Sign up for the Podcast Series
Dear Soul Sister,
Receiving a yoni steam is one of the more empowering things I’ve done on my healing path. I started seeing a shaman healer here in Boulder, CO a little over 6 months ago and it has totally shifted my perspective on what it means to be a woman. Connecting with my yoni and my womanhood has reminded me that I am not only worthy, I am sacred.
The first time I sat over a pot of boiled plants and herbs, each with their own medicinal property, I could feel that I had come home to myself. This practice that women have used, perhaps from the beginning of time, has been forgotten in our busy modern lives. I was instructed to breathe in deeply and let the steam enter my sacred space, cleansing and healing it. My Shaman healer, Ixeeya Becher, explained that the word ‘Yoni‘ is a Sanskrit word which means ‘Sacred’. She said that our yoni and our womb is our sacred temple, the temple of life. All human life enters through this portal.
The cervix is the doorway, the womb is the sanctuary and the ovaries the antechambers. As Ixeeya sang songs, rattled and drummed, I began to cry, realizing how sacred this part of my body is and how much I had abandoned it. I asked “When do you think we used this practice?” She said, “A yoni steam is used to reset the PH balance in your body. A woman’s system is very delicate and if the PH is off it can create imbalances such as depression and lack of energy and life force. Yoni steams were a regular practice after a woman’s menstrual cycle, after child birth and to cleanse the imprint of unwanted sexual experiences.”
Wow how had I missed this? With all our talk of sexual liberation in this country and the number of women on anti depressants, why are we not talking about our yoni‘s and how to take care of them?
Why and how did we forget just how sacred women’s bodies are?
How much have I subconsciously bought into the objectification of women’s bodies for men’s pleasure and the pejorative talk about a women’s vagina? I couldfeel the importance of owning and honoring this part of my body.
I’m currently reading Naomi Wolfe’s latest book Vagina, which presents the increasing body of scientific evidence to support the “mind-vagina connection” and the relationship to a woman’s creativity. Naomi says, “I came to conclude that the vagina is not nearly as free today in the West as we are lead to believe – both because its full role is seriously misunderstood and also because it is disrespected.” It’s no coincidence that Mama Gena who founded the School of Womanly Arts just released her book Pussy, A Reclamation, when this term was so recently on center stage in a presidential race.
Reclaiming my yoni and listening to what she has to say has been life changing for me. It’s increased my sense of self worth and changed how I feel about being a woman. How would your life change if you believed that your yoniwas sacred, that you are sacred, and if you were willing and able to listen to what your yoni has to say?
With love,
