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Show Notes

In this episode, I kick off a four-part summer series exploring somatic skills that can help us move through this season with a little more ease, enjoyment, and intention.

We begin with the first skill: the Pleasure Anchor. Together, we explore how to notice and savor the small moments that feel good in our bodies and environments—and how doing so can help us stay connected to the richness of summer instead of rushing past it.

Along the way, I share reflections on pleasure, gratitude, rhythm, and the nervous system's capacity to receive positive experiences. We also explore how finding the right pace—whether in movement, work, or daily life—can become its own form of nourishment.

This episode is an invitation to slow down just enough to notice what's already good, and to let those moments land a little more deeply.

Timestamps

00:00 — Summer reflections + introducing the four-part series
02:00 — The four summer somatic skills
03:30 — Introducing the Pleasure Anchor
05:00 — Noticing what's already pleasurable
06:00 — Practice: notice, appreciate, and feel the impact
08:00 — Why summer can be easy to miss
09:00 — Pleasure as a daily scavenger hunt
10:00 — Gratitude practices + sharing good moments
11:00 — Contact nutrition and nervous system nourishment
12:00 — Shared rhythm as a source of pleasure
13:00 — Finding your own pace
15:00 — Rhythm, movement, and listening to the body
17:00 — The pleasure of adjusting course when something feels off
18:00 — Shared rhythm with other people
20:00 — Closing reflections + invitation to practice pleasure

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

Photos and links from this episode:
www.mindandmountain.co/podcast

Transcript

Sarah 0:06
Okay, welcome to my hike video for some of these episodes. Just as an experiment, I've been hearing people talk about how much of podcasting these days is actually happens in the video space, like on YouTube. So I am in really cool places when I record these, so I thought I'd try as an experiment. So if you're watching on video, let me know if this is worthwhile. I'm just.. I'm also doing a lot of training these days, and my outdoor time is more athletically oriented than my slower walks that I was taking in this podcast over the winter, so not sure how that is as a listener, so curious to hear thoughts on that. If you two want to share and help me refine this process of this podcast as I move through the annual cycle, because I definitely have different ways of being outside in different seasons, and because I'm trying to bring you along, be outside most of the time when I'm recording these, guessing that maybe the format will be changing with the seasons. This is my first summer with this podcast, and so far it's been really fun. I'm really proud of myself for making it all the way through the winter season with an episode every week, and I just keep having more things I want to talk about, so that feels good. Feels like it's a good creative practice for me to think of something to share with you every week and spend the time thinking and finding language for it all. So, what we're doing this week is kicking off a little series. I have a four part series in mind, talking about some somatic skills that I especially think of as summer summer skills, and I'm gonna weave them together. I do think of there being an order with these skills, and I think they all go together and support, support us all, especially in this summer season, and I mean it's Alaska summer here right now, so I'm a particularly extreme version of this, maybe, but yeah, I wonder if they're helpful for all of us. Let me know, of course. So each episode, the next four episodes will be covering one of these skills, and today I want to introduce all four of them, and then get into the first one, so the four somatic summer skills that I'm bringing forward in this series are the first one, and today's focus is called the pleasure anchor, we'll get into that in a bunch of different ways here shortly, and then next week skill number two is down shifting, learning how to take it down a notch, and then the third week is the skill of getting big having space for more, and week four final skill is the skill of letting it be enough. Okay, so maybe just with the naming of those you have a sense for where we're going with this and maybe you'll find ways to access all four of those skills right away because the thing about somatics always is that it's pretty much if we're doing like a lot of us are doing this stuff already intentionally or not, maybe just naturally through our bodies, and we're just kind of amplifying that and looking to bring a little bit more awareness to it and I. Practice receiving the benefits of it that sometimes we just scan over because we're not aware when we're doing it, necessarily. All right, so that's where we're headed. I'm excited. Feels really well timed for me right now, and hopefully for you as well. Okay, so let's talk about a pleasure anchor. So, pleasure anchor is exactly what the name suggests, and again, I'm going to posit that you are already doing this, and our project then is just to amplify it to notice it when it's happening, and then maybe to maybe intentionally seek it out a little bit more, if that feels good, or also could be like staying a little bit longer with it when you're doing it, when you're noticing something cool.

Sarah 6:04
Okay, so right away we can do this together, and just wherever you are, whatever you're doing here, we can look for a part of the experience that our body is having that feels good in any way, think about like any sensory experience that you're having, like a part of your body that's feeling pretty okay right now, or the temperature, or something you're seeing, you know, any of these experiences you could then, you know, once you notice something delightful, pleasant, pleasant, you know, very open here, we can notice what you want to do with it, you know. Do you like, want to look for like a little bit more comfort somehow, like get a little cozier in your seat or something, or do you want to, what does your body want to do when it comes into awareness, like relationship with this more kind of pleasant part of the experience that it's having. Maybe you see a wildflower on your hike, pretty lots of wildflowers here, you yeah, maybe it's noticing something beautiful, and just wanting to spend some time taking it in a little bit, and then you know there's often an impact in your body when that happens, so that's like the step, the third little micro step of this process. It's like notice, appreciate, and then see what the body, what's happening in the body with that appreciation. Yeah, I mean that's essentially the practice, and the deal is that for summer there's so much here around us that can give us, that can delight us, is pleasurable about summer, I mean, so much, and this initial skill is the skill of actually embodying that and not missing it when it's happening, because we're in our, you know, like accelerated anxious, like manic summer pace, or thinking about the next thing, or feeling behind, you know, like summer is also, you know, tricky because of lots of the same stuff too, because of the muchness of it, so the savoring, it's savoring, maybe that's what this one should be called. Weigh in, let me know in the comments if you want to. If you call this one pleasure anchor, or if you like savoring summer. Okay, and then you know there are so many ways to this, is like one of the invitations here is to consider this like a scavenger hunt type of invitation, where you're trying to kind of look for different pleasurable experiences throughout your days, each day. Okay, and yeah, I mean, my husband and I started a sweet ritual before we go to bed, where we name things that we are grateful for from our day, so that's been a very sweet little ritual way to bring this into kind of like a practice, especially interpersonally, can be really powerful. Also, maybe that's like incredibly cheesy, and so you come up with something else that makes more sense for you, but it's been. it has been really sweet for us, and I'm also thinking about the contact nutrition skill. Maybe you listen to that episode, or have heard me talk about that in some of my other somatics classes. The contact nutrition skill of shared rhythm, just rhythm in general, actually is one of my other favorite ways of accessing this kind of pleasure in the summer, while because I'm often moving, you know, like I am right now, and the okay, so contact nutrition, just to be really quick, is though there's five of them, five different skills inside of contact nutrition. I have an episode on this. This is something I learned from one of my teachers, Carmen Spagnola. She's amazing. Diane Poole Heller as well. Carmen has a book on this coming out this year, I think. Very exciting, and the five, they're basically the way that our body is nerve, different ways to nourish our body's attachment system. If you're like anxiously attached, or your social nervous system is, is like jangly, you know, like many of us are. There's a plane, small plane, you see.

Sarah 12:03
Yeah, so the five contact nutrition skills are things that our bodies pick up on and help us feel safe interpersonally are kind eyes shared rhythm vocal prosody, our vocal tone matching what we are saying, ingestion behaviors, and a safe touch, so the shared rhythm one I'm thinking about a lot these days, because of the way movement like this, like being out hiking, has a rhythmicity to it, and there's really something about, for one, finding the rhythm that feels right in my body, so that's like one thing that I think is really just kind of interesting. What is the what is your rhythm cc in the episode or the times we've talked about the way that your pace is sacred? Yeah, I know like it's really something to be able to find a rhythm of movement just with myself and my feet and the terrain that feels like it works well, and then to settle into that rhythm and adjust it as things change in the body, you know, okay, so that's a little bit of shared rhythm, but that's like a first step of rhythm, and it can feel really pleasurable when I'm in a rhythm that feels good. So there's like an inquiry there in a different way to play with, like a pleasure anchor is to find your rhythm, and maybe it's like actually little, little literal rhythm, right now, like your walking pace, but maybe it's also the pace of at which you do things during the season, like do you move at a faster pace, or you know more accurately is probably to become skilled at finding the rhythm that feels right in the moment, because my guess is, and this is actually going to teaser for the next episode, where we're going to talk about downshifting, but my guess is that one of the things that really is tough for us about summer is that we're moving at a pace that isn't quite right or sustainable for our bodies, and we're in, we haven't figured out how to like speed up and then decelerate as well when those we have moments for. Up, so yeah, maybe it's finding the right pace for your, for you at this moment, and maybe there's a pleasure in when you feel like you have that, or when you notice that you need a shift, and then you do a shift, and then you get to feel the difference in your body, that for me is a very pleasurable feeling, because that's like, oh, I listened and I changed something and it feels better now, and there's like a like my body does like a like a deep, like a sigh of relief, kind of okay, yeah, and then one more thing on the rhythm concept, in case this is resonating with you, there is also a pleasure, no doubt, in shared rhythm and moving with people who, whose pace match yours, and who you can come into kind of an easy a yeah, I guess it's just an, like, especially an easy walking rhythm. I'm thinking of how lovely that is to spend time outside with people who move at a pace that's similar to mine, and how that's one of the really the things I really look forward to about this summer season. Okay, let me see if there's anything else to say here about pleasure anchors and savoring the sensory experience of summer, I think maybe we should just walk together into this clearing, which is a really beautiful place and a great spot to end this little walk and talk for today, I Thanks for being here till next time. Bye.