Hello and welcome to VagQuest: The Podcast! VagQuest was created to bring support, personal insights, and levity to those on a journey with vaginismus and related pelvic floor dysfunction.
My name is Missi and this podcast partners with a program I created to support those of you struggling with moving through vaginismus through a purely physical approach of exercise and dilating. Those are the things that got me started and moved me across the finish line, but in today’s episode, I’ll be providing part 3 of 3 of an overview of all the stuff I did in the middle of that journey.
As I mentioned in a prior episode, I use the chakra system of yoga as a pillar of organization— if you aren’t familiar, it’s like the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs of yoga. While I definitely did not do everything in the order I now present them to you, I wish I would have! It would have made a lot more sense to me, and I hope this is useful for you!
In part one of this series we reviewed the first three chakras— root, sacral, and solar plexus or navel. In the previous episode we reviewed the heart and the throat chakras. In this episode, we wrap up with the third eye and the crown chakra. I don’t think I mentioned this yet, there are actually a ton of chakras within and around the body, but these 7 are the ones we tend to focus on in Western culture, and frankly, exploring everything would be a whole other podcast.
We’ll start with the third eye or Ajna chakra, which is located in between our eyebrows, in front of our prefrontal cortex. This chakra also relates to the pineal gland, which is inside the brain and regulates sleep and wake cycles. This chakra is all about uniting our brain with what’s going on in our bodies, or interoception, perceiving how our bodies are moving, or proprioception, and our ability to tap into our intuition, which is knowing or understanding something without conscious thought. If you’re anything like me, despite being a dancer and a yoga teacher with overall body awareness likely above the average human, it was like I had one of those black censor blocks across my pelvis. I really had to learn to become more aware of what was going on in that space. I also learned to ignore my intuition through cultural conditioning. The good news is, we can do things to bring both our body awareness and intuition back online.
In the crown, or Sahasrara chakra, which is located at the crown of our head, we learn to connect to a higher purpose, divine love, God, universe, source, however you want to phrase it. I see this as three fold: first, whether we are religious, spiritual, agnostic, or an atheist, we’ve likely been informed by some aspect of our family or broader culture on what to believe about this topic. Here is where we can deconstruct that and get really clear on how these beliefs— the ones bestowed upon us— have informed how we behave and move through the world, and how that has impacted our pelvic floor. Next, we explore the relationship we want to have with a higher power or purpose. If you don’t believe in God, that’s totally cool, but you might believe in a higher goal or an idea of the life you want to create and how you want to show up in the world. These bigger ideas can help us stay motivated and connected to something when things don’t go our way. When culture constructs these ideas, it often blatantly excludes sexuality and pleasure, so this is where we can start to integrate those things and move from ignoring these parts of ourselves to honoring and cherishing them. Lastly, this is also where we can learn to tap into what I think of super charged intuition, or receiving downloads, where that sense of knowing seems to come from outside of me vs. within.
I’d like to share a personal story about this. I realize I might lose some of you with what I’m about to say, in that I might sound a little nutty, but the entire reason I created my first beta group-coaching program, which eventually became the on-demand workshop VagQuest, which is now this podcast, is because I received what I can only describe as a download in August 2023. It was a visceral feeling literally through the crown of my head that lasted about two days and it was the outline for this program, using the chakras as a pillar of organization. I’ve had to fill in that outline and develop this content over the past year and a half, and I will continue to do so, perhaps for the rest of my life, but one of the reasons I want to make all of this accessible while also sustainable to operate is because it isn’t really mine. It was given to me to figure out and share. Some of you have thanked me for my bravery in sharing my story over the years. I appreciate it, but I don’t see myself as brave. I see myself as dutiful. I’ve been given a job to carry out, and I may not be in a place where I can outwardly fulfill those duties every day, and I’ve had to take breaks especially recently due to some life changes, but it’s my purpose and the thing that I come back to and make space for. I’m very aware that this is the work of my lifetime. So when I speak about finding a deeper sense of purpose through our experience with vaginismus or other things that challenge us, this is what I mean.
Phew. Okay. Deep breaths. That was a lot.
We will start to dive into the deeper work within each chakra in the following episodes.
If you just cannot wait to do more, you can visit yogaforvaginismus.com, where you can sign up for the free Vaginismus Starter Kit, or the monthly Y4V membership which includes Yoga for Vaginismus, a library of asana, movement, and breathwork practices designed to support people with vaginismus; Divine Dilating, a series of what I call Power Practices, which are guided meditations to use while dilating, and lastly, VagQuest, the course!
Until next time, take deep breaths into your lower rib cage and lower back, and wiggle out anything you’re holding onto from your day, and I’ll see you on the other side of vaginismus. Peace.
