Exploring Worship as a Pleasure Practice: A Self-Pleasure Series
I’m sure the thought of worship and pleasure may throw some of you off and you may opt out of finishing this written piece, but I implore you to keep an open mind and rock with me for a few minutes.
To be honest, I can’t recall the prompt that led me down the rabbit hole of my thoughts, but I began exploring the idea of the body as the living altar a few years ago and dropped some starter thoughts on the “letter” bird app. You can listen to them here.
My goal with exploring praise and worship as a pleasure practice was to deepen our relationship with pleasure, but also point my attention towards praise and worship of the body as the living altar.
Here are some reasons connecting worship to yourself as a human may be challenging:
Worship and its connection to deities, incites our natural reaction to resist what can be outside of this lens.
Being edified feels uncomfortable.
Worship feels obsessive to most people and they don’t want to experience someone being obsessed with them.
The connection to worship and having a praise kink makes some feel weird.
Let’s explore that fourth reason.
A praise kink is when someone enjoys being showered with praise during intimate moments, or really any moment. Typically, persons with praise kinks love recognition and the acknowledgement stir up an arousal that grows with each word of adoration. While most people’s hearts become full of praise, a kinkster becomes full of insatiable lust.
I know it’s a challenge for people to see sensual pleasure with praise. But imagine having a lover speak affirmations over you while you’re asleep or praise you for a good fuck. Consider a lover adorning your body with precious jewels or crystals because they love the way your skin glistens from the shimmer.
Can you imagine someone seeing your divinity and wanting to exalt that?
This is what I believe it means to worship someone.
To honor, adore, and view them in high regard—as a sacred space.
This definition suggests that the body is both the altar and worship space. Or, do we not (should we not) hold ourselves in the highest regard? Do we not see ourselves as sacred?
When considering praise and worship in romantic relationships; however, I’m certain there needs to be a reframe. If praise is synonymous with adoration, affirming someone and speaking life into them, support, encouragement, and honoring respective intimacy languages also looks like care. So it begs the question, is worship simply an exalted expression of care?
Seeing ourselves as the living altar enhances our connection to the world—a short distance from pleasure. Seeing oneself as the living altar and instituting body worship starts with our view of who we are as divine beings.
Removing ourselves from the elevation of human existence makes concepts like the body as a living altar that deserve worship as something foreign.
To get us started on the idea of body worship, here’s a snippet of an unreleased podcast episode where I dive a little deeper into the body as the living altar.
This series delves deeper into praise and worship as a practice of pleasure, even exploring the idea of praying for pleasure.
Stay locked.
