Sensual Being
A podcast hosted by Jolene, tapping into your inner wildness, and how you connect with yourself, others and the world around you.
With 20 years experience teaching woman to pole dance, an addiction to Yoga, and a desire to connect with animals and be in nature, Jolene will unlock parts of your soul you didn't know needed unlocking.
This postcast covers many topics including; confidence, intimacy, kink, intentions, and becoming more aware of how we see ourselves.
Sensual Being
Ep 95 - Closing a Chapter After 20 Years
Have you ever felt trapped by an identity you've outgrown? After dedicating over two decades to teaching pole dancing, I'm sharing the raw, emotional journey of closing my beloved studio and retiring from a career that has defined me for most of my adult life.
This episode takes you through my evolution from an "OG" pole dancer who fought to legitimize the art form to someone ready for the next chapter. I reveal the conflicting emotions of excitement for new beginnings alongside the deep grief of ending something meaningful by choice. It's a strange paradox – feeling liberated while simultaneously mourning a loss that was entirely my decision.
The heart of this conversation explores the dangerous territory of identifying too strongly with what we do. When strangers, friends, and even we ourselves begin to believe "this is who I am" rather than "this is what I do," we create invisible cages that limit our potential for growth and transformation. I share how people's shocked reactions to my decision ("But you're a pole dancing teacher, what else can you do?") reveal everything wrong with how we view human potential.
Whether you're considering a major life change or simply feeling stuck in patterns that no longer serve you, this episode offers gentle permission to create plot twists in your own story. Remember: pivots don't need to be dramatic to be transformative. Sometimes changing where you sit for dinner can shift your entire perspective. Your life is yours to author – what twist might you write next?
- If you would like to connect further you can find me on Instagram @jolenesensualbeing
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I hope you enjoy your day.
Jolene
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Hello and welcome to the Sensual being podcast with myself, your host, jolene Whiting. I have been a pole dance teacher for nearly 20 years. I'm also a yoga instructor and my favorite pastimes are connecting to my own sensuality, connecting with the world and connecting with animals as well. In this podcast, you'll find new and inventive ways of how you see yourself, connecting yourself with others, and also how you see and view the world around you. In today's episode, we look at how making a plot twist in your own life can completely change your world. Hello, sensual being, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining today.
Speaker 1:I really hope that this episode finds you and your family and your loved ones really well and really getting into the feels of spring. I say it every time at the moment, but it's so important. Oh my God. We have just had, and we're currently still having, really nice sunny weather in the UK and yeah, not going to lie, it's well needed, particularly for this turning point in my own life. I've really been grateful for the sun to help lift my spirits, because this episode is going to come to you with some heavy news from myself and heavy news I have actually shared out to my students this past week at my pole dancing school, purity Studio. So I have actually taken the plunge to actually close a big part of my business not all of my business, but to close the pole dancing studio that I currently have. And I thought this was a very interesting topic to talk about, because it's not easy. It is not easy at all and I thought if I can share with you some of how I have been dealing with it, or mainly how I came to the decision as well, because when we have been doing something for so long, we actually identify with it and we are so much more. We are so much more than these things that we identify ourselves with. So I have been teaching pole dancing for over 20 years. I've been doing it now for about 22, but I've been actually teaching it actively for over 20 years and I am one of the world's longest serving pole dance instructors.
Speaker 1:I'm what they call an OG pole dancer. I'm pretty sure that stands for old school, gangster pole dance teacher, but anyway, I'm not quite sure, but OG anyway, old school. I was there when it all started, like early, early days. I wasn't the first pole dancing teacher by any means, but I have been there throughout a lot of the times when, if it wasn't for us trying our hardest to get pole dancing in to like gyms, like into studios, into dance studios and hiring so many different places I mean I started off hiring in a function room of a bar because bars and clubs were the only places that would have us and we had to do a hell of a lot of work.
Speaker 1:Some people compromised the dance side just to go down the more fitness angle, which, to be honest, that still goes on today. And I say each to your own, you can, I've always said you can make pole dancing what it is for you. But for me, during that time of trying to get pole dancing accepted as a legit form of fun fitness exercise whatever you want to call it I ended up doing it as pole dancing for fitness and my school used to be called Purity Pole Dancing. That was the original name. That was the original name and, funny enough, it was called purity because not that we were necessarily pure, it wasn't that at all, but it was more that at the time again, this was a way of helping me get it into more places because they were like oh, we don't want lap dancing here. We don't want striptease here and I'm like I haven't said anything about that. This is actually purely pole dancing and that's where the name come from.
Speaker 1:For purity, because that literally all the time, was what I was teaching. I wasn't teaching anything else. Um, I also didn't feel qualified to teach anything else because I thought, well, I, by that, at that point I had never been a stripper or a lap dancer. By that point. That came a lot later on in my little pole dancing career and, yeah, so when I started it was literally that. So that's where the name actually came from and it's just grown over the years. It's just grown and we call ourselves the purer team, which was actually invented by one of my students, chrissy, and she was like, yeah, we're like the purer team and I was just like, oh, that's cute and it's just kind of stuck over the years. So I always use that um, but yeah, so I've been teaching this for a very long time.
Speaker 1:I have seen pole dancing go from many different angles and everything and different competitions. Now, I mean, I remember once upon a time, once upon a time back in my day so, when we used to do like competitions and like if, like when I did this pole dance, I remember that they checked everybody's shorts to make sure they covered the gluteal crease, so the bit where your butt meets meets the top of your leg. So you couldn't wear thongs, panties or anything like that. You had to wear shorts. And you know they're trying to make it respectable, you know, and things like that, and it went down this whole route of that and it was so disjointed and there was a lot of shaming within the pole dancing community as well, and we've we've done a lot of work to try and get away from that shaming, to try and make it so fitnessy, you know, and we don't want to lose where it come from.
Speaker 1:I mean, I remember the reason why I started pole dancing is because I used to go to strip clubs when I'd literally just turned 18. I was like, oh my God, I can go to strip clubs. So I went and I was just watching these dancers. Some of them didn't even have to do much on the pole. It wasn't about all the tricks that they did or anything like that, but it was about how they moved and I was just like, oh my god, they're like beings from another world. They look amazing. I want, I want some of that. How can I be that? What can I do like? This looks incredible, like the sexual magnetism power that they exuded just by walking onto the stage and I was just like whoa, whoa, this is amazing. I want to be like this, and so that was my quest. That's why I started.
Speaker 1:But to try and keep it going all those years has been really tough, really really tough, and I was very fortunate that my first studio I had it for five years when I was in Reading and that was my own studio and that was the first one I got like that and it was still a bit unheard of at that time that you would have a dedicated studio for it. I mean, when I first started, definitely not the way, not in the UK anyway, but yeah. So as time went on and I left there and I actually left Reading and that was where I started. I taught in Reading for 10 years and I left Reading and I moved to somewhere else called Andover in the UK and it didn't have any pole dancing at the time and I was like, oh my gosh, I could set it up. This would be amazing, because I always tried to set up pole dancing where there wasn't any.
Speaker 1:So I used to travel out to all different locations as well as doing Redding, because I wanted to try and make it more accessible for people, because my first ever lesson I had to travel two hours and take I think it was two trains, or maybe it was a train and two undergrounds, I'm not sure, but I was traveling from my home into the heart of London to have these lessons because I was like, oh my God, I found pole dancing lessons and they were the first ones that I had ever found that weren't in a strip club, and my partner at the time he didn't want me going down that route and I respected that as well. So I was like, okay, but I still want to do this. And I found these classes and they're like two hours away. To be fair, they were still some of the closest classes I had ever found to me. So I wanted to try and negate that when I started teaching. So, therefore, I was trying to bring it into areas, and there are still so many areas that don't have it.
Speaker 1:It's madness to think there's so many areas in the UK that still don't have any pole dancing that you still have to travel out. I mean, even in my classes, where I have been for the past 10 years, people still travel like half an hour, 40 minutes to get to me. And that's not necessarily because there's nothing around there are more schools around now but it's finding the ones. That's not necessarily because there's nothing around there are more schools around now but it's finding the ones that really fit you, because every teacher will teach it differently. And this, again, is where the beauty is with pole dancing. It's also where the heartache is. The heartache because, like me, I'm closing my, so we have a particular vibe there. That vibe has been made by me, the space and the students, our collective energy of what we've intended to bring into the studio. Now that energy will go other places, but it will never be the same and it's trying to accept every pole dancing school or teacher to be what it is, not what you've had. And it's really hard to do that because, like I say, this is where the beauty and the heartache is.
Speaker 1:When you find something that you, someone that you really love, or a place you love, friends you love, and you're vibing with them, and then you can't anymore. That's really hard, but whilst it's good, good, it's really good and that's uh, I do intentions at the start of every lesson, particularly for pole dancing, and a lot of my intentions are around appreciating the time that we have together, because it's time is always fleeting it always, always is and again. This is why this part of my journey and sharing it with you feels very potent and very relevant, because I think it can hit home in many, many different ways because, like I said, it's not easy when you identify as something, because I've actually said recently that I'm looking at retiring from teaching pole dancing. So I'm not even just closing the studio, I'm not even going to be trying to get lessons elsewhere, because it's been 20 years Now with my current studio, because I'm there for another couple of weeks. It's actually closed in the end of March 2025. So we've got a couple of weeks left.
Speaker 1:The reason why it came to a head it's been coming to a head for a few years and I've been really trying hard to get, like help with the studio and things like that, and it's really hard to get people who are really committed and you know, last year I had I lost a teacher, like they didn't, they didn't want to carry on anymore and literally basically just threw it back in my face and I was like, wow, okay, you're not the person I thought you were. Oh my gosh, um. So that hurt and I thought, no, I couldn't have anyone teaching for purity again. But then someone else came through the ranks and I thought, oh my god, she would be amazing, she'd be amazing. And so I held on because in that time of holding on, everything at my studio changed. So where I was starting to do yoga and meditation at the studio, that all had to go because of activity, of noise that had then recently become a thing next door. That had then recently become a thing next door. And as much as I really tried hard to sort it out, I basically got let's say, I didn't get treated as nicely as I thought I would put it that way from the center. So you know, things change. You know I don't know, but yeah, it's um, and so basically what I did was I started hiring elsewhere on top of my studio, on top of my studio, I started hiring elsewhere. So, again, more cost.
Speaker 1:But I really wanted to do these other classes of, like spiritual yoga, more sacred dance, meditation, but I couldn't do them there because the noise next door was causing so much of an issue. The noise next door was causing so much of an issue, and so if I wanted to do those classes at the studio which one of them I did keep I had to work extra late. Now the problem was I wanted people to help me at the studio because I couldn't do the late nights anymore, and my partner has been so good for about or I'd say about six to nine months now he's been taking me almost every single night, every class, just to try and help me, and that has been so beautiful of him to do that, and he just fits it into his day now like it's expected, and I'm like I still. I'm like, oh, are you taking me tonight? Like asking, not, not assuming, and you're like, well, yeah, of course, and I'm just like it's so sweet, you know.
Speaker 1:So I've been getting help in that sort of way, but the fact that one of my classes, which had both pole dancing and meditation at the end, I mean that's a hard one to find another location, another venue for, so I had to start working late again to be able to do that, and it it just my health couldn't take it. It's doing the late nights. I think something's just changed. I don't know if it's an age thing or just I've done it for so long that my body's like, um, excuse me, hello, we are here, can you please listen to me? And I'm like, yeah, I am listening, just give me a minute, I just need to find another teacher and things like that. Hold on just a moment. And you know, and I've had to really scale back a lot of my lessons and everybody has been so understanding about that over the last sort of few months. But yeah, it's, it's just all all come to a head.
Speaker 1:And what made it really come to a head was when I knew that there wasn't any help coming for purity. I asked myself I said, okay, yeah, no, that's fine. We've been in this situation before. Okay, so am I happy staying here for another year, maybe two years, to see if I could get someone else to help? And I thought, oh my, it was an instant no, like oh my god, no, I'm not. I thought, oh, okay, am I happy to stay here for another six months and try, and really I mean that's a short amount of time to get somebody new coming in to go through like qualifications and things. That's too much pressure. But I also thought am I up for staying here for another another six months like this, feeling like this? And I thought, oh my god, no, I'm not. And that was that was a turning point. I thought, thought, oh my God, I've got to leave.
Speaker 1:And then when I realized that, I was like, okay, which month do I do it? And then I actually wanted to leave end of February, but the dates didn't work out for me. They didn't work out at all, because I've got to sort of put the studio back to how it was when I moved in 10 years ago and it just didn't work out that way. I'd have to cut a week of teaching and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to get like a full four weeks of the month. Hence why it's now been moved to March.
Speaker 1:And I'm very lucky, in a way, with my unit that I hire because it's a license, it's a 30 day in, 30 day out, and when I was starting this as a newer business venture there, then that felt very good. Like I didn't want to sign a lease for like, oh, do you want a five-year lease? I was like, hell, no, no, thank you. Um, I don't know if this is going to work. So I bought all like portable stage x poles, which are absolutely brilliant for when you're starting out. They are not the best to learn on. For when you're starting out they are not the best to learn on, but when you're starting a new business that is the way to go, because you can just sell them off if it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:And there was carpet in the studio, we had to put beams up, put a floor down, and all of that took time and money. And also we wanted to know if this was a sure thing, which I can tell you 10 years later. We wanted to know if this was a sure thing, which I can tell you 10 years later it really was a sure thing. But yeah. So I had a 30 day agreement, which means that I mean it works both ways. They could have given me 30 days at any point, so it could have been a bit sticky, but you know they never did, which was good. But yeah, so it's a 30 30 day. So where a lot of people may have had like, oh, my lease is coming to an end in six months, you know, and I know I'm not going to renew, you can have more time to really tell people. But I I didn't have that, that kind of time really and I didn't want to tell people.
Speaker 1:In February it felt too soon and then part of me, after the heartache of telling people, oh, my god, I'm not going to lie to you. Seriously, if your heart is set on doing something, you know it's for the greater good and you know why you're doing it. You have to stay really strong and keep reminding yourself of the, the reason why, over and over again. Because when you tell people who had been coming to the studio about 80, 85 percent of my students, I told last week, have been coming to my studio for between five and ten years every week, even during the pandemic. Even then they still came to me. And when I say came to me, we did it all online in that time. So these, these are people who mean a lot to me. They mean a hell of a lot. So it meant a lot to tell them face to face, to sit down with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that last week brought up a lot of upset and actually going through this as well has brought up a hell of a lot of feelings of grief. So when, when it was time to have my dog put to sleep, mr Bones, I love Mr Bones. It got to a point and I thought, oh my god, this needs to happen. He's gonna have a fall and it's gonna be horrific unless I do something about this now, because his arthritis and his front legs were so bad he was just falling over. And if he fell over, oh well, I didn't want to go down that route of what could have happened. So I put a day in to be like a three or four days away kind of thing. So I had that, and also at the same not at the same time but in the same feelings, years ago, when my dad was passing, when I found out that he was terminal and there was nothing that could be done, yeah, those two pockets of time, that grief that surrounds there, where you think, oh, you know well, what do we want to do, what do we want to say before, you know, the inevitable happens.
Speaker 1:Those feelings have all been coming up for me over this past week and it's made things very difficult at times because I have this feeling. You know, I've been asking my students like oh, what songs should we do leading up to it? What warmups did you love, you know, and things like that, and it suddenly hit me that the grief of what we are losing is. It suddenly hit me how hard that part is, even though I would say it's good grief as in good grief, but it's good grief as in. I have picked this. This means that my life is going to open up, because I've done this for so long and I've really enjoyed it. But now it's time to move on and I'm really excited about that. I am so excited about the next chapter in my life, the freedom of being able to do something different.
Speaker 1:But the grief is still there and it hurts, in a similar way to losing loved ones which you don't want to lose. It's really. It's so confusing. It's a bit like when people are stressed, but it can be a good stress. People say, oh, sometimes it's a good stress that they've got. You know, maybe they're moving house and you know, yeah, I know I'm stressed, but I know it's a good thing that's happening. You know you can have good stresses, but you can also have really bad ones, but the two are very linked in together.
Speaker 1:No-transcript, I did not want to lose them and in some ways I haven't lost them. I've still got my dad with me. I've still got Mr Bones with me, but you know, that feeling is so similar. It's very derailing, it's extremely derailing. I've had so much support around this Everyone whilst there was not a dry eye in the studio last week, everybody has been so supportive and respect the fact that I wanted to tell them face to face. I did not want to put this out as just an announcement on social media. They had to hear it from me because it really meant, it still means. It means so much to me. But that type of grief is still grief, even though for me, life is. I feel like it's opening up. It feels so expansive. I feel so different in so many ways. But I'm also grieving hard and it like I say it, this is so confusing. You've just got it.
Speaker 1:If you're in a position of making a heavy decision, a choice or something, you just got to remember your why. You must remember it, write it down, use it as a mantra every day. Why you were doing this? Because you can feel like a really bad person when you were grieving. You can feel like you've done something wrong or you weren't good enough. All of those feelings have come up for me as well, and when you start asking yourself those sort of things like what have I done wrong? I've done something wrong, that is not a good path to go down, because there is no answer to that and a lot of the time those questions aren't even valid. They're just feelings that are bubbling up, that they're not even relevant, but they're still there. So we must not feed those feelings and thoughts are not relevant, as in we mustn't give them the time of day, we mustn't let those feelings rule our day because, like I said, they're not, those aren't real. Your why is a real thing? Yeah, so you can see the difference.
Speaker 1:And I really find this particular thought interesting, and this one I've been thinking about a lot lately is do you think it is easier to finish something that you have been doing for a long time or to start something new? Because they are both. I can tell you from my experience I'm having right now. They are both on par, and when you you might have a quick answer you might think, oh, starting something new is much easier. Oh, leaving something? Definitely really think about that.
Speaker 1:Think about it in terms of relationships, careers, learning, qualifications, putting yourself out there in a new way. So, for example, when I did this podcast for the first time, coming up to two years ago, nearly two years ago this isn't me. And this is where that, if we identify with all these things that we do, when you try and do something different and you're trying to create a new identity, it can be really hard because if we look at it as an identity thing, that can be so damaging because it's so limiting. And it's so funny because when I started, when I wanted to leave office work, I did office work for five years when I wanted to leave that and do pole dancing and do that as a career or I didn't know career, but I wanted to teach it as my job. So I guess, yeah, that is a career. Um, when I wanted to do that, the amount of backlash I had from people in the office like you can't do that, that's not a real job, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:But actually now in the last sort of year or so, there have been a few people I have spoken to about this outside of my like support circle and saying, yeah, I think I'll do something different at some point. And they're like, yeah, but you're a pole dancing teacher, what else can you do? And I was like whoa, that's everything wrong with the world. That thought is everything wrong with the world. You know, we will never break free from patterns that we're in if we don't take that plunge.
Speaker 1:And this is where be really careful about how much you identify with something, and when I say something, I can mean a career, a fitness, a way of being. Are you a happy person? Are you a sad person? Don't identify with either of those, even if you're like, yeah, but a happy person, that's great. No, because you don't give yourself permission to be sad. Yeah, so I don't know what that noise was. Sorry about that? Um, but yes, being really careful about how you identify with things, even illnesses.
Speaker 1:I know people that the first thing they tell me is they'll tell me yeah, hi, I'm so and so, and I've got this. It's like whoa, hello, how are you today? You know who, you know, it's okay, who are you? First, before the illness, and it's like I've had it before where people have been a victim of something really bad in their life years ago and they'll introduce me to me as yeah, hi, yeah, my name's so and so, and I was stabbed 12 years ago. And I'm like as yeah, hi, yeah, my name is so and so and I was stabbed 12 years ago and I'm like what you know? It's like, oh, hang on a minute. Now I have to process this and you're still processing it, you're leading with it. Hang on a minute.
Speaker 1:This is all like oh, this could be a whole other podcast episode in itself of how we identify, but it seems so relevant with how I identify, I personally identify, and how other people identify me as well. And even something else just to throw into the mix like I started playing a lot of instruments over the last couple of years and I have also started singing or have I just carried on singing, who knows? But I feel like I have found like a really lovely singing voice and it really lights me up. I absolutely love it. I love it. It's so cute. I just oh, sometimes I just can't get enough of like. It's almost like it's like young me coming out when I, when I sing like just this carefree kid having fun, and that is how I want to lead through my life is being this carefree kid enjoying life. Yes, I've got responsibility. Yes, I've got bills to pay. Yes, I want to be a full-time slutty earth fairy, but yes, I still have my taxes to do.
Speaker 1:There's a duality in life of things sometimes, but how you are choosing to live your life is so, so important and just make sure that you are doing the things in your life that you want to do. And if you've stayed with something for a while and you're like I don't, I don't want to do this anymore, then it's your life. You get the chance to rewrite. Do a plot twist, pivot, and it can be magical. But just remember there is a guilt or grief that goes with it and guilt. I didn't even touch on guilt, my god. Yes, I feel guilty for closing the studio. Let's just leave it there. Yes, I do, I am not going to lie, I definitely do.
Speaker 1:But remember you are the lead in your own life. Don't live somebody else's life. Don't do things just because somebody else is doing them and you think that you should be doing it too. You don't have to be a sheep, you don't have to follow and even if you just take baby steps to do different things in your life, these pivots and plot twists don't have to be big.
Speaker 1:This is a big one for me, this is a very big one. They don't have to be big, they might be smaller. It might be as simple as changing where you sit when you eat your food. I always sit in this chair. Let's change it up today. These things do not have to be big to make a big impact in your world. Thank you so much for listening to that. Remember, as always, to lead through your life with your heart and to live with intention. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with your friends and on social media. If you have the time to rate or review this podcast, I'd be ever so grateful. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Jolene Sensual being. The links to my YouTube and to sign up to my mailing list will be in the show notes as well. I look forward to speaking with you again very soon.