Sexual Health and Healing

(waves crashing gently) Hello, we welcome you to a practice for your sexual health and healing. In this practice, you'll notice there's poses and breath work and even touch that will support you coming in to a deeper relationship with your own sexuality, and wherever you are, if you're feeling disconnected, or you're feeling really in tune with that part of you, this is a practice to meet it, to enjoy it and to realize that it's part of, it's one of the great gifts of life is to have these incredible bodies and to be able to experience so much pleasure. And as you go through menopause, as you go through these very big changes, you can disconnect a little bit from that part of yourself. So we invite you in this segment to reconnect, and to connect to the juiciness that resides within you. Elizabeth is with me today and she'll be demonstrating the poses and you'll wanna have three blankets, an eye pillow, some aromatherapy if you'd like and your bolster for the practice.

And we'll start with a seated position. So making sure that you're comfortable and remember if your knees aren't comfortable seated this way, you can extend them or bring them into butterfly, and taking a moment to just lengthen upward, to feel your heart lifting, the crown of your head floating up towards the sky. Perhaps rolling the shoulders a few times, and then relaxing the shoulders down and away from the ears. And as you're ready, you can bring your hands to your body and it can be anywhere at all that you'd like to touch. It can be belly, it can be heart, it can be yoni, breasts, and just take a moment to set your intention for this practice.

Reflecting on what you're opening to receive and to connect to, in this time on the mat. Take a few deep breaths. Feeling the vital energy of the breath flowing in. And consciously releasing any tension, any holding, any resistance within you as you exhale. And releasing your left hand to your left knee, allow your right hand to relax out by your right hip, lifting up through the heart, the crown of the head.

Take a deep inhalation, and as you exhale, you'll relax your left ear towards your left shoulder. And as you begin to open up into the left shoulder, stretching this area, take time to release any stress or anything that you're carrying on your shoulders. I find that stress can be an impediment to be able to come into your experience of opening to your sexuality, so it takes some time to really breathe the stress out of the body. Focusing your breath if you like into that shoulder as it lengthens, releasing, breathing into the tight areas. Taking another really deep inhalation.

And taking your hand now, that right hand, and just sliding it back behind your back, so I invite you to take it either to your sacrum, with the palm facing out, or you're welcome to slide it up higher, wherever you'd like to place it. It feels good to your shoulder, so placing your hand on your sacrum or behind the heart and releasing and stretching with the left ear moving towards the left shoulder. And sweeping the breath through the right shoulder. Just a little deeper stretch into the shoulder joint. And if it's too much, you can just let your hand rest out by its side.

And we'll take another deep inhalation here. And as you exhale, you can release your hand, bringing your left hand to the floor and sweeping your right arm up and you'll just take it all the way over into a nice, gentle lateral bend. So it doesn't matter how far you're going, you wanna try to soften and anchor your right hip down into the floor and keep relaxing your neck. Just a couple more breaths here. Breathing into the shape, breathing into that right side, opening it up.

And then as you come out of the pose, you'll press your left hand into the floor, you'll sweep your right hand back. You'll come back to center and just sit for a moment, nice and tall. Take a breath, feel what happened. Inhaling, lifting through the heart, through the crown of the head, and as you exhale, release your left hand out by your left hip and right ear towards your right shoulder. A nice visualization here can be to imagine that your left arm is hollow and as you're breathing, like a hollow piece of bamboo, you can just breathe right out of your neck, your shoulder, anything you're ready to let go of.

Softening into the stretch. Noticing how this side feels. Breathing deeply. And taking it a little more into the shoulder now. You'll take that left hand, the palm facing away from the body, slide it to the space at the low part of your spine, the palm facing away, and then slowly feel free to slide it up higher for a deeper stretch and keep relaxing your head to the right.

Deepening the opening through the left shoulder. Sweeping a few more breaths through that left shoulder. Notice how good it feels to stretch it out. And releasing the hand out by your side. And taking your right hand to the floor, and sweeping the left arm up, and coming into a lateral bend.

Again, anchoring down through your left hip, as you reach and open. Breathing deeply, relax your head to the right, making sure that you're letting go of any tension in the neck and you'll take a nice, deep breath here. And then slowly coming back to center. Take a moment to sit nice and tall. Feel the effects of the stretch.

And roll the shoulders forward, up, back and down. One more time. And release. And from here, you'll take one blanket, you'll position it up where your head will go. And you'll sit in front of that blanket and you'll put your bolster now under your knees.

And before you come back, you'll put one of your blanket rolls under your knees as well. So coming into a supportive relaxation pose just to take a few moments to come horizontal, come into a horizontal position. I find it so helpful for accessing and touching into the pelvic region, the hips. It also releases the low back and we're upright most of the day so it's really nice to come out of sitting and come into a horizontal position. You're welcome to use your eye pillow here, placing it gently over your eyes.

And feel the sensation and the support under your back, and just take a few breaths and let your back relax, let your hips soften, your thighs, let them get heavy as your legs drape over the bolster, relaxing all of the muscles, the shoulders, arms. And as you breathe, begin to feel the breath washing all the way down into the pelvis, so imagine that you could direct your breath all the way down into the pelvic floor, bathing the genitals, bathing this wonderful area of the body, has so many nerve receptors. There was a beautiful yogi who was talking about sexual energy and she said, why would our creator put more nerve endings in one part of our body than anywhere else? It's made for pleasure. And so celebrating that feeling, that ability to feel such pleasure, such joy and to really feel so alive with the experience of our sexuality.

And so as you breathe into that area, just notice the sensitivity, see if you can feel the breath and the energy flowing. And also feeling the connection to the breasts. The breasts have with the uterus and with different parts of the body. Feeling your breasts and even if you've lost your breasts, really honoring the journey and the gifts and the pain and even the suffering and how it deepens us, and so feel free to bring your hands to your breasts or any part of your body that may have been wounded, and to connect with the scars and maps of our life and what we've lived through, and as you breathe now into those areas that have been through so much, I'm gonna invite you to do some clearing breaths, some ha breaths, so we'll inhale fresh energy, inhale positive energy. And then exhale with sound if you like, ha, breathing out any trauma, any pain, anything you're ready to cleanse and clear.

And I invite you to imagine that it's releasing into the earth, that you could just pour it down into the earth. So anytime that your body said no and that wasn't honored, any time that you suffered some kind of challenge with your sexuality, whether it be a disfigurement or health issues or an injury, taking time to unwind that and to release it into the earth. So we'll take a few more cleansing breaths. (exhales with vocalization) Deep full inhalation. (exhales with vocalization) Two more at your own pace.

Cleansing, clearing, releasing. (exhales with vocalization) One last time. (exhales with vocalization) And feel, there's a spaciousness now that you can fill with some positive energy, guiding you to do that through the practice. When you feel ready, you can take a nice, deep breath. You can bring your knees up and place your feet on top of your bolster and just kick the blanket off your bolster so your feet are now resting on top of the bolster itself about hip width and parallel.

And then as you inhale, you'll arch your back a little bit and that's it, and create a little space that you could almost slide your hand under, and then as you exhale, you'll pull the stomach muscles in and flatten your back down into the core, tilting the pelvis towards the navel. So basically we're just rocking the hips forward and back, creating this gentle rock throughout the whole body. And this is similar to the movement that we sometimes do when we're making love or when we're moving into that energy of our sexuality, so you can let your breath flow in the way that it wants to flow, rather than making it a more yogic breath. Maybe the mouth wants to be open, maybe you wanna feel how that generates energy. And we're going to also work with the Kegel muscles here, the pelvic floor muscles.

Now, not only can strengthening these muscles strengthen your orgasm, but it also helps to bring blood flow and energy flow to all the tissue in the pelvic floor, so as you exhale, as your back flattens and your stomach muscles pull in, you'll draw up your vaginal muscles, your cervix, even your clitoris, feeling all the muscles around that area of the body drawing up and then inhale and rocking the pelvis forward, arching the back. Exhale, contract and lift and all the way up. And then a deep breath as you arc. And feel the breath move in the body, moving in the way that it wants to move and follow your own rhythm here. Have fun, explore what feels good to you.

And you're at home and no one's watching you, so if you wanna touch your breasts, or move your hands over your belly or press into your thighs, and see what feels sexy to you. Connect to that energy. And you're welcome to do that as well. Now the next time you exhale and flatten your back into the floor, pause there for a moment with the pelvic floor muscles lifted, and then with the knees hip width apart and the feet hip width apart and pressing evenly down, you'll lift your hips into bridge pose. Keep the pelvic floor muscles lifted as you do so and then slowly roll down.

You might enjoy a little roll under the neck. If it's not working for you, flatten the blanket and just have a little flat bit of support there. Inhaling, arching your back, exhale, flattening and contracting the pelvic floor and then lifting into bridge, feel the chest opening, the heart opening, and then rolling down, one vertebra at a time. This is how I like to do my pelvic strengthening and at one point, I was experience some incontinence due to like a sneeze or a laugh, if I was laughing really hard, and I started getting much more religious with my pelvic floor exercises, doing this every day, several times a day. I had talked to my gynecologist about it, she said, you need to do it 100 times a day.

So don't hesitate to practice this, but this is a great pose to do it in. It really does, especially when you turn upside down, it's a whole different sensation of working with the pelvic floor. And if you listen to the talk that we had about sexual health, you'll learn of some other ways with lifts and balls and different things that you can use to strengthen your pelvic floor that enhance your orgasm and your sexual vitality. Good, last time, coming up, holding for a moment, drawing that energy up high, feeling it moving upward, that beautiful circular movement of the sexual energy. And then when you're ready, you can roll down one vertebra at a time.

And when you get all the way down, you'll just rest for a moment, just let your back relax, notice what happened. You may feel some warmth in the pelvic floor, some energy flowing. And next we're gonna do some core strengthening, cuz core strengthening is also great for enhancing our vital sexual energy, our orgasm, and all those good things. And also for prolapse and for the weakness that can come in that whole area along with the pelvic floor, this can be helpful. So you'll slide your hands right underneath the outside of your hips with your palms facing down.

You don't wanna sit so much on your whole hand, but just kinda tuck your thumbs in. Press your thumbs down into the floor, and if you have any low back issues like a spondylolysis or spondylosis and you've got some concern about your low back or you've had some low back pain, you can start with a really gentle variation, so we're gonna start with the gentlest and go to the most challenging, so that would be pulling the stomach muscles in, flattening your back into the floor, and lifting and drawing just one knee towards the chest. Good, keeping your back flat as the foot lowers back to the bolster, slowly moving. And then squeezing the stomach muscles in, lifting, drawing it as high as is possible, and then slowly lowering it, keeping the stomach muscles pulled in. So you can continue there if you want a really gentle variation.

For those of you that would like a little more challenging variation, you'll take both knees toward your chest, and especially as the knees move away from the chest, keep the stomach muscles pulled in, lightly tapping your toes onto the bolster or the floor. Exhaling. Inhaling. So typically in yoga we inhale as the knees move away from us or as we open and oppose, we exhale as we close oppose. Some people prefer the opposite breathing here, they prefer to exhale as they're lowering the legs.

So see what works for you. Now this may be where you'll stay, or if you want a deeper variation, next time the legs come down, you'll straighten legs and you'll inhale the legs up, and you can either exhale the legs down straight, or with the knees bent, keeping the stomach muscles pulled in, pointing the toes as you come up. And remember to stay with a gentle variation if that feels better for your body. It's always listening to what feels right. There are many different modifications that you can make to make it a little easier.

But keep really lifting and pressing your back into the floor, watching if you're arching. You might wanna press your hands down a little bit more and not go so deep if you're finding that you're losing that stability in your back. Beautiful. Let's do two more here. Now this time as you lift, you'll keep your legs lifted.

This is a scissoring movement that not only activates the inner groin, the kidney meridian, but it also strengthens the inner thighs. Now for the gentlest variation you can take your hands to the outsides of your legs, and create some support there. And as you inhale, you'll open your legs, and as you exhale, you'll bring the legs together, squeezing the legs together and pulling the stomach muscles in. For the deeper variation, you'll slide your hands to the inner thighs, and as you open, you can even stretch a little deeper open, and as you exhale and bring the legs together, you'll create some resistance. So you can choose which works best for you today.

Inhaling, opening. Exhale, scissoring close, squeeze the inner thighs together, even lift up through the heels a little bit. Stomach muscles strong. Beautiful, moving with your breath. Exhaling as you squeeze.

And the pelvis opens as the leg open. So feeling the hips as the doorway to the pelvis, the legs are the doorway to the pelvis, and so opening, noticing how you feel as you open and as you close. Good, and it's important for our hip health, good for our legs to get strong. And one more. To work in many different ways with the legs, and one thing I like about yoga, you can bring your knees into your chest, is that we're using gravity a lot, we're using the natural weight of our body and gravity to strengthen and that's a perfect example of that.

So with your hands on your knees, you can draw some circles. Sometimes after I've done that pose I like to take my legs wide open and together, and that can feel really nice. Breathing deeply. Massaging and opening. And breathing.

And then as you come back to center, we'll go the other way. Good. Noticing how this feels, breathing in through the pelvis, the hips. And then as you feel ready, coming back to center, pausing for a moment here. And then gently rolling onto your side, and if a blanket's not nearby, you can use your upper arm under your head as you roll onto your side.

Just bringing your hands back to your body and taking a few deep breaths. And then slowly making your way up and onto all fours. And for this next pose, it might be nice to have a blanket open underneath your pelvis and hips. So we'll just bring it down to the middle of your mat and then you'll bring your hips here. Good, and come down.

We're coming to a nice heart opening pose now. And if you'd like the gentler variation, you'll slide your elbows underneath your shoulder joints, so forward and under you and even take a moment to clasp your upper arms just to make sure you're about shoulder width apart. And this is called Sphinx pose, and the hands come out in front of you and the elbows come right up underneath your shoulders, so back behind your shoulder joints, yeah. Now that's one pose you can take, and this really helps to generate the kundalini energy upward, but I recommend for a sexier version, to come into seal. And so with seal you'll walk your hands wider, you'll press your arms straight and you'll come up.

And you can even walk your hands in a little bit to get more height. Sometimes I find walking my hands up, getting more height can really feel nice on how it sort of stimulates at the pelvic region and opens the flow of energy. So I invite you to draw the breath from your yoni as if you're bringing energy up from the earth, up through the body and exhale through the crown of your head. Drawing the energy up through the birth canal, up through the vaginal area, up through the yoni, up through the spine, exhaling out through the top of your head and feel that energy as it starts to generate that beautiful, passionate, sexual energy. Let yourself start to connect to your juiciness, to that life force that flows through you.

A few more breaths. Feeling your heart opening. And connecting those two energies as well, the love, the self-love, the sexual energy, the passion. And beautiful, and when you're ready, you can come down onto your elbows. You'll take your hands right under your forehead and you'll come into forward facing Shavasana.

So letting your hands rest on top of your forehead. You can also put your eye pillow over your hands which can be nice to rest your forehead on and I like to cool my eye pillow when I'm having hot flashes in the freezer and grab it for practice and then you can use it here, but we're generating some heat here and that's okay too, to get that energy flowing. And from here, I'm gonna do a little rocking across the pelvis, so you'll bend your knees. Let the thighs, the top of the thighs rest on the floor, and then just gently, from side to side like a windshield wiper, taking your legs and feeling the rock across your pelvis, feeling the rock across the hip from hip to hip and across the pubic bone. It's a kind of a self rocking movement, it can be quite soothing.

Breathing deeply. And then when you're ready, coming back to center. Relaxing your legs back down and just taking a moment to feel what happened and really allowing your body to sink into the earth. I like to imagine the earth is holding me here, that I'm sinking into that embrace. Feeling your breasts, your belly, parts of your body that are making contact with the earth and relaxing into them.

And then when you're feeling ready, you can slide your hands under your shoulders. And then slowly press yourself up and onto all fours. And let's just take a gentle child's pose here, so the knees are wide and either sitting back towards your heels with your hips or you can lift your hips up over your knees, which gives it just a little different stretch and we're just gonna take a few breaths here, just feeling this sensation, stretching your back after the back bend of seal. Taking another deep breath into the back side of the uterus area which would be the sacrum, so really breathing right into the sacrum. And then as you're ready, you can slowly come up.

You're gonna get your bolster back into position behind you and you'll come onto your back, so you'll slide your tail bone up towards that bolster. We're gonna take the blanket, actually, to the other side of the bolster so it sort of supports the heels, and a blanket for your head. And if you need a blanket over you, you could always use the blanket roll instead of placing it under your ankles. Feel free to make a roll or a fold for your head and neck. And before we go into the deep relaxation, we're just gonna do a few moments of one of my favorites, which is happy baby pose.

So you'll come up and you'll clasp, open the knees wide, clasp ahold of the outsides of the feet. And you'll notice that the knees are wide here and going down towards the outsides of the rib cage. I also like to take the feet sort of over the knees for a different variation and pull down a little bit. At the same time inviting the sacrum to move towards the earth, and breathe. If it's not possible to get ahold of your feet, you can hold your ankles or the backs of your knees.

And this can be a pose where it doesn't have to be static, you can rock, sometimes I like to straighten one leg and then bend the other. And yeah, do a little like cycling here, a little movement, and this is taking blood flow into the pelvic region. And then as you're ready, you're going to take your feet to the bolster. And just take a moment here to feel what happened. And you have a choice for your deep relaxation.

You can either extend the legs straight or with your feet, kick the bolster right up to your tail bone and come into a butterfly variation. This is a gentle resting butterfly variation. And it's nice, a nice one to rest in for your final deep relaxation pose. Put your eye pillow over your eyes. And it can be nice to bring some aromatherapy into your practice if you wanna take a little drop for yourself.

One of the blends that's really good for sexuality has ylang ylang in it, so anything with ylang ylang, it's often put in those beautiful massage oils for sensuality. Ylang ylang is an aphrodisiac, and so as you're breathing the ylang ylang and massaging yourself, you can fall in love with yourself. And we're gonna take that even deeper with some self feathering and self touch. And so drawing your hands to your yoni and lightly feathering up the body and across the breasts and opening. And finding your breath.

Flowing with your touch. And noticing how this movement feels. The sensuality of it. Connecting you to the vital flowing energy that resides within you. Pleasure is our birthright.

So allowing yourself to enjoy your body, enjoy your sensual touch. And then feeling free to move into massaging your face or your scalp or any other place, your breasts. Any place that wants touch, let yourself explore that here. Breathing, feeling. And whenever you feel complete, you're welcome to rest your hands on your body.

Yoni mudra is a nice mudra over the uterus. Or anywhere at all that you feel drawn to place your hands, or even out to the side in an open position. See what feels the best to you. Noticing the vibration within you, the life force, the quickening. Feel your passion.

Your pleasure. Your joy. Resting, experiencing the vital flows of energy within you. The light traveling from yoni to breast to heart to tongue. Flowing to the edges of your skin.

Floating in the essence of joy. Allow your breath to gently deepen. Visualizing the breath flowing up through the base of your body, washing through you. Flowing out through the top of your head. Taking a few of these upward moving breaths.

From yoni to crown. Coming back, feeling new energy, new awakening of your vital sexual energy and aliveness. You can begin to move, to awaken, to stretch in whatever way feels good to you. And eventually you'll take your hands and draw the knees towards the chest and you can rock from side to side a little bit. You can turn your head if you like, opposite to the rocking motion of the knee, shoulders relax.

And then making your way slowly onto your side. And as you come onto your side here, feel free to fold the blanket under your head so it's just so, just right for you. Take a moment to connect with yourself, bringing your hands to any part of your body, and revisiting the intention that you set at the beginning of your practice. And ask your body and your being, that deeper part of yourself if there's any way throughout this next few days that you can continue to foster, to cultivate this energy and this connection to your pleasure, your joy. Perhaps there's an image that arises.

It's committing some time to stay in connection to this energy that we've been exploring, a sensuality and sexuality. But for now, when you're ready, take a deep breath and you'll slowly make your way up to seated as we'll close practice together. Bringing the hands into Anjali mudra at the heart, bowing towards this temple of your spirits, incredible physical body, with all that you are able to experience the pleasure, the joy, the taste, the feelings. We'll close our practice by chanting the sacred sound of om together. Inhale.

(extended vocalizing) Gently open your eyes. Namaste. (chuckles lightly) Namaste.