Stan Dale, PhD(h) – HAI Global Founder
Radio Talk Show Host and Entertainer
Founder of the Human Awareness Institute
Originator of the Love, Intimacy & Sexuality Workshop Series
Stan Dale’s Career in Media
A New Yorker by birth, Stan spent 19 years in Chicago, where he originated and hosted a psychology-based call-in talk show. Prior to that he was a popular DJ and a radio show actor whose voice was heard in living rooms across the United States. Some of the memorable radio programs he worked on were The Lone Ranger, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and The Green Hornet. For a brief period Stan was the voice of The Shadow.
For more than 20 years after his arrival in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972, Stan was the host of numerous radio talk shows on KGO, KSFO, and K101. He also appeared as a guest on several television shows including Donahue, Oprah, Joan Rivers, Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael and CNBC’s Real Sex.
The Korean War Years
In 1953, in the midst of his successful career in radio, Stan was drafted into the US Army Signal Corps and sent to Korea, transitioning from “Stan the Radio Man” to PFC Dale. After 9 difficult months in Korea, he was transferred to Tokyo, Japan and given a radio program with US Armed Services Radio. The format of his show was person-to-person interviews with a wide range of American Service Personnel, talking to the “man-in-the-street,” drawing attention to the various programs and services the US was providing in both Japan and Korea.
As part of that task, Stan a
ttended a Hollywood party at a famous Tokyo geisha house in honor of a new movie about to be shot in Japan and Hong Kong – Joe Butterfly starring Audie Murphy and Keenan Wynn. While at the geisha house, in a conversation with the owner, Stan was invited and gratefully accepted the offer to come live there and learn about the geisha tradition.
Stan observed the geisha training – their commitment to treating their customers with dignity, respect, understanding, compassion and respect. This experience fostered his intention to treat everyone he interacted with in this loving and accepting manner and to also teach others how to think and feel in this honoring way.
Stan Dale, the Stan Dale Workshops, and the Human Awareness Institute
In mid-August of 1968, the 39-year-old Stan Dale noticed that many of the callers to his radio show wanted to talk about sex and intimacy. At the time, station owners were concerned with losing their FCC Broadcast license if they allowed talk about those taboo topics on the air.
Stan took the huge step to invite his listeners to join him for a weekend of informative, heart-opening, sex-positive celebration that he called “The Sex Workshop”. Part lecture, part exercises, part sharing, Stan created an event to help people explore, experience and talk about this very human, yet very hidden activity – SEX. At the same time Stan began to integrate the lessons of his geisha experience into these events.
In 1972, after being forced off the air in Chicago for being too supportive of the anti-war movement, Stan moved to Santa Rosa, California. He brought his radio show to K101 (then to KSFO, and ultimately to KGO) and he began looking for a venue for his workshops. He hoped to locate the workshops at a site that was conducive to deep personal exploration, with room to grow. He also hoped to find a venue that resonated with Stan’s expansive vision of “creating a world where everyone wins”. After a couple of years at Orr Hot Springs, Stan found Harbin Hot Springs and Harbin embraced Stan and HAI.
Stan used to say of the workshops, that it was as if he had found a big beautiful gem lying on the path in front of him and he picked it up and began to polish it. That gem was HAI. He applied his advanced knowledge of human sexuality to help people become comfortable with sexuality and understand that touch and intimacy doesn’t have to be sexual. First on his own and later under his leadership the HAI faculty created workshops, relationship retreats and seminars catering to adults of all ages, relationship statuses, ethno-cultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, physical abilities, gender identities, and sexual orientations and/or practices
Since 1968 more than 85,000 people have attended the Human Awareness Institute’s workshops and seminars in various parts of the United States, Canada, Russia, Europe, Australia and Japan.
Stan Dale’s Passing
Stan’s 
health was compromised by cancer and other health issues in the last couple of years of his life. He died peacefully, in the hospital, June 8, 2007, with his loving wife Janet and other family members at his side.
There was a celebration of his life in San Francisco, on June 25, 2007, attended by over 1000 people. A DVD of the presentation was lovingly created. There were also regional celebrations around the world.
The flame of his love will burn eternally in the thousands upon thousands of people’s hearts who have been touched, either by Stan directly or by the beautiful workshops that he founded and are now part of his legacy. HAI, now HAI Global, a not-for-profit corporation, is alive and well and will continue to flourish as Stan wished.
Aphorisms and epigrams Stan was known for:
- Fantasies can set you free.
- There are no rules for jumping into the “new.” No one’s ever been there before.
- If not now, when?
- I know you, you’re just like me.
- Every second we each get a second chance.
- It all changed when I realized I’m not the only one on the planet who’s scared. Everyone else is, too.
- All endings automatically equal new beginnings.
- Comfort zones are plush lined coffins. When you stay in your plush lined coffins, you die.
- Children are not horses that need to be broken.
- Welcome home to your heart.
- You can’t lose your temper.
- Have your emotions, don’t let your emotions have you.
- Loving yourself starts with loving yourself.
- No one can make you do anything you will not do (not even at the point of a gun).
- Our experience is not the result of our circumstances, it is the result of our thoughts about our circumstances.
- A wonderful way to wake up-kiss your partner’s feet and heart. It only takes a couple of minutes.
- Awareness plus experience equals potency.
- Bless your former partners for all they have taught you.
- Love and like have nothing to do with each other.
- There is either love or violence.
- There is no behavior called love (only loving type behavior).
- Love is not an emotion. It’s a choice.
- All human behavior is either an act of love or a cry for love.
- Permission is one the most powerful psychic forces we know. When you are given permission to be intelligent, creative, or unafraid, you are far more likely to do so, than if you forge ahead on your own.
- Permission could be called encouragement or “I believe in you”.
- We do not own our children. They have been entrusted to our care for the youthful period of their lives, not their adult lives.
- Why let someone you don’t know, like Freud, etc. label your sexuality?
- If you want a label, how about naturosexual – naturally sexual.
- Fear is a negative fantasy.
- Most people in our culture are adrenaline addicts. Adrenaline is more powerful than heroin.
- Stop shoulding on yourself.
- You are who you think you are. But who you think you are is not really who you are, you are much more magnificent than you think.
- The awesome power of fantasy is awesome.
- Is that thought or belief serving you?
- Are you looking for the obvious?
- Intimacy = In to Me You See
- QTIP = Quit Taking it Personally
- A man would rather jump out of a plane attached to a bit of fabric than say I love you
- Tell me you love me; that’s nice. Tell me the truth and I know you love me.
- What is SEX? Sacred Energy eXchange. Spiritual Energy eXchange. Sensual Energy eXchange.
- Who said so, and why did you believe them?
- The paradox is you have to be potent to be vulnerable. And you have to be vulnerable to be potent.
- Your parents are just a little boy and a little girl who had sex one day, and nine months later you came along.
- Don’t worship at the altar of your emotions.
- Every parent to child transaction (looking down shaking finger at child) will elicit a child to parent response (looking up at parent, flipping him/her off)
- Fear, the dirtiest four letter word
- Love is like the sun – it shines 24 hours a day, whether you notice it or not
- Love is the answer. What is the question?
- If love isn’t your message, what is?
- If you don’t go within, you’ll go without.
- Violence is a cry for love.
- Please don’t hold back your tears because they wash both of us clean
Additional Information
There are some wonderful tributes to Stan on the web, including these:
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Guest Book at SFGate, where you can see many comments and add your own
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Stan Dale: Sexual Pioneer, by Marty Klein
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Stan Dale, Sex & Intimacy Pioneer, by Susan Mernit
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The Voice and Heart of Stan Dale, by Dan Murphy