Author: Amy Butcher

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Podcast

Pleasure Lab Podcast – Episode 17

Show Notes:

Length: 40:25

  • Zed and Amy talk about holes, puberty, and springtime (00:40)
  • April Fool’s Outtakes (25:29)
  • TT@H: planting seedlings with intention (22:02)

The Try This @ Home experiment came from the book E-Squared by Pam Grout.
Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro) and New Ages I (try this at home section). Also to Orquesta Arrecife for their snippet LA MORDAZA (whimsey section).
Don’t want to miss another episode? Subscribe in iTunes or Sticher! And while you’re there, please rate us so others can find the Pleasure Lab too.

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April's theme is Holes, Holy, Whole.

hole flowerIt is the time of planting, of digging caverns in the soil to plant a seedling.
It is the time of Easter, Passover, and the Hindu New Year.
It is the time when the impulses and intentions of March begin to find themselves taking form and following their telos towards wholeness.
And April is a great month to feel into those impulses in the body.

  • What holes in your body demand your attention?
  • What is Holy to you right now, sacred and essential?
  • Where in your life are things coming into form?

It can be a kind of unruly mess, this springing into being that is April springtime, that is the April showers that bring May flowers. What better than a little poetry to bring order to the chaos.
—Amy

Budding Scholars

BY APRIL HALPRIN WAYLAND
Welcome, Flowers.
Write your name on a name tag.
Find a seat.
Raise your leaf if you’ve taken a class here before.
Let’s go around the room.
Call out your colors.
I see someone’s petal has fallen—
please pick it up and put it in your desk
where it belongs.
Sprinklers at recess,
fertilizer for lunch,
and you may snack on the sun throughout the day.
Excuse me . . .
what’s that in your mouth?
A bee?
Did you
bring enough
for everyone?

April Halprin Wayland, “Budding Scholars” from Sharing the Seasons: A Book of Poems. Copyright © 2010 by April Halprin Wayland. Reprinted by permission of April Halprin Wayland.

How about you? What holes are calling? What feels holy? How are you becoming whole?

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Springtime Nettle Pesto!

rsz_nettle_pestoNettles are here!
These deep green stinging nettles are deeply nutritive and in abundance right now. Harvest them (using gloves!) while you can and experiment in the kitchen. I love to use nettles for pesto. I put it on steamed veggies, toast, raw vegetables, eggs or over pasta!
Here’s an easy recipe to try. I hope you enjoy it.
—Lizz

Recipe: Nettle Pesto

  • Prep time: 10 min
  • Total time: 10 min
  • Serves: 2 cups

Ingredients:

  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 3/4 C pine nuts ( I often use almonds or walnuts)
  • 1/4 C olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 1 Tbs lemon juice
  • 3/4 C parmesan or asiago cheese, shredded (for a vegan version I add nutritional yeast)

Instructions:

  1. Put a pot of water on and when its boiling dump the fresh nettles in for just one minute.
  2. Strain well and get as much water out as possible. Add nettles to blender or food processor.
  3. Add garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, sea salt, lemon juice and cheese if you’re using it.
  4. Pulse until smooth and creamy and salt to taste. Enjoy!

Source: http://www.nakedcuisine.com/?s=nettle+pesto

How about you? What do you feel quickening in your body? What are you hoping to bud?

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Equinox Meditation

seedling
As spoken to the Tantra SM equinox celebrants.
Lay on the floor or the ground.   Relax your body.  Notice your breath.  Let your breath move your body. With the inhalation and exhalation, your tissues will respond with the expansion.   With each breath, sink into the ground.   Gravity is the earth’s embrace.
Continue to notice your breath, follow the in/out breath through your nostrils into your nasal passages.   Breath into the area between your eye brows.  Once firmly aware of the place between the eyes, with your breath move your attention back into the middle of your mind, into the inner eye located behind your eyeballs.    From your inner eye, scan down your body. Allow the zenith of the sun to illuminate the seeds to be planted, or the germinating seeds already there.  Notice the potential.  Scan your whole body, noticing the ripeness, the quickening, and the seeds swelling.  Planted to express through the coming months.   Fertilized by yearning and desire.  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Focus on your breath, following your breath back toward the place between your eyebrows, and then your nasal septum.  Breathing into the place between your nostrils.   Next, follow your breath as it goes from your nostrils all the way into your lungs.  Breathe deeply into the region of your heart.
Become aware of your limbs, feeling the periphery of your body.  Gently wiggle your fingers and toes.  Take some time to bask in the relaxation and illumination.
Thank you
Alex

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A quiet voice is whispering . . .

Something is coming
 clock train
I’m starting to feel it: the flickering flame catching, the spark jumping, more and more on either side of the dim flame catching light and spreading, the heat spreading upward and out. Since our spring-forward daylight savings time change, the days feel longer, with more sunlight and daytime, suntime and daylight.
I’m noticing myself growing. Sometimes, just noticing the growing and naming it is the radical, revolutionary act. Change happens while we’re making other plans, while we’re going along seeking stability or transformation or pleasure or relief or whatever we path on which we might particularly be seeking right now. I’m noticing my path changing: New opportunities forking me into new directions, paths which used to be wide open and that I expected to go on for many more tanks of gas are now tiny walking trails that I’m carefully scrambling through. I’m attempting to reevaluate, reevaluate, reevaluate—from the place of now, rather than being attached to the decision my former self made when I started along this road. I’m not them anymore, I know different things.
This week, I can really feel that. In my morning meditations, some quiet voice is whispering, *change is coming, change is here, change is coming, change has already happened.* Everything is green green green and today the sun is shining, the leaves are bursting out of their branches which were just a week ago bare.
Something is coming. I can feel the heat, the green, the forks in the paths. I’m watching, following my deep pleasure, following my inner quiet, to take me somewhere new.
—Zed

How about you? What do you feel quickening in your body? What are you hoping to bud?
Categories
Podcast

Pleasure Lab Podcast – Episode 16

PleasureLabEpisode16Show Notes:

Length: 1:08:00

  • Alex and Amy on quickening and online embodiment (00:40)
  • Amy and Zed’s Book Club (44:22)
  • TT@H: Alex on quickening into pleasure (39:37)

Several books were mentioned in this episode:

Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro) and New Ages I (try this at home section). Also to Orquesta Arrecife for their snippet LA MORDAZA (whimsey section).
Oh, and Val McDermid: we want to buy you a drink!
Don’t want to miss another episode? Subscribe in iTunes or Sticher! And while you’re there, please rate us so others can find the Pleasure Lab too.

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Spring is, well, springing
The spring is coiling . . .
During this month of March, we here at Body Trust are pondering the theme of “quickening.” What is that impulse that forms the cherry buds that become the blossoms? What makes a crocus push its way up through the snow into the lengthening daylight? What is the impulse that comes before the flowering? And how does it manifest in our bodies?
Alex and I were discussing this very thing for the upcoming episode of the Pleasure Lab podcast. We felt the impulse in our bodies, a wriggling up, a potency that gathered speed until it stuck in our throats, just before the point of words. It kept repeating itself, silently gathering, until we laughed . . . because silent gestures make for lousy podcasts.
Medically, “quickening” is the first perceptible movement of the fetus in utero. Linguistically, the verb form means “to make more rapid, accelerate” or “to become more alive.” But magically, I have to wonder if—when the croci emerge and those cherry blossoms weigh heavy overhead—how do they sense the quickening in us? Do they smile their compassionate flowery smiles and say, “Oh, those humans, look at them doing their springtime thing again . . .”
In my body I feel the quickening as a frustration. What will I let come to fruition? Have I gathered the resources necessary to bring things into form? Can I suffer this place of readiness before outcome is known? We shall see. 🙂
—Amy

How about you? What do you feel quickening in your body? What are you hoping to bud?

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Podcast

Pleasure Lab Podcast – Episode 15

PleasureLabEpisode15Show Notes:

Length: 57:36
Amy and Zed ponder composting and disgusting (00:40)
Amy reads an excerpt from her short story “Waiting to Pee” (44:22)
TT@H: Zed on mindfulness (39:37)
Several books were mentioned in this episode:

Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro) and New Ages I (try this at home section). Also to Orquesta Arrecife for their snippet LA MORDAZA (whimsey section).

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Newsletter

How to Scratch an Itch
How to Scratch an Itch or The Composting of Ideas
When I’m working on a visual design project, one of my favorite parts of the process is the "not doing" phase.
When I’m designing a book, business card, or illustrating an idea I first get clear on the intention of the project. What is the hope or aspiration? What meaning and feeling will it convey? What is the design intention? I then spend hours looking at other types of design (the joke in graphic design is that there are no original ideas, just borrowed ones) seeing what styles have resonance, even if I’m not sure exactly why. Once I’m visually satiated, it is then time for the "not doing." That means forget all about the project, go for a walk or the gym, and completely surrender the idea to my unconscious. It’s like heading out while a big pot simmers on the back of the stove: I know when I return that something delicious will be waiting. All those ideas and other images will have been digested, transmuted into something new and exactly what I need for the project. It’s a kind of composting. It requires a trust in my capacities of creative digestion. And it’s deeply pleasurable.
Sometimes the composting, this "not doing" can happen in the present moment. For example, I have a concept like "itch" that I want to illustrate. I’m curious about the sensory experience of itch and perhaps I read a bit about it, discerning the differences between itch and scratch and pain, discovering the role of natriuretic polypeptide b (Nppb) and the pathways between skin and brain, etc.. And then I just let my pencil wander across the page, letting images emerge that are not a conscious depiction of "itch" but more an embodied sourcing of what my eyes and drawing hands ‘hear’ from the intelligence of my body that knows "itch." The result is not something my mind would ever have designed, but the image has resonance for all the rest of me.

How about you? How do you compost ideas? What are your tools of alchemy?

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Categories
Podcast

Pleasure Lab Podcast – Episode 14

PleasureLabEpisode14Show Notes:

Length: 1:11:27
Conversation with Amy and Alex about winter playtime (00:40)
Lizz, Zed, Amy and Alex ponder Body Trust’s mission (31:20)
TT@H: Lizz on ways to teather the mind (25:47)
Amy mentioned a book review of The Cabaret of Plants by Robert Mabey, to be found in the New York Times.
Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro) and New Ages I (try this at home section). Also to Orquesta Arrecife for their snippet LA MORDAZA (whimsey section).