053 - Dana Myers: Prioritizing Pleasure
Welcome to season two of Threshold Moments! To open our second season, I'm talking to Dana B. Myers about pleasure, intimacy, and relationships.
Dana is an award-winning product developer, entrepreneur, speaker, author, coach, and founder of Booty Parlor, an online retail space that aims to inspire and empower women from all over the world to feel sexy, self-confident, and satisfied.
Together, we talk about freedom, choice, and what happens when we use our imaginations to let go of the shame and frustration around experiencing pleasure.
We also discuss motherhood's impact on libido, the conscious choice to prioritize pleasure amidst life’s stresses, and how engaging in joyous activities can amplify our magnetism in all facets of life.
Tune in to learn more about:
The connection of freedom to sexuality
Pleasure as a choice
The power of planning ahead for intimacy
Connect with Sarah:
Connect with Dana:
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello, welcome to Threshold Moments.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:41]
This is the beginning of Threshold Moments second year. So if it were a child, we'd say you're 1 year old. Congratulations. And in the first year, I felt like we really dealt with the depths and darkness of many thresholds. And it's not that we're going to avoid this, but in some ways they played into my realms of safety and comfort.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:09]
And I thought it was so appropriate to have Dana Meyers be my first guest of the second season because Dana's line of work has revolved around self pleasure and pleasure and intimacy and relationships. And this is an area that I could speak to my girlfriends about, but saying things publicly would be harder. And I was surprised, pleasantly surprised at how easily this conversation flowed. And so much of that, I do believe, has to do with Dana's comfort in what she represents and what she embodies. That has been my experience of her since the very first time I heard her speak was that so much shame that I often coupled with sexuality or self pleasure just dissolved in her presence.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:09]
And I think you will see this here. And I think what you'll enjoy is really hearing from a woman who has been married for a long time, who has two kids, who Co runs with her husband, a highly successful business that needs her attention and time. And she still prioritizes and schedules in and makes time for pleasure as in some ways a way for self regulation, getting back to a place of magnetism. And I would often think for myself like I could only move towards pleasure if I was already in my parasympathetic, already in my rest and digest. But she teaches us ways and talks a bit about how we can help ourselves with those transitions to bring more of what feels good into our life.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:02]
We talk about freedom, we talk about choice, we talk about what happens when we begin to use our imaginations and just to let go of the shame of using our imaginations. In this very moment, I'm being reminded of a time when I first started somatic exploration and I was sensing into what I was feeling in my body and the images that came. And I said to the person in Holding Space, you know, I don't know that any of this is real. Like, are we just wasting our time? Does this make sense?
Sarah Tacy [00:03:33]
And she said, I think this is the patriarchy. And when I say that for any of the listeners who associate that with putting anyone man down, it's more of a system that might want to hold down and control imagination, our ability to tap into other realms so that we might become a bit more dogmatic and rule following. And as we listen to Dana, we hear freedom and we hear thresholds and we hear places where there was no shame. And then also when shame approaches and comes up, what does she do to be with it, process it and dispel it? We talk about magic.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:14]
We talk about motherhood, partnership, business, and sourcing our self worth from the inside. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Welcome to Threshold moments. Today we have with us Dana B Myers. She's an award-winning product developer, entrepreneur, and founder of Booty Parlor, an online retail space that aims to inspire and empower women from all over the world to feel sexy, self confident and satisfied.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:57]
Dana is a speaker and a love and relationships coach. She has LED over 400 sexual empowerment workshops, inspiring thousands of women and mothers to boost their sensual self-confidence and create more pleasure in their daily lives. Her tips and guidance can be found in her two books, Mojo Makeover and Mommy Mojo Makeover welcome.
Dana Myers [00:05:20]
Thank you, Sarah, it's great to see you. It's great to be with you again. Thank you for that intro.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:25]
Yeah, you're welcome. I thought that I would have my listeners first hear a thing or two about how you came into my stratosphere, my awareness. So our mutual friend Kate Northrop used to have a membership program called Origin. I am not generally one who does online programs or tunes in, no matter how amazing the content is. And for some reason, the day that you came into origin to speak, I believe it was on pleasure.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:03]
I tuned in and I was in the car with my husband and I think both he and I were like, who is this woman? And what stood out to me was that I had just heard a woman talk about self pleasuring and different ways and modalities and tools and times and in a way that had zero shame, in a way that had deep embodiment, in a way that I could hear it in your voice. And so then I asked you if you would come and present to a group that I was hosting. We met one Sunday every month for 10 months. And I think at the end of the ten months, if anyone had to choose a favorite part, I am pretty sure it'd be like your segment where you came in because the feedback for that day was just like more Dana.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:57]
And I was so also like shocked and surprised at some of the questions that women were asking you that day, how comfortable they felt with you. And again, just your unabashed nature when you open up to say like, yeah, to prepare to come and meet you guys. I started my day with self pleasure.
Dana Myers [00:07:17]
Of course and.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:20]
And, you know, this is a group of women in Maine who most likely didn't have this as a normalized thing in their households. And so just to hear someone say that with such just like, of course, this is what I did, I think was so eye opening and intriguing. And it's like, is that possible? What helped shape you into a woman who can be so embodied with pleasure? And I don't want to assume that there was never any shame at any point on the timeline.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:53]
So I won't make that assumption. If there was, I welcome that part of the story. And then what you may have done to be with that?
Dana Myers [00:08:03]
Love that there is no short answer, but really the story begins with my mother Barbara, who I'm going to see tonight for dinner. And she was always and still is a very sexually empowered woman and also a woman who lifts other women up. And so there's two very important aspects of how she raised me to both be sexually empowered and to own my pleasure as opposed to giving their way to other people without knowing what it was for me first. And then also sharing the message of empowerment. I mean, she's a makeup artist.
Dana Myers [00:08:47]
I grew up following her to the beauty shop where she had a little studio. And women would sit in her chair and they'd immediately start cutting themselves down and saying, I hate my nose or I hate this or I hate that. And I would watch her do. It was like watching a wizard, you know, I'd watch her paint their faces while digging into their lives and talking with them and giving them a safe space to air things out. And then she had this great way of making people feel good both by makeup and counsel.
Dana Myers [00:09:19]
Little girlfriend to girlfriend chat. And then they would look up in the mirror and they would all be transformed from the inside out. They would all see their beauty revealed and they would all stand up and just feel better about themselves and feel better about the relationship problems that they've sort of dumped on her. She always just had this way of like of spinning women into a more positive mindset and a more empowered mindset about how they looked, how they felt, what was happening in their lives. And so that was super empowering to me.
Dana Myers [00:09:50]
And at the same time, I was a very naturally curious girl. I got my period when I was 10. My hormones were exploding. I can't explain it in another way than to say I just had like a curiosity and a passion to learn more about myself through sexual exploration and my parents like we're on to it. But instead of shaming me, instead of trying to control me, they knew had they done that, I would have rebelled and gotten into more dangerous situation.
Dana Myers [00:10:30]
Instead, they acknowledged me. They encouraged me. My dad even said to me once we're hanging out in my room listening to music and he was like, I honor you as a sexual being. And I was like, oh, dad. And then, you know, talk to me about safety and values and, and my mom would say things to me like, you know, you know, touching yourself is just as pleasurable as having sex with someone else.
Dana Myers [00:10:57]
And I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, I know. And then I would sort of roll my eyes and run out of the room. But I'm obviously always very grateful for that acknowledgement and the permission to give myself the permission that was already happening. And so I did. I, I learned more about myself through learning about my pleasure and through talking with my friends about pleasure, like, hey, have you guys experienced this?
Dana Myers [00:11:25]
I think I had an orgasm. Do you know what this is? And as a young girl, you don't know what you don't know. So there were situations that I put myself in that were way above my head, way out of my control. And, you know, not all the outcomes were great.
Dana Myers [00:11:49]
And my mom noticed, you know, when that happened as well and noticed when I didn't want to tell her about those experiences. And it was at that moment where she did find me a therapist who this is a really pivotal moment in like the shame story that you brought up where she found me a therapist where I was. I felt safe enough to share some of these trickier situations that I was in. And she helped me go around or go through feelings of shame and not get stuck there because I think so many women do get stuck there because we don't have anyone saying, hey, this is how we learn about ourselves, even to the bad experiences, even to the experiences that we would have never chosen, but chose us. And so she really helped me to see that every experience that I had was a lesson to learning more about myself as a sexual being as opposed to feeling like something bad had happened or I made the wrong choice.
Dana Myers [00:12:57]
And I'll never make that choice again. So let me shut myself down. And that was super empowering. And so for all the other, like, you know, mistakes I've made throughout my life, sexual or not, I was able to see it as a life experience and not as a bad choice or a bad mistake. So I really even in, you know, the last two years in my midlife crisis, I made some really big F ups and, you know, sort of felt that hot rush of shame, wanting to come in and settle and really calling upon my past and going, OK, no, let's not let that shame take hold.
Dana Myers [00:13:38]
Like you're human. What can we learn? How can we be reborn through that? So sex and beauty and pleasure were just always my passions. And I was really lucky to have different guides, be it this therapist, be it other older women that I met that would take me under their wing.
Dana Myers [00:13:56]
It's so interesting. So many of them were hairdressers and artists and, and it's interesting because this just kind of came up like the artist history of these women who were also sexually empowered also affirmed my artistry and my love of pleasure. So lots of different guides throughout my life and always I think just I just don't have this attitude like I can pleasure my way through anything. I can pleasure my way through a bad breakup. I can pleasure my way through 911 when my life was falling apart and I had no job and I was trying to figure out how to survive in New York City.
Dana Myers [00:14:30]
I've pleasured myself through 18,000 business failures. For me, I think it's the South and my marriage. We always return to pleasure. We've been together for 21 years almost, you know, 19 years married. And that's another big example that my parents showed me.
Dana Myers [00:14:47]
Like my parents used to fight like cats and dogs, but they always returned to passion. We knew when their door was locked that they were doing their thing and we were not to interact. And that was a great example for me, really great example to see. And my mom would like to talk about it like we're going to fool around. And I hated that phrase.
Dana Myers [00:15:08]
I hated it so much because she still says it, because they're 78 and they're still, they still make so much time for passion and love. I was like, OK, cool. That's a very important part of a relationship because even though they're fighting and even though they're working through some really hard stuff, they're still together, They're still making time for love. So that was a really good example for me, both of them.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:30]
There are so many parts of the story that and wanting to highlight maybe even instead of asking a question off of it, it's like Eliza Reynolds works with teenage girls or teenagers who are socialized as females and just say, no matter how amazing you are as parents, it's so important that they have quote, UN quote, Big Sisters, not necessarily biologically, but someone where they can go to and say, like, I'm going through this thing. And that person say like, yeah, just three years ago, right? Not like, oh, 20 years ago. I know what you're talking about. So what I'm hearing is that you had this safety and stability at home and you had so many various layers and that your mom was wise enough to say, here's a layer of support that's 1° separated away from me, the therapist in this case who could guide you and I assume her wisdom. So something Alkaliza will say, it's like you're still the coach. So your mom is still picking. Here is a therapist. Shame is not going to be a part of this story.
Dana Myers [00:16:39]
And I love how you just frame that because like, that's such an egoless passion to take. So I don't have to be the one to help my child. Like, let me see if I can find someone else. And this was in like 1989, you know, something like that. So she was on to it, you know, she I love that. Very like ego less action. I love that.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:02]
The other thing I hear in Your Mother is, and I don't want to like skip ahead to where I imagine the podcast ending, but is just this inherent witchery. Like the spells that she might cast.
Dana Myers [00:17:22]
Oh my God, yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:22]
Simply by being exactly who she is and was to you. You said sexually empowered. And I think I hear the ways that she was sexually empowered was to claim like we're going in the bedroom for an hour or perhaps even by the way she might dress herself up or the way she might move through a room. And then to bring that forward. I think not to go too much into like the politics or patriarchy, but there's so much power in a woman's sensuality when she owns it.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:55]
So her ability to own that and then also bring other women into their bodies and into their beauty and have them feel it the way you described it was as if they embodied it. And so to the listeners, like, let's hang out with more people like that.
Dana Myers [00:18:11]
Yes, totally. And she so interesting to think of her kind of witchery and you know, all the different types of witches, the green witch, the eclectic witch. And she I think she is a glamour witch, you know, beauty, beauty was her jam and that sort of glamorous central energy that she had that was uniquely hers. And I watched her cat spell over policemen when they would stop her first beating. And I love framing that as a spell instead of what the patriarchy would have us believe, which is you're using your feminine Wiles to.
Dana Myers [00:18:51]
But I think she did cast spells within the patriarchal system to sort of have life move in her in her favor. Yeah. And she never like, shamed me for my magic as well, which, you know, was also a big part of my childhood as well and my teenage years as well as my like, sexual exploration.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:12]
What did your magic look like back then? I received.
Dana Myers [00:19:15]
A magic wand that I still have to this day from my friend, my best friend's mother, Roz. Thanks. Roz. And I would make altars and I would sort of stand over the altar, use my wands to set intentions. I didn't know they were called intentions back then.
Dana Myers [00:19:33]
I would talk to the spirits in my house. We moved into a very, very old house when I was 10 and that is when I first encountered spirits and they used to scare the crap out of me. But something inside of me said to turn to them and face them and talk to them. And just sort of like that they were scaring me only because they were afraid of me. This is all an intuitive hit.
Dana Myers [00:20:01]
But that if they felt that I was OK with them, that I set boundaries with them, that they would respect me and that they wouldn't hurt me, so I would, I would talk to the spirit and sort of set my boundaries. So between like making wishes or intentions over my altars and tapping into the spirit world, that's really where my witchery began.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:21]
I think you've mostly said that this is all intuitive. Any of that guy did like the altar making the I can understand how talking to the spirits might just be like, OK, this doesn't feel good. What do I need to do in this relationship? I had a similar experience myself and there's a point where like I've been running. We grew up in a house. I grew up in a house that the original portion of it is from the 1700s and none of us talked about this till later on where we're like, oh, you run up the back stairs too? It always would be like someone's chasing you up. So everyone, including our babysitters, when we talked about it later, I'm like, oh, and right before a really big pivotal event in my life, my feet just went up in the air and I fell down the entire flight. Like, I landed almost at the bottom of the stairs because the stairs were so steep back then, and it felt otherworldly. I'd never in my life tripped down these stairs.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:18]
And I was sitting there just in shock, like, am I dead? Am I alive? I lived. And then just realizing how long I've been afraid of this part of my house, which is right near where my room was, and that I could actually go and try to sense in like, what is this presence that everybody is running from and senses that nobody's talking about. And could I come into conversation with her and could we come to some peaceful resolution?
Sarah Tacy [00:21:50]
And I think that many people might feel silly to admit to any of this. Or people might not believe, say they don't believe in God. And then they get in a really tricky situation and find themselves praying. And I do think it's interesting how life brings a certain situation that will bring us to, hey, whether this is a real or not, I'm going to I'm going to come into relationship with it and see what happens. So what did you find happened when you started to? This is totally not the direction I was going to take with this podcast and.
Dana Myers [00:22:25]
I just want to go what did you?
Sarah Tacy [00:22:28]
Find happen when you started to come into relationship where you chose to see kind of like what if what happens?
Dana Myers [00:22:36]
Yeah, well, in the spirit that lived in my bathroom and would follow me to my room, I did start like saying, OK, these are the boundaries. You can't come past this point. And they, stopped and they stopped coming so close, which I really appreciated because they were quite like imposing energetically. But then one of them one was ****** and must have like zoomed into this Pee Wee Herman doll that I had. I don't know if you remember the Pee Wee Herman doll with the string because I'm aging myself, but I love that doll so much.
Dana Myers [00:23:14]
And I was very like trying to be very firm in my conversation with the spirit. And I must have entered the Pee Wee Herman doll and it chucked the doll across the room at me. And that really freaked me out. And then I probably just started making a deal with God or something. I need to call.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:34]
Oh my God.
Dana Myers [00:23:35]
And then everything did quiet down for many years and then emerged again when I was about 19 and I started coming into contact with other realms. The fairy realm was a big realm for me and there have been phases where I've been very in tune with the past lives that I've had. And I think that the more that I opened myself up, the more that was presented to me and through every like supernatural or spiritual phase. And I never called it witchcraft. I was always terrified of the word which so I just always thought I was spiritual.
Dana Myers [00:24:11]
I didn't really claim the word witch until a few years ago. But I think that if you open yourself up to it with the desire to, again, learn something, right, like all the sexual experiences that I had to learn something and not get stuck in shame with the spiritual realm, to learn something and not get stuck in fear, It's all been like incredibly enriching. And I think that it's all tied together. Throughout my midlife crisis, something that came into focus for me was like, what are my values? Like, what's important to me, what are my values?
Dana Myers [00:24:46]
And I place a lot of value on imagination and on living an imaginative life, having like a deeply imaginative inner world. And I think that a lot of my creativity in business, in the bedroom, in my spiritual life, it all comes from giving myself the permission to live a very imaginative life. Like I don't want to live in a world where my imagination is dead. Like it is so important to me. I value it so much and I really want to pass that on to my kids if they want it, you know, only if they want it. You can't pass things on that they don't want. But I've loved the freedom that my imagination has given me.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:34]
I've been listening with a thread of pleasure. So as I hear you talking about the more I open up, the more is offered to me. And you're talking about sensing into past lives and fairies. And this is so important to me right now. The word spirituality verse witchery or witchcraft or witch spirituality has such a purity to it.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:56]
And there's so much about discipline and following the way you know, there is that Yang so beautiful. And witchcraft to me has a little bit of this dark side, even though I know that was like a spin of the patriarchy, like even though I know it's just the heel, but there's the yin. So if we take the dark and say that's the yin, the mother Earth, that there's, there's something in that. And so the thread that I'm following is when you open yourself up to magic, to other realms, to what if to imagination the possibility that that could bring more pleasure on more dimensions of your life. So here I am thinking, you know, this is going to launch in February and we're going to talk all about like self pleasure in the way of ************ that this is talking about pleasure on a multi dimensional way of even to open ourselves up and notice shame when it comes up.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:53]
And then I'm hearing a choice of do I want to stay with a shame spiral or do I want to lean into this other alternative that I'm going to keep learning by living and that whatever choice I make and then going to be able to move with that choice and keep directing and tracking and listening and following inner self and.
Dana Myers [00:27:18]
And the word that comes to mind when you speak that when you relate that back, is freedom. And freedom is for me and I think probably for many others, freedom is so connected to pleasure. You know, after my first child, I felt I lost a lot of my freedom. I felt like my world became a lot smaller. I couldn't just roll out of the house and, like, stroll the streets and, like, talk to strangers and, you know, do whatever I wanted.
Dana Myers [00:27:52]
I now have this very sort of routine life. And someone once said to me, oh, you know, when you have your first and your second, like, your world becomes a little smaller and then it expands again. But for me, that was really the first time in my life where I felt a major disruption to my sex drive and my libido. And obviously, after you have a baby, you got to recover. Your hormones are crazy normal. But it went on sort of longer than that for me. And I thought, why? Like it's such a big part of me, Pleasure's such a big part of me. Like where is it? And then I put the pieces together and I was like, oh, it's because I don't have my freedom.
Dana Myers [00:28:37]
And then I really learned that freedom was such an input to my sexuality and my desire. And I think that it's really important when we're talking about imagination and freedom and pleasure and libido and all these things, it's like, I think so often people like, what's going to turn me on? What can my partner do to turn me on? Do I need to get a toy or watch some ****** footage or read a book or listen to sexy audio? But it often goes has to go one layer higher.
Dana Myers [00:29:06]
What turns me on? Freedom, imagination. I think it's all tied together, the freedom to acknowledge there were ghosts in my house, the freedom to explore my pleasure, the freedom to make pleasure an integral part of my life because that in itself is a freedom that a lot of women don't have because of their upbringing or the stories that they were told. So I think freedom is just a really important thing to keep in mind, especially as we get older and we have more demands on us. You know, I'm, my parents are almost 80, so it's like I've got, you know, young kids and older parents and that can be, you know, I can see where that's going to go.
Dana Myers [00:29:44]
God willing, my parents keep living, but I can see the demands on me as a caretaker towards both sides. So how do I maintain my freedom and that how do I maintain my independence? It's all very interesting. It's all very interesting. I know you talk about thresholds. It's like, that's a threshold in itself, right? Being like part of a sandwich generation I guess.
Sarah Tacy [00:30:04]
Yes, I can imagine for many there's an all or nothing of I can't right now. And actually this is something I would I'd love to tap into with you, which is in those early years of parenthood when so my kids just didn't sleep for the first three years. And so it just, I'm like, she's just coming back to life. And I wonder if pleasure would have seemed condescending to me. Like, oh, that's like almost like, oh, that's nice. That like, that's possible right now. I can barely make it through the day. But I've also heard you talk about how pleasure is how you got through the hard times.
Dana Myers [00:30:42]
A 100%
Sarah Tacy [00:30:42]
Now that you have more demands and you have coupled the possibility of freedom and pleasure, when you have a life, life scenarios which are more demanding of you. Can you tell us any what my teacher would call small doable pieces? Like small steps in which pleasure can possibly be incorporated when it might seem like the most impossible thing?
Dana Myers [00:31:11]
Well, first and foremost, it's a choice. And I can't tell you how many women have looked at me with like, you know, a combination of disgust and anger and then like you want me to what you I'm so tired. I don't want to, I can't, I can't take care of anyone else, let alone like my husband. I can't do this. And all of which I understand.
Dana Myers [00:31:36]
And it's really like such a mindset shift in saying like, and I still, I still have to be like, OK, well, what's the mindset, Dana? Come back to it. It is a mindset shift to pleasure is rocket fuel. Instead of pleasure as a chore, it is a choice to give yourself pleasure or to experience pleasure with a partner. It's an opportunity to, you know, flood your body with good feelings to take a break from real life for a minute. So it's like, I haven't said this in a while. It's, it's a choice. It's not a chore, it's an opportunity, not an obligation. I mentioned to you, we're in the midst of a, of a big deal for our brand and I, you know, it's like alive. It's very hot right now.
Dana Myers [00:32:32]
The contracts and the things and the negotiations and the this and that. And will it happen? Won't it happen? Will it fall apart? Will our dreams come true? What happens if they don't, you know, and, and trying to stay present with it. And, you know, my husband and I, we work together. So all this stress is like very front and center. We're living together, we're working together, we're parenting together. And yesterday was a big day in this journey of this deal.
Dana Myers [00:32:55]
And I was just like, OK, like the housekeepers leaving at one. I got to go get the kids at 3:00. So meet me in the bedroom at 2. And I was just like, I'm going to go show up and we're going to drop into pleasure. Because if we don't, then the stress is going to get the best of us.
Dana Myers [00:33:13]
And if we don't connect as lovers, then maybe we'll start fighting as business partners. And so for me, it's like constantly a choice. You could be lazy. And I'm not calling anybody lazy. I'm specifically talking about me because I know the benefits, the pleasure.
Dana Myers [00:33:29]
So by not choosing it, for me, it's lazy. I'm obviously if I'm sick, if I'm like, I'm never going to force myself. But when I'm like, what else do I have to do right now other than have a wicked orgasm and feed the intimacy of my most important or my second most important relationship? The most important one is the one I have with myself, but he's my second most important relationship. What better do I have to do?
Dana Myers [00:33:57]
Like, what better thing do I have to do? And so it was 45 minutes of amazing pleasure and connection. And, and it's just as a reminder, like this is the thing, this is the thing that our bodies and our hearts can do. And it feels good most of the time. So, you know, choose it.
Dana Myers [00:34:22]
And I get that that's definitely not what people are taught. And I also understand that that's not the structure that many people have, right? Many people don't see their partners until they come home from work and then they're always around the kids. So I understand that there's a lot of obstacles, but I also think there's ways and ways you have to choose it.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:41]
On the point that you just made, I can imagine for myself, I actually like feel like I really know myself in the situation, which is when I'm highly stressed, I often feel the furthest away from being in my parasympathetic and being ready to engage with Steve or myself. And almost every regulation practice is asking you to choose to change your state when it doesn't feel possible. So if you're engaging in a breath practice, if people, if they know the power of working out and they know like, I don't feel like it this morning, but then they've done it enough times that they go out. But I always feel so much better after I do it. And I can hear that you have enough experience with pleasure to have a similar understanding that although I'm not primed for it in this moment, I know that if I commit to this, I'm going to feel so much better on the other side.
Sarah Tacy [00:35:43]
And so for me, that's an invitation and possibly a invitation for my listeners to say, do you want to prioritize this? Would you give this a try? And getting to feel, and I could even say this, like when people are curious about like, what food do I eat? What food? Just like, how do you feel after?
Sarah Tacy [00:36:00]
How do you feel 5 minutes after? How do you feel 1/2 an hour after? And then starting to even like, you can track yourself and go like, yeah, that's something I want more of in my life.
Dana Myers [00:36:10]
I love that, but I think that the parallels, right, OK, let's use like working out. Working out is a little easier to be motivated for because there's also this like pre programmed notion that we as women have like, well, it'll make my body look better. So it's like it's an it's like an extra nudge of like as we're programmed to like want external validation, like, Oh, OK, well, yes, I'll work out. Yes, I know I'm going to feel better, but I also might look better. And that doesn't totally exist in like moving towards sex.
Dana Myers [00:36:43]
Yes, you'll feel closer to your partner, but that's like a tough motivator, right? When you're like irritated that they've left their socks on the floor, you're like, how am I going to, how am I going to get it up for him? But the priming, the priming of it I think is a really important thing because it's not just that making it a priority and being like, I'm going to get in there. It is the prioritizing of the transition to get there as well. So I always talk about sex like an event, like I want an invitation.
Dana Myers [00:37:13]
I want to know what I'm wearing. I want to know what cocktails are going to be served. Is there a theme who's going to be at the party? And then I'm like excited to go to that party. And I really look at sex the same way, which is why I was like, OK, I look through my day. I was like, 2:00 is great. But like, what do I want? How am I going to show up at to feeling ready because I can't go from zero to 60? I don't want to force myself. I don't want to feel inauthentic.
Dana Myers [00:37:43]
So for me, I start thinking, OK, what inputs do I need to be physically, emotionally ready to show up at 2? Yesterday I was like, I felt so stressed out about this deal. And I thought, OK, I could dance, I could move. But you know what? I just like, I just want to watch some ****.
Dana Myers [00:38:07] I was like, you know what? I just need to, like, redirect my attention and watch some **** which I don't often go to these days. I've had phases in my life where I love, like, really beautiful **** and phases where I'm like, yeah, I'm not interested. But yesterday I was like, that's going to be the thing. And so I knew, like, I knew what to ask for.
Dana Myers [00:38:27]
I knew Charlie had just gotten me this Pretty Little pair of, like, frilly panties. I was like, yeah, let me put those on. Let me see how it makes me feel. So I put them on and I looked at myself in the mirror and I sort of admired myself. The actual ***** was like a cut that I've never worn before.
Dana Myers [00:38:44]
Like it came up to like my chin. It was so like, and I was like, it was ridiculous. And I was like, I could easily criticize myself and be like, Nah, that's not going to be for me today. I don't like how that looks. But I was like, ***** you can wear anything.
Dana Myers [00:39:02]
I was just like, I'm just going to choose to admire myself in this very silly high cut frilly *****. And then I'm going to watch some **** and that moves in me. And it was amazing. But it was like, there's thought that goes into it. There has to be thought because we're thinking about so many freaking things all day.
Dana Myers [00:39:23]
I mean, my lists have lists. I know your lists have lists. I know everyone's lists have lists have lists. I mean, it's, it's, it's outrageous the things we have to remember. So to kind of clear our mind and get into a more, you know, embodied state where we can relax and explore pleasure in whatever flavor it's going to look like in that day with ourselves or with someone else.
Dana Myers [00:39:49]
You kind of have to like put thought into how you're going to get there and then put a little action. So you might have 5 minutes to transition. Dance, yoga, erotica, corn massage, whatever it is. You might have longer to transition. You know, sometimes when I know like I've put sex in the calendar, I start thinking about it in the morning. OK, what, what flavor? What am I interested in? What's piquing my interest? You know, what do I need? What do I want? So by the time it's time, I'm actually ready to be present and participate.
Sarah Tacy [00:40:23]
Thank you for highlighting transition. I think that is huge for many women, especially if so obviously I'm like talking in heterosexual relationships here because it's what I'm most used to myself. But I, in my experience, have met and heard from other women of stories where their partner because of seeing it in **** that would think that like, oh, we just, we just go and we just get started. So to highlight the importance of transition, I think it's also super empowering for a woman, say. Oh, and that gets to be part of it as well.
Dana Myers [00:41:01]
Letting your partner know like I can't go from zero to 60 after I've been making lunches and working and carpooling and this and meal planning and banking and the da da da, da. Help me get in the headspace, help me transition. Ask me what you can take off my load to free space so that I can start to practice some sensuality hours before we're going to meet up. I mean, it's very hard when you're doing the dishes and you know, your partner comes up and like snuggles you and like gives you the like, you know, the like soft ***** you know, like, and it's like, and it's like expects you to like be like, yes, you know, you're like, get your little ***** away from me. I'm doing the ******* dishes.
Dana Myers [00:41:48]
I'm like 30 minutes away from bedtime and being able to watch my show and now you want something else from me? I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about my plans were different. So there's always why I recommend, you know, planning sex so that you have the time and space to transition and show up. Look, my kids are now 10 and 13.
Dana Myers [00:42:12]
Spontaneous sex for me is returning, right? Because I have more freedom. But when you're really in the throes of it and you don't have that freedom and everything is so planned, it's like, just plan it so that you can wrap your brain around it and show up with curiosity instead of, you know, being interrupted, then have dread and then push off your partner. And then they feel rejected. And then there's resentment. And then it's like, oh crap, we're in that rejection resentment site.
Sarah Tacy [00:42:41]
Everything you said sounds so familiar. So I'm just like, oh, she's.
Dana Myers [00:42:45]
Naming it. We've all been there. We've been there.
Sarah Tacy [00:42:49]
Another point that I want to highlight before asking a little bit about this last threshold, which you can be as general or specific as you'd like. But I'm thinking about your mother and the policeman. And I'm thinking about what you said about working out having the side effect of possibly like a more tone body, but I'm thinking about pleasure and the magnetism that someone becomes when they are more pleasure filled. And so my experience of you, when I have seen you in person online, when I've heard you is one like this, like sensual beauty oozes from you in this vibrancy. And so I can imagine when you're going into a business deal, when you are so in your body.
Sarah Tacy [00:43:39]
And I imagine that it can create more confidence and a greater ability to articulate what you want and less of a fight or flight response and more of like an embodied. This is my vision. I heard you mention earlier, like, how do we create a win, win, win before we started recording that a person asking for how do we create a win, win or a win win, win is a person who is in balance in their nervous system, who knows the possibility of pleasure. And I would even think in sexual relationships that you're also looking for win, win. And there is a very feminine energy about that. So I think what I'm trying to say is there is a benefit beyond the immediate pleasure that we might get in the pleasure. And that might be our magnetism. It may even be our ability to close a deal.
Dana Myers [00:44:33]
I love that you're picking up on this. It brings to mind a story of when we first launched the brand 20 years ago this June. And I was at a women's shopping event. We had a table, and I was like, you know, showing off our toys and, you know, helping women, encouraging women to get a toy and go home and rock their own worlds. And there was a writer there from LA magazine who was doing a piece on our lunch.
Dana Myers [00:45:01]
The opening passage of her piece was her describing watching me and saying I want some of what she has. And I was so flattered. I was so flattered when she wrote that because it wasn't about my hair or being pretty or anything like that. It was about my energy. And I hadn't actually really thought about this in a long time until you mentioned it.
Dana Myers [00:45:26]
But yes, pleasure does make you more magnetic and I don't see that as some like feminine trick to play on people. I just think that it's a really organic way to raise your vibe and draw the right people to you and look you might draw. I think that a lot of women are afraid that if they embody pleasure or sensuality, that they'll draw the wrong people to them. And that, I think, is the valid fear. I think is women, we are afraid of drawing too much attention to ourselves because we could be hurt, right?
Dana Myers [00:46:01]
That's like in our primal nervous system. We're afraid of being hurt. But look, with all things, it's just practice and regulating it and balancing it out and knowing, knowing how to protect yourself as well. But yeah, I fully endorsed pleasure for raising your magnetism, for operating in the world in a way where you receive more of what you want.
Sarah Tacy [00:46:27]
I'm all for it. I'm really curious what you have done or if you've experienced as you raise your vibration, as you become more visible, do you find that you also draw? Like some people who say I could never have that or that's nice for you, or they feel attacked because it goes against the very thing that perhaps is holding them back that they so deeply believe in. I'm wondering, you know, in the world of spells or protections or even just logistics, how you manage what you draw towards you and how you boundary what will not come into your space.
Dana Myers [00:47:08]
I love that question. I've always used the Glenda, the Good Witch kind of bubble protection mode, where I always just envision myself like surrounded by an iridescent bubble of protection where only the things I want can come closer to me and that the energies that I don't want can't penetrate it. I'm also just really direct with people now. I think that throughout the last six years of like the journey through my midlife crisis, the journey into living in a more radically honest way, is that like when I'm not vibing with someone, I can either just like I understand it and I don't try to fake it. I don't try to force any relationships, so I either just use my energy to kind of block or I just tell people like, this isn't this isn't working.
Dana Myers [00:48:05]
I don't want to have this conversation or I don't want to be on the tech thread with you. I'm not interested. I don't align with you. And I think that's really empowering. I think so many women have always been like my tolerance for ******** just decreases every year as I ate and I really like it. It's true and I like it a lot. I do.
Sarah Tacy [00:48:26]
Can you say before we close out, is there anything you want to say? You've mentioned midlife crisis a few times and.
Dana Myers [00:48:35]
Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:48:36]
In some ways it's like a very general term and in some ways it's very bold term like, right?
Dana Myers [00:48:44]
And yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:48:46]
I always thought that I could avoid a midlife crisis by living my truth every day. I wrote like a whole piece on it when I was 24. Like, I'm going to have a midlife crisis every day of my life so that when I'm middle age, I don't like wake up because I thought it meant that like a person who had a midlife crisis was asleep and then woke up midway through. But I'm finding that's not true at all. I think that in some ways it's inevitable and super important for us to have this yet another transition that feels really important.
Sarah Tacy [00:49:17]
And I'm wondering if you could say anything about what it's been like for you and how it's shifted you or what has awakened in you. I hear that you're more honest, radical honesty, but I wouldn't wonder if you could say anything else about it.
Dana Myers [00:49:31]
Listen, growing up, I thought a midlife crisis was about not wanting to age, not wanting to look old. I think like the traditional beauty industry, I kind of, you know, imparted that to me. Oh, that's why you have a midlife crisis, because you feel like you're getting old or this or that. And that was not the case at all. I think for me, what really started it is that I just started to feel that the old ways of doing things, of operating, we're no longer working and a forcing right.
Dana Myers [00:50:10]
It was like the old way of like being programmed to achieve, being programmed to accomplish like yourself, worth being based on your accomplishments and the world and the accolades and all of that. Like I started to feel like all that's ******** and external validation means nothing. You know, I really started to think like, Oh my God, I've been like working so hard and driving for my professional success and was that really bringing me the kind of joy and inner peace and personal growth that I wanted. And so I that's kind of the beginning of it is like really having to look at the external validation piece. Another part of it was not so much worrying about my physical beauty, but this feeling of like, is this my peak moment of flowering as a woman?
Dana Myers [00:51:15]
And like what happened after this and what does it mean to me? I know I'm speaking vaguely here. Another part of it was like facing the repetition of patterns in the female lineage of my family and repeating patterns that weren't so good and I didn't like. And then there, you know, were huge explosions. And I had to come face to face with real choices that I made and grow through that.
Dana Myers [00:51:43]
I look back on it now, you know, the last years were some of the worst years of my life and also the best because I was really down in the underworld, you know, kicking the mud around and really looking at who I was and who I want to be and what's next and what cycle is next and what's evolving. And another thing that came up is, you know, we're taught in the witching world and the spiritual world and the female empowerment world, the maiden mother, Crone cycle, right? But I really came to understand like there's something between mother and Crone. What is that? And so for me, it's queen and who am I in that?
Dana Myers [00:52:25]
And what does that look like? And for me, what it looks like is on earthing a new cycle. And so much of my identity has been tied up in this brand and in pleasure. And so it's I'm never going to let go of pleasure. I'm never going to that's never going to not be a part of who I am or what I talk about.
Dana Myers [00:52:43]
But I think the biggest part of this midlife crisis, rebirth, I did call her midlife rebirth, but also like, let's call it what it is. Like, this is a ******* crisis. Oh my God. It's just, I'm so much happier having gone through it. And I wouldn't trade it for anything actually, because it's made me so much more honest with myself and others.
Dana Myers [00:53:10]
It has once again helped me look at shame and the emotions like shame and guilt that I don't want, that I have no place in my life. And so having to come in the right relationship with those and let them pass, let them, you know, move through me. I feel like I have a like a new lease on life having gone through the mud so I say when it's coming like go for it, set the **** on fire and let it burn and then rebuild like a phoenix out of the ashes. I know it sounds dramatic but that's legit been my experience in the last 6.
Sarah Tacy [00:53:47]
Years. So I'll just say that the two people that I interviewed right before you, Jennifer Fox, she's now in her early 50s. And she was talking about Maiden Mother Crone. And she was just inviting that like now that she is in her Crone and she was talking about like being at her peak at 43 and then just **** hit the fan and the anger and the burning. And she's like, but now even though I'm at the beginning of Crone, I'm experiencing maiden.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:16]
These cycles keep repeating within each cycle. So she and her husband, she's known her husband since 2nd grade. She and her husband are having a newlywed phase, but they have been through these like birth death cycle so many times. And then Jennifer Rasio B was just on as well. And the message at the end of each podcast tends to be these years were really ******* hard. But on the other side, I am happier and more myself and have more frequent and more capacity and more clarity and care less about what other people think than I ever have before.
Dana Myers [00:54:56]
A 100% you just wrap that up in a very succinct way. Happier than before, more me than before, more hopeful than before and more connected to my husband than before as well. And I always thought like I'm living the most authentic life. I'm, you know, but like it was like the micro dishonesties we tell ourselves. So the little games we play, the choosing our words too carefully as to not create a conflict, you know, all these little sort of micro ways of doing things from our conditioning or our patterning or patriarchal dynamics. Like really having to look at all of that and unearth it and choose a new way. So interesting and so hard. It was so awful. It was so awful, but now it's so good.
Sarah Tacy [00:55:48]
Yeah, I'm thinking of the book. It's called The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck, and you can really see how things often burn to the ground before they get better, which I think is why we do the micro truths or the micro dishonesty is because of the fear of the pain. But life is going to bring us where we need to go. So yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much.
Sarah Tacy [00:56:12]
I guess I'll say to my listeners like, please check out Dana's Instagram account. It'll be in the notes because I think what you're going to see is ritual and magic and wake surfing, which I didn't know you did not as I'm like preparing a little bit for this interview. I'm like, oh, she does this a lot and like, oh, and this is a new thing. And if any of you watch her wake surf, it's like it's so sensual and such a dance. And if you ever saw me wake surf, I'm so serious and like trying to perform and trying to get it right.
Sarah Tacy [00:56:43]
So I was so moved by the way you move. So I would say check out her social. I'd also say I listened Kate Northrop had her on her podcast and you touched upon so many things that we didn't touch upon here. So I would say listen to that as well if you want to hear anything about raising children with many of these ideas. And so there are other elements in that podcast. So listen there as well. And do you have anything else that you want to highlight?
Dana Myers [00:57:11]
I mean, I would just say, you know, go masturbate. I mean, that's like, you know, everybody just go spend a little time with yourself. And I could give you a shameless plug to check out our new ***** Bomb glamour pose at Foodie Parlor. But really just take time to connect with yourself. And our sensuality is something that's always with us until the day that we die. So don't waste it, you know, get in there and explore it and be in relationship with it. It's a gift.
Sarah Tacy [00:57:43]
Thank you. So I'm going to highlight the ***** bomb as a small doable way, talking about small doable pieces, like a small doable way to come into relationship with yourself on a daily basis. And I feel like by doing a ritual with that daily, that different awareness’s are going to arise in US, things that we're not going to want to keep, things that we're going to want to amplify. And so I can imagine that using that bomb could be a way like a pathway in that could be like really doable and accessible and absolutely like blow our worlds open in the best possible way.
Dana Myers [00:58:22]
Yes, 100%. Do you have some? I need to send you some I don't. But now that I'm talking about it, Oh my God, text me, text me your address. So text me your address please so I can get you to.
Sarah Tacy [00:58:33]
And I'm going to send you something as well. I have an anointing oil that I love and I think that you'll like.
Dana Myers [00:58:38]
Beautiful, thank you for having me. This was awesome. This is actually what I needed today to. I feel much more regulated now, so thank you.
Sarah Tacy [00:58:47]
Thank you so much.
Sarah Tacy [00:59:09]
Thank you for tuning in, it's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, It's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom, subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.