My my my, Yes, I said Vaginal Steaming
If you've never heard of this practice, and you have a pelvis, keep reading.
I know what you’re thinking, what kind of Beverly Hills bourgeoise elite fad is this?
Give me five minutes of your reading time, and by the end of this article you will understand how and why it could serve you, and just about every woman and girl you know. (And men, it’s really good for you too.)
Vaginal steaming is actually a thousands-of-years-old practice, with modern practitioners finding documentation in nearly 50 different cultures around the world. It is utilizing two of the most simple yet powerful forces in our natural world: herbs and steam.
It is nourishing, cleansing, grounding and empowering women all over the world today, as vaginal steaming has seen a resurrection, thanks our ability to communicate with healers from around the globe. And a few brave committed women.
Science is being done, peer reviewed tests and studies have happened for the first time in history, to validate the midwives and wise women’s claims.
Vaginal Steaming Serves All Women
Here’s a short list of benefits of this centuries old, yet modern practice:
align with the innate force of healing within
reduce pain, cramping, and bloating from menstruation
regulate menstruation cycles
reduce uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, and endometriosis
repair vaginal tears, scars, and episiotomies
treat painful endometriosis
treat hemorrhoids & organ prolapse
alleviate painful sex & enhance libido
enhance your sexual sensitivity
boost fertility and help women conceive
ease menopause symptoms: dryness, hormones, painful sex
clear up bacteria or yeast infections
drain painful cysts, heal from cyst ruptures
expel fibroids
resolve unexplained infertility
boost postpartum recovery, including blood pressure, pulse, uterine restoration, reduction of weight and waist size, healing of tears, gapping and swelling, the expulsion of lochia, bowel regularity and hemorrhoid reduction
My long love affair with vaginal steaming
I first found this practice in a training for Maya Abdominal Massage certification in Denver 2014. I immediately went home and started experimenting.
Before I started, my complaints were very common, and at the time I wouldn’t even call them symptoms, but just regular old PMS. Painful cramps, mood rollercoasters, low libido, breast soreness, bloating, irregularity, heavy bleeding, digestion issues… these were just what all women had, right?
Within one month of treatments, intuitively self guided, I discovered so much about myself. All those PMS symptoms vanished. I experienced for the first time in my life a REAL normal healthy period.
What I experienced:
I was blown away, because I had been exploring pelvic empowerment for almost 10 years by then. How had I never found this amazing practice before?!
Within one cycle all my most painful and uncomfortable PMS symptoms disappeared, and haven’t returned.
I started having lovely 28 day cycles with easy 4 day bleeds, where I found myself very in tune, naturally slower paced, introspective, and allowing.
That’s not all. For the previous 8 months I had been trying to get pregnant, with my wasband (my ex-husband). I didn’t think I was having trouble yet, but puzzled as to why I wasn’t conceiving.
During the next 3 months of treatments I came to realize something very cool about life. I was not getting pregnant, not because there was something wrong with me, but because there was something right with life.
We know so very little about the unseen contract we as women make with the greater energy behind life, and how we come to cary a potential new being into the world.
I learned in my first year vaginal steaming that there’s no such thing as ‘infertility’, there is not one ‘problem’ that can fall upon a woman’s body that would prevent her from conceiving. (Aside from having no uterus of course.)
I realized that deep down, it was not in alignment for me to get pregnant. I wouldn’t understand why until months later.
Peeking behind the veil
It’s a painful hell like no other to want a family and believe you are the problem. It can make a woman start to become hypervigilant. About what she eats, how she exercises, the environmental toxins, fretting each month with charting and tracking, stress is pretty much everywhere she looks.
But conception is not only about bodies and babies.
There’s a psycho-spiritual-existential ‘infertility’ that most women experience sometime in their life. Women who are having difficulty trying to conceive of who they really are, who have felt alienated by their own trauma responses, who are desperate to find home inside themselves.
Turns out that was what was going on for me. I was misidentifying with this body, this personality, these dreams, these fears.
Why aren’t we looking this elephant in the room directly in the eye, instead of rushing off to the next expensive procedure or surgery?
Vaginal steaming is a self care ritual for all women.
I had to confront my very personal beliefs about myself, to see that I was not limited to them. I was not an infertile woman, not a wife, not a daughter, not in control.
For me, I sat in that truth, not knowing who I really was… not knowing… not knowing…
I had to get real with myself and not give in to the temptation to run off to distract, bury my head in the sand, or try to pretend.
I remember a symbolic moment, where I was on a long bike ride in the pacific northwest, and I rode up to this giant maple surrounded by farmland. I threw down my bike and screamed and cried. Asking this giant tree for help.
The wisdom of life in the form of a tree soothed me. I didn’t have to know.
I kept steaming, and stayed connected to my cycles. Stayed close to the knowing that the answers weren’t going to come from my obsessive thinking, and for the first time in my life during difficulty, I didn’t disassociate.
A few days later clarity just came out of the blue.
Vaginal steaming was a pivotal practice of self care for me, then and now. It offered time in the day for me to slow down, feel my pussy and womb rush with freshly circulated blood, sensitizing to the energetic flow inside me. It gave me a place to go inward and feel myself in a way that felt safe. Over time I began to trust my womb.
This practice isn’t the end all be all, because no practice can be. But for me and women throughout the ages, it is a ritual of good self care, nourishment, unwinding tension, and helps me hear truth.
So I ask you, what woman do you know who wouldn’t benefit from a reconnection with truth, of re-patterning the way she feels touch, of easing her cycle symptoms, boosting sexual satisfaction, and looking towards who she really is?
Because when we close down, tense up, and tune out, we often find ourselves making rash choices, and misidentifying with our fears and acting from them.
I ask you, what young girl just coming into womanhood wouldn’t benefit from knowing herself deeply this way? Of not feeling victimized by her body each month? Of discovering this beautiful oneness with the energy behind life, through her menstrual cycle, and leaning into her inner compass, rather than the whims of culture?
What woman struggling with the impossible pain and heavy self judgement of not being able to conceive?
Of having pain so bad each month she misses school or work?
Of terrifying growths, fibroids and cysts preventing her from living a healthy life?
Of feeling sexually dysfunctional, trespassed, defiled, or feeling like her sexuality is not her own? Like it’s been shaped by the hands of others. Of feeling like she has no idea where to begin in the discovery of her own autonomous joyful sexual expression.
This beautiful simple and profound practice is the seat of all this rich discovery.
It’s a tool yes, but how you use a tool matters more.
I empower my clients to have their inside-out revolution, in their own time, paced by life’s wisdom rather than personal will. Vaginal steaming supports this discovery and I am thrilled to bring you this art.
I am opening myself up as a conduit for what I believe to be the most approachable, profound women’s healing work of our time, inspired by the healing work of centuries old wisdom.
Truthfully, I thought I was done being a healer, I had given too much. My own well-being needed tending to. I took a long hiatus of nearly a year away from serving others.
But the amazing thing about accepting that life is in the driver’s seat, is that while you never really know where you’re going, you can trust that it’s the right way.
I took an exhale and waited again. Let this beautiful practice of vaginal steaming open me up. While I cannot say that it’s been graceful, or smooth, I’ve felt brave for trying to wait out the knee-jerk grasping for something.
I’ve had support from so many wonderful family members and friends.
The clarity of this work again has been like a huge juicy inhale.
Since that breath my purpose has returned to me. Being a woman of purpose in a time of purposelessness was one of the greatest hells, and it made me realize what gifts I truly bring to women.
Seeing the way, from inner truth.
So, I’m here. I’m back, and yet I’m new.
I am yours, life and love brought me back from near drowning, for the greater good of supporting women who are waking up.
If this resonates, come see me. This is for you.