Pelvic Steaming my way into body acceptance

From Kundalini, I have been taught that trauma lives in the body. That is why certain poses can be so confronting - emotional upheaval leaving the body is as uncomfortable as emotional trauma/stress entering the body. I thought one needed to be screaming internally (our externally, the joys of Zoom muting) with one’s arms/legs shaking in order to reach that level of emotional emancipation - turns out I can get that from steaming my genitals.*

For those of you not familiar with pelvic steaming, I would like to take a moment to extol the virtues of this staggeringly simple transformative process - all you need is tea/herbs, bowl, and a toilet. Make tea in a bowl (chamomile, ginger, thyme, whatever calls to you). Place bowl inside the toilet. Sit on toilet with a blanket wrapped around you (creating a tent for the steam arising from below) and relax. The steam enters the core of your body and relaxes all.

Here is a recent conversation I had during a steam.

Okay body , here we go. I want all parts of you that have hidden away over the past 14 years of medical trauma to rejoin the collective, share your needs, and be heard. Let us let this process unfold slowly and with intention. I am asking you all to come back, I want you to be here. I am telling each of you that I am sorry and I want to hear what you need to tell me.

Ovaries, I am sorry a tech told us that you look like shriveled raisins. I am sorry I hated you for that.

Vagina, I am sorry I took your pain as a sign of my brokenness. That I judged our worth as a wife and partner by your functionality.

Body, I am sorry I have judged us/you again and again as smashed, smattered, damaged, and destroyed. Either judging the cancer cells that way, or judging the body that doesn’t handle the cancer cells, or judging the body that is different after treatments for addressing cancer cells - all of the things. All of the judgements, I am sorry.

I am sorry.

Pease forgive me.

I love you.

Thank you.

And then I sat, trying not to pee as all became super relaxed, and listened while I felt. Listened to the Voice of The Good tell me I am a beloved child of the Divine and the body is the means by which we see the Both And of life. Felt my whole pelvis adjust to the warmth and the herb and the attention.

Honestly, I can see why there are Yoni Steam Spas dotted around the country. Not sure I would want to do this in a room with other people, but I am still a novice.

None of this would be possible or be happening without the container of WiseBodies. I am indebted and honored to have Isa as part of my tribe.

Thank you thank you. The remembering and the forgetting and the remembering of life - all best when accompanied by warm tea.

*That is up there with a sentence I wrote as the topic sentence in college about Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, “Ida’s breasts are the confessional altar of her morality.” Hopefully this sentence will stick with me as long as that one has.