I know you’ve looked at the title of this article and thought ‘What?!’ Yes, I know it's quite the statement, and could mean so many, many things. But I want to discuss specifically the shame and trauma held within our vaginas and uterus.
All the ancestral stuff, all the downloaded stuff from family, from friends, society. Honestly, it's surprising that anything even works.
I'll share with you some of the shame and trauma that I became aware I was storing, together with one or two things I did that significantly changed my relationship with my vagina and uterus. Follow the suggestion to change your life in the way it did mine!
Growing up, I didn't really have much of an awareness of periods and menstruating – or what a period was. That was, of course, until I had my own. It wasn't really something that we spoke about in my family. My mum didn't have a conversation with me about having a period or what I was supposed to do.
I remember having a sex education class in primary school where we learned about the reproductive organs, but that was really about it.
I recall on my first period, I actually felt really embarrassed to tell my mum. So I kept it a secret and ended up using tissues as a pad, which was not very comfortable and quite a disgusting feeling. I already felt embarrassment, and I guess shame, and didn’t really want to communicate that I was on my period. But in my culture, we were expected to tell the family just that. Additionally, we would have to sit aside and not touch anything. So literally not sit on the couch. Thankfully, in my home, we were allowed to. But generally, culturally, we were not meant to sit with anybody, not go into the kitchen, not go into the fridge to get food or touch any food unless it was served to you.
The sense that I had around it from the messaging I was receiving was that when we were on our period, we were dirty. That made it feel even more shameful. I remember having a conversation with my aunt one time and asking her why we do this. Why do we have to sit to the side? Her response was that it was so we could have some rest. I challenged that: if I'm resting, I want to get into the fridge and access chocolate! After that she didn't really have much more to say.
(I was a very inquisitive and challenging child and teenager – and still am as an adult. I questioned our cultural practises a lot!)
So there was a lot of shame around having a period. Going to social events, to weddings or relatives’ homes, if you were on your period, everybody knew about it. Or you weren't able to go to these particular events because you were, as far as I could sense, unclean. You were dirty. This was the feeling that I always carried with me and held with me for such a long time. Reflecting on that, it's absolutely ridiculous. It's such a natural part of our being as a woman to have periods and to have healthy periods.
I acknowledge through my teenage years, through my 20s and a lot of my 30s too, I wasn't having healthy periods. They weren't regular. They were painful. I would get headaches. I started to realise that there was obviously a lot of trauma trapped in that particular part of my body: the vagina; the uterus; reproductive/sex organs.
I grew up watching a lot of Bollywood movies and there's a massive amount of taboo around even kissing on screen. There was all kinds of other touchy feely stuff between the male and female leads, like dancing in the rain and clothes all wet and the male lead running his head and arms all over the woman's body. But anything like being about to kiss was taboo, which I felt was absolutely ridiculous.
So there has always been this sense of shame, secrecy, taboo, around sexuality and what is a completely natural female reproductive process, that is the menstrual cycle.
Over the last 7+ years, I've done a lot of work with my body in releasing shame, pain, trauma and anger, and all of the different emotions that have been stuck and that I've been storing in my physical body. All of this stuck energy, stuck emotions created dis-ease, dis-comfort and significant im-balance, including around the vagina and the uterus.
When we talk about trauma, we often associate it with these grandiose things, like I must have been sexually abused to have trauma, I must’ve have been beaten up. But anything that creates an emotional impact, that is not allowed to be released, that's trauma. So, never belittle the trauma that you may have experienced in comparison to somebody else's. It's how you feel; it's how you experience it, and if it's bad for you and uncomfortable for you, then it’s trauma.
The good news is that it is something that can be released out of the body so that you can experience more balance, flow, love and peace in those spaces instead.
One of the things that I did as part of my healing with my body was a process that brought me into conversation with my reproductive organs. Well, actually, in this very first one, I had a conversation specifically with my vagina. This might sound strange, so keep an open mind and bear with me here. I did this with a couple of friends with whom I felt safe. There was three of us and we were facilitating this process with each other. Nobody was naked, but we were connecting energetically with each other’s vaginas so that we could balance ourselves with our vagina.
What was really interesting was that when my friend went into this energetic surrogation for my vagina, I started laughing. I started laughing because I could actually sense/see it in front of me.
My friend who was in energetic surrogation for my vagina she said to me, ‘Why are you laughing at me?’
My instant response was ‘Oh, no, no, no. I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing because I literally feel like I can see my vagina.’
She replied, ‘No, that's not me saying that. That's the message from your vagina. Why are you laughing at me?’
And I was absolutely STUMPED. I could not believe that this was the message coming from my vagina. I mean, I was gobsmacked.
After doing this balance, through this process, we (my vagina and I) exchanged kind, loving, open words with each other. It was an incredibly releasing process.
Now I've done this process many, many times with other parts of my body, and again they're powerful and have created so much balance.
The fun thing is that after I did this particular process, I finally ordered and started using a menstrual cup. I’d been introduced to and been made aware of menstrual cups now probably about 15 to 17 years ago. To be honest, I thought the idea of using them was disgusting. I had always had problems with tampons because I didn't enjoy putting my finger into my vagina to insert them when there was blood coming out. This was because I was still holding all of this grossness; the perception and feeling around having a period and menstruating and bleeding, that I wanted to be as far away from it and touch myself as little as possible during that period. The thought of getting period blood on my hands made me feel sick.
So after this process, wow, things changed. I started using the menstrual cup which only added to the level of connection that I had with my vagina and with my period and, of course, as a result my uterus.
Feeling into and really connecting with my cycle, I went through a lot of change in my cycle. This was really interesting to observe. It started to come into a lot more balance. I started to experience more ease during my periods and even the communication when I was sensing that there might be a bit of a headache coming on. I would be able to be more comfortable expressing, for example, in the workplace, that I needed to go home, I needed to have a lie down. I had no shame about saying ‘I'm about to start my period. I'm on my period.’ If anything, it would make other people feel weird, but I felt so comfortable in communicating that.
I think there's probably a lot in that in itself: being able to communicate I'm on my period. I need some time to rest and honour my body.
My tip for today is more of a suggestion. If you haven't ever used a menstrual cup, I'd highly, highly recommend it to get in touch with your menstruation, and to really be able to observe it in so much more of its entirety than using a pad or a tampon.
The main tip for today is a variation on the process that I went through with my friends. This is going to allow you to do this by yourself. You're going to sit in a quiet space and set an intention to have a conversation with your vagina or your uterus, or both together, and really open up to ask the question or to feel into any trapped stress or trauma that may be sitting there and where that might be coming from.
I’ve previously introduced the concept of breath to clear trapped energy in the body and stuck energy in the body. You can go back and read that and familiarise yourself with the technique. We're going to use that same process in this instance to really breathe into an intention that you want to send into that space.
For me, when I went through this process, I communicated with my vagina ‘I love you’. This was super powerful and moved me in all of my being. So pick a statement, an ‘I am’ statement, that resonates with you in communicating that with your vagina or your uterus. Breathe that into the space where you're holding any stuck energy. This will start to shift that stress and trauma out of your body, and you should start to feel more ease and more connection. Repeating this process with different statements is going to enhance that more and more.
Let me know how you get on with that process.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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