I Got A Yoni Massage To Heal My Broken Heart (This Is What It Was Like)
Breaking up can cause your vagina to feel depressed too.
getty Going through a breakup doesn't just give you a broken heart, your yoni (or vagina) is also going through its own loss, but getting over the breakup can be achieved if you try yoni massage therapy.
Being always in search of tools for female empowerment — especially when trying to get over a breakup — I decided to test a therapy form called "Yoni Mapping", the tantric version "Vaginal Mapping".
Through conversation, acupressure and simple massage techniques, I learned that my grief and broken heart from a breakup with a loved one over many years had also manifested itself in my vagina.
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Yoni is the Sanskrit name for vagina.
Yoni mapping is a form of treatment that combines dialogue, acupressure and light massage techniques to both give you the opportunity to know your vagina better and to release emotional tension that can sometimes manifest itself in your vagina over time.
With a combination of long strokes and light pressure, the therapist works through your entire vagina inch by inch, both externally and internally, without including the rest of the body.
Yoni mapping helps you increase your sexual sensitivity and at the same time helps you let go of any tensions. It is a treatment that can facilitate new levels of pleasure. Ecstasy even. For women who have pain, lost the desire or no longer feel contact with their sexual energy, yoni mapping is an extraordinarily effective treatment.
Little did I know, that I was in for a profoundly healing — and life-changing — experience after a devastating heartbreak.
I learned on a very direct level, that personalizing the vagina can have an enormous healing effect and provide a very concrete tool to heal not only your emotional experience of loss but also the feeling of having a body that seems to have closed down.
Get ready for a very personal and intimate description.
We are in the center of Copenhagen, Denmark, where long white curtains, small flower vases, and candles fill the room with endless tranquility.
In the right corner of a large Indian-ohm-ish room is a massage table. It has two folded blankets on top with purple pillows embroidered with golden thread. The lighting is soft. At the end of the massage table, there are two padded chair backs, that lean toward the end of it.
My legs are obviously supposed to go there. On the side, there is a little table with oils.
The decoration reminds me of a mix between a romantic girly bed and a gynecologist's table. But it is no more romantic than it is quite obvious what is going to happen: I am to get up on the table, spread my legs and put them over each chair back.
And then Mayanoa, the therapist, is going to have her fingers up my vagina.
Mayanoa is very respectful in her way of talking about my vagina. In fact, she talks about my vagina, as if it, together with me, is in some kind of psychotherapy.
When Mayanoa names my vagina 'she', I can't help but smile a lot.
I have to concentrate on not laughing loudly. The therapist reminds me that laughter can sometimes be an expression of discomfort or shame, and I am encouraged to pay attention to why I am really feeling like laughing now.
"'She' is a part of you who is allowed to be, just as 'she' is today," the therapist reminds me.
It is awkward for me to talk about my vagina as a "she", but I force myself to do so even though Mayanoa assures me that it is not required. Just a suggestion.
Mayanoa quietly asks me how "she" is feeling today.
"'She'" is actually a little closed down — sad in a way," I answer with a sense of vulnerability.
I just finished an intense relationship with a man that I have loved for many years. I find it hard to imagine that I will ever share the sacred loving and erotic space, that we had created, with anyone else again. I have an irrational fear that my body will be closed down and my desire turned off forever.
To me, that would feel like a life almost not worth living, I admit, with a little portion of old shame.
Mayanoa listens attentively and neutrally. She is totally calm as she nods.
"When you end a relationship with someone you have been close to, it is normal to go through a profound feeling of grief," she explains. "Also on a somatic level. It not just an emotional condition. The energy that has been so intensely intertwined is suddenly ripped apart, and then the entire body mourns. If there also has been an intense genital contact, the genitals also grieve."
"So, my vagina can actually feel depressed too in the face of a loss of a loved one," I think to myself.
This really makes sense and aligns with the way I perceive sexuality as a life force.
"Maybe you should allow your yoni to grieve," the therapist says. "I want you to acknowledge that she is beautiful, when she is sad and introverted as well as when she is happy and outgoing."
There is something comic about talking about my vagina as a person. But as we speak, perceiving my vagina as a person grieving actually really resonates with me, gives a new meaning to what I am actually experiencing and calms me down.
It even gives me hope, reminding me, that grieving is okay, it is even important and that this too shall pass.
I suddenly see an animated film of genitals with own personalities and lives popping up in my mind. How would it be if couples thought about each other's genitalia as individuals with their own identity and feelings? How would you say "hello" — and "goodbye" - to your partner's genitalia if you had that mindset? On a daily basis and when the break up was a reality?
I suddenly wished that I could go back to my ex and let our genitalia say goodbye in a respectful way.
The questions went mad in my mind: How would young people treat their bodies if they thought of their genitalia as a "he" or "she", that needed both to have fun and be playful, but at other times also needed to be listened to, tender loving care and safety. That would change everything.
Mayanoa explains to me that the treatment can awaken a wide variety of emotions from grief to joy, love or pleasure. She kindly reminds me, that all feelings are okay.
As we speak, I am habitually calling my vagina for "it". Suddenly I hear how alienating it actually is. So, I go back to "she". And "she" is now getting ready for some serious attention. We've talked enough.
"Now 'she' is completely naked," says Mayanoa, standing at the end of the massage table and looking directly at my vagina.
And yes, "she" certainly is — and feels — totally naked. I am lying with my legs completely open without panties.
Mayanoa has tugged warm blankets around my upper body and long warm socks. Nothing sexy about the situation. On the contrary, I have a complete mix of emotions from feeling extremely vulnerable to being childishly curious.
She sits down on the stool between my legs and puts on a pair of blue rubber gloves. Very blue. For a moment I get a flash of something related to floor cleaning. She puts her hands on top of each other on my yoni to greet "her". I forget about the floor cleaning in an instant.
She strokes my vulva. Slowly, gently, back and forth. Then she moves toward my labia with very slow strokes. External labia. Inner labia. After 45 minutes she ends the strokes by resting her index finger in the very opening of my vagina. A deep sense of feeling safe and loved embraces my body.
"Now we have reached the point of the treatment, where one could move on to the next step," she says, softly. "But we can also stop here so that we stick to the time," she smiles.
I accept continuing to the next step. My vagina needs this. In a profoundly healing way. The next step, I learn, is to invite her fingers into my body.
"Instead of me controlling the pace, I want you to imagine kissing my fingers with your yoni. That 'she' invites my fingers in," she says.
Mayanoa enters, providing a light pressure in a kind of circular movement inside my vagina. I disappear completely into my inner world forgetting everything about the fact, that there is actually a photographer taking pictures of the whole session.
Time disappears and my body becomes weightless and overwhelmed by a sense of endless universal love.
"Imagine your vagina like a clock. Here’s six o'clock, here's three o'clock, here’s nine o'clock," she almost whispers, while she slowly puts gentle pressure on various points inside the vagina. "Now, I probably touch your g-point ... at 12 o'clock."
She holds the finger with absolutely soft but firm pressure. Her touch is very far from the classic turbo-rubbing fingers that struggle hard to get a woman to climax. Again. However weird this may sound — there is nothing sexual about this — it just feels like an overwhelming source of love flowing throughout the body.
Perhaps my yoni was not as depressed, as my brain had actually convinced me.
A massive stream of energy flows through all of my cells, and it feels as if the whole universe's love is gathering within me. I float away in endless enjoyment. And instant happiness.
Mayanoa pretty much does nothing now. My body is on its very own voyage, which now has nothing to do with her touch. It actually feels more like a spiritual experience.
The doorbell rings. Intensely. Someone opens the door in the hall. I can hear a person being locked in.
"I have to conclude the session now," Mayanoa says.
Mayanoa asks me to breathe through my nose. Her two gentle hands again find themselves on top of each other on my genitalia in order to calm the high energy and allow the body to come to rest.
In conclusion, a depressed vagina needs care too.
Vulvodynia is a condition that is often referred to as a depressed vagina, due to the fact that antidepressants have been documented to have a healing effect on the condition. It is often described as itching, burning, soreness in the vagina often making it extremely painful to have sex.
Although it's not what I went through here, if you experience these symptoms, you need to seek a doctor.
As I slowly get dressed again, I know that I will include inviting my coachees of the future to address their vaginas as "she", as a part of themselves that they can actually communicate with, make deals with, take care of in an emotional, loving way.
I can feel the change already. And this has to be shared with the thousands, millions of women across the globe who are getting over a heartbreak and experiencing grief in the afterglow of a breakup, divorce, or other loss.
Two hours have passed. My yoni has got all the loving attention she could dream of. She was happy again. In this very moment, the happiness of my vagina seems to spread to my entire being. I find myself feeling ready to meet the world and all its wonderful people again.
Although my yoni is beautiful, both when she is happy and when she is sad, I just feel a better me when she is happy.
May your yoni be happy too.
Lucy Vittrup is an expert in human sexuality, sex educator, therapist and coach, public speaker, columnist, and author. Ready to break the pattern of toxic relationships? Take the 3-day Relationship Detox Challenge now.