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For many people, pleasure feels complicated. Longed for, perhaps, but also distant. Or conditional. Or reserved for someone else. In this episode of Deeper with Darshana, Darshana Avila sits down with Kai Cheng Thom to explore why pleasure can feel so inaccessible and how embodied liberation begins not with force, but with permission, to create a new narrative.
Rather than approaching pleasure as a destination to reach, this conversation stays close to lived experience. It asks how the body learns to guard itself, how shame takes root, and how healing unfolds when we listen to rather than override the body’s wisdom, gradually opening to the pleasure that is our birthright.
What Pleasure Activism Really Means
Pleasure activism may be misunderstood as indulgent or disconnected from the realities of collective struggle. In this conversation, Kai Cheng Thom offers a grounded reframe. Pleasure activism recognizes that liberation cannot be sustained on endurance alone. Care, joy, satisfaction, and erotic aliveness are not extras. They are part of what makes change survivable and humane.
Pleasure, in this framing, is not about excess. It is about nourishment. About restoring what has been denied or deferred. About recognizing pleasure as a human right rather than a reward for good behavior or productivity.
Why Pleasure Often Feels “Not for Me”
A central theme in the episode is the belief, held by many people across identities, that pleasure belongs to someone else. This belief is shaped by culture, family systems, religion, trauma, and structural power. It is often reinforced through shame, silence, and the pressure to prioritize others over oneself.
Kai speaks to the specific ways this belief is shaped at the intersections of trans identity, Asian identity, sexuality, and colonial history. Darshana reflects on how these narratives do not live only in thought, but in breath, posture, muscle tone, and nervous system responses.
Pleasure is not absent. It is often protected.
The Body’s Protective Responses Are Not the Problem
Rather than framing numbness, freeze, or armoring as failures, both practitioners emphasize honoring the intelligence of the body’s defenses. These responses developed for a reason. They kept something safe when conditions were overwhelming or unsafe.
Embodied liberation does not come from forcing openness or pushing past resistance. It comes from creating conditions where the body feels supported enough to soften. This includes moving slowly, honoring consent moment by moment, and recognizing that safety is relational rather than purely internal.
De-Shaming Desire and the Difficulty of Wanting
Much cultural and feminist work has focused on strengthening boundaries and de-shaming refusal. This conversation names an equally important and often overlooked practice: de-shaming desire itself.
Darshana and Kai explore how many people struggle to name what they want, even after learning to say no. Shame around wanting can limit intimacy, honesty, and pleasure, even in loving relationships. De-shaming the yes becomes a practice of self-trust and relational clarity, allowing desire to exist without obligation or performance.
Embodied Practices That Support Reconnection
The episode offers gentle entry points for listeners who feel curious about pleasure but unsure where to begin. These include starting with comfort rather than intensity, building physical and emotional support for the body, and practicing naming needs and desires without immediately acting on them.
These practices are not about achieving pleasure. They are about cultivating permission, presence, and capacity.
Pleasure as a Collective Practice
The conversation closes with a reminder that embodied liberation is never only personal. When one person becomes freer in their body, it creates more space for others to do the same. Pleasure activism, in this sense, is a collective practice. One that resists a world where joy is rationed and instead asks what becomes possible when pleasure is honored as part of what makes life livable.
This episode invites listeners to reflect on their own relationship to pleasure. Where it feels accessible. Where it feels guarded. And what might shift if pleasure were met with curiosity rather than judgment.
In This Episode
- Pleasure activism: Understanding it as a lived, embodied practice rather than just a concept.
- The internalized barrier: Why many believe pleasure is “not for them.”
- The roots of shame: How race, gender, sexuality, trans identity, and colonial narratives shape erotic shame.
- Protective strategies: Working with freeze and somatic armoring rather than fighting them.
- Honoring the ‘No’: Why respecting the body’s refusal is essential before opening to desire.
- De-shaming the ‘Yes’: Moving beyond just boundaries to strengthening our capacity for desire.
- Comfort as a doorway: How comfort serves as an entry point to pleasure and healing.
- Collective liberation: Why reclaiming pleasure is deeply connected to social change.
About Our Guest
Kai Cheng Thom (MSW, MSc) is a Certified Somatic Sex Educator, Qualified Mediator, author, and performer. She is a noted expert in the fields of trauma healing, professional coaching, somatics, dialogue facilitation, and conflict transformation.
As a theorist and practitioner, she has made significant contributions in the area of trauma-informed, social change-oriented approaches to pursuing individual and collective healing and transformation, particularly in her work on Transformative Justice and conflict resolution in activist communities.
Connect & Resources
- Website: kaichengthom.com
- Instagram: @kaichengthom
- Arise Embodiment: ariseembodiment.org
Connect with Darshana:
Darshana has supported thousands of people across the world to claim their Erotic Wholeness. Whether you begin with a self paced journey taken from the comfort of your own home or work with her directly for the transformational experience of a lifetime, your path to the pleasure, power and purpose you’re truly made for is just a step away!
Learn more:
- DarshanaAvila.com/offerings for courses and details about her private practice
- DarshanaAvila.com/community to enter the Galgasm community hub full of free resources
- YouTube.com/@darshana_avila for tons of inspired lessons, interviews and more
