The Menstruality Podcast - 158. How Yoni Mapping Can Support Your Cycle Awareness Practice (Jules Alma)

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

For a decade, our guest, birth doula, menstrual coach Jules Alma has been mapping her Yoni. It’s soothed and regulated her nervous system, healed her pain during sex and brings her back to her centre. She even uses it after she has attended a birth to regulate after all the beauty and intensity of the experience. Yoni is the sanskrit word referring to our vaginas and vulvas, and in our conversation we track the history of the practice of yoni mapping, from Taoism in ancient China, to Tantra in ancient India to modern day pelvic physiotherapy. Jules explains how healing it can be, on all levels, to create an intimate relationship with this part of our bodies and live what Jules calls a 'yoni-led' life. She’s also a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme and it was wonderful to hear how the course has supported her to live into her calling to guide women to find healing and joy through the way they bleed, birth, pleasure, and nourish their bodies.We explore:The shame, trauma and collective wounding that prevents many of us from cultivating a relationship with our vulvas and vaginas, and the powerful healing that can take place when we reconnect to this sacred part of our bodies. How Jules was at war with her body and her yoni for years, blowing past boundaries, experiencing health symptoms and feeling pain during sex, before she began to reclaim her rites of passage as a woman, and learned how to map her yoni. A step-by-step guide to beginning your own yoni mapping practice, as well as how Jules used the practice to soothe menstrual cramps. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyJules Alma: @jules____alma - https://www.instagram.com/jules____alma

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today, for being part of the community gathered around this conversation. I loved the chat that I had for this episode today. It's with a woman called Jules Alma.

She's a birth doula and a menstrual coach. And for a decade, she has been mapping her yoni. It has helped her to soothe and regulate her nervous system, helped to heal her pain during sex and brought her back to her center, back to her core. And she even uses it as a practice after attending a birth to regulate her nervous system after the intensity of the experience. So if you haven't come across this word yoni is the Sanskrit word referring to our vaginas and vulvas and in our conversation we track the history of the practice of yoni mapping from Taoism in ancient China to Tantra in ancient India to modern day pelvic physiotherapy And Jules shares the story of how she was at war with her body and her yoni for years, pushing past her boundaries, experiencing tons of different health

symptoms, feeling pain during sex. Then she began to reclaim her rites of passage as a woman and learn how to map her yoni. And in the conversation, she talks about how healing it can be on all levels to create a more intimate relationship with this part of our bodies. Jules is also a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program. And it was beautiful to hear some of her story about how the course helped her to live her calling, which is to guide women to find healing and joy through the way they bleed, birth, pleasure and nourish their bodies. So Jules, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for making the time to be with me and with us today. Thank you so much. It really is an honour and really exciting

to get to kind of have a full circle moment back in the red school world so yeah talking of red school you you're a graduate of the menstruality leadership program which we'll talk about later so cycle awareness is a really big part of your life um and i would love let's just get right into a deep cycle check-in i'd love to hear how's your cycle feeling how are you doing on this cycle day? Yeah. How's it influencing you? Yeah. So I am currently on cycle day 24 or sorry, 23. That's a perfect example of where I'm at.

And well, I've had a wonderful inner summer phase actually. I've, and I think maybe I've partied a little too hard and my body has sent me into a roaring halt as I've transitioned into autumn. I actually broke my toe two days ago. So whatever you believe with divine timing and stuff, for me, it's like I got a very clear message that it's time to slow down. And now my internal world is definitely shifting towards that as well. This is probably the last day I'll feel up for having a conversation of this life with someone else. I feel the introversion really starting to set in. I feel some of the friction with my partner starting to set in, which is typical for me

in my inner autumn phase. And it's the start of summer here in Austin, Texas, which is typical for me in my inner autumn phase. And it's the start of summer here in Austin, Texas, which is where I'm based. So I still haven't quite gotten the hang of enjoying my inner autumn and winter when it's summer here in Austin, because our summers are so intense, so hot and so sunny. So I often feel like at odds in the world with the outer season and my inner season but overall I do feel deep down a good sense of settling into this period as I begin getting closer to my bleed and I'm ready to fully go into my my cave and rest and you just shared with me you have you're a doula and you have five births coming up sometime over the next six weeks you never quite

know when they're going to come I mean we're talking about yoni mapping today but I'm just curious you know as when you're in the depths of your inner autumn and inner winter is it a different doula experience than when you're in your inner spring and inner summer does that shift or do you just find yourself in in the flow of it no matter where you are in your cycle honestly it's a bit of both so I used to fear that a little bit when I first became a doula and I was also new and kind of really honing the awareness of my inner cycle and I used to fear like well what if I'm just right gobsmacked in the middle of the void or my bleed and I get called to this birth and I have to hold space and support this, you know, woman, this birthing mother, and am I really going to be able to show up the way that I want to? And of course, with, you know, years of experience that

has happened multiple times now, and it is truly a balance of first, just kind of conjuring up the inner strength and groundedness that I always have in my reserves to be able to show up for my client in the way that I want to. And also appreciating that I kind of bring a different set of skills and gifts and just space holding abilities depending on where I am in my cycle. So I do kind of enjoy when I'm kind of in the range of like transitioning from summer to autumn to be called to births because I'm starting to become a little bit more serious and and just like that autumn grounding but I still have a little bit of the fire of summer in me and so I feel like I really show up as a fierce and solid advocate

for for the woman I'm working with. They're so lucky to have you at the Cycle Aware, it's amazing. I'm sorry about your toe. Did that happen in some amazing party situation? I wish. I literally I just stubbed it walking to my kitchen on the um leg of our trampoline and I looked down and it was clearly broken and so began my period of six weeks that I'm supposed to be resting my foot oh love it's so bizarre because honestly the amount of times I've stubbed my toe on day 22 then 23 like in that window it's just like you say is it that I haven't quite heeded the call to slow down? My body goes thunk right now you need to slow down, but it's a harsh way to do it.

It really does feel exactly like that. Yeah. I'm in autumn too, but this is vulnerable to share, but I'm going to share it because I'm in space with you and this community is so understanding. But, you know, there's always a possibility that I'm pregnant and would, I would just, you know, I'd love to be pregnant again. And, you know, I just share that for the people in our community who are in whatever part of whatever kind of messy motherhood or not becoming a mother experience that they might be in just to share some togetherness, some vulnerability, some, you know, it's hard to talk about these things in public because they're so tender. And yeah, but that's where I am. Wonderful community around this podcast. And thank you for being a safe space where I can share that and you know we'll see we'll see what happens that's really beautiful to bring up because I'm sure we'll get

more into this later in our conversation but when you start to look at the the map of the cycle and I think it's like no coincidence that autumn is the waiting period to find out that we're pregnant or not right it's like contains a certain energy to it and um I mean it's yeah the space holder of the cycle at least for myself um so yeah yeah that's it it's holding the tension on multiple levels for you know whether people want children or not that are actively trying not to get pregnant or that's so true I've never really thought about it that way that there's that always that tension not always but often that tension yeah and I am feeling autumnal as in there's a genuine sense of joy to be with you talking about this in my

inner autumn this is exactly what I want to be doing with women talking about cycles and yonis and vaginas and our the sacred creative hubs in our bodies so I can feel that that fire in me you know it's so much a part of my calling to honor this part of our bodies I'd be curious to hear just before we get onto the yoni mapping if there's a kind of cycle edge that you're working with at the moment if there's a particular inner season that is clunky for you that you're like journeying with i'm just curious oh yeah this i'd love to answer this question um you know when i was going through the menstruality leadership program with the Red School, my big, I don't want to say problem child, but yeah, my like clunky part of the cycle that I

was working with was like many, my inner autumn and just so much friction and spiraling and my inner critic that was just felt really out of control. And I actually feel like I've made quite significant progress with that since I did my training and other work that I've done over the past few years. And currently, I think what really has come up for me is my inner summer, which I just, it kind of goes to two extremes where I'm either just going, going, going so full and I don't know when to shut down the party. And I feel it bleed into the other parts of my cycle, pun intended.

Or it's like I freeze in my inner summer and I can't quite get the like hop on the train that gives me the lift and energy that I know I naturally you know need to exert to feel balanced out energetically again um and I've kind of been teeter-tottering between those two extremes for the past um I'd say like six months or so um and I think this is probably a natural experience of um you know you're someone that just has a business or you're more entrepreneurial and your business is starting to grow and more and more commitments are coming um so yeah that's that's kind of where I'm at with

my my current cycle endeavors thank you it's great to hear that and I imagine being a doula you know there's you're called upon so much like you know know, you have to be able to switch on at really a minute's notice and just go and dive into your calling full on. So I think it's a beautiful and probably very's one with a lot of responsibility on different levels. Like, of course, there's are in this work because we feel so passionate and lit up about supporting women in this way. And also, it's impossible to be there so deeply for every single client in the way that we want to be. And so there really is like the cycle teaches us, you have to really learn how to protect your own reserves so that you can build yourself back up again to support. Otherwise, you're just going to continue working from a deficit. Wow, that's so interesting. I could talk to you about that for a long time. But I imagine like through the Yoni mapping lens we can explore this because I imagine that practice is part of how you resource yourself or how you stay centered and grounded so let's get into it and I wondered if we could just start

with the word yoni because for some people that will mean a lot and for some people it'll be like oh what's that so I was just looking in wikipedia um earlier and you know it's a Sanskrit word that's been interpreted to literally mean the womb or the source or the female organs of generation and a few other things actually in Hindu mythology and here we're talking about yoni as in the sexual organs the reproductive organs yeah do you want to just walk us into yoni the world of yoni yes absolutely no no shame or worries at all if you've never heard the word yoni before or if you've heard it and you're like i don't know quite what that is um yeah so like sophie said it is a word from the sanskrit language um and in modern day it's kind of come to become it's kind of become a term that encompasses the entire vulva, vagina, cervix,

uterus, like female sexual reproductive organ area. I really like to use it personally because for me, it's just when I hear the word yoni, I think of my external anatomy and my internal anatomy. And so it's all encompassing. I, you know, I personally believe in, you know, using the correct anatomical words for our body and, you know, kind of overcoming any discomfort we have with that, because that's a beautiful practice in itself. And I also think the word yoni is really beautiful, especially with, you know, that Sanskrit definition of it meaning, you know, like the source, the portal to the gods um so yeah that's that's kind of why it's become my word of choice for my my body and my anatomy um but that's just one way

to describe yourself i've told this story on the podcast before but i just think it's so sweet and funny that i feel committed to sharing the correct anatomical terms with arty and he's completely like obsessed with the word vulva now and i'm like oh no have i have i said too much because we were at we were i was picking him up from nursery he's three and a half and um in front of his in front of his um nursery key worker he said mummy mummy have you brought your vulva and I said yes sweetie yes I've got it and he said good good because I've got my penis and the nursery worker said good you're using the correct anatomical terms that's amazing yeah the words without charge is is so powerful. And then they come out,

it kind of tests your own charge about them when they come out in these unexpected places. Yeah, there's a story from Tammy Lynn Kent, who I know we'll talk about in this conversation where she was at the supermarket, and she was buying latex gloves, because she uses gloves for her holistic pelvic care practice where she's giving women vaginal massage and her son who was probably a similar age to Artie or a bit older said my mummy touches vaginas to the woman at the checkout so beautiful to feel these these boys growing up into this world so yeah yoni mapping you you shared with me that the history of it is you said it's similar to meditation it's been used throughout history in different cultural variations um taoist um practices of ancient

china tantra temples of ancient india could you tell us a bit more about yeah that the lineage and the history yeah absolutely so yeah like said, with something like meditation, like most of us know of the practice of meditation in modern day, it's also had definitely a big resurgence, we could say like in the last 30 years or so. And then there's all these different kind of like subcategories of meditation and different schools of philosophy about meditation. And, you know, when we think about the original source or tracing back the lineage of meditation, we're like, okay, yeah, you know, we know of evidence in history where this has been, you know, what we could say begun or started in, you know, some of the more Eastern countries and cultures, like China, like Indonesia.

And we also see this in ancient India. But there isn't quite this like one person created this one practice at this one specific time in history. It's seen a lot of adaptations. And so yoni mapping is really similar where most cultures, especially Eastern cultures throughout history, experienced some sort of a period of sexual revolution. So the most commonly known ones being the Taoists in ancient India. And then we, most of us are really familiar with Tantra from ancient India. You said ancient India, but you mean ancient China, right? Oh yes. Thank you. Yeah. Taoism with ancient China, Tantra with ancient India. And so with these two examples, there are texts that exist from these kind of like sexual revolutionary periods where, you know, there's different

essentially self-pleasure techniques is what most people have interpreted them to be today. But when you get into kind of schools of Tantra or schools of Taoism, we start seeing that certain kinds of touch techniques and massage that were captured and taught to people during these eras were actually kind of given as prescriptions for different, you know, like whether it's like, oh, we're trying to amplify for fertility, you know, a marriage or a union has happened and, you know, they want to create a child right away, or a woman with menopausal symptoms who is experiencing what they understood at the time to be like symptoms of, you know, her fertility or life force energy starting to decrease and wane. And there's lots of examples

of this, including with the menstrual cycle too, of women experiencing, you know, what were considered uncommon or unwanted menstrual symptoms back then. And they were very comfortable with touching a woman's yoni, telling her how to, and providing truly like a full body massage experience. Now, fast forward hundreds of years forward from that, what we've seen kind of resurrected from these history and texts kind of started, I'd say primarily within the Tantra world where yoni massage started to become more of a popular thing. And this is a bit of a controversial area because there's certainly been people and organizations in the tantra world that have done this unethically. And, you know, there's just been

a lot of cases of it just being murky, crossing boundaries. And so it's kind of given like the word yoni massage a bit of a tainted name, unfortunately. But also deriving from that, what we've started to see in the last, I'd say 10 years is a resurrection of yoni mapping that's kind of come from the pelvic floor physical therapy world. So I'd say 15, 20 years ago, pelvic floor physical therapy really was not like a commonly known practice or like area of, of medicine or therapy. If you were going to one, and if you could even find one, it was a bit of a shameful manner. And it likely was because, you know, you'd recently had a child and maybe were having trouble like holding your bladder, you found yourself leaking a lot. And that was kind of the most common case that you

would see. Fast forward to today, and especially working with, you know, so many women in the birth and motherhood period of their life, everyone is talking about their pelvic floor physical therapists, everyone has one, everyone's seeing them. And it's like become a really common, accepted, much less shame around it, part of transitioning into motherhood that's wonderful isn't it which is really wonderful yeah and also working with clients you know of all different backgrounds what i've come to find is that pelvic floor physical therapy is not still at least in the u.s covered by many insurance companies it's very expensive, out of pocket, and even with partial

insurance coverage. And that can leave women feeling like they're experiencing Yoni symptoms, but there's just nowhere they can really go for help. They're afraid to touch themselves. For certain people of certain levels of privilege, and then so many, so many other folks are just, it's not accessible to them. Exactly. Yeah. And so what I've seen over the last 10 years is even though we've gotten a lot more comfortable with these conversations about the changes that our bodies, specifically our yoni goes through, the symptoms that can accompany the different life stages of womanhood, whether that's having a baby or menstruation or, you know, kind of your early years exploring sex and your different sexual experiences, going through menopause,

just all the things that come with having a woman's body. What I've come to find is that even though we're talking about all of this, most women are really terrified to touch themselves and don't feel like they have the power, the skills or the knowledge to essentially either kind of heal and treat their own body or to understand what is going on. So they have a better idea and clarity on where they need to go to seek help rather than showing up at, you know, a practitioner's office and just being like, help me fix me, I feel completely broken. And I've had this experience personally, which has kind of started my own yoni mapping journey. But I will stop there to see if I answered your question about kind of the lineage and how we got from Taoism and Tantra, all the

way to pelvic floor physical therapy and yoni mafe today. Yeah, you really did very thoroughly. And yeah, it's just beautiful to feel the progress that we've made and also to feel your passion for helping women and other folks with yonis to feel safe and comfortable with bringing their own presence and physical touch to this beautiful natural wonderful part of our bodies and I guess what was coming up for me when you were talking was just the shame the shame that is around the menstrual cycle and it's a huge part of what red school is doing is to just de-shame the menstrual cycle but yeah that shame can also exist around this part of our bodies the pelvic bowl the the yoni and our yonis so yeah that's what I was feeling and how how beautiful it is

that this work is helping to de-shame this area because it's just it's just such a sacred powerful wonderful part of our bodies and the more of us that can just slowly gently in a trauma-informed way because you know the shame is there often because of of trauma whether that's personal trauma or just being woven into the collective trauma in that part of our bodies so I think we have to we have to pace ourselves here don't we we have to go gently yeah absolutely yeah and you know there's there's so much magic that happens and so much um re-emergence of our own power when we really start to know our bodies what I've found personally is that a lot of times that shame that feels really stuck um you know, those blockages that you

just, I'm like, how do I shake this from myself? The way that they begin to dissolve and soften begins with putting the power back into our own hands. And like you said, going at our own pace, you can't massage, force massage your own yoni into softening and full body acceptance and love. Absolutely not. It's something that's done slowly, intentionally over time with a lot of presence. And it's just done completely at your own pace, not at your practitioner's pace, not at your partner's pace, yours completely.

Beautiful. Could you carry on with where you were going before your story of discovering this and how it's how it supported you? Yes. So it actually is very much intertwined with my cycle, which I always find really beautiful. You know, as a teenager, when I got my period for the first time, when I experienced Menarche, I was quite by the book about it. I was like, oh, I have these pads. I know what to do. Like everything's fine. Shut off completely from the head down all the emotions of the experience. And it was almost purely just like logic. Like I won't have any issues with this because I know what to do. And that theme kind of carried on through like all my experiences of womanhood going forward.

Any sort of like symptoms or acute conditions that came up with my yoni that I was experiencing, let's say like a yeast infection or something like that, I felt very much like put in point A, get point B. And it took me many years to learn that actually my body doesn't quite work that way all the time. And actually creating like true safety and confidence in my body doesn't come from just expecting it to be a certain way because they do a certain thing. There's a really beautiful complexity going on underneath the surface that's completely holistic in nature, mind, body, and soul. And I had to take years to really let all the emotions start to come up around my cycle, around the different things I, you know, symptoms and conditions and experiences I had with my yoni,

which for me felt really shameful or scary or that I didn't understand. So to be more specific, I don't think it's a coincidence that from age like 18 through the first few years of my early twenties, I struggled with chronic Yoni infections. I didn't understand what was going on. I ate really well. I really took care of myself. And I was just like, why does this keep happening to me? I also experienced, you know, like, like many, some pretty intense premenstrual symptoms, both the emotional side and also the actual physical symptoms. And then sex and pleasure was a complete anomaly to me. I didn't understand what was happening there. I didn't understand why I wasn't experiencing pleasure like I thought I would, and then why I was even having pelvic pain

in my earlier sexual experiences. And so for me, it felt like my yoni was just like this problem child of my body. And we were really at war for many years with each other, just kind of fighting to finally come into harmony. And I didn't understand her. She probably understood me because she's much wiser than me. But I completely just, I blew past her boundaries so many times and I didn't know how to fully integrate her into my life. And later on for me, this is personally become kind of like, I didn't know how to fully integrate womanhood into my life because I actually didn't have many like older, wiser female or feminine mentors growing up. And so a lot of these initiations of womanhood, I really tried to

sort out myself. And I typically tend, my pattern was to do them from a very masculine frame of working. So with all of that, I slowly started to reclaim my rites of passage. The first one being with my cycle. And that's when I read Wild Power for the first time. And through that, I was like, starting to be able to attune to the subtle energies of my cycle. I started my daily cycle awareness practice. And that like blew my mind all on its own. But through this, I was still having, you know, all the other things like the chronic yoni symptoms, I was still experiencing pain with sex, like just feeling like I was not fully connected to my body to my yoni in this way. And one day, I just decided, oh, I actually I did go to a pelvic floor physical therapist. And this

was in my this was in my late teens, maybe like 1920. And this is like way before anyone really was talking about pelvic floor PT. And so I felt so much shame going into the office to try to figure out what kind of was going on with the pelvic pain I was experiencing. And it was really helpful and informative. And I also came home and felt a bit broken after the appointment as well, because it just felt like I'm on this like really beautiful, complex, deep spiritual journey with my cycle. Why can't I have that with the actual physicality with my Yoni? The appointment with the pelvic floor PT, although super helpful, still left me feeling like there was just a depth that wasn't there. It's like the difference of your daily menstrual cycle awareness practice and like the whole framework you kind of learn in the red school where you're really

tuning into the emotional experience and how your inner landscape is shifting versus like, oh, I just kind of eat different foods or move differently during the different phases. I kind of see yoni mapping similar where, you know, you can go to the pelvic floor PT, or you can even go to someone for a yoni massage and you get, you receive that, that service, that experience, that education. And then there's the practice that you facilitate yourself, which is completely at your pace and you feel complete safety to let all of the emotions from your touch, from your body come up to be integrated, to be felt. And it's just, it's your experience.

It's no one else's. And there's no goal or deadline for what your body needs to do by what time I'm going to pause my conversation with the wonderful Jules for a moment to share an invitation with you so as I mentioned earlier Jules is a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program which is a three-month immersion into the power and wisdom of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program, which is a three-month immersion into the power and wisdom of the menstrual cycle. I took it myself in 2017. It was amazing. And as she will share a little later in our chat, one of her favorite aspects of the program, and me too, was the vibrant community that she found herself in the middle of and the quality of the space holding she experienced on the program. It's been called a life transforming experience, the deepest self growth of my entire life and

nothing short of a miracle. So you can read more stories from past graduates, you can explore the curriculum and see how the MLP could help you to step deeper into your leadership at menstrualityleadership.com yeah the word safety came up a few times in your story and personally for me with my story with this it's yeah probably I don't know 12 years since I found Tammy Lynn Kent's book Wild Feminine and it just sang at me from the bookshelf there's something about the cover and I opened it and I saw you know vagina massage and was like wow what is this and the book perhaps a bit like your experience with Wild Power it helped me see how much pain I was in. And I couldn't contact, not physical pain, emotional pain. And I couldn't contact that pain because I had numbed, totally numbed myself.

You know, you mentioned your yoni knew you better than you knew your yoni and that you had crossed her boundaries. And that's totally like my late teens and my early 20s was just again because I hadn't had that initiation and most of us don't have initiation into our sexuality you know from menarche and beyond I just gave myself away and got myself in all kinds of okay I say got myself that's interesting I had traumatizing sexual experiences and it was like I can't really describe it like it like I was kind of scarred emotionally in that area of my body and you know from one particular one where I was in a terrible relationship which I've also spoken about on the podcast um and he was sleeping with lots of other women and brought sexually transmitted diseases

back to me when I was just 18 I was so tender and like just new into this world and I had a difficult experience going to the clinic and it all felt so cold and clinical and I just felt broken like you said I was just like I felt so um yeah like I'd been broken so when I discovered the book I realized wow I am holding so much pain in this part of my body and I think it's helpful for both of us to share these stories because the people listening like everyone's got their own story here you know we've all got different twists and turns that we've been through in our lives. But I think our yonis and our pelvic bowls are holding a lot of our past experience. So as I started to bring presence to that part of my body and bring touch to my vagina, it's just slowly but surely opened up the wealth of beauty and joy and intelligence that's here in this body that

I had also numbed myself away from I've numbed the pain but then in the numbing of the pain I've numbed all of that wisdom as well and then my cycle awareness journey opened up so it was concurrent for me as well yeah so I think it would be great next to hear about something that you and I spoke about when we were preparing for this which was the connection between nervous system health and the yoni and yoni wrapping could you walk us into that yeah first I want to say thank you so much for sharing a bit of your your story and how Tammy Lynn Kent's work really influenced you um she was a big influence for myself as well um in my whole kind of process of creating this as a practice in my life I'd also say we have a podcast episode with her it's episode 92 if people want to listen it's a great one I've

heard it yeah so the nervous system is definitely like kind of a hot word, right? And in the last few years, but it's obviously always something that's been with us like our cycles. And I, you know, I follow so many Instagram accounts, and I've been to lots of workshops in my like, local area with everyone's different take on the nervous system. And something I feel like I haven't seen many people talking about is how the nervous system for the female body or for female physiology really is rooted in the yoni. The clitoris is the area of the body with the most amount of nerve endings. I think it's something over 9,000 nerve endings. And so if we're talking about our nerves being fried or our nervous system being imbalanced or not feeling safety, why are we not talking about our yonis? This is like a question I've had in my mind a lot over the last few years. And I've had my yoni mapping practice, I mean, almost for a decade now and for me it's like when I have my practice one of the

first things I started noticing was just how soothed and grounded my system felt even from just a five to ten minute practice and I also want to make it really clear that yoni mapping is not necessarily like a self-pleasure or masturbation practice. It doesn't always like if something becomes pleasurable and you kind of follow that thread. Wonderful. But for me personally, most of the time, it's much more exploratory. And I'm just listening to what my body has to share, what sensations or emotions come up from the session. And so, yeah, with doing my practice like this, I noticed really early on that

I felt almost similar to how I feel when I leave a yoga class or I have a meditation, any sort of like, you know, kind of common nervous system regulating tool that, you know, we often talk about today, except really my uni mapping practice felt like the most effective out of all of them and the most powerful. And, you know, I follow that today when I come back from a birth that feels like it really jolted me, even if it was a really beautiful, positive, smooth experience that I was attending. It's still quite an intense event on my energetic body and my overall nervous system. And I have my little routine where I take a shower, I use water to kind of like start to soothe and wash off the experience. And then I'll very often go into my yoni mapping practice, which, again, for some people, this

might sound like, whoa, this is wild. What do you mean? But it is truly a tool to use to bring your body back to its center and to really work with the various pressure points, acupressure points of the vagina externally and internally. And so much of the tension that we hold in our pelvic bowl, like Tammy Lynn Kent says, is just really begging to be released. And it just needs our touch to do so. Most of us, I think, can also relate to the only times we touch our body are when we kind of have some sort of a sexual goal. So either we're touching our body with that sexual goal in mind, or our partner is, or we have some sort of symptom or condition going on, and we're scared and full of fear and so

we're like looking in the mirror crouching down trying to figure out what's going on and there doesn't seem to be a very regular in between for us um shoulders we don't think twice about either massaging our own shoulders or asking someone else to massage our shoulders or like another part of our body it's it's just interesting isn't it because it's just shoulders or like another part of our body it's it's just interesting isn't it because it's just it's just another part of our body yeah yeah exactly you know you you give yourself a little back massage or maybe you roll your wrist around and you kind of feel how your wrist is feeling or you know your shoulders or your trapezius muscles which really common area to hold tension and we just kind of do this throughout the day like you said

without thinking about it because we feel the tension and we instinctively feel that it needs to release. And then we feel lighter, we feel better. And we're like, wonderful, I'm carrying on with my day. But you know, there's with our yoni with this part of our body, there's so much stigma, and externally, and then also our own internal stories about what it means to touch this part of our body, what it means to interact with it. And it just kind of gets in the way from us being able to have that kind of relationship with it. But truly over time, like you don't have to feel 100% comfortable or shame free to begin the practice. the practice is what's what gets you to the other side. And like I said earlier, it really is about going at your own pace. And I thoroughly believe

that every, every single woman, every single person with a yoni can have the experience of having a deep relationship with this part of their body, where they really start to feel, you know, like their yoni is a wise compass, something they can trust, someone they can trust to help guide them through life. And it completely changes your view on walking through the world and just the way you experience day-to-day things. You're igniting your source of magic in your body. Could you paint a picture of what it looks like, your yoni mapping practice? So what would it look like from start to finish? Yeah, so I'll start with kind of giving my loose schedule.

I keep things pretty intuitive, but I definitely don't go over a week without having a Yoni mapping session. An average week will probably look like I do two to three, 15 to 20 minute sessions during the week. And then over the weekend, I might do kind of a longer, more in-depth session that's maybe up to an hour, 45 minutes to an hour, I'd say. And so for one of those shorter sessions, what that looks like is I like to do it in the afternoon, kind of in the middle of the day when I start feeling maybe like work stress piling on a bit. And I know that I just need to recenter myself and kind of feel back in my body. And I do it in privacy. I'll go into my bedroom, close the door. And I'll often start with a little bit of coconut oil.

Not a lot. And I'll just kind of cut the outside of my vulva with my hand and begin what I call yoni breathing, um, where I'm really sending my breath down into my uterus, um, my actual vaginal canal, like, so inside of my yoni and I'm feeling the muscles opening and contracting, expanding and contracting with my breath. So that's kind of my first way of getting my body's permission that it's ready to interact with me in this way. And some days I feel so locked up that my body doesn't do the expanding and contracting and doesn't want to really interact with my breath. And that's a day where that's really the extent of my practice. I just leave it at that where I leave a handcuffed over myself.

Most of the time though, once I do a little bit of yoni breathing, I'll move into just kind of lightly massaging my pubic mound, the outer labia and bringing a little bit of, you know, positive blood flow into the area. And then I like to yoni gaze so I'll bring like a handheld mirror and I'll just spend a minute or two kind of looking at my external anatomy and saying some positive affirmations to her and then from there I begin the internal practice I want to say if you're someone that has a lot of like fear resistance or just some sort of like emotional blockage to touching yourself or, you know, even entering yourself with your own finger. Sometimes you can just start only working externally and spend a few weeks like that until you feel comfortable, um, entering yourself. There's no rush in the process and you shouldn't override your own boundaries in order to have the

practice. And then internally, you know, what the practice looks like is, I'll start literally just around the very entrance of my yoni. So my vaginal opening, and I just kind of press the tip of my finger around in a clockwise motion, giving like two or three breaths to each spot. So I'm really feeling what sensations are coming up in that area for a lot of, um, for a lot of people, this actually is a really highly sensitized part of the Yoni where you feel a lot of like stinging or burning, but then what you find is by holding your finger there for a few breaths, the sensation starts to dissipate, which is really interesting. And then I'll go an inch deeper, maybe, where I just bring my finger in slightly more, and I do the same thing, working clockwise. And I'm doing this, you know, working through the entire length

of my vaginal canal until I reach my cervix. And then I guess it's kind of, I'll say advanced practice technique is when you feel like you're ready to interact with your cervix. And then I guess it's kind of, I'll say advanced practice technique is when you feel like you're ready to interact with your cervix a bit, you know, you can do the same thing where a lot of, a lot of us have a visceral reaction to touching our cervix. If it's something we've never done before, where it can feel nauseating or like a knot in your stomach or like, this doesn't feel right. I shouldn't be here. But it's really amazing over time of just simply holding a finger on an area of your cervix and breathing some love and releasing some tension there in maybe even weeks, you know, your, your timelines up to you and your body, but you really start to feel that visceral tense reaction turn into a softening um a loving sensation and a lot of a lot of women myself included have had very like cosmic godly experiences with um transforming that into like a pleasurable and beautiful sensation yeah i'm remembering back to a conversation i had with

olivia bryant um who's the self cervix teacher I don't know if you've come across her but we had a great cosmic cervix conversation for anyone that wants to explore that I'm kind of lucky in that when I had that horrible experience when I was 18 um when they were examining me they found a cyst on my cervix which is benign and fine but it meant it means that for my whole life I've had this relationship with my cervix because I check in with the cyst and see how it is and then in that process I check in with the cervix so it's kind of it was a blessing in disguise or like my body calling me into myself somehow yeah beautiful thank you for walking us through that just for de-shaming it, for opening up the possibilities.

And, you know, I hope everyone listening can have a sense of, oh, maybe like even if it's maybe just starting with the yoni breathing. to just simply do that practice of cupping with love and then seeing if we can feel kind of map those proprioceptive maps you know around our yonis and vaginas and uterus to to feel how the muscles are moving is already a huge and beautiful act and I'm thinking of something that Tammy said because I did her holistic pelvic care training and the thing that the core thing that I took away was it's really your loving presence in that part of your body that does the healing there's so many other benefits like the physical massage releasing tension in the fascia and all of those like there's so many but and simply us bringing loving presence with no agenda to that part of our bodies is so profoundly healing isn't it absolutely yeah that's that's so beautifully said by yourself and by Tammy um yeah you know

I also want to say too you know I have had experiences where I've had like really bad menstrual cramps or I was having like a acute yeast infection. And these are usually experiences in our life where we're like, we do not want to interact with our Yoni or this part of our body. We don't want to look at her, touch her, feel her. Um, but in my experience, I've, I've had these, um, these moments and these store, these healing stories where I like faced her head on in her pain. And I started my mapping practice, um, like in the middle of my bleed or in the middle of having an infection. And she started to open and soften and relax and feel safe. Um, and I like resolved my

yeast infection the next day. It really was amazing. Um, and same thing with menstrual cramps. I don't get them so much anymore, but when I do kind of have an instance where I'm just feeling a lot of tension, um, my Yoni mapping practice feels absolutely wonderful for that. You know, there's the physical aspect where of course you're like relaxing the muscles in this area of the body, which kind of helps ease the edge of those cramps. But I also really believe there's this kind of like psycho-emotional, psycho-spiritual element of it too, where you really are sending love and care to your body rather than as soon as you feel her causing some sort of discomfort, we separate, you know, we say we don't want to be in relationship

with you anymore. And it's like, well, what if in her pain or in this discomfort or in symptoms, you did decide to be in relationship with this area of your body, then what might happen? Yeah, like we've, we've been, it's actively been severed this connection with our bodies, you know, through the history of millennia for women. There are so many ways in which we've been uprooted, like my friend Jules talks about how we're like root vegetables with our roots dangling in the air, you know, we've been uprooted from our feminine practices or from our practices as women and it's such a radical act for us personally but for the collective to simply reconnect absolutely I'd love to read something that you shared on Instagram because it's so poetic and so beautiful and just hear how it lands in you today and has anything you'd like to add so you said in blood in healing in waiting in stress in inflammation in sickness in disconnection your yoni is awaiting your touch

a yoni led life can be confronting easy to put off or disguise itself as quote not your thing but every woman's yoni is her thing every woman can be that kind of woman the one who knows how her body works who knows what her body needs and who knows her body's edges of potential i trust my yoni to always show me what i need to see feel or know she is my guide and compass through life it sounds super super wonderful being read by you too Sophie I'm I would bet that that was written in my autumn yes yeah I mean I'm super woman. I don't have this like, base of knowledge or experiences that's like so out of reach than the average woman. I am the average woman, you know, I just happen to attend births and have followed like my own personal fascinations with holistic women's health and the, you know, women's bodies and everything. And I need that reminder too almost all the time same yeah this conversation is absolutely serving as a reminder to me like Sophie come back to this part of your body come home come home so thank you so so I'd just love to hear a little bit about your experience of the MLP

what called you I mean it's quite clear what called you but if you could share in your own words what called you to to the program yeah so this was this was actually like a big move for me to decide to sign up for um for the MLP training I wild power had been like a bible for me you know always sitting on my nightstand I it was just a huge reference for me. It totally changed the way I was living my life over the past few years. And then it also marked a change for me where I really wanted to diversify what I was, what I was doing and the knowledge that I had. And I had, I had at this point in time, I was already pretty tight with my cycle, I'd say. But I also just felt like there was more to go and deeper to go. And I knew there was more of a vocabulary that I could have.

There was just deeper knowledge on how to hold space for others kind of in the cycle realm. And it really enticed me. I, and I always had seen the connection between the cycle and then the pregnancy birth postpartum transitions, um, that, that we go through. And so it was like a natural extension to, to birth work as well for me. Um, and from there, I just, I think I got an email because I'd been on the Red School email list. And was this the first, was that the first MLP training that went on? There were many in person, like 12 or 13 in person before it came online.

And I think 2020 might have been the first online one and 2020 or 21 was the second, but I can't quite remember. I'm bad with time. Okay. Well, yeah, it was, that makes sense to me. It was either the first I can't quite remember I'm bad with time okay well yeah it was that makes sense to me with either the first or second online training that that I joined I remember it was like fairly fairly new to be online um and I was like oh amazing I I remember there was a cycle coach that I followed that was a graduate of the in-person MLP training that I'd

been following for a few years um and I thought well maybe I'd go to the UK one day and do the training. And yeah, when I started seeing it advertised online, I was like, yes, this is it's time. Like it feels right. It makes sense. It's available to me now fully. And then through the actual training, I mean, to me, the most profound thing about it was just being able to interact with that many women, people on a weekly basis and share these super vulnerable, intimate experiences about our lives and cycles, which is something I'd never experienced before. I think most of us haven't. And we just were having these conversations all the time about our inner worlds, our inner experiences with our cycle, and just the different like life stages and approaches to womanhood and taking care of ourselves and

moving through our emotions. And I mean, that's something that's a value you can't put money on, you know, it's like, how do you gather this many people in one place and have these kinds of conversations? Like, that's the ultimate preparation for learning how to hold space for others in this way. And then whatever way, you know, you're trying to extend your own work. How would you say that it has supported you in your leadership or as you've as you're bringing your calling out into the world in, in bigger and more beautiful ways? Yeah. So there's, there's the personal aspect of it. And then there's like the skill aspect. So with the skill part, it really has helped me in the way that I hold space for doula clients, which is, you know, obviously highly intimate work and

everyone has their own experiences through pregnancy and birth and postpartum. And because I got exposure to so many different people's experiences in the program, I really noticed myself taking that with clients I work with today of just really being able to sit, hold space, listen, reflect back without trying to like solve or interject. There's so many, like, you know, when, when you're a doula or you're working in the birth world or working with women in these, these ways, um, there's so many like intangible skills of the, the social interactions that we have and the connection that we have. Um, and that was kind of an unexpected

skill for me that I gained from the program. And then personally, I thought that I was pretty deep with my cycle awareness practice prior to that. But obviously, the training just took it to another level. And I really learned how to hone in my cycle awareness in a way that really deeply supports my life and all of the projects and endeavors that, you know, I seek out and try to build on. And it's given me a lot more respect for my body and the way that I just want to do work in the world. I don't like, I don't want to burn myself out or go past my boundaries. And I really respect the reserves of energy that my

cycle creates for me. And I've noticed like in my friendships with other women or even like family members, I just, I think sometimes I sprinkle a little bit on them and I see them blossom from like a tiny conversation that we have, which is always really exciting for me. Or people are like, well, why do you, why are you doing things this way or oh you're you're not coming out on your period what do you do instead and I love I love having those kinds of conversations and I'm not afraid to have them anymore it just ripples out in incredible ways doesn't it it's like every woman every person who's cycle aware it's just slowly magnet, gently infusing out into their communities. It's so exciting to feel. So, wow, thank you. This has been such a rich conversation. Like I knew it was going to be amazing and it's been, it's surpassed my, my wildest dreams. It's been wonderful to be with

you Jules. And I'd love to ask for people who love the way you're speaking and can feel, like I can feel the depth of your practice and your experience here and it's so inspiring to me and so for people who are feeling that too how can they connect with you how can they connect with this work how can they be guided in yoni mapping with you by you yeah so um you can follow me on instagram jules alma and my website julesalma.com um there's actually a free intro to yoni mapping course so if you'd like to kind of get started with i think it's about 10 days um of like a personal practice each day to slowly introduce you into how this can become a

regular tool in your life that's a really great starting place um and other than that if you're based in Austin Texas I do attend births here gosh if I ever got pregnant again I'll totally want to move to Austin so you'd be my doula I just want to um recommend the 10-day course because I signed up for it when I knew that we were going to have this conversation it is a very supportive gentle way of feeling like you're having your hand held as you're easing into this so yeah thank you for creating that and thank you again for this conversation best of luck with all this beautiful beautiful work that you're doing thank you so much Sophie I'm really touched hey thank you for listening all the way through to the end here what a beautiful conversation if you have a friend who you sense could benefit from the work that Jaws is sharing from this

conversation please share the podcast with them please get in touch with me if there's anyone that you'd love me to be in conversation with any themes that you'd love me to be in conversation with, any themes that you'd love us to explore. And that's it for this week. So I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.