Freya Graf is a Yoni Mapping Therapist with a passion for holistic health, wellbeing and personal development. Freya has a background in yoni massage, kahuna massage, yoga, tantric bodywork and sexuality, and is one of only 20 women in the world qualified to offer Yoni Mapping Therapy – trained by Bonnie Bliss. I’m thrilled Freya is joining me in this week’s podcast to talk about the wonders of yoni mapping, better connecting with our bodies and how to communicate whatever we desire.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and more.
Broadcast: March 19, 2021
Duration: 35:31
Here’s a snippet of our conversation…
It’s all about safety and easing in.
Amy: I think the initial discussion with you was lovely because it is such a good way to build rapport with the therapist. I think it was about 45 minutes, and it really helped me just to get into my body and just get totally relaxed and open to receiving.
Freya: Oh, totally. You can't ask someone who's never met you before to rock up to your session space of your house and just get on the table and open their legs. So you need to touch their whole body first and really relax them before you approach the yoni so it's a really deliberate and slow, gentle process to ease them into it. So you don't want them to feel like they're being rushed or put in an uncomfortable position. It’s all about safety and just easing them into the experience.
Amy: A huge part of this is education for women isn't it, and having a better understanding of their anatomy…
Telling and touching…
Freya: Yes. I discuss the anatomy and then it's amazing to pair that with the bodywork. Because I can literally give them a guided tour of their vulva and their vagina. I can show them the different anatomical points that are significant inside the vagina and really give them direct feedback. Because I'm telling them about where I'm touching as I'm touching it. And so they can create a neural pathway to that area of the body that might not have been there before. They may have never been touched in that place or they might've been touched, but in a really unconscious way where they're not present and really paying attention. So, yeah, we're kind of creating a map for them in their mind of that internal landscape and getting them to start familiarizing themselves with this wonderful world of their vagina.
Amy: And one thing that I recall from my experience was actually the feeling of tension in various areas. That really surprised me. It amazed me how much tension I carried.
Freya: I know, a lot of people find that. Really shocking and interesting because we do store so much tension in our pelvic floor muscles. And that pelvic floor area is a rich area with so much going on. And it's our centre of gravity, it's in the centre of our body. So there's ligaments and tendons that come from our toes all the way up to our uteruses and from our jaw all the way down to our cervix. And it's all quite connected. And we sit down a lot, too much. There's all sorts of lifestyle factors that influence tension in the pelvic floor. And then add to that all sorts of things like giving birth or posture stress. Stress that we hold in the jaw or the shoulders that, that is reflected in the Yoni. So there's a lot more tension than people expect, I think. And it's totally workable.
Better body connection – and orgasms.
Amy: So, why might women choose to come to you? What are some of the challenges women might be experiencing that would lead them to find you?
Freya: One of the most common ones is just a lack of proper education. So they really feel as though they missed out on a crucial piece and they don't have enough knowledge or info. They feel like they're missing out, they're missing a piece and they don't know what they don't know. They’re curious. Women want to feel empowered by more knowledge and a better connection with their bodies. Challenges might be numbness or pain or discomfort during sex, or really heavy menstrual pain, they might be coming to prepare for birth or rehabilitate their pelvic floor muscles after birth. They might just really want to have better orgasms. They may have never experienced an orgasm before, or they have with themselves, but they can't with a partner.
Amy: I had this conversation with my friend and I said ‘So if your husband were to give you a shoulder massage would you ask him to keep going?’ She said Yes. So I asked ‘What is stopping you from saying, I love what you did tonight. Can we please do that again?’ I feel like it's a muscle we need to develop.
Get comfortable communicating what you need.
Freya: Communication and feeling confident and comfortable with communicating our desires and our needs and what we like and what we don't like. And it's not just the woman's responsibility. Like whoever the partner is. They can help this situation by asking for feedback or saying, ‘Hey, how is this feeling? Or do you like it when I do this?’ Or encouraging the woman to actually receive, rather than feel like they're taking by being like, ‘I love massaging you. I just love giving you pleasure. I get just as much enjoyment out of this. As you get from receiving it.’ The giver of massage gets just as much oxytocin as the receiver of the massage.
Amy: I agree with you. Such worthwhile conversations to be having. So, based on this, the receiving of pleasure, you've mentioned that women can come to you if they have trouble orgasming, or haven't, so they can perhaps learn. Is it okay for a woman to come to you to experience pleasure? Can you kind of feel into that?
Freya: I just tell them it's not something that we're necessarily shooting for. Like it's not a goal. There's no expectations of the session. I definitely don't want it to become something that we're reaching for. However, pleasure is so welcome and so natural and normal, and it totally depends on the client and how the session is going. Every single session is unique, but pleasure is totally, totally normal and welcome and okay. It's not something that we're trying to make happen. I'm not trying to give them pleasure or give them an orgasm. But if it is happening and it's arising in the session, then amazing, great.
Go home, play, let it integrate…
Amy: Now, another question I had for you was in relation to the clients that come to one session or do some people come back from multiple sessions? How does that look?
Freya: Bit of both. If someone's just coming, because ‘I am curious, I just want to experience it’ and they want the educational component and just to grab a few tools and stuff and then go off on their own and carry on the work. There's definitely a need for a fair bit of integration time after each session. So I recommend usually like a month or two after a session, just to go home, do the home play practices, see how you're feeling with that. Let all the dust settle and let it all kind of integrate.
Amy. I do definitely remember that beautiful feeling driving away, this grounded sense of relaxation.
Freya: There's always going to be stress-related things going on and it achieves a really, really deep relaxation - internal Yoni work. There's something about it that just allows your body to really relax on such a deep level compared to a regular massage.
