There are a lot of things that I share on my Facebook and a lot of people private message me in response, sharing with me their stories, how my messages have helped them, telling me about the paths they're on. And I am grateful always to be a witness to these shared vulnerabilities, to welcome people who want to say something that is important to them. Our voices are tools and we must never let them become silenced. Having said that, as a Punjabi woman, I am rather trepid at approaching this topic publicly because I've been conditioned since I was a child that anything to do with sex or sexuality is immoral, wrong, shameful, and bad. I still feel uncomfortable when I see modern-day Bollywood films where the main actors kiss one another (yeah, that's a thing now! It wasn't in the 90s).
The thing is, sex is a shameful, very shameful thing, to discuss in our culture. Women, especially, are not meant to feel good about it. We don't display our affections in public. We aren't encouraged to talk about it. Parents leave it up to the public school system and their children's friends to educate their children about what it means to be sexually healthy and how to consent. However, a lot of the time, we end up in the cracks, struggling to understand how to handle situations where some advice would have really come in handy. And sometimes those situations turn out to be really dangerous.
We all know (because I've spoken about it so many times when I share my own vulnerabilities and my own healing journey) that I've had quite a lot of sexual trauma happen to me. From when I was a child to my early twenties. It's not easy when you're lonely, isolated, and dealing with difficult situations with no one around for support. It's easy for many vulnerable girls and boys to fall into that space. The victim-blaming and victim-shaming is profound in Indian culture.
So how do we fix this? We could go into the unhealthy stream (which some of us, including me, have done): sex addictions, alcoholism, drug abuse, violence...etc...etc...It's a quick fix for intense emotions, but over the long term, it does us no good. It creates more trauma in the body.
The other path is a lot of work. It's daunting, challenging, overwhelming, and it asks us to give a lot of ourselves to the cause. It's a path that we veer off course all the time on and one that we're pushed back onto, usually when we've hit some sort of rock bottom. It asks us to be devoted, even when devotion is the last thing we want to give.
Trauma shows up in the body differently for everyone. And I'm not biologically a man, so I can't speak for them in this situation. As a woman, I know that a lot of women, including myself, store our trauma in our vaginal area. I'm going to refer to this space as the "yoni" which means "sacred space" and is a word that is used in a lot of Tantric/spiritual communities. It's a word that captures better the type of healing we're going to be doing, because referring to that space as sacred is the first part in reclaiming it from those who stripped you of that protection and sacredness.
I don't have all the answers figured out. I'm only just beginning on this type of healing. I've been in therapy over my trauma for years, and I personally feel that it's not working as effectively for this at the moment, so I'm branching out back into a world I left quite some time ago. There are alternative therapies that we should seek out when the mainstream one isn't working. Sometimes these medicines are rooted in our own cultures. For a while, I've been frustrated with the blockages in my own body. I've had stored trauma in my yoni for years and I can feel the energy there and it bothers me. I meditate daily and also do a body scan. Whenever I do my scans, I noticed that there is an uncomfortable and tense energy in that area, and of course that makes sense. I was repeatedly violated for a long time, so of course it makes sense that that area on my body doesn't feel relaxed or safe.
And yes, this definitely has made sexual encounters for me awful post-assault because my body just doesn't want to welcome another person inside it. There's nothing I can do about it, unless I want them to force themselves in, and that just lands us back to square one! So, there is a lot of shame and embarrassment that victims of sexual assault have to handle. We want to be close with someone but it's so difficult. The body remembers. It's stuck in a flight/fight/freeze mode and it wants to feel safe and comforted, especially when we're stripping ourselves (literally and figuratively) before someone else! But not many people are up to that task of comforting someone in one of the spaces that should, theoretically, be one of the safest.
I can't tell you what good intercourse is like because I've only had shitty experiences but I can tell you that, even if you don't have a lover, you still deserve freedom from your trauma. This is something I've been understanding over the past little while. Being able to separate your trauma from your body and seeing it as something that was placed there by someone else, helps separate the notion that trauma is a part of us. It is not a part of us. Trauma is an energy that is living in our body and we're paying it rent, without realizing that we're the landlords of this place. Does that make sense? By healing this traumatized energy in our bodies, we are slowly sending it the message that is not welcome in our bodies.
So how do we do that? The first step is awareness. Do a body scan. Do it a few times if you don't find it right away. Trauma- any kind of trauma- manifests differently in people's bodies. Be gentle with yourself. Learn to cultivate mindfulness and detachment. Learn to cultivate gentleness. Make it a part of your nature. Be patient. You won't heal from this overnight, but by using mindfulness techniques little by little. This is a process and things in nature take their own time to bloom.
I did the scans and realized there was something in me that needed healing. I think when a part of your body is traumatized, you need to befriend it. Your body is still a being, created to house your soul. It contains a lot more wisdom that you'll ever know. It contains the sum of all your ancestors' wisdom in it. Part of learning how to respect your body is befriending it, guidance from beyond. I started doing this with my yoni. Soothe it like you would someone who's hurt. "I notice you're hurt, you're safe now. Things will get better, you're safe now". Nurture it (my therapist suggests hugging yourself or placing a loving hand over areas that feel threatened or safe. I encourage this because it does help).
I consulted a beautiful friend of mine today and asked for her input on how I could further my practice of healing. She recommended a number of spiritual practices that I'm going to try out and hope for the best. I'd like to think I'm fairly in-tune with myself but there can always be a more deeper connection and that's what I'm searching. This is what I can recommend to you right now and you can see if it works. If it doesn't, no worries. Ease back, let go. Start with something else that feels better to you. Everyone is different and there's no shame in that.
Engage in sound frequencies (chanting, mantras, doing Naam Simran, engage in intuitive movement like dancing (belly dancing did help me with this)), engage in guided visual meditations, breathe and stay with your trauma if it comes up (this is where you can engage in your mindfulness work). Let the feelings come through and pass, like waves in the ocean or clouds in the sky. Breathe through it. Soothe yourself as you would a child. Everything is healed with presence (as my friend says).
Create a morning routine where you can surrender and let go. Where you can ground yourself. Journal about it. Create a sacred alter and stick your routine there.
Again, these recommendations are from my friend. I can encourage you (and this is something I've done when I was in Recovery and helped me a lot) to visualize yourself as part of the Earth. Your lungs are rivers, your body a tree trunk, your breath the wind, your feet are sand...it helps me feel connected to the earth and disconnected from my trauma.
Lastly, there are websites out there that recommend different yoni massages and meditations. As with anything, be a little critical when you read anything off the internet, but here's something I found that I think may help:
http://risingwoman.com/heal-vaginal-pain-using-yoni-massage/ (the only issue I have with this article is her simplified definition of what trauma is and that weird advice of putting those pills up your vagina- I can't advocate for that, but the actual massage she outlines is interesting)
https://sonjashradhadevi.mykajabi.com/p/complete-meditation… (I don't know how well these are, I haven't personally tried them, so if you do it, let me know how it goes)
https://www.tantricalchemy.net/tantraalchemyblog/2015/11/28/how-to-really-open-your-heart-heal-your-womb-yoni
And if you're more into reading books, "The Sexual Healing Journey" by Wendy Maltz is a good book that I encourage you to check out.
Even if you don't have a lover and even if you're not sure WHEN you're have a lover, do this healing FOR YOU. A lot of sexual assault survivors (including me) feel jaded and for good reason. Why bother healing, if we'll just be betrayed again/hurt again/broken again/if we can't even function like normal people? It's a valid question. And I felt that for a long time. And I came to this conclusion: We don't engage in healing work for the hope that a lover will come along and treat us better. We engage in healing work so that *we may be free from pain, as individuals".
We heal, not so we can hope to find a gentler, kinder lover. Because that might not happen. You may not find someone who can speak your soul language, someone whom you don't have to constantly translate yourself to all the time. But that's not the point. The point is, we engage in healing work because we deserve to live a life without trauma inside us. We deserve that as an individual, as a person. As long as that trauma is inside us, the longer we're haunted by ghosts from the past. The longer that trauma is inside us, the longer we're slaves to those who hurt us. They may not even be around us physically anymore, but so long as they're with us mentally/emotionally, they still control an aspect of us and that is life-draining. It's draining. We ESPECIALLY don't deserve that. We deserve to live a life where our bodies feel comfortable and safe. Where our bodies are in a state of relaxation, where we are happy. And it's possible. But for that to happen, we NEED to move away from this thought (a thought that is created by trauma, let me remind you) that we can't be healed. We can be healed. We have the tools and we just have to want it bad enough.
I like to keep things practical. I'm the type of person who needs a practical solution to something, something that I can use my hands for. I don't like to think that my only solution to healing is through the mind. Body trauma calls for work with the mind AND the body. We shouldn't separate the two.
If you have any questions or want to talk more about this, message me. And if you want to learn even more about being an embodied being, nourishing yourself spiritually, loving yourself, connecting with the sacred and divine, I encourage you to check out my friend Abneet Sandhar 's services (The Nourished Woman Tribe). I've known her for years and she is a gift.
