There is no need to ask for luxuries and costly pleasures. Simple pleasures will also do. They have the same or a higher positive impact on health and happiness. Learning how to create joyful experiences will bring great health benefits.

Movement

For those leading a sedentary lifestyle, it is never too soon and never too late to begin to move, to become more active. Walking, hiking, running, biking, swimming, and many other activities have great physical and emotional benefits. These activities produce even greater benefits when they are performed with pleasure, and not in a mechanical way out of a sense of duty. Exercising in a gym is usually good for you but climbing to the top of a hill near home and enjoying the sunrise or sunset is better for you emotionally and physically. 
Movement-whether through exercise at home or in the gym or hiking in the woods-increases vitality, enhances endurance, strengthens the heart, and produces many other beneficial results. In addition, movement reduces stress, helps fight allergy symptoms, decreases appetite, helps counteract anxiety and depression, controls blood sugar and helps the body in its struggle against many other common ailments and conditions. 
Movement helps to increase a person’s sense of optimism and hopefulness, self-confidence and self-image. In addition, movement increases the sexual drive and the enjoyment of sex. Many factors play a role here, such as the increased endorphin levels. All healthy movement increases vitality and the joy of living. 

Humor

The healing power of humor has been recognized around the world. Humor has a powerful impact on pain. Laughter has been demonstrated to relieve pain almost immediately and the pain relief may continue for hours after the laughter has subsided. This has been of great benefit to people who suffer from chronic pain from a wide range of causes. Research shows that laughter also strengthens the immune function, helps relieve tension, fights stress, minimizes panic attacks, defuses anger, counteracts depression and anxiety, and has an overall positive effect on wellness and health. 
There are many ways in which humor and laughter increase the pleasure of being alive and how to use laughter to experience a more joyful life. Humor helps bring perspective to a person’s life and perspective brings a sense of balance that is essential to good physical and emotional health. 

Touch

It has a powerful effect on humans, from infancy onward. Touch is critical to the newborn, infants and children. Babies who are held regularly-even if only by a neutral party-grow faster and are healthier than those who are not touched frequently. There is startling evidence that even people who are in a coma respond positively to being touched.
Deep emotions are expressed silently through touching. There is great pleasure in certain forms of touching and great solace in others. Touching also helps relieve physical pain and emotional distress. From ancient religious and medical traditions the world over, we have learned of the healing power of touch.
Massage is another form of touch that promotes healing and wellness. It relieves from stress, headaches, chronic pain, emotional worries and other problems of modern living. Healing touch restores the flow of energy in the body and brings on soothing pleasurable sensations. 
Touch improves the circulation and lymphatic function; helps fight fatigue; and enhances the body’s immune system. A cascade of the body’s pleasure chemicals is stimulated by simply touching. In addition to the healing and health-promoting aspects of touch, the pure sensuality of loving touch between partners is essential to a fulfilling life. Loving touch deepens intimacy and heightens sexual gratification profoundly. 

Love

The message we get across cultures reflects the power and primacy of love. Love is essential to happiness and health. Studies show consistently that loving people are healthier overall, experience less illness in life and live longer. They have stronger immune systems and experience less heart disease, stress, chronic pain, and other conditions.

Loving people also experience a more intense sexual life. This is due in part to their better state of health but also because loving people are better able to give and receive pleasure. In general, they are more in touch with their emotions and more aware of the emotions of their partners. Loving people are frequently more physically active and physical activity has been shown to improve one’s sex life greatly.
Sex is a crucial part of loving and pleasure in life. But a healthy sex life has additional benefits beyond the pleasure of the moment. A good sex life improves self-confidence, reduces stress, brings pain relief to those with chronic pain, fights insomnia and promotes an optimistic, hopeful sense of well-being. Studies demonstrate the healing powers of the pleasures and passions of love, from first falling in love, through growing physical delight, to a deepening intimacy between partners. There is evidence that love increases creativity, sharpens the intellect, enhances intuition and makes life worth living. In a life guided by pleasure, the healing force we call love is the foundation.

Senses

Becoming attuned to one’s senses-and ordering and shaping one’s life to please those senses-is integral to savoring the pleasures of being alive. Colors, textures, sounds, fragrances and flavors all combine to create the world we inhabit. And we can use them to shape a wonderfully aesthetic world that enhances the pleasures of life. 
An aesthetic life is not something rarefied or available only to the wealthy or the privileged. It is there for all who have the imagination. A life without aesthetics is truly an anesthetized life, one in which pleasure is muted by a powerful anesthesia. Imagination is a powerful tool that can be used to create opportunities to develop the senses to the fullest. The small pleasures of daily life can add up to great joy. 

It is obvious to all that a meal served with attention to aesthetics and eaten in a pleasing environment is enjoyed more on a subjective level than the same meal served under less appealing circumstances. 
The pleasurable environment surrounding a meal has objective benefits as well as subjective ones. For example, the body absorbs more nutrients when the meal is served in pleasurable surroundings than when the same foods are eaten in a neutral or unpleasant environment.

Anyone can have fun and learn to create “pleasure recipes” that feature a great variety of different colors, aromas, flavors, and textures. The psychology of eating is also a critical element. Foods must be enjoyed to be nutritious. And to be enjoyed, foods must be in harmony with each individual’s personal and culturally acquired tastes. 
A meal offers a simple example of how to practice because all of the senses come into play. Touch is involved in the selection and preparation of the food. Vision is involved in the preparation of the setting and the presentation of the meal. Candles and lowered lights greatly increase the enjoyment and satisfaction of a meal. The sense of smell, the most primitive and powerful of the senses, is essential to a full enjoyment of the meal. Hearing comes into play in the selection of music that can be used to enhance a meal

Abundance, Not Deprivation.

The experience of pleasure usually creates a new way of looking at life, one that can be summed up in the phrase, Abundance, Not Deprivation. Deprivation is an ineffective method of reaching health and happiness. It simply does not work for most people. This is clearly obvious in the failure of the majority of diets. Most diets are presented in the negative: avoid this food, don’t eat that food. In these cases, eating becomes a form of punishment. Most people can eat anything they want and still be healthy. Eating becomes a pleasure and reward in and of itself. 
When guided by pleasure, a positive approach is taken. Rather than focusing on abstinence and deprivation, people emphasize satisfaction and fulfillment. With a “pleasure program,” every activity is an opportunity to experience joy and delight. And pleasure pays off.

So what’s the problem? If pleasure is such a valuable guide to living, why are not more people living that way?