Mythology, Menstruation and the “Woman with the Issue of Blood”



Christ and the Woman with the Issue of Blood, by Paolo Veronese,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Concern from the Vatican about environmental issues has been in the news lately. The ‘seven deadly sins’ have been updated to include environmental pollution and during his American visit the Pope repeatedly spoke of his concerns about damage to the environment. In July, on his Australian tour, “his holiness” recycled his speech on this topic once more.

I am a little reluctant to welcome these comments from the Catholic Church, particularly as in the Bible the best publicised environmental vandalism - the deliberate and senseless destruction of a wild fig tree - was in fact perpetrated by Jesus himself. This is how authors of the Good Book report it in the Gospel of Mark (11;12-21):

“The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it… In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus: "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

Today, of course, a well-known public figure could never get away with such pointless vandalism, and anyone openly destroying a budding tree, in front of witnesses, would probably be crucified by the British press. At the time, however, only Juno, the Goddess of the wild fig tree, was watching with horror the obliteration of Her sacred tree.

Lammas (and fresh figs)

This is the time when thanks are given for the fertility of the fields. It was traditional in the Scottish Highlands to sprinkle drops of menstrual blood on doorposts and around the house using a wisp of straw and on Lammas Day people smeared their floors and cows with menstrual blood, an act of especial protective power at Lammas and at Beltane.

Lammas is the Festival of First Fruits. Fig trees in the Holy Land also produce their first fruit about this time and up to late September. Modern Bible criticism also has a field day with the fig tree enigma. Scholars question if this took place in the spring, as reported in the Gospels, or late summer/autumn. They point out that Jesus was familiar with the seasons of the land and would not expect fruits on a fig tree in the spring. Others remark that it is completely out of character that a religious Jew, like Jesus, should destroy a fruit tree.

Read more: http://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=492&Itemid=99999999#ixzz1YUeI2l4N

Letter from A.

I wanted to apologize again for running so late today.
Your hands truly speak for themselves...! The session today was very enjoyable and pleasurable. I felt, alive, fresh, envigorated and I felt like the most beautiful woman on the planet after this session :) it was an amazing experience.

Therapeutic Massage for Survivors of Trauma and Sexual Abuse

Treatment for survivors of trauma and childhood physical and sexual abuse is a highly specialized field, in part because of the complexity of issues involved in both the original trauma and in the psychological and physical symptoms that can emerge in the aftermath. Resolution of the trauma is never final; recovery is never complete. The impact of a traumatic event continues to reverberate throughout the survivor’s lifecycle. With each new life event comes the potential of a stress-induced return of traumatic memories.

Psychotherapy has been and continues to be the first-line order of treatment for survivors and is essential in working through deep-seated impairments in trust, relationships, body image and self-perception. For many, the adaptations they created to cope with the abuse will later emerge as maladaptive barriers to healthy functioning in adult life. While verbal therapy is critical to retrieval and integration of the fragmented mind, there is another aspect to recovery that has more recently gained attention and validity: that of retrieving the body as well.

Recognition that the body also holds the scars of trauma has led to increasing use of Therapeutic Massage/bodywork as a valid treatment for survivors. In addition to traditional massage, some therapists have developed specialized modalities. Other somatic therapies integrating aspects of body awareness and emotional release as part of a body/mind approach are also helpful. Since the body was integral to the trauma, it must be integrated into the healing process.

Quite commonly, the traumatized person resorts to defensive coping mechanisms, dissociation that can carry into adulthood. With any future stress, there can be a tendency to escape through dissociation and a separation from awareness of the body’s experience. While dissociation may temporarily serve an adaptive function, in the long term, lack of integration of traumatic memories seems to be the critical element that leads to the development of the complex behavioural change that we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The effects of abuse on regulation of bodily and emotional states are well documented. Chronic hyper-arousal and attempts to adapt can lead to disturbances with sleep and digestion, eating disorders, and other forms of body distress. Survivors are prone to experience depression and anxiety, and in some cases resort to self-mutilation to block out emotional pain. As the child grows up the fragmentation of self, both in body and mind, increases fragility as the adult tries to navigate life with maladaptive defences. What occurs is a gradual breakdown of defences, surfacing as problems in maintaining relationships, jobs; alcohol and substance abuse, or even suicidal thoughts.

Therapeutic Massage

As the body was integral to the trauma, it is also integral to the healing process. In the past, psychotherapy was a stand-alone treatment, and it remains a necessary element for processing and reframing the psychological effects of abuse. But with the growing understanding of body/mind connection, there has been increased interest and practice of providing bodywork to facilitate wholeness. For some clients, after years of verbal therapy, there comes a time when they need and want to reclaim the body.

It is important to note that not all survivors are appropriate candidates for this approach. Several factors can influence suitability, including ego strength, the readiness to embrace change, level of dissociation, potential for psychosis, and a desire to explore this option for resolution at a deeper body level.

As a backlash to abuse, aversion to touch leaves some victims touch-deprived. The experience of touch is another important benefit of bodywork. It involves learning that touch can be pleasurable and positive experience. Even for those in a relationship, may have difficulties with trust, intimacy, receiving touch, etc...

The therapist has to find the appropriate touch for each individual client. Asking for constant feedback, clients can assume ownership of their body within this safe environment and determine their boundaries. What pressure to use and when to touch, when to hold you, when to stop and do absolutely nothing. It’s the immediacy of touch, the caring and nurturing it conveys, that makes it a highly therapeutic experience.

A male therapist?

When there is a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse, the lack of trust is often coupled with a general fear of men.

In therapeutic massage the empathic witnessing by a male therapist is in itself a reparative relationship, and can provide the quality of touch and presence that can restore health in mind and body. The quality of this presence will also create safety and in this safe space healing can happen.

Clinical Research - healthy sexuality linked to general health

Although many of the benefits reputed to come from sex are drawn from inconclusive studies, there are in fact, many positive health benefits have been substantiated by scientific research.

Depression in women - One study, conducted by psychiatrist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York, Albany, found that females having unprotected sex were significantly less depressed than both sexually inactive females and females who had sex with protection — indicating a connection between exposure to semen and elevated mood in women. Gallup said some of the chemicals found in semen can be found in the female bloodstream after sex — having been absorbed through the vaginal epithelial tissue — within about an hour of intercourse.
His study, published in 2001, also found that depression scores went up as time after the sexual encounter increased, suggesting the possibility of a “semen-related withdrawal effect.”

Endometriosis - Another study, conducted at Yale University, fertility doctor Harvey Kliman, explored the effects of orgasm on endometriosis — a condition in which the uterine lining grows in other areas of the female body.

Kliman’s study found that women who had a high frequency of orgasm during menstruation— either through intercourse or masturbation — had the lowest instances of endometriosis. While orgasms ordinarily produce upwards contractions to suck semen inwards, during menstruation, orgasms instead intensify the outward motion of orgasmic contractions, thereby pushing debris out instead of pulling it in, he said.

Logan Levkoff, a sexologist who spoke at Yale on the female orgasm, said sex increases the production of DHEA, a natural steroid, and releases hormones that reduce stress, improve muscle pain and cramping.

Orgasms and attitudes about female genitals

An Indiana University study published in the September issue of the International Journal of Sexual Health found that women who feel more positively about women's genitals find it easier to orgasm and are more likely to engage in sexual health promoting behaviors, such as having regular gynecological exams or performing vulvar self-examinations.

"These are important findings about body image," said Debby Herbenick, associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. "Our culture often portrays women's genitals as dirty and in need of cleaning and grooming. Some women may have had greater exposure to such negative messages or may be more susceptible to their impact."
Herbenick's study created a scale for measuring men's and women's attitudes toward women's genitals. Such a scale, she wrote in the study, could be useful in sex therapy, in medical settings to help better understand decision-making that goes into gynecological care and treatment, and in health education settings involving women and their sexual health. The study also found that men had more positive attitudes about women's genitals than women.
"Women are often more critical about their own bodies - and other women's bodies - than men are," Herbenick said. "What we found in this study is that men generally feel positive about a variety of aspects of women's genitals including how they look, smell, taste and feel."

Authentic Tantric Massage for Women

In tantric bodywork, the entire body is first lovingly massaged - deeply, and therapeutically.

This is the way you’ve always longed to be touched, but never believed that this kind of touch had really existed.

The therapist has no personal needs whatsoever, and he is not doing it to meet his own sexual needs. His joy is tuning in to you and the flow of your energy. Suddenly you find yourself unable to distinguish between body parts - you’ve been experiencing a gradual progression in the massage, which feels absolutely right and natural as every part of your body awakened. He isn’t asking anything from you – you’re not expected to reciprocate in any way, other than to soften and receive any pleasure that happens. He knows how to touch and when hold you, when to stop and do absolutely nothing. He remains still, resting, gently tapping in to an energy and transmitting it back into the core of your body.

This is an honoring, loving full body massage, in which every part of the body is held, massaged, explored and healed. Feelings of repressed sexuality and traumas, as well as low self-esteem, poor body image, (eg. due to abuse, disability, radical breast surgery, etc.) can be treated and healed. You will emerge with a new-found confidence. All the receiver has to do is just relax into the moment and enjoy the healing, the energy shifts. Tantric massage, given with the right intentions, never leaves the person feeling lonely, or empty. It doesn’t try and manipulate, or please. It is profound, emotional and spiritual and heals on a cellular level. The therapist has to be exceptionally experienced, sensitive, confident, with a great degree of emotionally intelligence.

In tantric massage. the empathic presence of a male therapist is in itself a reparative relationship, particularly where there is a history of abuse or traumatic sexual experience, where the quality of the masculine presence creates safety. In this safe space healing can happen.

Charging for Tantric Massage

A conversation in a Tantric Massage session recently, has helped to crystallise my thoughts on receiving payment from women for Tantric Massage.

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The consciousness of human sexuality still carries shame, guilt, and fear. Women, married or in a relationship, are still struggling with awkwardness, embarrassment or anger, under the "blanket" of a loving, committed relationship… Sex is still commonly an awkward and uncomfortable subject for many...

Many of the shaming elements in biblical interpretation and church history have passed from generation to generation into the present experience, our culture and society at large. I am deeply concerned for the healing of the profound trauma of shame and fear, not just in individuals, but within group systems, such as marriages, families. Today it's like an aftershock of an earthquake - using seismological imagery, I see long-unhealed sense of guilt as a dangerous "fault line" running through individual lives and in families, particularly affecting women for generations, and the words of the Bible are still shaping how men see and think of women:

“…No-one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure.” (Revelations 14:3-4)

For much of its history, Christianity has emphasized a strong separation of body and spirit, leaving some to consider the body "bad" and the spirit "good," thereby reinforcing our modern-day lack of clarity about sexuality. In the first century Paul advocated celibacy, if at all possible, as the best way to give oneself fully to the service of Christ. This set the stage for the shaming of those who couldn't’t measure up to the ideal. A fear of the flesh and denial of sexual impulses have left us with a disembodied theology and a great deal of shame and self-loathing. I see women are especially affected to this day...

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Tantric bodywork teaches us that tantra is where men and women feel worthy of nothing but the best...

...where women understand, by example and gentle teachings their bodies, and that the shape of the entrance to their yoni is a sacred geometric shape called a Vesica Piscis.

...where men understand how to love and honour women and are loved and adored in return.

...where people aspire to excellence in their sexuality and love relationships, expand and enhance their feelings about sexuality

Religious and social conditioning has, and is still depriving women of their birthright, to embrace fully their sexuality and abandon themselves in their desire. Part of the problem is that we live in a culture which worships male energy which has led women who are struggling for recognition to act in a masculine way disconnecting from the power of their female energy. The power of the feminine is not acknowledged and unconsciously even feared.

In view of the above and the damage caused in a male dominated society, it seems obvious, that women should be offered Tantric Massage by their boyfriends, lovers, husbands and ideally even by therapists freely.

*********

After many years as a complementary therapist, I found that by working directly with the sexual and erotic energy of the body, healing could be speeded up. It is sacred work which requires maturity and self-knowledge. This work is enjoyable, often awesome - moving into sacred spaces to meet a radiant feminine spiritual-sexual energy. It is a privilege to witness and be given such trust.

I would not exclude anyone who sincerely want to change and yet I also need to honour myself, my time and experience. It is a conflict, difficult to reconcile in a marketplace-driven society.

My fees are based on the fact that as a complementary therapist I charge £50/hour for therapeutic massage, reflexology or aromatherapy sessions. (This is probably half the rate charged for “tantric massage" to men on websites where you find a masseuse with no tantra training or experience, although admittedly they may be more attractive than me.)
A genuine Tantric Massage session is around two hours long, and as I also offer flexible rates in my clinical work - feel free to pay as much as you can comfortably afford.

Ps;
To 'N',

Thank you for the inspiration for writing this....
Thank you for your joie de vivre...
Thank you for the softness of your body...
Thank you for guiding me with the rhythm of you breath...
...and allowing me to witness your beautiful "surrender".

A

Authentic Tantric Massage for Women

In tantric bodywork, the entire body is first lovingly massaged - deeply, and therapeutically.

This is the way you’ve always longed to be touched, but never believed that this kind of touch had really existed.

The therapist has no personal needs whatsoever, and he is not doing it to meet his own sexual needs. His joy is tuning in to you and the flow of your energy. Suddenly you find yourself unable to distinguish between body parts - you’ve been experiencing a gradual progression in the massage, which feels absolutely right and natural as every part of your body awakened. He isn’t asking anything from you – you’re not expected to reciprocate in any way, other than to soften and receive any pleasure that happens. He knows how to touch and when hold you, when to stop and do absolutely nothing. He remains still, resting, gently tapping in to an energy and transmitting it back into the core of your body.

This is an honoring, loving full body massage, in which every part of the body is held, massaged, explored and healed. Feelings of repressed sexuality and traumas, as well as low self-esteem, poor body image, (eg. due to abuse, disability, radical breast surgery, etc.) can be treated and healed. You will emerge with a new-found confidence. All the receiver has to do is just relax into the moment and enjoy the healing, the energy shifts. Tantric massage, given with the right intentions, never leaves the person feeling lonely, or empty. It doesn’t try and manipulate, or please. It is profound, emotional and spiritual and heals on a cellular level. The therapist has to be exceptionally experienced, sensitive, confident, with a great degree of emotionally intelligence.

In tantric massage. the empathic presence of a male therapist is in itself a reparative relationship, particularly where there is a history of abuse or traumatic sexual experience, where the quality of the masculine presence creates safety. In this safe space healing can happen.