Ground Floor: on vaginismus, vulvodynia, and other ways we brace

Melissa Rose Hirsch a singer, vocal coach, and birth doula on the direct link between the voice and the pelvis: why so many of her students cry mid-lesson, and a striking clinical observation from her...

28 Sep 202249min

Naomi on growing up largely unsupervised from around age seven, making breakfast, emptying the dishwasher, mothering her younger brother while her parents worke, and how that early lack of holding sh...

14 Sep 202214min

Naomi on the last piece of her healing journey to fall into place: her own pelvic floor, after years of urinary and fecal incontinence that Kegels never touched. Why: a pelvic floor that's already bra...

7 Sep 202219min

Dawn M. Rivers a yoga teacher and business coach on radically raising her prices, funding a retreat through crowdfunding, and the discomfort of sitting in "the liminal suck" between who you were and w...

16 Aug 202242min

Naomi and her husband Ali on the first time he gave her a vaginal massage: the practice she teaches for releasing pelvic holding patterns tied to vaginismus, vulvodynia, and past trauma. A rare male-p...

13 Juli 202236min

Naomi breaks down three conditions that get conflated constantly: vaginismus (the vaginal muscles involuntarily tightening against penetration — tampons, fingers, a partner, a toy), vulvodynia (persis...

6 Apr 202236min

Kayleigh Castle, mental health coach, on menarche (first period) as a mirror for the mother-daughter relationship, breaking a generational pattern of emotional neglect with her own son, and what she's...

29 Mars 202251min

Adriana Zaccardi, guide, "spiritual midwife," and teacher of maiden-to-mother rites of passage on menarche (being told by a doctor at 16 that she was "broken," then put on the pill for seven years wit...

23 Feb 202253min