Ep 47 - Yoni Eggs, Pelvic Health, and Your Esthetic Practice

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0:00:39.3 EC: This podcast episode is sponsored by LAMPROBE. LAMPROBE is a popular and revolutionary device that enables skin care practitioners to successfully treat a wide variety of minor skin care irregularities, such as clogged pores, cholesterol deposits, dilated capillaries, skin tags, and many more common skin conditions. LAMPROBE treatments are non-invasive and deliver immediate results. The LAMPROBE can expand your standard service menu with new and highly in-demand services. For more information, visit lamprobe.com. Follow @lamprobe on social media, that's L-A-M-P-R-O-B-E, or call 877-760-2722. 

 

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0:01:28.8 Speaker 2: You are listening to ASCP Esty Talk, where we share insider tips, industry resources and education for estheticians at every stage of the journey. Let's talk 'cause ASCP knows, it's all about you. 

 

0:01:43.0 EC: Hello, and welcome to ASCP Esty Talk. I'm Ella Cressman, licensed esthetician, owner of the HHP Collective, and like many of you, a constant student. Today, oh, we're gonna get personal. As estheticians, we are versed in anatomy, and many have seen our fair share of intimate areas. Having performed many Brazilian or bikini waxings from back to front, lady gardens are something we are comfortable with grooming. But what about the Yoni? We have seen a recent introduction to Yoni steams in aesthetic practices, and perhaps you've also been curious about Yoni eggs. 

 

0:02:20.4 EC: Today, we dive deep, absolutely no pun intended, into the subject of pelvic health and the aesthetic practice. I'm excited to be joined by Sydney Zwicker. Sydney is a woman's health mentor and certified holistic pelvic care practitioner. She offers online courses, workshops, and one-on-one coaching programs to help women reclaim their essence and embody their truth. She believes, like many of you, that education is the key to empowerment, and that chronic pain, fatigue and anxiety often stem from not knowing that things could feel differently. Sydney believes there is no one way nor a right way to heal. It's a little bit of this, it's a little bit of that, and a whole lot of courage. Every person is different. By shedding the stigma of the female lived experience, we can journey into wholeness. Sydney, welcome. 

 

0:03:11.1 Sydney Zwicker: Thank you so much, Ella, for having me. 

 

0:03:14.5 EC: I'm super excited. I have to say. I met you as a consumer. [chuckle] Sydney is also a licensed massage therapist, and I was referred to her from my acupuncturist, and I had the most amazing experience. But as I was dressing, I saw these Yoni eggs, and I had to ask, "What is this all about? What is this?" So from that, we had an amazing conversation. And I want you to share, Sydney, how did you get into pelvic health?  

 

0:03:40.8 SZ: Yeah, so my journey into pelvic health and the Yoni egg came from my own healing of sexual trauma. I'm a survivor of sexual abuse from my late teens. And I kind of did it all from talk therapy, somatic therapies, crazy cult-like therapies, where you hit a giant block and scream about your mommy and daddy issues. And I kind of just always felt even though the layers of the onion started to heal, there was something stuck in my body. And the Yoni egg was actually the first time I started to have really interact with this part of my body outside of the thought that I learned from Cosmo and teen romance comedies, that having drunk meaningless sex would heal my sexual trauma. I remember being told putting a Jade egg or a crystal inside your vagina, and I was like, "Oh my God, that sounds so healthy." And from that Jade egg practice and the Yoni egg practice, I started to become fascinated with understanding this part of my body, realising I didn't know much about it, and I didn't really actually have a relationship to it, and that was kind of the part that was missing in my healing. 

 

0:04:40.5 SZ: But what I noticed when I was learning about the Jade egg is most of the online classes available at the time, it was about maybe seven years ago, were all about bigger, better orgasms and how to be a super sexy embodied woman, and it just didn't resonated with me. So I did all my own research. I started Googling female anatomy, and trying to learn more about the body, and learn different ways to actually interact with this part of my body, and then I started hosting women circles to talk about it because I wanted to know if it was just me who felt overwhelmed by the whoo-whoo feminine that we can often find here in Colorado. 

 

0:05:17.5 SZ: And that was the start of it. And from there, it snowballed. I ended up teaching this workshop probably over 100 times now. I was living in France teaching it to women 80 years old, 16 years old, speaking in six different languages. And from there, that place of learning about the pelvis and female anatomy and pelvic health, I discovered Tami Lynn Kent's book, Wild Feminine. And she's the creative holistic pelvic care, which is a bodywork modality that integrates pelvic floor PT techniques and energy work, the idea that we can't separate the stories from this part of our body, and that's really how I came into this path. It felt like lily pads in my own healing process, and then just a lot of feeling like, "People need to know about this," and so starting to share and educating myself and continuing always to absorb everything I can learn about the female body and different ways to heal it and work with it and understand it. 

 

0:06:10.4 EC: Oh, maybe we can put a link to that book too also in the show notes. So check the show notes for a link to this pivotal book for Sydney. It's interesting that you say that 'cause in my research... I have a funny story to tell, of course. I always... Most of my research starts with a funny stories. But in just my research online, very, very technical stuff and accurate, I did find one site that was talking about, "The history is really unknown about the Yoni egg, but it's thought to have traced back to ancient China where concubines used them," literally what they wrote is, "To create super hero vaginas to control the mind of the emperor." So that goes along with what you're talking about. But for you and all the research you've done, what is the Yoni egg? How are they used? What are the benefits?  

 

0:06:57.8 SZ: Yeah, so definitely, you'll hear a lot about it being an ancient Daoist practice. In anything when we adapt it from an ancient culture, in the healing world and the wellness world, we always try to find ancient roots to validate that our practices are legitimate. Whether or not it came from ancient China or someone in the '80s made it up, I don't really care, but it's about understanding that lineage. And the word Yoni is actually Sanskrit, so it comes from ancient Indian culture. And the reason why I use the word Yoni, and I think a lot of Western women teaching this practice use the word Yoni is that vagina and vulva all have connotations in the English language that make it hard to connect to this part of our body. So finding something that feels like it's honouring this part of our body, often in the foreign language can be a little bit more helpful in that. So that's kind of what a Yoni egg is. If you don't know what a Yoni is, it's the Sanskrit word that means vulva or sacred space. It really honours the whole being of the female anatomy. It doesn't just talk about the vulva, so the exterior or the vagina, the interior anatomy, but really that whole space in between. 

 

0:08:02.3 SZ: And the Yoni egg or the Jade egg, it's often called. Because it's often found the mineral of the crystal is jade, often is a tool for pelvic health. They've been turned into sex toys. Geisha balls come from the same lineage, the same idea of how to do a Kegels or how to engage with the pelvic floor. They're really powerful tools. If you believe or subscribe to energy healing, working with a crystal can be really powerful in offering something else, the capacity to help you look internally at what's going on in your life. So using something like a rose quartz crystal can help you look in the elements of love, and how you connect, and how your self-connection, and all the things and the themes of people connect to rose quartz, the mineral. 

 

0:08:44.9 SZ: And so Yoni eggs, whether they come from the Daoist tradition with concubines learning to build their vital energy and to become the best concubine or however you wanna speak about it, were used to start to harness vital energy. So our life force energy, that ability of the female body to create. So when you are building sexual energy, that pleasure in your body, you can create a life if you're having intercourse with a male, and the sperm and egg meet, and you create life. 

 

0:09:12.4 SZ: It's so cool that our bodies can do this, but the idea behind the Yoni egg is by building up some of that vital sexual energy, you can actually learn to heal your body and then heal others around you, you have kind of building up that... That's a buzzy fun feeling in your body, and so that's kind of more the spiritual practice, so that's kind of more the spiritual practice, and then the other part to it, what we're doing on a physiological level, and what I think about as a massage therapist is we're starting to massage the pelvic floor muscles, many people hear about Kegels like memory squeeze, we're not told to relax the pelvic floor, the pelvic floor like any other muscle group, needs to have movement, it needs to have expansion, there's fascia, connective tissues, organs, everything that sit in that pelvic cavity and what you're doing with the egg is you're starting to massage along the pelvic floor, you're starting to open up that tissue, create more space, create more blood flow, so you have better hormone regulation, you have more sensation, and all of that kind of leads to more feeling here, and my point of view around sexuality is that no one should tell you what it to look or feel like, but if you have the tools, to feel more, you'll be able to develop however you want your sexuality to develop. 

 

0:10:23.6 SZ: The Yoni egg practice is more than just super hero vagina. It sounds like there's other physiological benefits, like you mentioned hormone health, mood, physical health, like an all-over a healthy Yoni. 

 

0:10:37.5 SZ: Totally I think a lot of women actually get into it, at least a lot of my clients get into it because of dealing with intensity in their menstrual cramps and PMS symptoms and feeling really disconnected from this part of the body. And one of the things I share about PMS is a White man made up illness, it's really normal to feel fatigue in the later part of your cycle because the hormones that are being pumped in our body are there to have us start to rest, to create a space to maybe host a baby, and so what comes with the Moodiness, the cramping, all the other symptoms often come from dysfunction in the way that our female hormones and our female reproductive system is functioning, if there's not a lot of room... If there's a lot of congestion in the pelvic bowl, the uterus, when it contracts to start to release the blood or our lining of the uterine wall, which is our menses blood, it doesn't have that movement to sort of contract in the way it wants to, it's the same way your legs feel sore if you've been working out in only on one side, and so when we give more space, yes, you might feel little bit of that tiredness or a little bit of achy-ness, but if we can start to open up space in the pelvic cavity, we can start to also shift the way that we deal with cramping and any other PMS symptom you might feel kind of in that medial part of your phase. 

 

0:11:52.6 EC: But not cravings, maybe... With a hormone balancing. 

 

0:11:58.9 SZ: Exactly, so a lot of the cravings come from hormones and a lot of the cravings come from the fact that after you ovulate, if you're not on a hormonal control, you actually... Your body temperature rises, it produces the hormone, the main hormone in the second part of our Phase is progesterone, and it increases the body temperature, and because of that, you burn more calories, that's why you crave meat or three burritos in one sitting, all those cravings are coming from a place of, we need to eat different things at different parts of our cycle to support that. 

 

0:12:26.9 EC: I've noticed I was lucky enough to have just some strange period coming up, but what I've noticed at 40, almost three, 'cause I'll be 43 in a couple of months. Is that my man-made up PMS is so, so much more severe right now, it's like I didn't have the moodiness that... I don't remember being their moody, I never had those kind of symptoms before or the cramping before, and I think it's my age, I think I'm entering into... I'm on the doorstep, getting ready to knock on the door of menopause. 

 

0:13:01.5 SZ: I think it's really normal to feel that as you get older, so much about our cycle and moving with our cycle is about understanding your boundaries with the world, and that PMS is like... We have less empathy because our body is telling us what is important at the moment, and so I think that's really normal as you get towards menopause or even just as you get older and more understanding of your body to feel a little bit more frustrated, we're also living in a pandemic, so our stress levels are super high and that affects the female hormones. 

 

0:13:29.2 EC: Yeah. I'm not tolerant in a lot of situations, my tolerance isn't, and that's all month long, that's ultimately days of the cycle. 

 

0:13:38.6 SZ: Totally, but what's cool about the Jade egg and menopause is actually the Daoist call menopause the second spring. This idea, instead of menopause as the doom and gloom and the end of being a wanted woman, it was this great opportunity as you transition into elder or as Tami Kent calls it a seeder, a sexy elder, is this idea that that creative energy that the female body has to create life or to create healing, that receptive quality that is harnessed during a Jade egg practise actually, because we're no longer focusing on creating life, you get double the amount of that energy coming into your body and then being able to share to others that idea that as you transition into menopause and into that role of the Elder, you're not losing any of your creative power, but instead you now become the wise woman and get to teach with that. I know many women who do a Jade egg practise, who are more in that Crone energy and that elder energy, they find so much deeper pleasure from that place because it's really focusing on working with their own body, understanding how their body's functioning on that hormone level. 

 

0:14:43.9 SZ: What happens during menopause is our estrogen starts to decrease, which can lead to vaginal dryness and lots of symptoms like heat flashes, and a Yoni egg practice actually starts to by increasing the blood flow in the pelvic bowl and through the female reproductive system, you start to balance a little bit, the way that the body processes estrogen and can decrease those symptoms as well. 

 

0:15:05.1 EC: Very interesting, and this is different from a kegel or kegel I've heard them both Kegel potato, potato. 

 

0:15:11.1 SZ: Yeah, a kegel. I usually say a public floor contraction just because like most parts of the female anatomy, a kegel was named after a dead white man, I don't know if he's had actually a white man, like fallopian tubes are named after a man named filliopio, all these things because many men named our bodies, and so I'm a big advocate for reclaiming that, but the kegel move that we all know is that sort of clench in you can do those kegel exercises with an egg. And how I say to work with this is the idea of, if you think about your left ear right now that Cartilage part of your ear, bring your awareness there, take a few breaths, it's a little bit hard to do, but now touch your ear. You can be the massage a little bit, and now try to think about bringing your awareness to your left ear, that idea that by bringing physical touch and sensation, it's much easier to actually engage with the part of our body we're trying to squeeze and contract or be aware of... And so part of what the egg is doing is it's just bringing a weight, it's bringing physical sensation, not only massaging, but just by its physicality, the surface area around the egg, and because many people squeeze almost as like we're told to stop the P kind of move, which works some of our public for muscles, but there are two hammocks and they move both up and in, and so that idea of almost lifting up the pelvic floor, it's like a separate diaphragm... 

 

0:16:33.2 SZ: Similar to our breathing diaphragm, how do we lift up and in it includes the anus and includes all of the other parts, not just kind of the staff, the P muscle, which can feel more in the front part of your pelvis, and so working with an egg can really help to create a more holistic kegel practise. What I offer clients a lot is we are squeezing at times when we're doing these exercises, who are also learning to relax, so many women, most women who have not have children, even postpartum, have lots of hypertension in their pelvic floor muscles. And what we actually wanna do is create space and openness so that the muscles can work to their full capacity, being able to open and close the... Similar, the way that boys talk about doing weight lifting, you wanna be as focused on the release as much as the contraction, and so what an egg can really help you do is have that weight can be really grounding, it can help you connect to actually relaxing the pelvic floor that pushing out kind of movements that can be really helpful in creating health in the pelvic cavity. 

 

0:17:33.0 EC: For all of those other people who are at home who wanna ask but are afraid to, Well, how do you look for quality when you're purchasing an age, what do you look for... 

 

0:17:41.0 SZ: Yeah, I often base it off of price point, I work with a specific Yoni egg company, I did a lot of research, I bought... When I was first getting into this, the cheaper ones, the three sets for under $100, I didn't buy from Amazon, but from a company that I would now never buy anything from, just knowing what minerals they sell and things that are not safe to put inside the Yoni I often look at price point, if you're buying a jade egg, it should not be less than $60, it's usually a little bit more than that, ran 70 to 90 for a Jade egg. If you got buy a pack of three Jade eggs, it should not be less than $150. Jade is an expensive rare mineral, it cost money if you're getting it cheaper than that, it's most likely not that jade, it can be Aventurine, which is also another green mineral that people use to swap it out. 

 

0:18:27.8 SZ: Another way they do it is when they're shaving the Jade or shaping it, they'll take all the little crumbs of Jade, similar to what happens in the Turquoise market, and then they'll use glue to stick it together and compress it and create an egg shape, but it's mostly glue and shavings of Jade, and those are the ones you're gonna find probably on Amazon, probably for $20 or 50 for a three set, it's just not good to put in your body. 

 

0:18:49.7 EC: I think that's the one I got might have been cheaper than $50, but there was three of them... 

 

0:18:53.8 SZ: Totally, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think there's such little information out there and very little holistic information out there or information that really embodies, like we know nothing about our female body or what we should be doing here because most women don't... It's very intimidating, the Women's Health world because it's either super, super medical or it's super woo-hoo and dis-concerning, and in my work, I try to bring both together of... Let's understand basic female anatomy and what's going on in our body, but also allow space for the more spiritual elements that come from working with this really cool part of our body. So the company that I use is called Yoni crystals. 

 

0:19:28.3 SZ: I think there's gonna be a link in the podcast to also to kind of my shop which has all those crystals in there too, I only care the ones that I find really safe to use internally, the three most popular ones you'll find out there are Jade Rose courts and obsidian, the courts, crystals will be cheaper. There's just a more abundant mineral... The thing with Rose court is to be sure is that it's a more fragile mineral if you're not a very careful person, if you're not willing to take the extra step to clean it in warm water with antiseptic or some sort of natural cleaning agent. 

 

0:20:00.0 SZ: That's safe to use internally, then it's just gonna be little more difficult, whereas Jade, because of the way that the mineral is formed, you can actually boil, so I usually say starting with a jade or Rose court is the best place. Obsidian volcanic glass is also a really great mineral, but we often say energetically, like think of a volcano energy, it can be a little bit more intense when you're using it. So the reason why I chose the Yoni Crystal company that I work with is because I met the woman who runs the company. And she does her due diligence to find out the mines, not only ethically sourced the minerals, so most crystals come from third world countries and places where people are not paid well or often killed because minerals are raw materials, and so she made sure to work with very small mines where she's done her best possible to know that these are being ethically sourced and that they're using water to shape them, another way to cut costs in creating a Yoni egg is to use toxic oils and makes the shaving process faster to make the shape of the egg but those are not safe to use internally, so all of her eggs are hand-shaped by water on site of the mine that they were actually produced in, so she's worked with them, she's bought them equipment to figure this out as a way to create clarity and due diligence in the Crystal world. 

 

0:21:14.2 EC: I want to ramble obsidian from your website. I saw it already, so put that aside for me 'cause I gonna be buying it. 

 

0:21:19.6 SZ: Yeah beautiful right. 

 

0:21:21.7 EC: Oh it's so cool, but I'm a little worried about the volcanic energy, 'cause I'm spicy enough. 

 

0:21:27.7 SZ: Totally, and one of the ways that they talk about in the Daoist tradition of why they use Jade as the mineral is not only was it a sacred mineral in ancient China, but Jade is considered to have young or that masculine energy. And the Yoni  ____ yen, or feminine energy, and when you bring the feminine of the Yoni and the yang energy of the Jade mineral together, you create really balanced and harmonious, vital creative energy, and actually obsidian was used, was said to be used in the Daoist tradition is kind of that up level, because of its black volcanic glass, has more of that intensity of that Yang masculine energy, it can create more of that powerful feminine energy on the other side, that kind of light and dark balancing energy. 

 

0:22:08.3 EC: For those who are listening and wanna understand how they can incorporate Yoni eggs into their practice as aestheticians either as a retail item or as... Do they refer to you, do you... Is this part of your teachings... Tell me more about that. 

 

0:22:26.1 SZ: Yeah, so I'm really excited. It's been a year process of making all this information into an online course, as I said, I taught a lot of workshops about the Yoni egg, trying to offer a really grounded approach to this practice sort of integrating my background in Women's Health and pelvic anatomy as well as then the history and how to practice in a down-to-earth way of making this accessible for all women, not just those who are deeply in the spiritual world, and so the online course is actually coming out at the end of this month, if fingers crossed, everything goes well, finishing up the sound recordings this week, and that's a way to definitely get involved in understanding the practice, it's great for facilitators who are wanting to learn more about this and be able to understand, to be able to offer clients the basic knowledge of how to do a Yoni egg practice. 

 

0:23:12.9 SZ: I truly believe in anything wellness, it's about feeling into what feels right in your body, and if you can check in with your body, those yeses and nos, is this right for me? Will really be in alignment. Other ways that I can work with women is I do sell eggs, I do one-on-one coaching people who want that more one-on-one approach in the Denver area, I will be offering in-person workshops again, we just can't do it right now. 

 

0:23:34.8 EC: Yes, soon, hopefully. Is there an easy exercise that they can do with this egg... More than just what I did, which was to pop it in and take two steps. 

 

0:23:45.1 SZ: You can also put in your egg and then take like in a yoga class or just notice what it feels like to move with the egg side, that can be a really powerful way to just start to have someone else guide you, or if you place your egg internally and then listen to a guided meditation and maybe occasionally you try to squeeze and relax the pelvic floor, just really starting to notice what is happening here. I think that this is a great tool to integrate into for any aesthetician into their practice, because aestheticians are, besides gynecologist, one of the few career paths where you're looking at lady bits and most women outside of being in one of these fields has never seen another woman's vulva doesn't know that their vulva is completely normal, and so working with a Yoni egg for me. 

 

0:24:29.5 SZ: The most powerful part is you have to start interacting with this part of your body, and it's something really powerful to offer clients who come for waxing or whatever they're coming, to have someone else honor and take care of their body. This is the practice that also honors this part of our body, and it goes really well with that, I think a lot of aestheticians also feel that connectedness to the female body, helping make beauty and how to honor the female body. And I think this can be a really great tool to interact with. And to you bring to clients and to offer other ways to support their body. 

 

0:25:01.2 EC: Also a safe space where a lot of clients divulge, they feel safe. They're in enclosed room. It's dark, they're relaxed. And so they share. So there's a special connection that aestheticians, I think also a lot of beauty professionals have with our clients, where we are unqualified therapists at time, which is the listening ear, so this is definitely something to keep on your radar. Sydney, I am grateful for your time today. What an amazing thing. We will have links to Sydney's website to Sydney's course, as you mentioned, it will be ready in March 2021 with a perfect thing. Is there anything else that you want to leave as parting words before we close out today. 

 

0:25:44.6 SZ: I'm just so grateful to be here and get to geek out with you about women's health and pelvic health, and I guess if anything, I'd wanna leave for anyone listening to this who is curious about starting a relationship with this part of their body is just to know that you're not broken and that everything can heal, and that there are many different ways to start connecting to your pelvis, connecting to your vagina and your vulva and your feminine energy, and that... There's no wrong way to do it. 

 

0:26:11.9 EC: Couldn't have said it better myself. Well, thank you so much, Sydney, for being on with us. And thank you for listening. And we look forward to the next episode of ASCP Esty talk stay tuned thank you. 

 

0:26:23.4 S2: Thanks for joining us today. If you like what you hear and you want more, subscribe, if you wanna belong to the only all inclusive Association for aestheticians that includes professional liability insurance, education, industry insights, and an opportunity to spotlight your six skills. Join @Ascpskincare.com, only 259 per year for all this goodness. ASCP knows it's all about you.