Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (8 page)

TRUE SELF-CARE

I’ve already touched on the notion of what we “deserve.” Be forewarned that the guilt and shame of millennia will hit you between the eyes once you open to pleasure. You may start to wonder if you’re selfish or self-centered for wanting to have more joy in your life and indulge your desires. Fear of being selfish is embedded in our language: “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.” “Don’t toot your own horn.” “Don’t get too big for your britches.” “You’ll get a swelled head.” Are you afraid people will think you’re “full of yourself”? One in five people is genuinely narcissistic. These people take up all the oxygen in the room, satisfy their own desires at the expense of others, and blame problems on everyone else. They have an abyss inside that no amount of love or caring from others can fill, and they tend to be surrounded by those who over-give. If you have one of these individuals in your life, please know that it’s neither possible nor even desirable to try to fill that abyss for him or her.

You have to overcome the habit of chronic over-giving in order to bring balance into your life and the lives of those around you. If you’re always worried about others’ feelings, you may be overly empathetic, excessively self-sacrificing, and badly in need of more self-nurturing. As Amanda Owen, author of
The Power of Receiving
(Tarcher, 2010), writes, “Those who have trouble giving attract those who have trouble receiving.” And if you’re concerned that
you
may be turning into a narcissist, that means
you’re not one. Believe me, narcissists do not reflect on how other people perceive them, or on their own failings.

Self-sacrifice is the shadow of self-centeredness. The desire to draw attention to yourself by becoming a martyr is supported by a dominator culture that benefits from women who are constantly giving to others in order to gain social approval. And we all know how difficult it is to be around martyrs who try to make us feel guilty and who get angry if we don’t constantly notice how much they are doing for the benefit of others. When you give too much, you enter a state of imbalance. Then the pleasure gets sucked out of your life and you experience chronic resentment that too often leads to disease. To be an ageless goddess, figure out what makes you feel joy and then let go of the guilt.

Consider a discipline of pleasure to be an investment in your health. A joyful heart and a body that experiences pleasure and nurturing are your most reliable health insurance. The late Peter Calhoun, a former Episcopal priest turned shaman, pointed out that all native cultures have known that healing happens through regular primal experiences of pleasure and ecstasy in the body—not through the intellect. Five minutes spent dancing in your kitchen to a song you love, or petting your dog or cat who offers you unconditional love, can make a difference if you do it often enough.

Any pleasure can be yours if you own it. I like to tour those charity showcase houses, where they have designers redecorate every room of some gorgeous mansion, and appreciate the aesthetics. I used to find it hard to imagine myself being comfortable in such a house. They seemed too grand for me. Even just walking through them made me feel a bit like an intruder. I could never afford to live there—who was I kidding? Now I walk in as if I own the place. I’ll take the card of the cabinetry guy. Why not imagine ways in which I could achieve pleasure, whether it’s redesigning my kitchen or enjoying someone else’s designer bedroom on display? Kids make believe all the time, but as adults, we’ve been taught to feel self-conscious about exercising one of our biggest sources of pleasure—imagination! The pleasure centers in your brain don’t know that you don’t actually own the hot tub at the hotel when you lower yourself into it. They don’t
know that the painting on the wall at an art museum isn’t yours to keep. They only know that in that moment, you’re in heaven enjoying the experience.

In Italy, public art is treasured by people of all social classes. Even those who are struggling financially “own” the art that’s the legacy of their people. The Italians are on to something. Think about all those movies where some pleasure-deprived American or English woman goes to Italy and loses herself in the luxury of aesthetic and sensual pleasure—which then attracts a man she chooses to enjoy or not, depending on her mood.
Eat, Pray, Love; Enchanted April; Under the Tuscan Sun; Summertime; A Room with a View
—all these movies demonstrate the importance of slowing down to take time for pleasure. The Greeks understand this too—check out the movie
Shirley Valentine,
about a British woman in a stultifying marriage who finds pleasure again by vacationing in Greece alone and reconnecting to herself. She makes a brave move in devoting herself to her own pleasure—which also ends up saving her marriage.

We all need to remember the quiet, relaxing joy of being with others, taking in a beautiful view, and sharing good food, laughter, and conversation. If someone in the group is a curmudgeon, mentally cast her as a character in your story of pleasure. Maybe she’s the Maggie Smith character whose dry wit you can enjoy without taking her comments too seriously. Smile at the predictability of that person’s complaints, but don’t take in any depressive energy.

And dance! Goddesses move their bodies. Every indigenous culture has used dance to celebrate life. We heal through dance, movement, sound, and tears. Eve Ensler, author of
The Vagina Monologues,
ushered in Valentine’s Day in 2013 with a global movement called One Billion Rising (
www.onebillionrising.org
)—a call for people around the world to celebrate the resilience and life force of women who have been sexually abused (approximately one billion women) by getting up from their chairs and spending a few minutes in joyous dance. There’s a time for grief, but then we have to dance. Many women love to dance but don’t. Why do we deny ourselves?

I dance in my living room, which is in the exact feng shui center of my home. (Feng shui is the Chinese art of placement to enhance the flow of life force in a space.) For more than 30 years, the space was used only during the holidays, so most of the time, it was essentially empty of life. Then I removed all the furniture so I could use the room, which has a hardwood floor, as a dance or yoga studio. Now I use it regularly. One year, I threw a tango party on the anniversary of 9/11 to celebrate the people who survived and helped each other as well as those who were lost. One of the men who attended told me afterward, his voice cracking, that his brother had died in the September 11, 2001, attacks—which I’d not known about. He said softly, “I really needed this,” and gave me a big hug. What better way to celebrate the memory of those who have died than to join in close embrace, dancing to beautiful music with another human being?

You can do this too. Open your home, your heart, and your front room. Life isn’t meant to be lived with plastic covers on the couch or a veil of grief dampening your spirits.

Commit this to memory:
experiencing pleasure is crucial for vibrant health.
It is not selfish. It’s a gift to yourself and the people around you. Your joy gives them permission to experience joy too. It creates an ever-broadening circle of celebration and joy that spreads out from you in waves, lifting up everyone.

Exercise: Peak Pleasure

LAUGH AND LIGHTEN UP!

Laughter has many proven benefits, including reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure, greater immunity, improved memory and circulation, and better blood oxygenation. Laughter also reduces pain by increasing your beta-endorphins, which are feel-good neurotransmitters.

My motto is that anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of. One evening many years back, when I was studying the harp, I was helping a fellow harpist in our harp ensemble at the Cleveland Institute of Music move her instrument out of a retirement home where our ensemble had played for the residents. As we carried the ungainly harp down a hallway, I overheard an older woman say to another, “It was a good day. Nobody fell.” I burst into laughter and had to put my end of the harp on the ground. I managed to catch my breath long enough to say to my friend, “When my definition of a good day is when nobody falls, it’s probably a good time for you to help me check out.” My friend was horrified by my dark humor, but I really believe that when you lose your sense of humor, you lose your vitality. At that point, you’re just waiting for the end to come.

Deep laughter from the belly floods you with nitric oxide. Buddhism has the laughing Buddha to remind us of the healing, life-affirming nature of laughter. I wish more spiritual traditions would help us lighten up. Just because something is meaningful doesn’t mean it can’t be screamingly funny.

Laugh and have fun. When you open up to receiving pleasure, it comes to you. Don’t be afraid to lighten your To Do list and put “pleasure” at the top of it.

MEN’S ROLE IN WOMEN’S PLEASURE

Many men are having a hard time of it these days. Historically, men have always had a higher suicide rate than women, in no small part because women are far more likely to consult a therapist. In the U.S., the suicide rate of men in midlife is at an all-time high because men are feeling cut off from the life force.

Keep this in mind: Too many little boys have heard “Be a man” or “Don’t be a sissy” over and over again since they were very young. They have to shut down their feelings of sadness or fear at an early age to survive in our culture. The result is that far too many have repressed anger and sadness that can easily turn into violence or depression. Men require support to access their feelings—rather than being told repeatedly to “suck it up.”

Being cut off from their feelings makes it hard for men to connect with ours—which in turn makes it hard for them to support women’s pleasure. A man’s deepest desire is to serve the Goddess—that is, to serve life. That truth is written into the King Arthur legends and the stories of brave warriors who protected their people. Look at the comic books and science fiction movies that serve as our new myths. The man is always trying to serve and protect women, or the feminine.

The problem is that when it comes to serving women in real life, many men go about it ineptly much of the time because they’re not listening to what women actually want and need. If we help them serve our goddess energy, and praise them for what they do for us, including the small things that make life more pleasant, men will want to work even harder for us.

To receive assistance and pleasure from men, you have to start with making requests, not demands, so that their egos don’t get the better of them. Otherwise, they tend to shut down. Set the expectation that the men in your life can give you pleasure and acknowledge them for doing so. This can be as easy as thanking them for opening a door. And yes—I know you are fully capable of doing it yourself. But remember, receiving is a skill that has to be cultivated.

When you put pleasure and fun at the top of your list, the man wants to get in on it. Men find you attractive whatever your age because you are living agelessly and joyfully. Who wouldn’t be attracted to someone like that? To use a dance metaphor, I waited my whole life for a man who would be willing to go out dancing with me. When I finally went on my own, I discovered there was an entire community of men and women looking to dance. I always find male partners willing to participate in the dance. (Of course, I also had to keep up my end of the bargain by getting good enough to be a pleasure to dance with!) I don’t have to date a man who will dance with me because I own the dance in my body. I can go to any city on earth and dance the tango with strangers who don’t even speak English. Men rise to the occasion when they’re appreciated by the feminine energy.

For you, receiving pleasure might take a different form than having a partner dance with you and honor your goddess-like self. Your supportive partner may not be a man at all—it may be a woman who is attracted to you and unapologetic about desiring and receiving pleasure. Even so, open yourself up to having the men in your life and your community serve and assist you and other women.

It’s not as if men have to lose out as women own their pleasure, and women become the “winners” who beat out men in some competition. Everyone benefits when we’re balanced by embodying the feminine principles of receptivity, pleasure, and connection to the earth. A woman who owns her pleasure makes a man’s life more fulfilling. It’s not having a woman pay the bills and run the household that will unburden him, but having a woman who is overflowing with enthusiasm and passion for her life.

For too long, women have been
trying to do it all. Getting angry or resentful toward men, or rejecting them, won’t lead to a fulfilling and enjoyable life. Inviting men to step up and support women in receiving pleasure will.