Pregnancy and childbirth can be arduous on the body and mind. It’s an incredible time, but it impacts every aspect of your life, especially your sense of ‘self.’ As my son moved out of the baby stage (he’s now 9), my thoughts started to progress past the – get up, feed child, feed me and keep everyone alive until bedtime – routine. Who WAS I post-childbirth?

Like most new parents, sex had become an infrequent event, often inconveniently squeezed in after Caelen’s bedtime and just before passing out exhausted at 8.30pm. Kegels has helped with the basic stop-myself-peeing-when-sneezing, but I felt disassociated with myself, my body and my sexuality. Before childbirth, sex was important to me, I’d go as far as to say it used to be my favourite pastime.

I realised that I couldn’t get back to me, without being able to make time for and embrace that aspect of myself again. I’d always been interested in Tantra and Taoist practices and I started to look to these areas for inspiration. I read so much, devouring everything I could get my hands on and started to realise that my ‘sex life’ wasn’t necessarily about sex with my partner and more about embracing my body, understanding my needs and being comfortable with myself. I came across the amazing practice of using Yoni Eggs.

Jade egg or yoni egg practice is the ancient Chinese art of using Yoni eggs to literally heal the body from inside out. This 5,000-year-old practice was once the closely guarded secret of the royal Chinese concubines, but is now being rediscovered by women worldwide. I discovered that this awesome practice is said to not only tighten the pelvic floor and improve your sexual health, vitality and intensity of orgasms, but provide a myriad of other benefits. Ancient texts promised benefits such as a natural face lift, longevity, curing incontinence, improved lubrication, higher levels of fertility and decreased menstrual cramps. I can honestly say that through my practice over the past five years, I’ve experienced every one of these benefits.

Being the founder of a women’s yoga collective, I knew that this was something I had to bring to other women and so I created YoniYoga. I started to combine a gentle yoga practice with the use of my Jade Egg to create a complete spiritual and physical practice, accessible to all women, no matter their life stage. YoniYoga is about being comfortable in your own body. We’ve been taught to be ashamed or embarrassed by our own reproductive organs and our physical and sensual needs as a woman. Not only can a YoniYoga practice help with this, it’s a deeply healing practice. Women who have suffered traumatic childbirth or miscarriage or even sexual assault can truly heal by working through these emotions.

You can just wear your Jade Egg while you go about your daily business, or even wear it to bed, but I highly recommend you combine the practice with gentle asana or YoniYoga. This allows you to fully engage all the internal muscles, so you get a gentle and therapeutic workout.

Not only is a regular practice important for vaginal health, it is also vital for mental and emotional health. The practice of YoniYoga is a moving meditation: It helps calm and balance the mind and helps you reconnect with and appreciate your body.

It cures incontinence
Inserting a Jade egg into the vagina strengthens your mula bandha (root lock) and is also said to seal in your vital energy or Chi. On the most basic physical level, it tightens your pelvic floor and helps to resensitize the vaginal canal and stops you from peeing yourself: what’s not to like here?

On an energetic level. when the PC muscle and diaphragms become loose, life-force energy will leak out from the organs as they tend to stack upon each other. This can cause conditions such as prolapse as the organs drop all of their weight to rest upon the perineum.

Inserting a Jade Egg into the vagina also stimulates the vaginal reflexology points relating to the liver, lungs, heart, spleen, and kidneys allowing for even more benefits of this practice. When we practice yoga asanas while wearing the egg, as opposed to a static yoni egg practice, even more of these points are activated as your moving around, enhancing the benefits even further.

It’s keeps you looking young and feeling vibrant!

One of my favourite books ever, Vagina by Naomi Wolf, (a Yale graduate and former political advisor to Bill Clinton,) mentions the direct connection of the vagina to the brain and even a direct co-relation to a women’s confidence. I believe this radiates in the face providing that secret glow. When these muscles are strengthened by YoniYoga, no energy is leaked from the root lock.  This means we maintain this vitality which was said to result in natural facelift which kept the royal concubines youthful.

It can regulate your menstrual cycle and help to alleviate PMS
YoniYoga can help to alleviate PMS and even hormonal imbalances. Healthy sexual organs mean healthy, regular menstrual cycles with decreased pain, cramping and even less PMS. A regular YoniYoga practice can tone the internal vaginal canal and organs and help reduce much of the heavy bleeding, cramping and fatigue experienced at this time of the month.

Improves lubrication and vaginal elasticity
The increased circulation experienced by practising yoga using your yoni egg, helps you lubricate naturally. This even applies during and after menopause. YoniYoga can also help return vaginal elasticity and heal damaged nerve endings post-birth too. For a physically and energetically health Vagina, jade eggs are most definitely the way to go: Tight, moist and happy vaginas all round.

Helps your get your libido back, heightens sexual pleasure and can make you multiorgasmic

A yoni egg practice awakens the vaginal tissue allowing you to experience deep vaginal orgasms. We’re so used to things being carelessly ‘shoved’ into the vagina: Tampons, penises, fingers… that the vagina can tense up, freeze and numb over time. By showing our vaginas some gentle consideration and love, we can resensitize and invigorate those muscles again. If you’ve never experienced vaginal, G-spot, cervical or full body orgasms (I hadn’t!) then these portals of pleasure will now become open to you.

By strengthening the pubococcygeus muscles, this allows us to enjoy longer lasting, more powerful and more intense orgasms. This was something I experienced after only using the yoni egg a handful of times. Not only that but you will be able to isolate the rings of muscles in the vaginal canal, enabling you to ‘squeeze’ your partner during intercourse, meaning your partner will feel the benefits too.

My advice to you: Purchase a Jade Egg as soon as possible. Find a qualified teacher and learn the range of gentle YoniAsanas to accompany your jade egg practice. Enjoy all of the benefits you didn’t even know you could experience from yoga.

@thepinkyoginii @yogabellies

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www.yogabellies.co.uk