopamine Nation. Such a phenomenal book, if anybody really wants to learn, like kind of the science of dopamine, but when dopamine spikes really quickly and really high, the counter to that is it has to drop equally as far in order to find homeostasis again. And so in that drop, guess how we feel, crap, terrible. We feel even worse than we did before. And so what do we do? We reach for more of whatever the false pleasure was to begin with. And on and on that goes. I mean, if you’re an. Careful it can be for the rest of your

Laini Gray 15:01
life. Yeah, I mean, and I don’t want to jump in, but this is where addiction, right? This is what we always think of. We think of gambling and drinking and all these horrible things, yes, but as a midlife woman, we get stuck in the same thing of quick fixes. You talk about this all the time, jumping from room to room to room to room, and going from quick fix to Quick Fix that’s a dopamine Yeah, that’s a false pleasure. I’m going to get in shape in 21 days, and then I get to I do it for 21 days, and I’m excited, and then I follow, and I don’t, I do all of the bad things again, all the bad habits come back, and then I feel bad, and then I sign up for the next I’m going to do this boot camp for 21 days. And so we get in the same cycle.

Laini Gray 15:40
So I just want to reiterate, and we often think of these as these really addictive obsessive behaviors, but they can be, oh, I’m watching this. They look good from the outside, totally. So it’s not just bad things that you can be addictive to, right? It can be exercise. It can be that the food, food, like we’ve taught food, can nourish or not. But if I’m just grabbing it because I don’t want to do anything else, that can be depleting and really be a struggle for me later and make me feel bad,

Courtney Townley 16:07
well, it can even be work, right? We’ve talked about kind of that work life imbalance a lot, and I think it does. A lot of people will work more, not because, you know, necessarily, they’re trying to make more money. I’m not saying that isn’t a reality, but a lot of people are throwing themselves into work so much so they don’t actually have to deal with the truth of their life, or actually find what they enjoy doing outside of work, putting themselves into new experiences and new opportunities, because that’s uncomfortable. Yeah. So good, so good. I also just want to acknowledge here that the consequence of false pleasure, which, by the way, there is not a person on the planet, probably, maybe there’s one or two, but not many that are immune to utilizing false pleasures to some degree. We all do it. We all use them. I could even say caffeine, for me, is a false pleasure, right? Because I’m artificially enhancing my chemistry to get energy. That’s literally why I’m using it, and I do like the taste of it, but it’s more for the energy.

Courtney Townley 17:07
But the consequence of that is, of course, physical, we know there’s physiological breakdown when we have a lot of sugar in our system, when we’re always looking at computer screens, when we’re spending more money than we’re earning because we’re online shopping. Like, there are those consequences, right? But there’s also emotional consequences. There is relationship consequences. Like, I mean, how often do you walk through the airport now everyone’s on their phone. No one’s even looking up, yeah, yeah. It’s horrifying. Okay, so let’s discern between a false pleasure and a true pleasure? A true pleasure is an activity that provides both immediate like we typically often feel some immediate satisfaction. It may not be as as intense as a false pleasure, but we typically do feel some immediate satisfaction, but there’s also lasting benefits. So what would be some examples in your brain, like, what comes up for you around like true pleasure for me,

Laini Gray 18:01
being outside in the sunshine. I am, I am, I am happier the minute I have some on my skin. And then, of course, because I studied physiology, all of the health benefits of that that I’m like, I’m doing this for my health, and it’s so good, right? Because for a long time I would say I have to go outside because look good for my health. And now I’m like, Oh no, I just go out because I feel good, right? Going outside, taking that walk, anytime you can, for me, anytime I can be outside. It’s just that the body gets these feel good. Hormones start moving around, and I’m just in a better mood. And that’s I love that

Courtney Townley 18:33
you can I don’t want to cut you off, but I do want to just say this really quick, yeah, I love that you started with this one, because I want listeners to maybe discern. With true pleasure, there’s categories of high like kind of high resource, true pleasure, things that require a lot of effort, and then there are things that are low resource. And what you’re mentioning with the sun that’s so low resource to walk outside and just sit on the deck, yeah, yeah. Okay. What else comes up for you?

Laini Gray 18:59
Reading? Just sitting down to read a book for pleasure, like for fun, not about physiology or gut health or hormones,

Courtney Townley 19:08
not about work. Right to

Laini Gray 19:11
just sit and read and, like, escape into a novel, or, you know, to be able to put yourself in that place and go, Oh, this is so cool. Or just having a conversation with no time limit, to sit on the couch with a friend and just visit and be like, Oh my gosh, we’ve been talking for two and a half hours. Yes, right? Like, those kind of things are just the minute you spend this is kind of fun. And then once you relax into it, you’re like, Oh, that was good. That was good. I feel good even the next day because I did that

Courtney Townley 19:39
well. And that’s so important is, I think so often we are doing things that bring us true pleasure, but we’re never taking time to really pause and recognize, like, ooh, more of that. That felt really good. So when I’m working with a client who’s really wrestling with finding things that bring. Them more joy, or things that help, you know are pleasurable, but also help to enhance their health. We start with just noticing. I just tell them, Go out into your week and just start noticing what sprinkles a little more life into your life. That’s where we start. I love that. Yeah, it’s so important. It’s such a simple thing, but just noticing what brings joy.

Courtney Townley 20:22
Okay, so we kind of mentioned some of the chemical barriers at midlife for women, because hormones are changing, which affects all our neurotransmitters. But let’s talk about some of the other barriers that midlife women face with making time, because I think that’s a big one, is we just argue that we don’t have time, or we have just lost the art. We’ve lost the practice of inserting it into our life on the regular. Like, what would what comes up for you around, like, other barriers for women, around pleasure at midlife,

Laini Gray 20:54
I feel like things are our life is really over scheduled. Yeah. And so one thing that I’ve just noticed recently, like, remember when you were in your 20s and you had a vacation coming up in three months, and you would start shopping for it right away. When we went to the store, we actually went to the store. So you had time in your day to go to the store, go to the mall and go to, how many stores did you go to? How many hours did you spend and and you might not find it, and you might go again the next day, and you find all these things, right?

Laini Gray 21:21
And, and now it’s like, oh, I still haven’t gone to the store. Like, that’s to me, that’s a really interesting thing to think about, that I used to have time to go shop for the perfect outfit, and now I’m like, Oh, I haven’t even gone to the store, and I need to go find something really quick, right? And that’s different, because I do. I love that experience. I love browsing and shopping and looking and just experiencing things. But we get so over scheduled in our day that these simple things that were kind of fun 20 years ago or however long it was, feel like a chore. When things that are fun, like going to dinner or having friends over for dinner, that used to be something fun, and now it’s like, oh, I don’t think I could do it tonight. Yeah, right. So things that are, you know, like that, like really simple things

Courtney Townley 22:09
I hear in that, like, permission is a part of that too. It’s like permission to take, like, an afternoon and say, I’m going to go find a great outfit for this, whatever the thing is, whatever the event is, and I’m gonna be I’m gonna give myself, like, full permission to enjoy the experience. I’m gonna go get coffee. I’m gonna take my time. I’m not gonna worry about, like, the other things that have to get done after that. I’m just going to be all in with the experience that I have pre scheduled and put some forethought into right? And I’m not saying all joy has to be pre scheduled. Please don’t hear that.

Courtney Townley 22:43
But I do think that when we have such full schedules, that is often a starting place for a lot of women is they have to intentionally create the time to read for an afternoon, to go have coffee or lunch with a friend. I think it starts more scheduled, and then hopefully you get so much nourishment from it, it becomes more of a baked in part of your life, definitely, but permission, and I think a lot of women are always, you know, they may give themselves permission to go to the event or go, like you said, go shopping, but they’re not again, they’re not fully in the experience, because they’re doing it for someone else. They’re trying to make someone else happier. They’ve got to get on to other things to serve other people.

Courtney Townley 23:26
I mean, I think, honestly, I mean, this is, like, a bit, I think, edgy for me to talk about on the show, but I think it’s important I think about this with sex. I think a lot of women have a hard time receiving pleasure because it’s, you know, they don’t have time just get it done. They feel weird about receiving, like, having all that attention on them, and I think that that is a really interesting thing to for people to start examining in their life, like, how good are you at just allowing someone to pleasure you?

Laini Gray 23:54
Yeah, no, completely. I mean, and that’s made it’s an interesting dynamic. But you think about being a teenager or early 20s. What did you do with your friends? You went shopping, you got ready, then you went out dancing, looking for boys or whatever, right? Yeah, and we’re not doing we don’t even do that pre episode. How are we going to want to have be pleasure and sex if we haven’t even gone shopping, spent time with our girlfriends, feel pretty about ourselves and then, and we

Courtney Townley 24:17
don’t want we don’t know what we like. That’s the other piece. If you don’t know yourself well enough to know what you like, that can be again, there’s that relationship piece. Totally, yeah. So good. So what do you think are some signs of pleasure? Deficit, fatigue, for sure,

Laini Gray 24:35
totally overwhelm. Low motivation, like to get anything

Courtney Townley 24:39
done. Like complacency, too, of just feeling kind of like just

Laini Gray 24:43
whatever. This is my routine. This is how life is. This is how it is, what it is. I’m just kind of doing it.

Courtney Townley 24:49
Yep, definitely, irritability. I know that in my own life, when i Everything feels like I have to, I feel like a caged animal,

Laini Gray 24:56
yeah? Anxiety, depression, disability, life. Yeah, I can’t get I can’t get everything done. I can’t get everything done, right? You’re not getting anything done

Courtney Townley 25:05
because you’re just spinning out. Yet, we talked about this in our last episode about the resentment, right? Healing resentment, I think, is a sign of maybe not having enough pleasure in your life, like real pleasure, yeah?

Laini Gray 25:18
Or being mad at your spouse, your significant other when they do something good for

Courtney Townley 25:22
themselves. Yes, exactly. That’s a good one. That’s

Laini Gray 25:26
you get to go have a boys night, right? Oh, must be nice. You can go with your friends, and Mom will just stay home and take care of everything.

Courtney Townley 25:33
Do you know? Or you get to go hunting for a weekend, because that’s a big thing here. Or you get to go for a week. Well, okay, where do you want to go for a

Laini Gray 25:39
week? No, most of the time this boss will say, Well, where do you want to go? And you’re like, Oh, I can’t go. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, that’s that’s another Oh, I could never do that. I have other things. Yeah, it’s really interesting how we start projecting our resentment onto our loved ones.

Courtney Townley 25:55
Yeah, that’s so true. That’s such a good one. Okay, so behavioral patterns, what are some things that you see in yourself or with clients, where it’s kind of an indicator to you that there’s not enough true pleasure in their life in terms of how they’re showing up and what they’re actually doing behaviorally.

Laini Gray 26:13
Well, they’re doing the same thing over and over again, not getting, you know, getting the same result and getting mad. Yep. So they’re not, they talk about taking the action, but they’re not, or they’re too tired to take the action, or they’re just, they’re just not able to show up. I just, they’re like every there’s an excuse for everything. They’re so overwhelmed they don’t have any joy. When you don’t have any joy in your life or have some pleasure in your day, every day is hard. Every day.

Courtney Townley 26:42
It’s so there’s a lot

Laini Gray 26:43
of hard in everybody’s day. So if you can’t weave some joy in there, somehow it just feels heavy and hard.

Courtney Townley 26:50
Yeah, it’s so true. I would say a few things. I would say to me, some indicators that we’re really wrestling with true pleasure is, number one, their inability to be present with anything. They’re never really in the experience of anything, because they’re always thinking, they’re always overthinking, over analyzing, planning, solving problems, right?

Courtney Townley 27:12
We’re not actually in the experience of anything, I would argue even with human body. So I talk a lot about, you know, one of the tools I use with my clients for body image is that I just remind them that you can’t think about your body and be in your body at the same time. So you either get to be in the experience of physically. And here’s a great way for everyone listening. This is a great way to do this, like right now, I want you just to go to the normal thoughts you have about your body. My butt’s too big. What’s this thing around my belly? I don’t like my shoulders, right? Like, think about your body for a second. Like, and that’s analyzing your body. That’s typically how we think about our bodies. So that generates a certain emotional landscape, which for you right now, as you’re thinking about your body, what’s coming up for you? Oh, my hips, okay. What’s it making you feel

Laini Gray 28:04
heavy in my butt right now sitting here,

Courtney Townley 28:08
you’re almost generating a sensation of that, right? Totally, I would argue too, like emotionally, it makes us feel like crap. We feel self doubt, we feel insecure, we feel like we should sign up for another program, because all we’re doing is thinking about what’s wrong, right? But now, if you take a moment and just really drop into your body like so if someone’s listening to this, I would encourage you to close your eyes, as long as you’re not driving but literally drop into your hips. So Laini, because you gave that example, like, be in your hips for a second, and how do they feel? Like when you’re in them, they don’t feel.

Laini Gray 28:44
strong,

Courtney Townley 28:45
yeah, yeah, grounded, stable. Like, just the experience and the thoughts are so incredibly different. So you can use that for anything around pleasure, like, just notice the next time you’re at lunch with a friend, or the next time you are reading a book, like, are you in the experience? Or are you distracted, like looking at your cell phone every 30 seconds, which I’ve been known to do, are you thinking about what you’re gonna say rather than really tasting the food and listening to your friend tell you her story? Yeah?

Courtney Townley 29:18
Like, are you thinking about it, or are you actually in it? I think that’s a really, really powerful shift. I would also say dependency, like when we’re really dependent on things like social media, scrolling, the sugar, the alcohol, I would say that’s usually an indicator that we’re looking for pleasure. We’re looking for the pleasure that we’re not getting. In other ways. Yeah, and so if you have a high dose of dependency in some area of your life, I think it would. It’s a great question to ask, what you’re actually hungry for? Yeah, it’s probably not the sugar, it’s probably not social media, but maybe it’s connection. Yeah, maybe. Comfort, maybe it’s safety and those things why they aren’t directly pleasure. They definitely allow more pleasure when you feel those things.

Courtney Townley 30:11
Okay, so I did, we did this in the last podcast, and I thought it was really fun. We’re gonna do it again. We’re gonna do rapid fire, but Laini, we’re gonna do it right this time, like last time, I felt like, we you and I were like, we were so not rapid fire. We were like, we asked the question and then it was like a 20 minute explanation. So let’s test. I know, I know. I’m gonna rapid fire some questions. We’ll see if we do just even 1% better, right, than what we did last time. So what is one pleasure that you have reclaimed at midlife.

Laini Gray 30:42
No alarm clock in the morning,

Courtney Townley 30:44
no alarm clock in the morning. I love that.

Laini Gray 30:46
Yeah. What about you, Courtney,

Courtney Townley 30:48
I would say for me, it’s I typically, I mean, unless it’s a very extreme situation where I can’t figure out a different solution, I just don’t do, I don’t work with clients before eight o’clock.

Laini Gray 30:58
Yeah.

Courtney Townley 30:59
And that, honestly and that time is my time. It’s my white space, right? So I’m utilizing that time in ways that bring me a lot of pleasure, for the most part. And it could I still do work early in the morning sometimes, but I really enjoy it. I enjoy when I’m writing or being creative with my morning time.

Laini Gray 31:17
That’s why I don’t have an alarm clock.

Courtney Townley 31:18
Yeah, yeah,

Laini Gray 31:20
I wake up.

Courtney Townley 31:20
I’m jealous that like I will get there someday. I’m not there yet. Yeah, I’m not there yet. What false pleasure Have you had to confront

Laini Gray 31:30
Instagram and social media and just being on the internet? Yes, and that’s I’ve worked on that a lot in the last year, which is why I don’t show up on Instagram very often, or Facebook at all, because it was just robbing my time, and then I would find something. Oh, this person’s doing this. I need to do this. Oh, I should be doing this with my business. Oh, I wish I was going on that vacation. It’s the Compare and despair totally. And I’m like, This is ridiculous. Just don’t even look yes. So I spent a lot less time on my phone and that’s been freed. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 32:02
yeah, I can relate to that, for sure. I would say one for me that is kind of less obvious, is true crime. Like there was, I think there were a couple years of my life where I couldn’t get enough. I was just absorbing. And it’s like, really horrific, if you think about it, like you’re being entertained by listening to these, like, just tragic, awful stories. So that is one that I did confront. And now I definitely listen to, I listen to a lot of different podcasts now for politics and personal growth and all the things and and I truly do think at the end of the like, long term wise, it brings me so much more joy, because there’s so much more integrity in that for me. Okay, that was not a rapid fire answer. Okay, what is your go to five minute pleasure practice? I feel like you already answered this.

Laini Gray 32:48
I did. It’s a nap. But if it’s sunny outside, it’s a nap in the sun. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 32:52
a nap in the sun. I love that. I would say one of mine is sitting down and just loving on Sully my dog, like just sitting with him for five minutes and, like, rubbing his ears, and it just, it just makes me so happy, because he’s just so he’s so happy.

Laini Gray 33:08
It’s a recharge really, right? Because it’s really, what can you do really quickly? That’s pleasure, but also recharges you.

Courtney Townley 33:15
Yes, exactly. So it’s like, I’m soothing my nervous system, and I’m really enjoying at as I do it. Which pleasure Do you wish more women would give themselves permission to enjoy?

Laini Gray 33:28
There’s so many, but I’m gonna say, eat carbs. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 33:33
beautiful. I love that. I was gonna say, like around food too, that I wish people would give themselves full permission for their permissions. Like, if you’re going to have chocolate cake, you actually set the table beautifully, and you take a moment to really, like, observe it and be grateful for it. And you know that sounds really cheesy, but try it. And then you, like, take one bite, and you put the fork down, and you really just savor the hell out of every bite. Here’s the power of that you don’t take it as far.

Courtney Townley 34:04
You’re not going to have to eat the whole cake, because guess what? You’re experiencing it. You’re not missing it. You’re actually in the experience of eating the cake. So you’re probably not going to take it so far, and you’re not robbing yourself of the joy. You’re doing it on purpose. Yeah. But so often I have clients who are like, Oh, I had wine last night, and I just, you know, they go off on all the shame and regret, and I’m like, Okay, hang on a second. Who was it with? Where were you? Why did you drink it? Did you enjoy it? There’s a lot of substance we need for this story.

Laini Gray 34:36
It’s true. It’s really true. Yeah, I just had a vacation last week, right? So I didn’t have internet, didn’t have Wi Fi, didn’t have cell service. I was outside in the sun with my family, active, doing all the things that bring joy, and I ate all the things, and I came back and I was two pounds lighter, yeah, do you know? I mean, I had the salted network ball, I had the seven layer bar, right? Yeah? And I had one of them, and I enjoyed. It, and it was great because I was also outside, so I wasn’t eating all of them, because I didn’t have other pleasure opportunities outside of that.

Courtney Townley 35:07
Yes, oh so good. I love that you were in a beautiful place with people you love, and away from all the tech and really checked out. And that alone probably did wonders for your biochemistry, what is your pleasure? Non negotiable. Like,

Laini Gray 35:27
which one do I have to have? Yeah? Like, which

Courtney Townley 35:29
one is? Like, just not negotiable. Like, you’re never gonna give it up. It’s something that you enjoy so much, and it’s,

Laini Gray 35:36
yeah, it’s just something time alone,

Courtney Townley 35:38
time alone. Yeah, that’s a great one. Mine’s dancing, for sure. And it’s funny, because I can say that, and it seems like such a Okay, yeah, dancing, but it’s interesting. As a midlife woman, I feel like there’s so much judgment in it, because I’m a social dancer, so I travel, I go out dancing by myself all the time. I’m not going to like techno clubs by myself, right? But making fun of me. But even if I did right, I

Laini Gray 36:03
know I’m like, hello, I was just at a DJ, yeah, but it

Courtney Townley 36:08
is like, there. I get so much nourishment from dancing in social settings. And I do think that social dancing is such a dying art, which just breaks my heart, because I love it so much, so I need to do something to help with that, but I haven’t figured out what it is my point being. I feel like I can get very caught up in other people’s expectations and belief systems and all the things where it would be easy for me to negotiate something that I have been so passionate about from day one of my life, right? I always say it was my first love, so I just have to keep coming back to that, that it’s this, this, this is nourishment, and I know why I do it. And if someone doesn’t understand that, that is so okay. And

Laini Gray 36:51
I will say to your point, because that’s what we love dancing, and we love EDM dance music and whatever. And every time we show up somewhere, we’re like, Okay, we’re gonna be the oldest people here, and we never are, never. So don’t even think that. Don’t let your age be a reason you don’t monster or you don’t go to the nightclub or the dancing or the country line dancing thing or whatever, go do it.

Courtney Townley 37:17
And also, like to the point of aging, right? Like, there’s so much research on dancing that actually really would encourage you to go because it a lot of you know, dancing is so great for the brain and it, you know, it helps you to learn so many different patterns.

Laini Gray 37:32
And, yeah, just music itself helps with the brain. Music

Courtney Townley 37:35
itself, yeah, and that’s not even tapping into the physical benefits, right? Of the like, what you’re doing to your joints and your bones and your muscles and your all of that great serotonin and dopamine running through your system. So yes, clearly we’re both advocates for the dance world, but it is interesting,

Laini Gray 37:51
don’t get me wrong. Yeah, I do go for the last concert went to was the seven to 10. It was done by 10 so I could go to bed.

Courtney Townley 38:00
I joke with all my friends that because Latin dancing doesn’t really start until like 11 o’clock at night. Okay, yeah, so I am so grateful that I live in a place where I only get to do it like twice, maybe twice a month at the most, because I wouldn’t survive it. But I’m always joking that maybe I need to spearhead like a 3pm or 4pm Latin dance thing. But anyway, okay, what has surprised you the most about pleasure as you have gotten older,

Laini Gray 38:30
usually it requires doing less than doing more.

Courtney Townley 38:33
Oh, that’s so good, so true.

Laini Gray 38:38
Yeah, less planning, less anxiety, less over the top, everything is just about enjoying something. Yeah, it’s not stressful, right? We don’t I don’t have I’m not training to run a half marathon for pleasure. You know? I’m not training for something. I’m not signed up for something to have fun. I’m not, you know, that’s probably the biggest surprise is that there’s a lot more pleasure in the simple things and things that don’t require as much energy, which is really great for having me standing around.

Courtney Townley 39:08
I think mine is a little bit similar in that. I think what surprises me at midlife is how much of my life I spent not fully allowing myself pleasure because I hadn’t proved myself enough. I hadn’t worked hard enough. I hadn’t, I hadn’t, I don’t know, accomplished something. And I see so many women doing this, where they don’t allow happiness or pleasure or joy until they can fit in the size six, until they get to the like, whatever the thing. And it’s just ludicrous, because here’s what we know for sure, is if you actually learn how to enjoy Joy taking care of yourself like you find pleasure in the experience, you’re going to keep doing it. That’s how we stay consistent. But if you hate the process, because you rob yourself of joy. Along the way, telling yourself you can’t have it until you get there. Even if you get there, you’re not going to stay there. So it is like it’s so potent to to really bake it into any process that you want to keep up with over time.

Courtney Townley 40:16
Okay, let’s talk a little bit before we close this out about just some practical strategies, like things that maybe people could consider who are rumbling with either finding things that they enjoy or just giving themselves permission to feel pleasure. And I thought one of the first things is just, how do we encourage women to recognize more frequently pleasure that helps versus pleasure that harms. Like, what do you think are some of the tools that fall under that bracket?

Laini Gray 40:47
Well, I like what you brought up earlier about checking in right, checking in during the experience, and then the day after. How do you feel after that experience? So am I still refreshed and relaxed after a week away from everything, or am I still relaxed after staying up till two in the morning, you know, or whatever? Like comparing which experiences actually leave you refresh the next

Courtney Townley 41:10
day, yeah? Or, like you said, several days later, because if I drink a bottle of wine tonight, I might feel amazing for like an hour, yeah? But tomorrow morning I’m gonna feel like hell, and even in a few days, I’m probably gonna feel worse, like in terms of just my body struggling to get back online.

Laini Gray 41:25
Yeah. And to your point, though, too, in order to do that, you have to slow down to be able to pay attention. It’s

Courtney Townley 41:31
why awareness is everything. It’s one on one. I love that you’re mentioning it. It is. What else do I have here? I think noticing how things that you pursue for pleasure, how is, how are they affecting other parts of your life? Yeah, I think that’s a great lens to look through. So if I drink wine tonight, how is that going to affect work tomorrow? How’s it going to affect my workout tomorrow? How’s it going to affect the way I communicate with people, how I talk to myself, my self narrative? Because honestly, that’s pretty straightforward. All those areas are going to get hit hard in not a positive way. Yeah, so I think that’s a great way. And like you said, like going out, sitting on the porch in the sun just five or 10 minutes, probably makes all those areas better.

Laini Gray 42:25
Totally, I’m nicer to people. I’m more of a better human. I give things. Yeah, it’s true, yeah.

Courtney Townley 42:33
I also have the dosage piece. I always talk about dosage with people, like it’s not that things are inherently good or bad. We all want to eat. I always bring up chocolate cake, because obviously I love chocolate cake. But whatever your thing is, it’s not that you can’t you have to live a life without it. Yeah, but understand how much of it you are eating and who’s driving. Are you the one leading the dance? Are you the one driving the car with the substance? Or is the substance driving? Because if it’s if it’s the latter, that’s a problem. If I can’t enjoy this in moderation.

Courtney Townley 43:07
I think it was Veronica Valley I had on the podcast several years ago to talk about alcohol. And she said, You know, one of the most frequent comment questions I get is, How do I know I have a problem? Yeah? And she said, Well, if you don’t think about alcohol like a sandwich, you have a problem a sandwich. I could take it or leave it like you know what I mean. Some days I feel like a sandwich, some days I don’t like some days I really want a sandwich and fully enjoy it, and then I don’t think about it for a month. But if, if you think about it incessantly, that’s probably an indicator that that it’s controlling you. So I think the dosage, how frequently Am I turning to this thing for pleasure, is a great question to be asking.

Laini Gray 43:46
I’m just gonna circle back to our cell phones right there on that. Do you know, I mean, like, how many of us are turning that on first thing in the morning, or, you know, checking it multiple times through the day? Can I mean, and I have someone in my household that I’m like, Wow, are you attached to that? Yeah, you know, yeah,

Courtney Townley 44:05
I know it’s so fun. I mean, just to share a story around that my son is about, he’ll be 16 in October, and I have been like, militant about, like he didn’t have a cell phone until he was almost in high school. Even when he got a cell phone, he didn’t have social media. But my child is also a really avid skateboarder, and if you know anything about the skate community in terms of competitions and sponsorship and all of that, it’s all done through social media. So he circled back. It hadn’t been for about a year, but he circled back like a week ago about asking to get on social media, and I finally felt like, you know what it he’s 16, like we have to let go of this at some point, and I’d rather it be when he’s still with me so I can help him regulate and help him learn how to use it more responsibly. So I still did, like the whole family setup. So I still have control over like I and I know some parents hear that and think I’m probably like a tiger mom, you know, like I’m just a helicopter mom, whatever that word is. But with that, I’m just not, I’m not ready, because I I can’t even regulate myself. And then I’m asking this little, you know, this young man who definitely doesn’t have a fully developed prefrontal cortex and all his brain online as it is. How’s he going to regulate himself totally?

Courtney Townley 45:29
So, yeah, okay, let’s talk about creating a pleasurable like pleasure practice. So again, for people listening who are like, oh, like, they’re feeling maybe a little stressed out because they’re very aware that they don’t have a lot of trauma. Lot of true pleasure in their life. What are some small ways that you would recommend somebody go about starting to insert more true pleasure into their life?

Laini Gray 45:53
So I think we’ve talked about this before too, but creating your perfect day scenario. What are the elements of a perfect day. So for me, it’s waking up with no alarm clock. Yeah, in a perfect day, there’s green outside my window, because I don’t really like winter, but I have to deal with it right? In a perfect day, I get the first few hours of the day to whatever I want to do, if I want to go for a walk, if I want to have breakfast, right? Those things are perfect. In a perfect day, I have movement in my body, if those kind of things. And when you start to outline this, and this isn’t a one time assignment, you start to think through that, oh, I would connect with someone I love in a perfect day, whether that’s by phone, in person or whatnot. I would, you know, those kind of things. And then you start to schedule those things into your actual day so that you actually find those moments of joy, like, Oh yes, I sit down to eat breakfast that’s joyful.

Laini Gray 46:45
You can find joy in these really simple things. And then once you have these days that are kind of just joy filled anyway, then the dancing or the going out on a vacation is just like icing on the cake. It’s not. You don’t have to come back to a life that you want to escape because you’ve created a life you love just out of simple pleasure.

Courtney Townley 47:04
It’s just the way that you live. Yeah, that’s so great. It’s so great. And I’ll just add to that, because I think that’s such a great lens to or sort of a great framework for people to, like, really ignite, like, what would and to do that exercise effectively, yeah, you have to ditch the expectations that it’s supposed to look a certain way, that is very hard for people to do. So you don’t have to go to work at like, if you again, we’re going to the land of rainbows and unicorns. If you could create anything like shape your day in any way, what would that look like? And don’t censor yourself. That’s so important. I would also say expect discomfort. Yeah, because when we start allowing ourselves pleasure, and sometimes even just thinking about the perfect day, it makes us like kind of freak out, because that seems so indulgent, it seems so over the top. How could I ever live that way? Just watch your brain, because that’s the very reason why you don’t have more pleasure in your life right now is because your brain is telling you it’s a problem.

Laini Gray 48:04
And you know, I was just thinking of this because that does, there’s still discomfort in my life, in my perfect day, I don’t start anything for anyone else before 10am yeah, I don’t. And so, for example, if there’s stuff going on at work and I know I need to do things, or I know I need to plan things, and it’s 830 in the morning, I start to panic, and then I’m like, wait, wait. Yeah, I don’t have to until 10, and so I have to check in every day. But when I do that and give myself that permission to like, no, no, no, you’ve created a whole schedule around this. Yes, no one’s expecting you to show up till 10. You don’t have to guess what. You can go for a walk right now. You can make some raspberry jam right now. Whatever do you know what I mean like, it’s very it is. It’s discomfort all the time, because those expectations of other people and other things are always going to creep in. But at least if you have some of your joys and pleasures outlined ahead of time. Yeah, it’s easier to check back in and go, Oh, wait, no, this will actually make my day better.

Courtney Townley 49:03
Yes, it’s that whole concept of life by design. We’re totally gonna do this at the retreat, by the way. So those of you listening, I run for the last this will be our third year of running a Montana retreat. Well, Montana retreat we’ve done the last two years. This year, we’re taking a group to the Azores Islands off of Portugal. So Laini and I are in the space of, like, curating the curriculum for that, but I think doing the ideal day, because at that, and I know like Martha Beck does that whole exercise around which I’ve always loved, but yeah, let’s definitely explore that, because I think that’s just such a powerful reset for people. Like, how far has my life gotten from that perfect day? Because even if I just pollinate in one or two things from that vision, I’m probably going to feel a hell of a lot better, and life’s going to just be better. Yes, so good, so good.

Courtney Townley 49:49
And the last thing I wanted to say, because I think this is important with any new practice, like, if you are someone who’s just like starting to dip your toe into the pleasure pool with full permission. And again, it’s going to be uncomfortable, so make sure you titrate the experience. So I would never recommend someone who can’t even sit by themselves for five minutes to go travel by themselves for a week. Like, that’s a big that’s a big leap. Yeah, so maybe we start by going out for a meal, but with ourselves for a day, you know, just one day, or then we graduate to maybe an overnight stay somewhere by ourselves. Like, there’s ways to ease ourselves into escalating the experience, but I think our brain freaks out when we think that, like the exercise of the perfect day is to start living that way tomorrow, like, come on, no, that is not what we’re saying.

Laini Gray 50:36
No, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, yeah. Mine had to evolve. Mine was first. It was palm trees. I see palm trees outside my window, and then I’m like, do they have to be palm trees? No, it’s just green. In a perfect day, I see green, so that means the sun’s gonna come out. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So it’s an evolution. It’s a journey, just like anything else, and it can change. I mean, for heaven’s sake, if you end up getting married during the your perfect day is going to change. It. You’re going to wake up a little differently, you know. So it’s always changing. And that’s the great thing, too. That’s a pleasurable thing to to give yourself permission to change

Courtney Townley 51:13
well. And I think if you want to live a healthy, happy life, you have to that’s, that’s the point is to keep learning about ourselves. So as you keep learning that ideal day, that vision shifts, which is why it’s such a great thing to keep circling back to. So, yeah, it’s a great reason we’re going to do it at the retreat, because I think it’s a great one to come back to for the people coming.

Courtney Townley 51:35
Okay, I think this was great, like I you know, I knew this would be a great conversation. You and I always have great conversations, but I think that this was really important stuff. I do want to tell listeners that if you’re listening to this and you’re like, you just need a little bit more support, and you want to come into an incubator around this whole conversation. The masterclass inside of Rumble and Rise, which is my membership community for the month of August, is Pleasure Principles and the masterclass drops the first week of the month, and then we do a coaching call later in the month around that topic. You don’t have to be a member of the Rumble and Rise community to get access to that course. You can just buy it as a one off class. I think it’s $29 which is a screaming deal, because it’s an hour long masterclass. And then I also give you a very robust companion guide to walk you through certain exercises and also give you additional resources. So if that sounds like something that would be up your alley, definitely check it out by going to graceandgrit.com/masterclasses, and you will see it’s like the one at the top of the list, because it’s the next one coming around the corner.

Courtney Townley 52:42
Thank you, Laini, I always love talking to you, and I just so appreciate your input and your energy and all the things well.

Laini Gray 52:48
Thank you for having me. This is a great we’ll do it again soon.

Courtney Townley 52:52
All right, my friend, have a great day, and we will see you all very soon. Take care.

Courtney Townley 53:03
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self-care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.