The following is a transcript of this episode. It has been edited for clarity.
Intro: So how open are you to receiving love and pleasure? Are you wishing you had more energy and sexual desire? My guest today on the More Beautiful podcast is tantra coach Dominique D’Vita, who works with some high functioning women who are badasses in the boardroom and other areas of life, but maybe not feeling it so much in the bedroom. Dominique tells us how shame, stress and hormones can disconnect us from our feminine energy, and how tantra can help us reconnect not only to ourselves, but ultimately our partners. We’ll also learn how tantra can boost your energy, awaken your sexual response and keep us looking and feeling younger than ever. Welcome to More Beautiful, the podcast for women rewriting the midlife playbook. I’m Maryann LoRusso, and I invite you to join me and a guest each week as we strive for a life that’s more adventurous, more fulfilling and more beautiful than ever before.
Maryann: Welcome back. Joining us today on the More Beautiful podcast is the beautiful Dominique D’Vita, who is a registered nurse and a certified transformational tantra coach. Dominique, welcome to the show.
Dominique: Hi, thanks so much for this invitation, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation. It’s going to be a juicy one.
Maryann: It will be, I’m looking forward to it too. For those of us who don’t know what tantra is, can you explain it to us?
Dominique: Now this is a common question, and there’s so many misconceptions about tantra, so I’m really happy to have this conversation. So tantra, the word has a few meanings. One is expansion. The other is like a looming or a weaving, like a merging, of bringing things together. And the other one is just to help you have this expanded awareness, right, so another word that tantra can mean is also practice. So there’s these different practices that you do to really help you have this expansion and elevation in your consciousness. And so whenever we think back to the history of tantra, it came from India, and it’s a Sanskrit word. And when it was first discovered and used, it was used by males only. Females were not allowed to use these practices. And the reason that they did these practices was for expansion and enlightenment. So you might think of Buddhist monks, because there is also Buddhist tantra. They’re really using these practices to open up their chakras and their energy centers in their bodies, and to open up their third eye and crown chakra and actually be able to have this kind of high zen, you know, expanded consciousness. Now, the byproduct of having this, when you have this deep intimacy within yourself, all this amazing self love, when you’re able to really fully connect with yourself, then when you’re with a lover, you’re able to use the meditative techniques and practices to be more present, because our presence is a gift, to be more dropped in and not be distracted when we’re being with a lover, and then to be able to tap into the energies moving throughout our bodies and using breathwork practices to share and experience more pleasure. So the byproduct of tantra is better sex, but the intention of tantra is not even about sex.
Maryann: Interesting. Yeah, I know, because when we hear the word tantra, we think of sex, right? But it’s interesting that the history is so different. I love that you say that if we can first master self love, we will better understand our bodies, deepen our connection with our partner, and experience soulful, connected love. That’s amazing. What kinds of issues are most women coming to you with, and what is your first step in helping them?
Dominique: Hmm, great question. A lot of times, there’s a lot of sexual shame that impacts us being able to have pleasure. And so a lot of times women will come to me because they’re not able to have an orgasm with penetrative sex with a partner. So I help them to be more orgasmic, experience more pleasure in their body. And a lot of times, women are really in our masculine energy a lot because of the way society has been structured, so we lose that essence of our feminine energy, of tapping into the power of that, because we’ve been conditioned in society to view feminine energy as weak. It’s actually a superpower when you know how to tap in and empower yourself with it, but we’ve disconnected from this for so long, and so then that impacts our relationships as well, because then we lack that polarity, or the opposition of the energy or desire in relationships. So a lot of times when I’m helping women, it’s with having better orgasms, knowing how to attract better love by first being their own best lover and having healthy self love. So a lot of times when we work together, we work on our mother-father wounds, the inner child healing, because these first relationships that we have often impact our current relationships and the types of partners we’re attracting and choosing based on what we interpreted as love and what our standards are. If we weren’t treated in respectful ways or didn’t have boundaries with our parents…like, for example, my mother was alcoholic. So when you’re hanging out with an alcoholic, there’s no boundaries. And so “boundaries” was not even a word or even thought for me. But I did notice in early adulthood, oh, some of my friends that had healthier parental relationships, they had higher standards and wouldn’t tolerate certain BS. When they would see a red flag, they’d be like, oh, no, I’m not going to be treated like that. But if you’ve been treated poorly by a parent, and you thought that they quote, unquote, loved you, but they were bringing dysfunction into the relationship, then often we feel safe or comfortable with people that also raise the same red flags. We’re like, oh, you feel like home, because it’s familiar from the root word family. So we want to look at your first experience of love, what that means to you, and how you can repair yourself and love yourself in a healthy way. And then also have a lot of compassion and forgiveness for your parents and for yourself as you’re unlearning the things that were holding you back and then re-patterning and with neuroplasticity, having a new experience in your body and in your life.
Maryann: Wow. So it goes really deep, right? So you’re almost like a psychologist, in a way.
Dominique: I really dive in deep with my clients, most definitely, because everything touches everything, right? And pleasure is medicine. And so a lot of times to women will feel shame regarding sexual desires or shame about touching themselves, or they don’t even understand themselves. I’m just like, first you need to be your own best lover. And then you become a better lover, and you attract better lovers. But first, you need to have this connection with yourself. So if they’re very disconnected, or they feel like sex is just something that they do as an obligation to a partner, or it’s only for them to experience with a spouse or a boyfriend and not for them to self pleasure and have self discovery and other experiences…You know, like all of these things, we have to look at that and see where our beliefs are and kind of have a more open mind of what’s possible for us, and let go of the shame.
Maryann: Talking about women in the 40s and 50s, do they have different concerns? Do they have different hang ups that they bring to you? I mean, what is different about the different ages of women who see you?
Dominique: I think that sometimes in the older generations, we still feel like sex is something that we do out of duty to the other, and not something that we can actually explore for ourselves and see what it means for us and experience pleasure in our own bodies. You may think that certain things are taboo or wrong. Like, if I’m masturbating or self pleasuring, is that me cheating on my spouse or my lover? Am I going to hurt his ego if I do that, you know? But if anyone deserves to enjoy how amazing your body is, it’s you. And one thing I want to remind everyone listening is that you are your longest lasting relationship. From your first breath to your last breath, you are with yourself in every moment. So it’s so important that we focus on what that relationship is like. What is the relationship that we’re having with ourselves? Because the relationship that we have with ourselves is going to impact the relationship we have with others. The more we have self love, that we have self compassion, that we let go of shame, all of those things, the more we’re able to experience within ourselves, then we’re able to offer that to someone else, right? Because we’ve worked past a lot of barriers and things that can hold us back from experiencing healthy relationships. And relationships are just a mirror of the relationship we have with ourselves. So by being our own best lover and healing these aspects of ourselves, we raise the bar and we start to attract better lovers, because like attracts like. And another thing I support my clients with is manifestation, because actually, this energy is creation energy. So you can also create not just a human life with your sexual energy or qi energy or lifeforce energy, you can create the life your heart desires. I also support males in separating their orgasm from their ejaculation so they can be multi-orgasmic and have stamina for hours. So I have one male client that in his 60s, his wife, she…usually pain with sex increases after after menopause. However, she actually started having less pain with hormonal changes after menopause, and she was wanting to have more intimacy and more sex. And their son had graduated college and was out on his own. And even Viagra was failing him. He was not able to have sex with her. And so I started working with him, and now he’s like, I’m having better sex with my wife at 60 than when we were 30, which is amazing. During my sessions with him, he would come to me and say, I want to thank you, my wife wants to thank you. And she was very supportive in leveling up, but her being in her 60s, she was shy to work with me. Like, she could talk to her husband about sex, but for her to talk to me about sex was edgy for her. But by working with him, that impacted the relationship, and he’s just like, I have like over hour long sessions with my wife, she has six, eight orgasms at a time, I was ready to go again the next day. And now she’s like, I need to study Tantra to keep up with you. And I love that, and he was like, I feel so much power my penis. I wish I discovered this 15 years ago. And the reason I also work with men is also in support of the feminine. Because this is going to help women have better intimacy and sex. And so he has even shared with me that through our working together, he’d felt initially that his mother had not loved him, she had passed, he had never mourned the loss of her. And he actually has a PhD and works with death and dying in the hospital setting. So he’s like, well versed on these things, but he just still didn’t quite have the tools to work through that. And when I worked with him, he finally had a breakthrough in one of my coaching sessions that his mother had loved him. And then the next session, we dived in deeper, and he was able to finally cry. And he was like, you know, I realized my mom loved me. And it was just such a game changer for him. And then he shared with me, like, now that my familial wound has been healed, my anger has all been dissipated. He was like, now I’m a new person to myself, and I’ve become a new partner to my wife. And his wife had thanked him. She said, you know, after 30 years of marriage, right, and raising a son, she’s like, thanks for allowing me to get to know you. Because in the older generations, the males, the patriarchy just hasn’t disempowered females, it’s disempowered males. And they feel like they always have to be the protector, the provider, the strong one, and they keep these walls up and stay guarded. And you can’t really fully connect with them. And just allowing and knowing that he could feel safe to feel his emotions, to be vulnerable, changed the dynamics of their relationship. So it’s really interesting to work…I love supporting older and young couples alike.
Maryann: Wow, that’s an incredible story. I’m so happy for that couple.
Dominique: Me too.
Maryann: Right? And you bring up an interesting point about older people, and how sex can get better, not the opposite. Because I mean, I have plenty of friends in their 40s, 50s, and beyond. Some of them are in perimenopause, some of them are in menopause. And I find it interesting that some women say that sex does get better for them as they get older, even after menopause. Others say, nope, I’m done with that. What’s the difference between those two types of women, and how can all of us get better sex as we get older?
Dominique: It’s such a great question. There can be a lot of layers and variables of other little elements within, but I’m just going to say, as some big main things that I experience, a lot of times it’s your hormone levels. So even when you’re starting to be 30 and 40, you should start to get your hormone levels checked. Because certain things within our diet, pollution and society, all those things can impact and be hormone disruptors. Foods that we eat, stress, a lot of things can impact that and then also decrease desire. For me, I started experiencing menopause about two years ago, and I started bioidentical hormones. And between whenever I was just starting the bioidentical hormones, I had met a new lover, and that’s the person I’m dating now. And it was challenging to have sex for a bit because I was just like, oh my gosh, I couldn’t even fully handle penetration as much. And I had moved to Texas from California and I hadn’t been with anyone for awhile, I was just doing my tantra self pleasure things, and I was like, oh my goodness, it’s amazing how much the hormones impact. And even for me, my desire was dropping down because my testosterone was so low, my estrogen was so low. And so you need to look at those hormones. And I knew the power of pleasure as medicine, so I continued to do my practices and self pleasure, but I could see that the desire had dropped down, my libido had dropped down. So looking at those things, also, what could be some stressors that are impacting you? You know, when as females we feel overwhelmed and we feel like we have to be like a superwoman or Wonder Woman, and we have to be the moms or have to do all of these things and have these responsibilities…One thing that I even remind my male clients of is that, you know, you need to support her. Use Instacart and have them bring your shopping and your groceries, have a maid come in and do things. Like, if you want your woman to be the vixen in the bedroom, you need to take some things off of her plate that are overwhelming her. And then, you know, schedule a date night, prioritize your pleasure. It’s so important. So, we can get so caught up in the list of things to do and so exhausted in the day, that we may start the day thinking, I would like to have sex with my husband or my lover tonight, but then as the day goes on and you’re tired and things start to stack up, especially for the female, if we can’t even give ourselves self love and are just constantly pouring out into our children or projects and looking after the house and tending to all these other things…If we don’t even have the bandwidth to tend to ourselves, we’re definitely not going to feel like…We’re almost going to resent our partner wanting us to show up for them because it’s like, hey, I don’t have the space to show up for myself, so have a seat. Wait a second, right? And so we need to have that time to source within ourselves and care for ourselves. And then the other thing too of like, you know, use it or lose it. The less sex we have, the less we desire sex, right? So just reminding yourself how much that can connect you to your lover. And you know, I love the psychologist Esther Perel, in her book Mating in Captivity.
Maryann: Oh, she’s great.
Dominique: She’s amazing. And she talks about how just cohabitating with someone can minimize desire, and so often there’s not any more date nights. And for females, I feel like we are very much into anticipating sex, looking forward to it. Males, their turn on happens so fast. They’re like, oh, I’m ready to go, let’s go. Females, we can be thinking of tasks and doing things, and we’re like whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, where did this come from? So it’s really important that we have a date night, so that we can prioritize our pleasure, set the time for it. And another thing to think about, too, is when you see two people out, eating lunch together in the middle of the day, looking nice, and how much energy they have and how vibrant they are, their conversation flowing. Then, at the end of the evening or night, if you’re having a date with your partner or husband, especially as we’re aging and maybe getting more tired, or we’re having more stressors happening in our lives, then what can happen is we’re so tired that we show up in that space for that date without that same energy. So why do we make the dates always late in the evening? You know, sometimes why don’t we have a rendezvous in the afternoon or at lunch?
Maryann: That is so true. My husband and I were just saying that.
Dominique: Yeah. So that your energy matches where you’re wanting to go, and you don’t end up being drained at the end of the day, when the stress of the day has built up, and then you’re like, oh, you know what, we’ll just do that tomorrow or another time. When you do it, you have that connection, you’re like, oh, so amazing, I really have missed this more than I thought. So it’s really important for our intimacy and the strength in our relationships to have intimacy and connection and share pleasure together.
Maryann: Yeah, you just unpacked a lot right there. And I want to go back for a second to the the fact that some women experience pain during sex as they get older. What would you say to reassure women that they can get that under control, that there are [treatments]? Should you go to the doctor and just explain what’s going on and get yourself a cream or a pill or something? I mean, because there are solutions, right?
Dominique: Yes, I definitely would. And if your doctor is not well versed on bioidentical hormones and is like, oh, you don’t need to get your hormones checked, go to someone else, a naturopathic doctor or functional medicine doctor or someone that does this, that prescribes bioidentical hormones, so that you can get some. Because if they’re not comfortable doing it, they don’t usually do it, they’re not really the ones to be doing that for you anyway, so just go to someone else that this is their specialty and have those things checked out for yourself. And then just doing things to minimize stress. And a meditation practice every day helps so much, it helps women have better orgasms, it helps men to last longer, because our brain is our largest sex organ. So doing other things to minimize stress, minimize your cortisol levels, increase pleasure. Some females may need to do something with a pelvic floor, a physical therapist. There’s some other options to do if you’re having a lot of pain that you need to look at and see where this is coming from, but there’s also other practices and rituals with tantra that can help you to relax and to start to feel more pleasure and increase your blood flow to your sex organs, because that can change too as we age.
Maryann: Wow. OK, so there are things you can do to get the physical stuff under control, get your body back in the shape that you want it to be sexual again. What about psychological things that are going on? Do insecurities kind of come out at this stage of life?
Dominique: Definitely. Most definitely, because things do change as we get older. I think a common thing as we’re older is like, oh, my gosh, when I was 20 or 30, I really had it going on. Because when we’re younger, we’re criticizing ourselves. And then we’re like, oh, if we could just have that body back, that body was amazing.
Maryann: It’s an age old thing, right? Everyone says that.
Dominique: Yes, yes. We can really tap into accepting, you know, self love, doing mirror work, and just knowing that when our lover has a connection with us and they’re in those pleasurable states with us, they’re not sitting there and dissecting our bodies the way we can in front of a mirror, because we can always be our own worst critic. And especially when they’re aroused, you know, just think about when you’re aroused with your lover and you’re in passion, you’re not sitting there and picking apart their body, you’re just like, oh my gosh, this feels so good. You’re focusing in on the pleasure. So focus in on your pleasure, and you know, dim the lighting or whatever you need to do. But even just some gentle exercise and movement for your body can be so good, because that can increase your confidence. It doesn’t have to be extreme workouts, but just something like yoga or other things where you’re feeling connected to your body, and you’re keeping that mobility going, and keeping the flexibility, because that’s going to just help you with your longevity as well. But don’t beat yourself up, you know, because your lover wants to be with you and they’re desiring you for a reason. So don’t push them away, is my recommendation.
Maryann: Right. I think it’s important to live in your body more, too, because I find that especially since the pandemic, we all have these very cerebral lives. Like, we’re on Zoom, or, you know, we’re on the phone, we’re on the computer. And I like the way you mentioned moving, just moving, you know, dancing, exercising, walking. Doesn’t it all feed into that?
Dominique: Most definitely. The three main tenets of tantra are breath, sound and movement. And so dancing is really great. It also helps you connect more with your feminine energy. But one thing is even dancing before you’re going to be intimate with someone, or on a date night before, you are actually increasing the blood flow to your sex organs. You’re getting that energy through your body, you’re breathing more deeply, and you can increase the arousal that you have. And so that helps to amplify your orgasms and help everything just be so much better afterwards. So it’s just kind of like preheating the oven, like, we need to warm our bodies up. Because there’s the orgasm gap between males and females. And when I speak about male and female, I’m anatomically speaking. Not how you identify with your gender, but just how our bodies are structured at birth and how we respond to pleasure differently. So you know, males can quickly be turned on and their arousal can go away fast. And then females, it can take us up to 20 minutes or so to be turned on. And so if males can’t last for 20 minutes or so, then right when we’re starting to get turned on, for males, if they are ejaculating faster than you both want it to happen, then what can happen is, you know, females can start to resent and be like, oh my gosh, before I even get going, it’s already game over. Like, why do I even want to do this and have the mess? I’m spending my energy towards something…I’m almost being teased, like, I barely start to get there, and then it stops. And that can also build some resentment and also create a lot of pressure for the males as well, like performance anxiety, and then maybe they don’t want to have sex as often or initiate because they don’t want to be rejected, or they’re embarrassed. A lot of things can happen that can create this kind of vicious cycle, so it’s important to disrupt those cycles in those patterns.
Maryann: Right. It almost feels like going back to teenage sex, right, some of the problems in midlife?
Dominique: Yes, those challenges can present themselves. But for males, you know, there’s so much more available. They can have full body orgasms, they can be multiorgasmic. And these are things that I teach my male clients, and it’s really empowering. If anyone here listening has read the book by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, chapter 11 is titled “The Mystery of Sexual Transmutation.” And this book was published in the 1930s. And even now, over 90 years later, it’s so edgy to talk about sex. So you can imagine it was super brave and bold of him to include and dedicate this entire chapter. And at the time, he was interviewing the most successful people at the time, like Andrew Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, a lot of the thought leaders and really successful people, and a lot of them had mastered their sexual energy. And so with sexual transmutation, tantra teaches those techniques. It teaches you how to focus and channel your sexual energy, your turn on, and even focus it into your goals so you can be more successful. And when men frequently ejaculate, they’re draining a lot of their lifeforce energy. That’s why males quickly fall asleep after sex and females will be wide awake and charged up. Because we get charged up with orgasms, but males get drained and depleted. So knowing how to separate and have an orgasm without ejaculation, and just occasionally, based on your age and your health, having ejaculations, can actually give you more fuel for your passions, and have you be more successful. Because how powerful you show up in the bedroom can be how powerful you show up in the boardroom. The other thing that you touched on that I didn’t share earlier about tantra is what I love so much about tantra, these tools and techniques, so that you get out of the logical mind where we do overthink and can literally be blocking our pleasure. And then we’re able to connect and drop into our bodies and explore pleasure and experience it with all of our five senses. And then that really opens things up for us in all new ways.
Maryann: That’s so cool. You know, one thing a lot of women in midlife say is they actually have more time now. So isn’t that something that will benefit us as we get older? More time, more freedom, right? To play?
Dominique: Yes, to play and to dance, and to even have time to play with yourself, you know? To have self pleasure and things like that, experience things, and just even pleasure mapping and other rituals that I guide my clients on so you can really unlock what your pleasures are. I was even coaching a younger woman that’s in her 30s and having her do the self pleasure rituals, and she was like, wow, I didn’t realize that there are these other places in my vulva, my vagina, that are such a turn on. You’re just almost skipping past those parts by rushing towards the things that we know work instead of exploring, like, what else was possible for me. And for tantra, I had my awakening with tantra, because I was able to experience prolonged states of bliss. And that gave me what is called a Kundalini awakening, which wasn’t what my expectation was, but it literally changed my life. If we’re single or solo, we can give ourselves these kinds of pleasure experiences. Because so often when females will self-pleasure, we know how to get from point A to point B fast, so we just go through what works. And we can go really fast and be like, oh, it’s almost like a task on our to-do list, like, done, I just rubbed out whatever, off to the next thing, right? But the thing is, if a lover was to be so fast with you and not take their time with you, we would resent them. We’re like, why aren’t you taking your time with me? Well, your body wants to know the same about you. Why are you not taking the time for yourself? Why don’t you give yourself an amazing date night, luxuriate in pleasure, see what’s possible for you and see if you can experience higher, more intense levels of pleasure, and tap into the power of that?
Maryann: That’s interesting. So would you equate, in some instances, self pleasuring as something like what men might do with porn? Like, it becoming detrimental if it’s done in that way that you describe—quickly, without intention or lingering? I mean, can that have negative effects on your sex life?
Dominique: I believe so. And I believe that you’re going to be able to unlock more of what’s fully available for you and understand your body more whenever you take this time with yourself, and you can communicate that to whoever and be like, oh my gosh, I explored this thing the other day and it felt so amazing, but I bet if you did that to me, it would be even more intense. And invite them to try these things with you and be able to have these conversations. But you know, by having this sexploration, you know, or self exploration for yourself, you can unlock a lot of things and also let go of the shame and start to embrace your body more. You can start to be more confident in your body and in your skin, and just realize the amazing goddess you are, and show up differently. And when we show up differently, more empowered and not feeling shameful about pleasure, that it’s wrong or bad or dirty, then, you know, that impacts all of our relationships and impacts who we are as a person in our very being. It’s just kind of like when you want to eat more nutritiously, let’s say, and you’re maybe more vegetarian or you’re on non GMO foods and you do that over 90% of the time, occasionally, you’re going to probably go through a drive thru somewhere that’s not the optimal meal for you. Shame can pop up in our society so much that we even talk about having guilty pleasures. Why is that a word? You know, why is that a saying, guilty pleasure? Why do we need to have guilt when there’s pleasure? But there’s going to be times that you’re just going to want to go ahead and have something or give yourself a quickie, maybe, but make that the occasional thing, not what you do all the time. And then for males, males are actually having higher incidences of erectile dysfunction, even at younger ages, because of watching so much porn. Their body becomes dependent on that stimulation to stay aroused, and then they see the money shot, the money shot, the money shot. They see tits, ass, tits, ass, in a rapid fire sequence. And then when they’re intimate with their lover, or doing like missionary position or something and kissing, they’re not getting all of that imagery, and their bodies are like, hey, what’s happening? And then sometimes the erection can go away. And it doesn’t mean that they don’t desire their lover or things like that, but the partner can take it very personally. But it can also mean that their bodies have become dependent upon that imagery, and so that’s something that we need to have an awareness of, and start to have more intentionality and more empowerment with our pleasure.
Maryann: Yeah, and I do worry about the younger generations like Gen Z and the porn and stuff, but that’s a whole other topic. [Laughs] But I do think about it, and worry that those kids are not getting enough real life experience.
Dominique: Exactly. That’s why they’re saying younger men are having higher and higher incidences of erectile dysfunction, because they begin their masturbation with the videos and with porn, whereas back in the day, it was just maybe you had a still image from a magazine or something like that.
Maryann: The JC Penney catalog, right? [Laughs] One thing you said earlier that really stuck with me was that sexual energy can help you in all other areas of your life. And you say on your website that sexual energy helped you grow your business, and it can help other women achieve success in all areas of their life, and it’s a form of manifestation. Can you elaborate on that?
Dominique: Yes, yes. So, our sexual energy is our lifeforce energy. It’s our creative energy. We’re literally created from sexual energy. There should be no shame in that, in such creation. It’s literally why we’re all here. So why everyone wants to act like sex doesn’t happen or it’s such a bad, shameful topic is beyond me, because your very existence counted on sex happening. But we can again, like I said, harness and start to build and cultivate that energy in your body and build that up. And whenever you’re able to build that up, one thing that I’m going to look at with my clients is what energy leaks do you have? Where are you leaking your sexual energy? You’ve got to think about your pelvic floor as almost like a bowl. And with the muscles there, you have a bowl and you’re building that sexual energy and that turn on, and if your pelvic floor is weak, the sexual energy can be leaking out from that area. And then what practices do you do to increase that sexual energy? And we also have these energy centers in our bodies called the chakras, and tantra focuses on optimizing and opening those chakras so your energy flows more freely through there. So then we’re using breathwork techniques, also known as pranayama in tantra, to actually circulate that sexual energy and that turn on. We want to increase it, and then we want to know how to focus it and direct it, and with breath, guide it through our bodies. And so then we’re actually invigorating ourselves and our bodies just by allowing the pleasure to fully go through our bodies instead of it all staying congested in our pelvic floor area. But also whenever we are empowered with our sexual energy, we increase our confidence, we increase our magnetism, we start to attract things to us, we start to elevate our vibration. And you know, all my male clients, when I start working with them, one male client, he was ejaculating like three times a day, he was leaking a lot of his sexual energy. And the two weeks I worked with him, I was like, you know, I don’t believe in not masturbating for males, or the no fat thing. But since you’ve been leaking your energy for so long, you’ve been depleting it. I want you to go two weeks without masturbating and ejaculating, just to build that up. And he was like, wow, like, my confidence has gone up. Women are checking me out and I feel like I can approach women more easily. He did sales in this company and closed a seven figure deal. He identified a prospective client in a clubhouse room and took the conversation offline, and then had a conversation with that person and made a seven figure sale, the biggest sale the company had had, and this all happened within two weeks. But it is that increased confidence, that magnetism. Especially for males, if their energy is drained, then they’re depleted and they don’t have that go get it. Just think about Muhammad Ali, like he wouldn’t have sex for like six weeks or so before a match because you lose that extra oomph that gives you that edge, and males need that. Females, we lose our energy through menstruation, through pregnancy and childbirth, but we get empowered by it. So whenever I help my clients to manifest things, it’s different in males, because males, I want them to not ejaculate and leak the energy so much. Females, we even use the waves and the cycles with the moon, and do what in tantra is called sex magic. But it’s not a dark magic; you always have the best intention, you’re not trying to control or manipulate people, you’re just tapping into the power that you have. Because literally, we’re being disempowered in a society with sexual shame, because we’re disconnecting from our power centers and our chakras and our sexual energy, which is our life force energy. And we can literally, just like I said earlier, not just create a human life with that energy, we can tap into being able to create the lives our heart desires. So my female clients have also manifested divine partners, brand new Mercedes as a company car when they wanted a car…They were like, I would like to have a car so I can just drive around sometimes, and literally, this person is in Europe, the company is based in America, the person is still doing all of their work in Europe online, doesn’t even have to leave the home to do any business, and got a Mercedes within a few weeks of doing the practices. She was like, I got a raise, and my company announced to me that they’re giving me this nice Mercedes, so I guess I’m going to be learning how to drive now so I can spend some time in the car. And I was like, OK, yeah. So it’s really empowering. It’s really powerful. But we have this power, but we haven’t been taught. It’s a sexual transmutation Napoleon Hill talks about, and these techniques were used by Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, to tap into their creative genius, and we have the ability to do the same.
Maryann: Now, for a lot of women, like you mentioned earlier, there’s shame attached to owning your sexuality. I mean, because we feel it when we are empowered, right, we’re feeling our sexual energy. And a lot of times, society kind of likes to divide us into the sexy women and the smart women…These labels and these restrictions tend to give us a lot of shame. So what’s the key to owning our sexuality and our sexual power and not feeling any shame in doing so?
Dominique: Hmm, such a great question.
Maryann: For women, right?
Dominique: Yeah. For women, just to let go and to tap into, like, where did that shame come from? That’s something that I guide my clients on. Where did that shame come from, and how can we let go of those outdated beliefs? One book that I highly recommend to my clients to read is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, because he has you look at, what are your belief systems, and did we just accept from our parents or society that this is something that is true, but it isn’t actually our truth? We’ve just accepted and adopted these beliefs without ever questioning or seeing, like, does this even make sense for me? Is this really my belief? And then we just continue to play these stories out and then pass it down. So we can be the pattern disrupter by knowing and understanding how empowering it is to connect our sexual energy, and that it’s not something shameful. But for so long, people wanted us to be disempowered. Like, even if you think back in the day, women that were very powerful were a lot of times women that were not entering relationships, that would be isolated and keep to themselves. They could connect into the magic within themselves and the power within themselves, and they weren’t easily controlled by society. And then when they would speak out about how powerful they were, then sometimes these women were like witches, you know, viewed as witches. And to me, witch is “woman in total control of herself,” right? So it’s like someone that was very powerful and knew her own magic and probably understood her sexual energy, how she can channel and create things and manifest things. At that time, they could be burned at the stake because the old patriarchal way of not being able to control a woman was so bad. So this is ingrained in us that we don’t even know in our subconscious, from maybe past lives, through DNA, through other generations. That when we would take a stand for ourselves, or we would do something outside the norm, it wasn’t safe for us. Like literally, women were burned at the stake, right? So I mean, that can be an edgy thing for someone to really think about and take in, but there’s a lot of shame. And then even in society, like the Madonna whore complex and how men wanted their wives to be a certain way, but then they wanted the wife to be goody goody and great for being a homemaker and great for raising children, but they couldn’t explore with their wives their fantasies and other things they want to do, so then they would get someone else that they didn’t have that same expectation of that could be the bad girl. And then it makes us split into like, you know…People would say, oh, you’re not marriage material, right? You know, that’s not marriage material. And for me, I always had a high sex drive. So I actually have dated men in the past that really enjoyed having sex with me and really enjoyed how open sexually I was, and everything was great, but then they will go off and marry these like very uptight women and later they will come back to me and asked me to see them again or be with them again, because the women they were with were not very interested in sex. So it’s like that illusion of having the trophy on your arm. You thought that’s what you wanted, but then when that person doesn’t wanna have sex with you, what are you there with? You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s the wildest thing.
Maryann: Yeah, I know what you’re saying, and I think that’s changing, right?
Dominique: Yes.
Maryann: Thankfully, now, we see more and more examples of women who are successful, that are masters of their own lives, right? Plus, they’re okay with their sexuality, they embrace it.
Dominique: I love that. I’m here for it. It’s breaking away from, well, you know, like, if I’m a mom, I can’t be that…If I’m a professional career person, I can’t do this. And I really challenged that in my own role on my journey. I came from a small town in Texas, and I was raised in what was called the bible belt and taught to be super religious, etc, etc. But luckily, my mom was sex positive and talked about sex. So I’m able to have these conversations without feeling shame about them, because it was a topic of conversation in my home. And then as I went on my journey…I’ve been a nurse since I was 19, I was a teenage mom, I went through all these things. And then I was like, oh, well, I don’t want to be out of control, I should just stay married to the first person I ever had sex with like these outdated beliefs, right, because you don’t want to be the nympho, you don’t want to be the slut. And so you make these decisions because you’re trying not to fall into being categorized that way and escaping shame.
Maryann: What horrible labels, right, that women have been given.
Dominique: Exactly, exactly. I mean, I’ve had a booth a few times at the SlutWalk in LA, the Amber Rose house, because I think that that sexual shaming, we need to let that go. We are all able to enjoy our bodies and make decisions on our bodies of what we want, and that shouldn’t make us be judged by others as being wrong. As long as we’re having consensual sex and we’re respecting that person and making those decisions, it’s just between me and that person. It’s not for anyone else outside to judge. But as I went on to being a nurse, right before I turned 40 I went to LA and I was a model, and then I did nude modeling, and then I was a pro dom for a while, and I didn’t have sex, because that’s illegal to have sex with someone for money. But it just helped me. I was curious, like, people really have these fetishes? And I’m always curious about sexuality, so I explored those things. And so I was a nurse at USC during the day, and then sometimes at night, I was being a pro dom, and I was like, wow, this is so fascinating. And I was talking on Playboy radio and vivid radio, and going through all these things. I did nude modeling, I did burlesque performing. I did all of the things. I was like, I want to explore all of it. I’m not here just to be one dimensional. I’m not here just to be the mom to everyone. And I would talk to my daughters. Like, when I was a pro dom, my daughters were 17 and 21, and I told them. Because I was like, if I’m ashamed of it, then I shouldn’t be doing it. And if I want my daughters to be able to talk to me about their lives, why am I hiding and being so secret? Because then they don’t feel like they can communicate with me, because I’m not even being authentic with them and who I am. So I would just give them my reasons and talk to them about my choices. And of course, I had different conversations with them when they were younger little girls. And as they evolve into women, I have more evolved conversations with them that are relevant for where they are in their journey, and talk to them like the women that they are, and stop acting like sex is something that doesn’t happen. Like, we want to act like we’re not having sex a lot of times in the household, but then our children are not comfortable talking to us about sex. And I would rather my children talk to me than turn to a stranger or a peer and be educated, because I’ll be sure that they get the right information.
Maryann: What a gift for your daughters to start their own sexual journeys with that confidence and that ability to have someone to talk to. I mean, that’s wonderful.
Dominique: Yes, thank you. And one of the first things that I would teach them, too, is don’t fake your orgasms. Like, don’t do it. Because then your lover’s gonna think, oh, wow, that move really worked. Let me remember to do more of that. And you’re like, no, no more of that.
Maryann: [Laughs] Right.
Dominique: You have to know how to communicate what turns you on and have these conversations so you can have more pleasure.
Maryann: I wonder if that generation will be faking anything because they’re all about authenticity. So maybe they won’t.
Dominique: Hopefully, hopefully.
Maryann: So I want to just ask you, what would your advice be for a woman who maybe is listening right now, and she’s been out of the game for a while, she wants to find a partner. Can she use this sexual, this feminine energy to channel a relationship or to get better sex?
Dominique: Yes, yes and yes. You will enhance your relationships you already have, you will increase your desire, more spark. It’s so powerful when we are in our feminine energy, it’s so powerful when we let go of the blocks that we have to experience intimacy and connection. You know, a lot of times we’ve had a hurt from our parents or hurt from a past relationship, so we still have some walls up and are more guarded when we enter relationships, and we’re not able to have that depth of intimacy and connection. So when we can have vulnerability, that’s a superpower. When we tap into our feminine energy, that’s another superpower. And it leaves so much possibility for us. We can be this super attractor and attract the type of relationships that we want, and we can enhance and improve the relationships that we already have. Because even when I work with someone…I do work with couples, but sometimes I will just work with a woman. And her husband may not know that she’s doing this, but the relationship starts to change. Because as she shows up differently in the relationship, that energy creates the possibility for new experiences and to change and then to have the spark rekindled and desire. My client was like, oh my gosh, my husband surprised me and ravished me in the shower, and he hasn’t done that forever. But she was so much in her masculine all the time that he wasn’t able to show up as a leader in the relationship, and he kind of retreated and had been depressed for a while, gained weight, was sleeping a lot. And I was just like, you know, you need to loosen the reins a little bit and tap into your feminine and allow him to take that masculine lead. Like, what are you afraid of here, allow him to show up. Because if he doesn’t feel needed, if he doesn’t feel valued in the relationship…A man does want to protect the woman and doesn’t want to do these things, but if you never trust him to do that or make decisions, then how does he have the space to show up for that? Even when we’re single. If you’re newly single, and if we’re the type of woman that’s like, I can handle everything myself, I can do anything a man can do. I pay my bills, I do everything. And if we do that, we actually are blocking allowing the universe to bring someone into our lives because it’s like, oh, she’s got that. She obviously doesn’t need anyone. And any male trying to date us is going to be a little intimidated, like, oh, well, they have everything under control, they don’t need me for anything. And a man does want to feel needed, and they’ll show up differently, too. So you know, how we show up in a relationship changes…My clients will attract better partners and even using apps like Tinder or dating apps, they’ll have a different experience when I guide them through that because I’m like, use intention. What is the energy? Are you treating it like a game? Are you joking around about it? Are you being careless with it? Are you using it as a tool to connect with someone? So that’s been a game changer. And the other thing I want to share is that one of the biggest misconceptions about tantra is that you need a partner to begin. You don’t. It begins with you. You first start learning these practices and rituals and start doing this deep healing, because a lot of times we think, oh, all men are the same, all women are the same. But actually, we keep showing up the same way in all of our new relationships, and we’re that one constant. And so a lot of it is like how are we relating to others? What are our blocks or our patterns or our baggage that we’re bringing in that we haven’t faced off with? And then we’re like, oh, we have a new person. And we think that’s a new opportunity, but we show up with our same beliefs and the same energy and the same vibes, and we have the same outcome. And we’re throwing our hands up, like, oh, everybody’s the same. No, sometimes you’re being the same. So how can we change that? And then we can show up differently and create different experiences.
Maryann: I love that. So it starts with just one person. You don’t need to have two. One person can make change. But just to be clear, when you talked about women and the “I can do everything” sort of mentality, you’re not saying that women should feign this incompetence or whatever. They should just allow themselves to be vulnerable when they do need help, right?
Dominique: Right. Thanks so much for that clarification, I appreciate that. Of course I love empowered women, right? We’re all goddesses, I love that. I think that being able to receive—now, buckle your seat belts up for this one—your ability to be able to receive is your ability to be able to be orgasmic. Because to be in your full orgasmicness requires us to be in our full receptive mode and to be open and be able to receive, right? So we can be receptive to the pleasure, so that we can surrender to the moment. Because if we are always overthinking and are very in our masculine, logical energy and we’re so used to making things happen—like, we’re the CEO of a company, we make things happen! You don’t, like, make things happen with orgasms, right? You need to be in the way of allowing and receiving and surrendering and trusting, and being able to be vulnerable and feel safe with that person. So this person that you’re choosing as your lover needs to be someone that you feel safe with, that you have respect with. So for me, I realized with tantra that I can’t put a body condom on someone and protect myself from their bad vibes. So when I started dating again, it was like, OK, would I want to be like this person? How do they live their life? Do they inspire me? What is their self care? Do they meditate? What are their vibes? Have they worked? Are they aware of their past traumas? Are they working on the things that have been holding them back? Are they in a growth mindset? These are the things that I’m going to look at now for a partner. Far different in my earlier years of dating, and my mother conditioned me just to focus on the superficial things like, oh, is he good looking? And if he wasn’t good looking, did he have money? That was it for my mom. She had me when she was much older in life, and my mom was born in 1933. So her ideals for dating were way different than what we have happening now. So that is some old programming I had to let go of, right? But that ability for me to be vulnerable…We think it’s a weakness, but it takes so much strength to trust another person, it takes so much strength to let the reins down and not always be in control. And we can be more orgasmic when we are able to receive. So just think, if you’re an over-giver, if you’re always doing for others and you never allow people to do for you…not to say you are weak or you can’t handle it alone, but that you are open to allowing other people to do things for you, and you know that you deserve to receive as much as you enjoy giving.
Maryann: I like that. You deserve to receive. I like that. Yeah, a lot of women really don’t think of it that way. When you mentioned that you can start with tantra by yourself, what does that mean? What do you do?
Dominique: Oh, great question. There’s a lot of different tantra practices, and I actually have a course. It’s the intro to tantra course, it’s a six week journey, and you have lifetime access to these modules. And so I start there. If people can’t do one-on-one coaching or group coaching with me, that’s a great place to start for males and females. In that course, we go over those solo practices and go into white Tantra practices, which is about breath work, meditation practice. Your brain, again, is your largest sex organ, so you have better sex when you have a meditative mindset, when you’re able to be dropped in and connected and not allow the monkey mind to distract you from your pleasure. We’re going to be doing things with mantras and yantras. Then we go into pink tantra, which focuses on self love and your heart chakra. So then we are able to have more healing, more intimacy, vulnerability, and open our hearts. And for the feminine, the more we can open up the heart chakra space…In tantra, the vulva, the vagina, is called the yoni, which means sacred space. So the more our heart chakra opens and we feel safe, the more the yoni starts to open, our orgasms flow better. And then we work a lot with self love, because the relationship we have with ourselves is going to be the relationship we have with other people. And so self love can improve relationships with coworkers, friends, family, lovers, across the board. And so we’re focusing on that. And with other techniques, we go into all the chakras and the energy centers. How do you optimize those things so that your energy is flowing and each chakra center correlates to a part of the body? Just like we have a throat chakra, sometimes if someone’s throat chakra is blocked, they have a challenge speaking healthy boundaries, speaking their truth, communicating in bed, honoring their “no”s, right? And so when you say “I guess,” you want it to be an enthusiastic “yes,” not a people pleaser “yes.” Yes. But a lot of people are interested in sex. A realization, awakening, that I had a couple of years ago was like, oh my gosh, the reason I’ve always been so good with sex is I’m a damn people pleaser, crap! [Laughs] And so you have to look at that.
Maryann: [Laughs] And so many women are.
Dominique: Right, right. So going into like these chakras and optimizing them so our energy is flowing and we’re feeling more empowered, and then knowing how to use red tantra and self pleasure rituals…How do we start to even be able to experience pleasure in a whole new way, to have full body orgasms, to have prolonged states of pleasure. And pleasure is medicine, and it’s like the sexual healing that Marvin Gaye would sing about. You give this dose to yourself. And when you have this awakening for yourself and you’re so expanded and you’re really filling yourself, you’re letting go of shame, you’re vibrating higher, you start to be this amazing manifester. You start to show up more powerfully in your life. You attract better lovers. So a lot of times people will be like—even males will be like—oh, I want to learn this after I have a partner. No, no, no, no, you want to learn this while you’re single, because you will attract a better partner if you already have this, because your energy will attract better partners. So they’re doing self pleasure rituals with tantra. And when you master those techniques, and when males know how to self pleasure and edge and last longer—because they don’t want to be practicing with their lovers, they want to first practice on themselves—then you add the lover in and start doing this and you have more intimacy, increased desire. And you actually create soulmate type relationships with these techniques and tools. So often we are like, why can I not find my soulmate? But if we are only approaching sex and having sex in a superficial way and mimicking what we’ve seen in porn, which is literally dumbing us down, and we’re having sex in a superficial way, we are going to create superficial relationships. So even if someone, let’s say, is in a last ditch effort to save the marriage, and they want to come to me to tantra, and a woman is like, I’m about to divorce my spouse. Before we start to work together, I need to also ask her, is this a safe relationship for you? Are you being abused in a way? Are you sure this is a relationship you want to be in? Is this healthy for you? And if the answers are yes, then I will teach them and support them on that. Because I’m like, otherwise, you’re going to create a deeper connection and bond with this person, and it’s going to be more challenging for you to leave something that probably you should be leaving, and I’m not here to support that. I’m here to support honor, healthy relationships and how to attract them, how to create them, how to continue to build on them.
Maryann: Right, because the sex hormones, they form attachment, right? Even if the relationship is horrific, you’re gonna be attached.
Dominique: Exactly. We have all these responses when we have sex and orgasms that bind us and bond us to the person we’re with.
Maryann: Yeah, I love the work of Helen Fisher. Do you ever read her? She’s the anthropologist who wrote all those books about the chemistry of the brain in love.
Dominique: I am definitely gonna have to check that out.
Maryann: You have to check her out.
Dominique: Yeah. I work a lot with neuroplasticity and creating new pleasure pathways for people, so…
Maryann: Yeah, I’m trying to get her on the show, she’s brilliant. So, going back to the whole wellness category, are there any products that you would recommend for women over 40? Sex toys, lube? What would you say to women who have never purchased a sex toy or a wellness product in their lives? And I’m ashamed to admit that I’m in that category. [Laughs]
Dominique: Oh, it’s OK. My mother has already passed, but I remember when she was older and she wasn’t dating anymore, I was just like, oh my gosh, you don’t masturbate? You need to get like a sex toy, I’ll order one for you. Because she was just so ashamed about it, it was so funny.
Maryann: But you don’t need a sex toy to masturbate.
Dominique: You don’t, you don’t, but she didn’t even have one. But you know, you can let your fingers do the walking for sure. Like, definitely. But then sometimes as you get older, you can get cramps in your hands and things like that that can make it more challenging than when you’re younger using your hands, right? So, sex toys can be so great. And for me, when I self pleasure, a lot of times I do things just touching the outside of my vulva. I won’t even penetrate my vagina because I can experience an orgasm just by touching the outside. But if you’re familiar with acupuncture and you look at the diagram of the foot, different places on the foot will show like the lungs, the heart, whatever. Same as in our vagina and the penis. I discovered this in my research, that the cervix actually is connected to our heart. And the head of the penis is the heart for the male. So whenever the male is inside the vagina, then his center for his heart is touching our center for our heart, when he’s able to reach up to the cervix. And then down further along the shaft is like the lungs and then down in that same area on the vagina is our lungs, our pressure points for our lungs. So, with noting that whenever you’re actually internally massaging your vaginal canal and feeling pleasure and breathing into it, you can actually be stimulating these organ systems in your body, which can help with your longevity and your health. And so it’s great to use a toy to do this and experience more pleasure. And one of the toys that I love—and I can share with you some of these resources that you can put in the show notes—is a company called Chakrubs, and they have toys that are made of crystals and they’ll have like a dildo shape or the yoni egg, and what’s really great is if you get a sex toy that’s a crystal—and they have some that are curved, to go more towards the g-spot and everything— the crystal…like, the Rose Quartz helps with opening your heart chakra, the black obsidian helps with healing any kind of traumas that we’ve had, then you have the amethyst, and you can look at the different properties of the crystal and get the toy in the property that you want. And it will talk about and describe the other benefits, so then you’re having this amazing sexual healing when you’re using these toys. And then you can also use other things, like sometimes I use another crystal or curved wand that has more of a curve to even work on the g-spot a little more. And we can actually do something that’s called a de-armoring of our cervix. It takes longer, but by doing a de-armoring, we’re actually working through any traumas that we’ve had in the past and everything by stimulating ourselves internally, and then rewiring our experience through pleasure and through breathwork and other things. So there’s just this whole world that can open up for us. And we can just start to be more orgasmic, and that actually helps to increase our immune system. Especially in these times, we want to have a healthy immune system. Having orgasms lowers your stress hormone, the cortisol hormone. Most diseases are created from stress: cancers, high blood pressure, things like that. And when you think of the word disease, it’s dis-ease in your body. So inviting good feelings into our body, experiencing pleasure, has a cascade effect in terms of the neurological impact that it has, the cascade of hormones that it releases, the feel good hormones, the dopamine release, these other endorphins, and lowering your cortisol level. So you literally can start to experience and optimize your health through pleasure. So I’ll say again, pleasure is medicine. I’m also a registered nurse. And then the other thing is, I love this other brand—and I’ll share a link on it with you, it’s called Foria, and I have a special code where your listeners can get discounts on these—and what I love about it…It’s a product that I also use, and it’s ethically sourced, it has no toxic chemicals in it, and one of them even has some CBD infused in it. And it can actually increase your arousal. One of their oils is called “awake,” and so if you’re not having as much desire, then you can do that. And then when you work with tantra, we do other things to increase the blood flow to your sex organs, to start to create new pleasure pathways in your brain, so you start to have a different relationship with your pleasure. And you can start to be your most orgasmic self, and that really empowers you both inside the bedroom and outside the bedroom.
Maryann: Wow. [Laughs] I am sure everybody is now on Amazon, or searching the web.
Dominique: Yes, and we’ll share some links here in the notes too, so they can get discounts on these products as well.
Maryann: Thank you, those sounds great. Dominique, is there anything else you would add?
Dominique: It’s never too late. A lot of times we think that life is over, we’re too old to do that. That is a lie that we’re telling ourselves. Let go of that, just embrace your inner child, be young at heart, and just have an exploration and a curiosity and be adventurous, and do that in all areas of your life. And that’s gonna keep you so youthful. You know, I’m dating someone that’s far younger than I am, but a lot of times when people meet me and things like that, they think that maybe I’m not even 30 years old, because of the way I show up energetically. And orgasms are the fountain of youth, so it’s not too late. But I know that when I had been a mom for a while—and I had been in an unhealthy marriage—when I got divorced and I went through that process, it was like dating had changed so much in even just 10 years. So in 20 years, 30 years, it can change so much. So I really love to empower my clients and show them in these modern times, how can you go about it? How can you reinvent yourself and be your truest self? Like, what is your truth, if you strip away what society and everyone else expects from you? We have this one life to live, our soul came in here to have this experience, and we have these amazing bodies that are wired to experience pleasure. Pleasure is your birthright. And for females, we are the only sex that actually has this organ whose sole purpose is for pleasure, which is the clitoris. It has over 8000 nerve endings, more nerve endings than a penis. You are wired to experience pleasure, so let go of the shame or the fears or the things that are holding you back, and let’s discover what’s fully possible for you because it’s not too late.
Maryann: That’s beautiful. And I will vouch for the fact that you look decades younger than you are.
Dominque: Thank you.
Maryann: And so yeah, to quote my favorite movie, I’ll have what you’re having.
Dominique: Awesome. I love that movie too.
Maryann: OK, so Dominique, please tell our listeners where they can find you online.
Dominique: Yes, thanks so much. You can find me at yestantra.com, I’d love to connect with you. Also, all my social media and clubhouse is at yestantra.
Maryann: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Dominique: Thank you so much. It’s such an honor to be here.
