Available now6-MODULE, ONLINE COURSE

Joy and The Body

A joy filled and body centered journey

This course is an opportunity to return to the joy of the body & the richness of life. How we feel about our body is never in isolation to how things outside appear to us. Our body is our world, so let’s fill our world with joy.

Facilitated and curated by Aisha Paris Smith.

Trailer

This course is a guided experience, and you will be brought through six weeks of facilitated embodied learning. Each week, we open with guided grounding, then teaching and Q&A and exercise, then a group body poem, and integration with reflections to close. We will come together to connect with our bodies on every level, to return to the joy of the body. Through the course, you will step into somatic awareness, explore body-based practices, and observe the openings, shifts and releases they facilitate. It is a chance to begin a new way of relating to your body, creating new levels of intimacy and understanding, and creating an internal and external environment for it to flourish.

Course modules

Module 1: Embodiment & Connection

An introduction to discover new depths of embodiment and ease

An introduction to root us in a place of embodiment and connection through somatic practices. Start to unfold your unique experience of being in a body, in your body.

Module 2: Empowered to Want

Evaluate your joy and unravel the beliefs that create your joyful (or joy-less) reality.

To trust our bodies and open to what feels good we must be willing to acknowledge our desires and more than that, to voice them. In this class we will discuss what obstructs desire-based action and create permission to please ourselves first. You will evaluate your joy ethics and unravel the beliefs that c...

Module 3: Meaning & The Body

Explore how you categorise yourself and others, and build new associations.

The body is a place of projection: self-worth, identity, capability. What associations do you have with your body and bodies in general? In this class we’ll explore how you categorise yourself and others, and how to build new associations.

Module 4: Pleasure as a Resource

Experience pleasure as way to positively change your body and mind.

Mindfulness-based pleasure is an untapped resource. In this class we will experience pleasure as way to positively change our body and mind.

Module 5: Body Shame Be Gone

Confront body shame and further unlock your ability to compassionately be with yourself.

An opportunity to confront body shame, conscious or unconscious to further unlock our ability to compassionately be with ourselves just as we are, which ironically frees us in a transformative way.

Module 6: Build Your Capacity To Receive

Expand how much joy you hold in your body through somatic practices.

The amount of pleasure anyone can have in their life is infinite. Learn how to expand how much joy you can hold in your body through simple somatic practices. Attend ready to express yourself through your whole body.

Course information

The human body has an incredible capacity for pleasure that most of us are not accessing. Instead, people struggle to relax and enjoy being in their body, which becomes a struggle to engage with life. Unable to identify what they like and want, people live without joy, stumble upon it randomly for short periods or derive joy from doing things that make other people happy. The body’s pleasure pathways must be unblocked through the senses to increase our capacity for joy and to reclaim our personal guidance system.

When we touch a body, we touch upon the memories, emotions and thoughts encased within it. Touch allows us to bring a tactile experience of care and attention to places that may never have received it. When the body feels under-resourced to process an experience or feeling, it is repressed and seemingly buried inside the flesh. Touch can gently recall those experiences to the conscious mind.

With safety, relaxation, self-awareness and somatic fluency, the body will naturally begin to unwind and turn on. Receptivity will begin to sprout like a young seedling, bringing life back to our pleasure pathways and shaking off the outgrown skin that we are ready to expand beyond. It’s less about being taught something new and more about being prompted to find the permission to access and act upon an intelligence that was always there.

To return to the joy of the body, we will come together to connect with our bodies on every level. Working together means working not just in a group but in a community upheld by clear agreements and fused by a shared intention. Every week we will step into somatic awareness, explore body-based practices, and observe the openings, shifts and releases they facilitate. This is not about manipulating or getting the body to be a certain way. It is a chance to begin a new way of relating to your body, creating new levels of intimacy and understanding, and creating an internal and external environment for it to flourish.

Read about the core questions of this course here, and watch our conversations with Aisha Paris Smith here (transcript) and here (transcript) to preview how you will learn with this joy-led teacher.

Course Includes

6 modules

13 sessions

Joy-led teacher

Community discussion area

Video, audio and transcription available

Curated readings, resources and embodied practices

Teachers

Aisha Paris Smith

Somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach. Aisha blends her conscious approach to life with the profound experience of being in a body. She embraces all that it means to be a human with flesh, blood, bones, ego and eros. She experiences every day the wisdom of her body and has seen clients transform through the power of somatic methods.

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What our students say

The ‘Joy and the Body’ sessions were wonderful. I loved Aisha’s way of conducting the classes. It was truly a safe space, thanks to her. A special mention to her way of communicating - that tone, the pace - everything was helpful. There has been thought given to the course structure, the flow of the sessions, the content and it is beneficial. It was a great way to discover more of me and am glad I chose to do this course.

by Chhabii Mehta

Learning outcomes

Deepen your understanding of pleasure and come into conscious relationship to it so that you can live from a place of self-created joy more often
Increase your capacity for pleasure, sensation, receiving and self-expression
Begin to identify your boundaries, desires and internal compass towards what it wants and away from what it does not
Discover your personal shadows and how they have been holding you back
Explore your body in a sex-positive space with measured exercises that support you staying in a place of healthy, functional embodiment
Connect to your felt sense and start to understand the language of your body
Learn somatic tools to have greater means of regulating your inner and outer experience
Learn from a joy-led teacher in a supportive community of joy seekers