The Lost Squat

Over the past weeks I've been really enjoying refining the yOnilates program and preparing the teaching materials for the second cohort of teacher trainers. This sort of research and clarification is one of my favourite activities, and I’d like to share with you one of the gems that can really support pelvic wellness throughout life...
Squatting!
We just don’t do it enough any more.
For many folk, squatting is seen as undignified and uncomfortable. At best, we might undertake it during exercise class or yoga, but usually only a couple of times a week.
I’m going to suggest that you find a way to make squatting a part of daily life.

It’s not that unusual - in fact our bodies are absolutely designed to squat. Watch most toddlers and you’ll quickly see how they squat and stand up again with grace and ease. A huge proportion of the planet’s population squats daily, usually many times and for quite long periods. People squat to rest, to chat, to pray, to cook, to share a meal, to use the toilet and to give birth. It’s not that we can’t sit comfortably in a deep squat, it’s just that we’ve forgotten how.

Our failure to squat has important implications. It is a ‘use it or lose it’ situation. The synovial fluid that bathes all our joints is like the body’s oil that also provides nutrition to the cartilage. Movement and compression are essential for the production of synovial fluid, and, if a joint doesn’t go through its full range, the production reduces and eventually stops.

When we sit all the time rather than squatting, the hips and knees never go past 90 degrees and the degeneration starts.

For those of us interested in the wellbeing of our pelvic floor, the lost squat has further implications. When we squat, we also activate the many muscles connecting in to the pelvis. Strengthening your glutes and hamstrings will provide important support to the pelvic floor. The squat action also stretches and lengthens the pelvic floor itself. Many of the pelvic issues people experience are actually due to the pelvic floor being too tight, rather than too weak.

So squatting is really useful and it is a good idea to do more, but as movement expert, Katy Bowman, says, ‘If you haven’t squatted in the last million years (besides the two times you went camping and peed on your shoe), it’s going to take awhile to prepare your joints.’

Here are three starter exercises based on her excellent suggestions:

The calf stretch

Place the ball of one foot up on a rolled yoga mat or towel, or use a low block or a pilates half pipe. Keep your heel on the ground and feel the stretch in the back of your calf. To increase the stretch step forward with the opposite foot.

No-bow, bottom drop

From a hands and knees position (with lower legs and feet parallel & tracking straight back), drop the hips back as far as you can, without allowing the feet to move closer to each other, or allowing the tailbone to tuck under. Don’t sit back any farther if your tailbone tucks. Make sure you keep a lightly arched back. If your tailbone tucks, making your back bow backwards, come forward, re-lift your bum, and hang out in the position where you can still keep your back slightly arched.

Supported squat
Use the handles of an open door to lower yourself down into a squat whilst staying supported. Position yourself so your arms stretch out fully, and make sure your knees head down in line with your big toes.

Head over to Katy’s excellent blog for pictures of these exercises and additional tips. She will give you a better idea about your squat-ability, and get you on a safe and healthy path to full squatting.

If squats are already a doddle, then just make sure that your knees are heading out in line with your big toe, and resolve to find extra opportunities to incorporate squatting into your day.

Squat during ad breaks on the TV, when picking up stuff from the floor, or talking to small people. Squat occasionally rather than sitting to do a simple task, and, if you are up for it, you could even consider getting a little stool to put in front of your toilet to help you squat, rather than sit on ‘the throne'.

Happy squatting - and do let me know if you have any more ingenious ideas about when and where to incorporate more squatting into your life.

So what is a Somatic Sexologist exactly?

When I tell people I’m a somatic sexologist, they often look blank. Melody Wright’s article, linked below, does not discuss sex but it does describe elegantly the somatic practitioner’s understanding of how stress is stored in the body and how we work with people to support its release. It may help you to understand more about what I offer.

Many problems within our sexual life are due to trauma or distress from past experiences being triggered by what’s happening now. The events that may leave trauma in our body can range from the seemingly small to the clearly challenging. The body, and especially the sensitive tissues of the genitals, can close down or numb out after eg. a sexual encounter that went wrong leaving us feeling ashamed or inadequate, an uncomfortable experience of penetration that we suffered through rather than telling our partner to stop or maybe simply teasing or unwanted attention about our body shape or experiences of puberty. Events such as these can all cause tension and distress that is held in the bodies tissues as well as the more obviously traumatic experiences of non-consensual, inappropriate or unwanted sexual touch at any age. 

Somatic practitioners understand that these are responses that you can’t think your way out of. What we can help you to do is to re-train your body using practices that support you to deactivate the sympathetic response of stress in your nervous system and activate the parasympathetic, rest, digest and repair mechanism. 

A somatic sexologist can support you to understand how this stress plays out in your body during or around sexual experiences and to develop confidence in your ability to regulate this. We can help you to reverse these stored responses, heal past wounding and as Melody says, to ‘create a more embodied, joyful life’.

If any of this rings a chord with you and you’d like to find out more about how we might work together please pop an email to consult@lauradoe.com and tee up a confidential, no obligation chat. Location is no issue as I work via Skype with people all over the world.

Melody Wright's article - Stress - It's not in your head, it's in your nervous system

On wombs, grief and talking to children about sexuality

Last night I sat in a room filled with parents, mainly mothers, who had come to hear me discuss how best to talk to their children about sexuality. Studies show that children who report having easy, open conversations about sex with mum and/or dad are more likely to do what most parents want for them; delay sexual activity, have fewer partners, and use contraceptives when they do have sex. However, when parents feel discomfort, shame or embarrassment on the topic, young people are left to learn about sexuality from friends, television, music, advertisements and the internet. These are sources which can present a skewed and at times even dangerous perspective. 

So how do we create the environment for these conversations, especially when most of us had very little effective modelling to draw upon? For many of us this calls us to attend to whatever remains of our discomfort around our own sexuality. More on this later.

This morning I've been reading an excellent book called Wild Feminine by Tami Lynn Kent. I'm at the chapter on mothering and the womb and, as with much of what Tami writes, her words resonate beautifully with my own understandings and experience. 

She speaks of the capacity of the womb to hold (create) and release energy and also of the depth of grief that she has encountered while working with women in their pelvic bowl. I'm well aware of the capacity of the sensitive tissues of the pelvis to hold and store unprocessed memory and emotions and the possibility of release with tender, loving touch, focused attention and breath.

The light that went on for me was when she spoke about the lack of grieving rituals in our culture. Not only do we not have a time or place set aside to grieve the small and the large losses of our lives, most 'modern' women do their best to ignore, cover up or minimise their body's monthly release of her womb's lining. And in doing so we miss this natural opportunity for grieving and letting go of whatever has passed in the previous month. Little wonder that so many of our bodies respond with pelvic and uterine issues, both those that involve heaviness, holding and unwanted growths and those that result in weakness and excessive release.

How would things change, I pondered, if we devoted just one hour of each menstrual flow to allowing ourselves to grieve for the losses and deaths of the previous month, both our own and those of our family, our nearest and dearest? For women after menopause and for people without wombs the natural timing for this would be the dark moon. The human body responds to the moon's cycles even without a womb lining that waxes and wanes.

Which brings me back to the parents meeting. I find that a good part of what colours our views on sexuality and thus what we present to our children is determined by our own experiences. Often the bad ones. The process of cleaning the slate so we can be clear about what we want to pass on can be well served by reviewing and taking time to grieve and let go of losses and disappointments in our own sexual history.

Although, for some this can be a more lengthy journey, a simple ritual with a clear intention can be very helpful. Here's a suggestion, that could be used, both for this process or as regular monthly ritual.

Take some time to reflect on and write down those events from your sexual experiences (or those of the past month) that are unresolved within you. Allow yourself to feel the feelings that arise. Give your self permission to grieve these losses. Self soothe with gentle touch and let the tears flow if they are there. When you feel complete then simply take the pieces of paper and throw them into a river or stream of moving water or burn them in a fire and watch them being released or carried away. 

And if you are considering how best to talk to your children about sex then I recommend that you give yourself a couple of days and then ask yourself the question 'What does my child need to know to have a happy and fulfilling sexual life?'. Guided by this reflection, your conversations will be more likely to contain what kids say they want from their parents - honest guidance about values and feelings. 

I'd love to know if this is useful - do let me know how you go.

Looking at libido myths

I saw a discussion on Facebook today in which vulva cancer survivor and unstoppable gynae awareness advocate, Kath Mazalla, posted about a radio show she had listened to.  In this program, men, she reported, were saying that they had more urges than women, and women are becoming more accepting of husbands/partners having affairs in order to keep their man happy. Kath questioned whether most women would accept this.

What I question is the first suggestion that men have 'more urges than women'.
To start with it simply doesn't make sense to me, on an evolutionary level, that the gender responsible for growing the next generation in their bellies would be distinctly 'ho hum' about the act that starts the whole process. Did nature decide to rely on 'male urges' in combination with the masculine's generally superior strength to propagate our species?
I don't think so!

I believe that during centuries of male dominated society, we in the minority ('western') world, have been sold this myth. And many of us have come to believe it.

Prior to the 18th century it was thought that both the man and the woman needed to achieve orgasm for conception to take place. Once scientists discovered this was not the case interest in accurate education about feminine sexual pleasure dwindled dramatically. It has been suggested that information about women's arousal anatomy has been systematically removed from medical textbooks after this time. Women's natural urges have certainly been socially, morally and spiritually condemned, with those who enjoy sex becoming branded as whores and the only really acceptable archetype's available being the chaste maiden or devoted (and asexual) mother

However there are numerous countries in Africa and many Muslim communities who consider a woman’s sex drive to be extremely powerful. So powerful in fact that young girls genitals are quite literally cut out to preserve their moral values. Female Genital Mutilation affects an estimated 140 million women worldwide. It describes a range of practices in which all or part of a girls vulva is cut, sewn or removed. Fran Hosken's ground breaking report on FGM was published in 1979 and was influential in persuading the World Health Organization, to make efforts to end the practice. She reports that FGM is said to 'protect a women against her over sexed nature, saving her from temptation, suspicion and disgrace while preserving her chastity'. For these people a woman's 'urges' are considered to be so intense, both for her and for her community, that they must be extremely controlled.

And now lets look back at European history.
During the systematic persecution and execution of 'witches' in the Middle Ages chief inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote his notorious Malleus Maleficarum which became a handbook for secular courts throughout Renaissance Europe. In Section 1 he says "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust which is in women insatiable".
Insatiable, huh!
So why is it that we believe that men 'have more urges than women'? In part, possibly, because so many of our ancestors who dared to delight in their natural expressions of pleasure were burnt at the stake.

And now the pharmaceutical companies have jumped in on the act, where the church left off. They have created a medical 'disorder' called Female Sexual Dysfunction in order to attempt to repeat the unprecedented financial success of Viagra.
Viagra, the first oral treatment for erectile dysfunction was developed accidentally by scientists at Pfizer Laboratories and was greenlighted for use by the FDA on March 27, 1998. It was a huge success and has made billions of dollars for the company.
In that very same year, sex experts came together at the pharmaceutical industry-funded International Consensus Development Conference of Female Sexual Dysfunction to craft a new classification system. Because, guess what, unless you have a dysfunction, you can sell a cure.

In my practice I find that many women's issues around lack of desire and enjoyment of sex simply arise from lack of understanding of our arousal needs and how they differ from men's. This simple lack of knowledge in both partners has resulted in uncomfortable intercourse, before a woman is fully ready, which, over time, becomes extremely disheartening and quite literally numbs a woman's capacity for sensation. And with nowhere to go for information (other than internet porn which portrays a limited and unrealistic view of female sexuality) many women just give up and resign themselves to believing the myth.

What I believe we need is to lift the taboos, so that sex can be discussed, to educate openly and accurately and to support women to rediscover our natural, delightful, healing & empowering capacity for pleasure.
This is my mission and my passion. If it interests you please check out my new DVD -The Art & Science of Female Arousal or visit my teaching website or FB page to find out more.