Turning the Pleasure Switch Back On

{Note: this podcast includes a meditation, so please listen to the podcast if you would like to enjoy the meditation.]Last time, we talked about the switch. The pleasure off switch — the one so many of us turned down click by click across a lifetime, so slowly we never noticed the room getting darker. We talked about the permission wound underneath it: the decision, made by a little girl decades ago, that feeling wasn’t safe.And I made you a promise. I said that in part two, I’d show you how those beliefs got written into us in the first place... and that I’d walk us through a practice, together, for beginning to rewrite them — right at the level they live.If you haven’t heard or read part one — The Pleasure Off Switch — go and listen or read it now.So. how does a belief like ‘my pleasure costs someone something’ actually get written into a person?Here’s the thing about us as little girls. In roughly the first seven years of our lives, our minds worked completely differently to how they work now. There was no filter. No critical voice standing at the door asking, ‘Is this true? Do I agree with this?’ Whatever we saw, heard, and felt simply went in — and it went in as truth.The way our mother sighed when she finally sat down. Who got praised, and for what. What happened when we were loud, or hungry, or wanted something. All of it was being written directly onto the operating system, while we were far too young to read the code.And two things make that early writing go deep.Repetition — the message that arrives a thousand times in a thousand small ways.And emotional charge — the message that arrives once but arrives with a jolt. A moment of shame in front of the class. A door slammed. A look.Repetition writes in pencil, over and over until it’s grooved into the page.Charge writes in ink, instantly.Now think about what got repeated for us.Good girls share. Don’t be selfish. Wait your turn. Who do you think you are?And think about what the culture around us kept confirming, everywhere we looked: that the women most loved were the women who needed least.Remember the funeral I told you about in part one — the beautiful young mother, and the words everyone reached for? She never said a bad word about anyone. She always put others first. That wasn’t one family’s grief talking. That was the installation software — still running, still writing the same belief into every girl in the room: a woman’s value is her selflessness. Her wanting nothing is what we’ll praise her for.So if you’ve ever wondered why you can’t just decide to enjoy your own life — why the guilt arrives two minutes into the massage — please hear this: there is nothing wrong with you.A program is running exactly as it was written. It’s just that nobody asked us before they wrote it.Which brings us to the question underneath everything: why doesn’t trying harder work? Why can’t we affirmation our way out of this? We’ve all stood at the mirror saying the beautiful words. I am worthy of pleasure. I choose joy. And somewhere in the background, a quiet voice folding the washing says... no you’re not.Here’s why…The words are talking to the conscious mind — the part of us that already agrees. But the belief doesn’t live there. It lives below, in the part of us that runs the show automatically — our habits, our reflexes, our guilt, our flinches.And that deeper part of us doesn’t speak argument. It doesn’t respond to logic or effort or trying harder. It responds to two things: feeling and safety. It changes when we go down to where it lives, in a state where it’s actually listening, and give it a new experience — not a new lecture.And there’s one state where that part of us is naturally open, naturally receptive, naturally listening. Deep relaxation. The same softened, drifting state we pass through on the edge of sleep.Which is exactly where we’re going now.So here is what I’ve made for us. It’s called the Pleasure Switch Meditation. It goes down to the level where the decision was made — and begins, gently, to unmake it.Two things before we begin.First: obviously don’t listen while driving, and not while doing anything that needs your attention. If now isn’t the moment, save this episode and come back tonight. It will keep.Second: this is a beginning. One pass through this meditation will not erase fifty years of conditioning — anyone who promises you that is selling something.But done gently, and repeated — this is the kind of practice that works the way the dimmer worked. Click by click. In the other direction.So. find somewhere you can be undisturbed for a little while. Sit, or lie down. And when you’re ready... let’s begin.THE PLEASURE SWITCH MEDITATIONWelcome. This is the Pleasure Switch Meditation — a guided practice for coming back into your own body, and your own life.Inside each of us there is a room — the room of our aliveness. And on its wall there’s a dimmer switch that got turned down a long time ago, click by click, until our days went grey. This practice takes us back to that room... to turn it up again.Come here daily if you can. Somewhere you won’t be disturbed. Never while driving. And when you’re ready... let’s begin… listen on the podcast…Take your time coming back. Have a sip of something. And whatever just happened in there — whether you saw everything vividly, or saw nothing and just felt a little softer — it counted. The subconscious doesn’t need the movie. It needs the visit.Do this meditation daily if you can, even for a week, and watch what starts happening in the ordinary hours — the tea you actually taste, the sun you actually feel. That’s the dimmer coming up. Click by click. In the right direction this time.Now, I want to be honest with you about what this practice can and can’t do — because we don’t do false promises around here. This meditation begins the rewrite. For many of us, it will be enough to start feeling real movement. And... some beliefs are older, deeper, more stubborn. Some decisions were made in moments that need more than a gentle daily visit — they need precise, held, one-to-one work to fully unmake. That’s not a flaw in you. That’s just the truth of how deep some ink goes.That deeper work is what I do with the women I mentor, one to one — deeply personal work on living a fully expressed life. Your beliefs, your body, your voice, your soul work brought all the way out into the world. If the meditation stirred something today — if you met her at the switch and felt how much is waiting on the other side — and you know you don’t want to do this alone... reach out to me. We’ll have a real conversation. Not a pitch. Just two women talking about what wants to come through you.And one more thing — because I know some of us will want to keep this. I’ve made the Pleasure Switch Meditation available as a standalone recording: no episode around it, no talking, just the practice, ready for every morning. It’s yours, free, when you subscribe to Fully Expressed on Substack.Subscribe, and it comes straight to you, along with the conversation we continue in writing every single week.I made this song for you and for me. Turn the Pleasure Switch on! Play it loud. Play it for her. Dance to it. Listen to the Song over on Substack.Our pleasure was never lost. The light was never gone. It was waiting — one click away, the whole time.Join me on Substack:https://fullyexpressedwithayesha.substack.com/Here’s to living fully expressed!LoveAyeshaIf this space resonates with you and you’d like to go a little deeper, you’re warmly invited to join the Fully Expressed Collective.https://fullyexpressedwithayesha.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Fully Expressed with Ayesha Hilton at fullyexpressedwithayesha.substack.com/subscribe