My Experience With Yoni Steaming
Dec 08, 2021
*Like most, if not all, healing practices, yoni steaming bears roots in indigeneity and ancient cultures. My experience with vaginal steaming involved private, personal honorings in acknowledging and respecting this. Although I don’t typically choose to share the more sacred, traditional knowledge, it felt important to recap my personal experience with newfound levels of self love and to write an honest review of this powerful practice, with this particular blend of herbs.
Mere years ago the word yoni wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I truly did not even know what the word meant. Having been in the throws of yoga and hearing sanskrit words often, this was especially odd. In retrospect, it makes sense, as I spent much of my adult woman life being quite disconnected from my body, my home. Getting back to basics through the workings of a healing lifestyle ––connecting back to me, connecting back to nature –– has led me down the long road of navigating self love and embracing my inner femme stuff, a big part of that self love. Doing a yoni steam inadvertently taught me more about myself and made me appreciate the bits of me on a new level. Necessitating some deeper digs in hugging and loving my womanhood too.
The medicinal blend of Yoni Steaming herbs I used for this were:
Rose buds and petals - soothing to tissues, promotes self-love and emotional healing
Yarrow - superb for tissue and wound-healing
Calendula- calms inflammation and brings energetic brightness
Mugwort - relaxes the nervous system, promotes spiritual awakening
Rosemary - increases circulation and promotes detoxification
Damiana - boosts fertility, libido, and mood
Lavender - calming on all levels
All you need to get started is a toilet or a chair (with a removable seat cushion), some herbs and a stove, and a pot with water.
I’m keeping this review to the quick intimacies of what I personally felt in terms of sensory experience, mindfulness and the emotional connection in getting back to body. You can read much more about the ins and outs of yoni steaming and the potential women’s health benefits here.
It was magically meditative. I cleared old energy from my space, dimmed the lights, lit a yummy candle, put on binaural beats and read Jonathan Livingston Seagull (lovely little parable story I would recommend reading!). Aside from regular meditation, this was the most set aside moment of presence that I had cultivated for myself in a while. Getting all nowed out, coupled with the warmth of the steam and the other self-romancing elements, was a blissful experience alone. I spent about 30-40 minutes steaming.
The herbs were calming, soothing and deliberate. This blend includes some of my favorite herbs, like lavender, rose petals, calendula and rosemary. And some new ones that have clear energizing and detoxifying elements around reproductive and women’s health. With these herbs I was able to sink into familiar and fragrant-driven feelings of comfort and deep relaxation. And there is something to be said about mindfully focusing on relaxing and healing the vagina, as we store a lot of old emotions here. These purposeful, powerful herbs paired with steaming can work synergistically to dislodge archaic emotions, especially if we keep a routine with steaming. I did feel a remarkable softening of my womb space, and my entire body, during and after doing this.
It was a significant symbol for reset during a new moon. It felt best to do the steam on a new moon, aligning with the divine sensations of embracing the new, turning in to deeper emotional clearings, seeding fresh ideas, projects, routines, etc. It also happened to bookend my cycle which felt like perfect timing.
It was a unique exercise in next-level, intentional self care. I don’t often prioritize my female body in terms of showing it direct appreciation, getting in touch in more intimate ways. It was a moment in pure dedication to myself and the parts of me that might not get a whole lot of focused self love. The parts that have been historically more ignored, hidden and even shamed. As women, we face a lot of unlearning, unraveling and general healing work to tackle in this department.
Being ultra intentional in cultivating a more intimate moment with myself was one of the more special experiences I’ve had in the last few years, after using various modalities of healing, energy clearing and relaxation. It was also a real privilege to do something for myself that was completely different and maybe not something I would have taken up on my own volition.
I will definitely be vaginal steaming again sometime and hope to make it somewhat routine for all of these stellar reasons and more. Having only steamed once so far, I’d like to work it into my life so I can experience and assess more long-term reproductive and cycle-centered benefits.
I sometimes still struggle with ovulation pains, I come from a history of vaginal Ph issues (although this seems gone since adopting a high-fruit, raw vegan life) and am fresh off of a half life of invasive birth control pills and devices –– there is a lot of residual damage, toxins and trauma to still be purged out! It seems clear that yoni steaming can be of immense support –– physically, emotionally and spiritually –– for doing this work.
Have you heard of or done any vaginal steaming for yourself? I would love to hear about your experience in the comments below.
