Craving a Change of Atmosphere: Why Venusian Spaces Matter

What if what you're craving isn't another strategy?

Not more information.

Not another self-improvement project.

But a different atmosphere.

In this deeply personal episode, I share the story of how a single doctor's appointment changed the course of my life and led me on a decades-long exploration of sacred sensuality, pleasure, feminine embodiment, and what eventually became the Vital Goddess Mastery space... aka the Venus Temple.

Together we explore:

🌹 Why atmosphere matters more than most of us realize

🌹 The hidden pressures many women live inside—and why they often intensify at midlife

🌹 The question that changed everything: "What is the more?"

🌹 My "Secret Agent for Venus" astrology reading and the birth story of the Venus Temple

🌹 Why true healing happens through relationship rather than fixing

🌹 The Venusian principle that "the more" emerges through relationship

🌹 Why sensual breathwork, breast massage, and Jade Egg practice are not techniques—but invitations into relationship

🌹 The Taoist concept of the Second Spring and why midlife may be an initiation rather than a decline

🌹 The difference between a mental yes and an embodied yes

🌹 Why the Venus Temple is not built on self-improvement, but on self-remembrance

This is a conversation about beauty.

About love.

About pleasure.

About remembering what was never broken.

And perhaps most importantly...

about creating enough spaciousness to hear yourself again.

A Few Favorite Quotes from This Episode...

"Atmosphere matters. It's the landscape of our lives."

"The more emerges not through force or fixing, but through relationship."

"The work of the Venus Temple isn't to tell women who they are. It's to create enough spaciousness that they can hear themselves again."

"The Venus Temple is not built on self-improvement. It's built on self-remembrance."

"Venus says there's no solution to any problem unless beauty and love are present." — Caroline W. Casey

Ready to Explore the Venus Temple?

The doors to Vital Goddess Mastery are now officially open.

If you've been craving more...

and you're feeling that quiet embodied yes...

I'd love to welcome you into our Venusian Mystery School for women navigating midlife and beyond.

Although our next semester officially begins in late August, I've always loved welcoming women on the early side.

It's a much more Venusian way to enter. 

No rushing.

No cramming.

No pressure to catch up.

Just a soft saunter into a new chapter.

Your Venusian Summer begins here.

A season to arrive gently.

To exhale.

To settle.

To remember.

A season to explore the practices at your own pace...

wander through the library...

immerse yourself in the full Jade Rebirth journey...

and slowly cultivate a deeper relationship with yourself.

You'll also receive a private settling-in session with me to help you get oriented, answer your questions, and discover your own unique pathway through the Temple.

And because I believe the feminine unfolds in her own timing, once you join, you'll continue to be invited back into future semesters, live sessions, and our evolving Temple offerings at no additional cost.

Once you're in, you're in.

Your unfolding cannot be rushed.

🌹 As part of our Solstice celebration, Venusian Summer tuition is currently 30% off.

🌹 Learn more and join us here.

If it feels right...

I hope to see you on the inside.

xo,

Dianne

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

These are no ordinary times. And you, my friend, are no ordinary woman. The feminine is rising. And a new way of being human is emerging on the planet. It's time for a return to the body. Where truth lives, pleasure flows, and love leads the way. Hello, beautiful soul, and welcome to the Vital Goddess Podcast. This is a space for what I call the Venusian Revolution, a return to the body, where truth lives, pleasure flows, and love leads the way. Here we explore what it means to live as a woman who is rooted in her truth, guided by her pleasure, and led by love. And for many women, midlife becomes a powerful threshold for this journey. A moment when something deeper begins to call her forward. The path of the feminine is rooted in the temple of the body. Here we root to rise. Embodiment is the reclamation. Welcome to the Venusian Revolution. I'm your host, Diane Shepard, and I'm so glad you're here. I deeply enjoy recording these episodes for you, and it makes me so happy to take a look at the map and see all these women from all over the globe that are tuning in. I appreciate you so much. So whether you are brand new or been around for a long time, just knowing there are women out there who are really interested in this type of feminine embodiment work, words cannot describe it. It's everything. So thank you and welcome, welcome. So in today's episode, I want to go into something I think many women are craving, which is a change of atmosphere. So the title of this episode today is Craving a Change of Atmosphere and Why Venusian Spaces Matter. I want to dive into this and really unpack the deeper philosophy beneath everything I share with you here on the show, but also in this Venus temple that I've created as well. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, about what so many women I think are craving. And what I'm feeling is that I don't think it's another strategy. We've got lots of that. I don't think it's more information. I think we're a bit in uh overload at this point with information. We've got so much information coming at us. And don't get me wrong, I I love to educate myself and learn more, but the amount of information is pretty amazing. And it's not another self-improvement project. We're talking, what are women really craving here, right? Our minds might tell us that we need these things. We need to go in. It's kind of like a hamster wheel, really. Keep learning, keep going, keep improving. But what I think, deep down inside, what many women are craving, even if they don't quite have the words for it yet, is a change of atmosphere. So we aren't encouraged to think about that much, are we? But atmosphere really matters. It's the landscape of our lives. We become shaped by the environments we inhabit, both within our body and without, the air we breathe, the conversations we have, the questions we ask ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves, the expectations placed upon us, the spaces we spend our time in, all of it shapes us. And I think many women have spent years living inside an atmosphere that doesn't feel so good. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of striving, a lot of pushing, a lot of self-surveillance, which our inner critic loves. We talked about that in the last episode. Self-improvement to the extreme, where it becomes toxic, and the constant feeling that they need to become someone other than who they already are, that the answers lie somewhere out there, probably in some expert's hands, somewhere outside of themselves. And for many women, I think that atmosphere becomes really intense at midlife, like almost to a breaking point. The messages get louder, the pressure seems to increase, really dials up. And we have entire industries that are created around women's fear of aging. And these industries begin competing for our attention by convincing us that we're fading, we're declining, it's the beginning of the end, we're becoming less, and that we're one big problem to solve. Can you relate? Yeah. But what if that's not true? What if it's simply not true? What if what many women experience at midlife isn't the beginning of the end, isn't a decline, but an invitation. An invitation to stop fixing, an invitation to start listening, an invitation to remember. Because my own journey into sacred sensuality began with an invitation just like that. Although at the time I didn't fully recognize it as one, but I'll tell you the story. My journey into sacred sensuality began with a doctor's appointment that I'll never forget. I was 40 years old. I had three children, and I was navigating menopause, pelvic issues, galore, emotional roller coaster. My marriage felt really fragile, on the rocks, I would even say. And after my exam, the doctor looked at me and said, Well, it's the beginning of the end. You're drying up. I mean, what else can you expect? And I didn't hear another word because in that moment, an unexpected wave of rage rose through my entire body like a tsunami. And I was swept away by it, to be honest. I couldn't focus on anything she was saying. My like my logical brain just shut down. And I walked out of that office, never returned, of course. I walked out of that office feeling pretty overwhelmed, a little numb, but also with this certainty, like I knew in my heart, in my body, that there had to be more. And so as a result of that experience, a different question began to emerge for me that day. Instead of asking, how do I fix myself? Like, where's the expert? Where are the things I need to, you know, fix myself? I began asking, what is the more? Like I know in my heart there's more. What is the more? Please, universe, passionate plea to the universe. Please show me the way. And as these things go, almost immediately doors began opening. The right teachers appeared, right? When the student is ready, the teacher appears, the right teachers appeared, carrying Taoist practices, tantric practices, rich conversations, experiences, books seem to just fall off the shelves and into my hands. I'm sure you've had similar experiences. And again and again, all of the arrows seem to be pointing towards one thing: pleasure. I'll say it again, pleasure. Pleasure. I often say pleasure is the portal. So for years I followed those arrows, not as a hobby, more like a calling, like it was my job or my PhD. I immersed myself in the study of the sacred feminine, the feminine body, sensuality, embodiment, intimacy and love, holistic sexuality, sacred sensuality and pleasure. And then one day during this journey, I had booked an astrology reading with an astrologer who I have tremendous respect for. And so we're sitting there at the start of the session, and she says, So what do you do for a living? And I told her I taught Pilates. I was a Pilates teacher, which I was at the time. And then she smiled and said, Oh, that's a nice cover. Would you like to hear the deeper story of why you're here? So of course I said, uh, yeah, sure. So she said, You're a secret agent for Venus. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to discover what was once sacred, what has been hidden, forgotten, and labeled taboo. Find it, reclaim it, and make it accessible to modern women. And then she paused, probably noticing the subtle panic on my face. And um she said, Yeah, it's a big job. So we both started laughing, and she said, Oh, don't worry. There are others like you. You have kin. There are kindred spirits. If you build it, they will come. That conversation happened about eight years ago, and it completely changed the atmosphere of my life. What began as a question for more became a path and eventually a living temple, a Venusian mystery school for women navigating midlife and beyond, a place where women come home to their bodies, to their beauty, to their pleasure, their desire, to their love, to the parts of them that were never broken, only forgotten, an atmosphere to remember. And that, my love, is the birth story of the Venus Temple. So I want to dive into a little bit around what exactly makes a space Venusian from my perspective. Well, a Venusian space is built on relationship, relationship with the body, our sensuality, our pleasure, desire, beauty, truth, arrows, life force, love. Not about fixing any of these things, but getting into relationship with them. True healing happens through relationship. Through relationship, beauty and love emerge. Years ago, when I was a student in herbal school, one of our first assignments wasn't to study a plant. The assignment wasn't memorize the medicinal constituents and learn the contraindications. I mean, that came later. The assignment was sit with the plant, be with the plant, listen, observe, develop a relationship with a plant. And what was so fascinating was that as relationship deepened, and I saw this with all of my classmates as well, understanding naturally emerged. And I've come to believe that so much of life works this way, and it is a very Venusian principle. That more that you know in your heart is there, the more that we're seeking emerges not through force or fixing, but through relationship. Pleasure is not an achievement, it's a relationship. And again, that is a deeply Venusian principle. Even your morning coffee or tea can become a sacred relationship. Instead of just gulping it down and hopping on your phone as you do or checking your emails, if you just pause, take a little time to truly savor and receive the scent, the taste, the feel of the mug in your hands, the sounds of mourning, the light streaming in. If you make this a daily ritual, even three to five minutes, I know you'll feel the power of this in just a week. Relationship heals us and awakens our essence. So when we begin relating in this way, getting in relationship, life becomes participatory rather than transactional. Again, a very deeply Venusian principle. And that principle is woven into everything I teach. Sensual breath work, for example, it's about getting into relationship with the breath, truly receiving the medicine of the breath, breath as lover. Breast massage. The breaths are not body parts to fix, they're a relationship to explore, reuniting them with the heart and getting into relationship with the love that we are. The jade egg or the yoni wand, this is so far beyond the key goal. It's about getting in a sensual relationship with this crystal, this gift from the earth. That's one part of it, and that elevates your practice far beyond any pelvic floor therapy can do. It's about getting into relationship, the crystal as a tool, an anchor for your attention to get into relationship with your yoni, with your feminine core, with Eros, with life force itself. These practices are not merely techniques. They are invitations to relationship. So why is midlife the perfect time for Venus work? Well, you can definitely hear that in my origin story. That's how all of this came to be through my whole journey into a different way, a different atmosphere for menopause in midlife. And midlife, I think for many women, is often the moment where the old atmosphere starts getting stale and even stops working, just like everything's wrong. You know that feeling? Yeah, if we can be passionate about like how everything is not working, I get that. Right? The promises that don't deliver, the striving can become exhausting. We're just not willing to do that anymore. The masks that we have to put on start to become really heavy. We just want to ditch them, like shed them. Yeah, many women find themselves asking, Yeah, I know in my heart there's got to be more. And what I want to say is that is not a crisis. It's a wake-up call from Venus herself. It's a Venusian initiation, the initiation many women never received and didn't even know they needed until things get to that point. In Taoism, we call this initiation second spring. I love that reframe. A rebirth, a sacred, sensual, sexual, and spiritual rebirth. Just the other day, one of the women in my world said to me, you know, I'm 66 years old, and I feel so juicy and alive. I feel like I'm just getting started. Yeah, and I was like, that just makes my heart sing. And I get to hear comments like that often from the women who are engaging in this work. It is powerful. So this Venus Temple that I've built, the Vital Goddess Mastery Space, isn't really a course. Although, yes, we do have a curriculum and structure. I'm I'm a nerd that way. I like a I like a good structure and a good map. We have that. We have a lot of guided practices. You could probably guess if you listen to this podcast for a while. We're into that. We have live sessions where we meet once a week. But what we're really creating is something more subtle, harder to describe, more sublime, I think is a better word. It's a sanctuary, it's a field, it's a Venusian ecosystem. And perhaps the simplest way I can describe it is this. The work of the Venus Temple isn't to tell women who they are or who they should be. It's to create enough spaciousness so they can hear themselves again. Because the Venus Temple is not built on self-improvement. It's built on self-remembrance, not convincing women that they're broken, not feeding that machine of self-improvement, but creating the conditions where something forgotten can be remembered, something sacred, something beautiful, something wise. A place where a woman can remember and reclaim what was once sacred, what has been hidden, forgotten, and labeled taboo. And again, reclaim it for herself, not as an idea, but as a lived experience in her body. And perhaps that's why Venusian spaces really matter. Because remembrance requires a supportive atmosphere to get into relationship with yourself. And sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to not focus on fixing and changing ourselves, but to step into an entirely different field, a different paradigm, and allow that field to support what becomes possible when we say yes to the body and yes to pleasure. Your body has a vote, and patriarchy has done a pretty darn good job of gerrymandering the districts, so that vote easily loses its voice. Most of us have become very familiar with the mental yes, really operating from the mental space most of the time. And a mental yes sounds like, yeah, that makes sense. I should do this. This seems logical. This is the next best step. This would, this is, this would be good. I got, yeah, I got this, that kind of thing. And sometimes the mental yes is required. It can be really useful. And yet the mental yes can often feel like a contraction in the body, like we're overriding the body. So what we try to do in my work is harmonize this relationship better because we need our mental yes, we need that logic, we need that analytical mind. But if that's the only space we're operating out of, we're not going to feel so good. But there's another kind of yes, a somatic yes, an embodied yes. The somatic yes often doesn't arrive as mental clarity and certainty. It arrives as resonance. This could be a softening or a melting feeling in the heart or the womb. A deep exhale. Many women feel tingling or goosebumps. For me, it's often these soft, bubbly champagne bubbles in my heart and in my breasts. That's when I know I'm like, ooh, that's that embodied yes feeling. And it can change, but that's that's a common one for me. And I invite you to feel in what your somatic yes feels like and really get to know it, get to know the signature. It's a quiet sense of recognition. There's often a gentle cellular expansion in the embodied yes that can easily be overridden by the logical mind. But when you feel that embodied yes, when you're leaning in, I want you to notice, yeah, what does that feel like? And give some space for your body to feel it. It's that feeling of like, I don't know exactly why. And maybe this doesn't even logically make sense, but this feels right for me. There's so much wisdom in that, so much Venusian wisdom in that. And I want to invite you to get really good at feeling that gentle cellular expansion, that quiet, embodied yes. Start to lean into that and trust that. It's such an important piece of this journey. Your body has a wisdom all her own. And if you're feeling called to explore this work more deeply with me, the doors to the Venus Temple are officially open. Solstice Weekend. It's such a beautiful time to begin. And although our next semester officially begins in late August, that's when we start to meet live on Zoom and dive into the curriculum in a more organized way. I always love inviting women in on the early side. It's a much more Venusian way to enter. No rushing, no cramming, no pressure, no trying to catch up, just a soft saunter into a new chapter of your life, a new atmosphere, a new paradigm. So if you're feeling that embodied, yes, your Venusian summer begins here. A season to explore the practices at your leisure, to listen to the replays, to wander and browse through the library, to immerse yourself in the jade rebirth, jade egg journey, to set up your sacred space, gather your supplies, your sensual crystals, your scents, your textiles, your botanical oils, all the good things, maybe some chocolate or cacao, special teas. Like, I can go on and on. I really like to encourage women to do it up, goddess style, Venus style. And to just slowly cultivate a deeper relationship with yourself. That's part of the journey, right? Taking your time to set all that up for yourself is really part of the journey. And to celebrate the women entering on the early side. This season also includes our Venusian summer tuition, which is 30% off the entire tuition. So joining now during this solstice weekend, this solstice season is a great time to begin. And you'll also receive a private settle you in session with me so that we can connect, get you oriented to the landscape, answer any questions you may have. I can even help you shop for your jade egg or your crystal egg, your Yoni wand, things like that. And just really to help you discover your own unique pathway into the temple. I love helping women set up their space, you know, feel comfortable. So then again, when our semester starts in August, you'll feel really grounded and ready. And perhaps one of the things I love most about this community is that there's never any pressure to rush through this experience. The feminine hates pressure. Venus hates pressure. So once you join, you'll continue to be invited back into future semesters, live sessions, or evolving temple offerings at no extra cost. So once you're in, you're in. There's never pressure to hurry through your experience. There's never pressure to, you know, I don't upsell anything or anything like that. But what I really want you to hear is that your unfolding cannot be rushed. So yeah, once you're in, you're in, and you can come back. And women have been loving that option. We've been gathering this way for over for about six years now. And many women tell me that knowing that they can come back again and again, can return again and again, is one of the most nurturing aspects of this experience. So if, like so many women in my world, you've been craving more and you're feeling that embodied yes, that gentle cellular expansion, I have a hunch that you're a kindred spirit. And I would love to invite you into this Venus Temple. You can learn more about everything that the Vital Goddess Mastery offers, which is quite a lot, and join us through a link you'll find in the show notes. So, all that being said, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from astrologer and mythologist Caroline W. Casey. She says, Venus says there's no solution to any problem unless beauty and love are present. Isn't that beautiful? And the older I get, the more true that feels. So that's all for this episode. Until next time, take good care of your beautiful self. Thank you, my love, for joining me in today's episode. And if something true stirred within you, that's the wisdom of your feminine speaking. Lean into that, trust that. And until next time, soften, breathe, and let love leads to the city.