I am gathering a waitlist for an 8-week Somatic Pleasure Coaching cohort. This is what I need from you: 1. Shoot me a message that you want to be on that waitlist 2. Then, let me know what would excite you enough to jump in and take advantage of this opportunity This will be the founding cohort and you will be founding members. Building in realtime and in public. Love you, James (I'll wait a few days before I open this up to the rest of the world.

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dyke. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give— yes or no, or maybe — should be clear; the darkness around us is deep. —William Stafford Hello my friends, I came across this really amazing poem the other day and I thought I would share it with you. Let me know how it lands on you and how you interpret it. I will weigh in a little bit more once I hear from a few of you. I don't think that I have ever read any of his work. Let me know if you're familiar with it.

(I realized that I hadn't posted this one to the community) Subscribe to the Somatic Pleasure Newsletter if you haven't already (number really help) A fool bolts pleasure, then complains of moral indigestion. — Minna Antrim The other day I ran into one of my nephews. We were standing there talking and he blurts out, “Uncle James, I’m not a fighter… but sometimes I feel this energy and I just want to smash something.” He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t out of control. He was describing a current moving through his body that didn’t yet have a place to land. I recognized the energy immediately. It’s the same current that shows up as cute aggression—that irrational urge to squeeze something you love because the feeling is too much to hold politely. It’s the energy that hits when you’re out in nature and suddenly want to run, scream, leap, cartwheel—move—because stillness feels like a lie. It’s the energy of holding someone and feeling like there’s no possible way to get close enough—like you want to sink into them, pull them into your being, entirely. This energy—EROS—doesn’t have one expression. It changes shape depending on context, relationship, perception, and moment. Sometimes it wants to roar. Sometimes it wants to melt. Sometimes it wants to create. Sometimes it wants stillness so deep it almost aches. The problem isn’t the energy. The problem is that most of us were never taught how to stay with it or what to do with it. So we suppress it. Moralize it. Demonize it. Spiritualize it. We discharge it unconsciously—through conflict, addiction, performance, or numbness. And then we wonder why intimacy feels thin… why leadership feels hollow… why pleasure feels fleeting or dangerous. What happens when, instead of dumping the charge, we learn to behold this energy—when we slow down enough to savor it, the way you’d let a dark chocolate truffle sit on your tongue? We stop needing to get rid of it. We let it move into the body instead of out of control.

If You Can’t Come Back, You Weren’t Initiated Subscribe to Substack Sign-up for the newsletter “Eroticism, may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death.” — Georges Bataille I am reading Georges Bataille’s English translation of Erotism: Death and Sensuality, in which erotic desire is revealed not simply as pleasure or indulgence, but as a willingness to engage life with passion and risk, where the self loosens, taboos give way, and we skim the edge of death. Erotic authority is knowing how close to the edge you can go and having the Somatic intelligence to find your way back. There is a part of you that is not interested in being well-adjusted.It doesn’t want balance.It doesn’t want approval.It wants to feel more—even if that means flirting with the edge of annihilation. That part knows the truth most people spend their lives avoiding: the erotic isn’t polite. It isn’t safe. It doesn’t care about your spiritual vocabulary or your relationship agreements. It presses. It pulls. It asks whether you’re willing to loosen your grip on who you think you are. This is why people keep throwing themselves at peak experiences. Psychedelics. Tantra weekends. Kink and BDSM scenes that promise transformation. Religious devotion dressed up as transcendence. Extreme sports. Relationships that swear they’re about freedom. All of them whisper: Come here. Come closer. Dissolve. And, it works. You disappear just enough to feel alive. Then it’s over. The room empties. The drug wears off. The rope comes off. The altar is dismantled. And you’re back in your body, alone with a nervous system that has no idea what to do with what just happened. So you chase it again. This is where the erotic gets misunderstood. Not as sex, but as escape. Not as intimacy, but as transcendence without consequence. Without preparation. Without return.

My recording platform just sent this to me. Lot's of work was done. 25 episodes recorded. Several in the schedule and many just waiting to be scheduled. 2026 will be an amazing year (again). Let me know if there are any specific people you would like me to try and interview.