Pleasure, according to Stella Resnick, is the visceral, body-felt experience of well-being. Despite the fact that this energy which comes from feeling good prolongs our lives, many of us are still programmed for unhappiness. The challenge is to move beyond our culture of self-denial, negativism, and punishment to relish a zest for life.
This paperback by Stella Resnick presents skills that can be developed in order to deepen and enrich our capacity for enjoyment. She explores eight core pleasures including timeless buoyancy, pain relief, play and humor, and enhanced sensitivity. The one misstep in this up-tempo psychological work is when Resnick includes spirituality as just another example of pleasure rather than its animating and overarching source. Now is the time for all of us to reclaim pleasure as a powerful accelerator of well-being.