Sex, Yoga & Depression: A Personal Story of Bringing Back the Juice
From a young age, I felt a deep unhappiness for being born into this world. A deep feeling of not-belonging. This planet seemed utterly foreign to me. All the things that my peers were preoccupied with — and most of humanity for that matter — seemed painfully futile, insignificant, and empty to me. Life left me feeling like I had a hole in my heart.
How Depression Lead Me to Yoga, and Yoga To Sex
During the winter I turned 13, I experienced my first bout with depression. It didn’t take long before I was having major depressive episodes at a terrifying rate. It took a few dark years, seeing counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists before I enrolled in my first yoga course.
After my first class, I felt a deep inner connection. The atmosphere in the small candle-lit room allowed me to come to rest, and find a calm center of stillness inside. It was like reuniting with a long-lost lover. A feeling of calm and contentment.
My intuition was telling me that this was what I needed to do.
As soon as I graduated from university, I took the opportunity to fly to the U.S.A. and train as a Yoga teacher. When I returned to the U.K., I made teaching yoga my main occupation. I taught at local studios for the next four years before packing my bags in 2011 I and leaving everything behind for an unknown adventure.
And Then, Thailand Happened
I found myself in Thailand in a small spiritual school that now has thousands of students all over the world. Living in this community allowed me to explore the ancient practices of Yoga, Tantra, and Yoga Therapy to depths that were unknown to me before.
It was during this time that I started devoting my daily life to yoga and that I learned a lot about life, happiness, and sex. During my master’s studies, I conducted a large project on sexuality and gender. But it was here in Thailand that I had the opportunity to learn hands-on about sexuality, sexual development, and sexual bodywork.
I hope to give you some insights into feminine sexual difficulties, their connections with trauma, how depression comes into play, and finally how yoga can help you to heal and to blossom into your full potential.
Sexual Difficulties & Trauma
We all have experienced it at one point or another: lack of libido, pain during sex, pain after sex, difficulties getting aroused, or an inability to orgasm.
We all know that our bodies sometimes have a mind of their own.
Sexual problems can be the result of trauma, but also of sexual rejection by a partner, fear, verbal abuse, lack of self-esteem, emotional pressure, and pain during sex that causes a contraction or fear. Some women experience chronic sexual difficulties to the point where they feel that things are never ‘the way they are supposed to be’.
In some of these cases, doctors use the term ‘sexual dysfunction’ to describe a variety of problems that women can encounter with regard to their sexual functioning. It encompasses both physical and emotional problems. Most women will at some point in their lives face one or more of these challenges.
Sexual difficulties are very common, they can be transient or chronic, but unfortunately they are often neglected and lower the woman’s self-esteem.
Unfortunately, many women also suffer from sexual trauma. According to a study of the Center for Disease Control in 2012, nearly 1 in 5 (or 18%) of women reported that they had experienced rape. On top of that, 13 % of women reported sexual coercion at some time in their lives.
It doesn’t matter whether the cause of your sexual difficulties comes from trauma or psychological difficulties.
The results of your pain is likely to manifest on many levels.
According to the yogic holistic perspective, all layers of the human being are intrinsically connected. This means that the effects of physical abuse will also manifest in a disruption at the level of your energy system, govern many of your emotions, and leave its traces in your mind. Vice versa, emotional or mental negative experiences will manifest energetically and result in physical problems.
Because of this web of connections, all layers of your being have to be addressed in order to achieve true healing.
The 4 Sheats
In yoga, we consider the human being to be made up of 4 layers. These 4 layers govern different aspects of what makes you ‘you’. The 4 layers are represented as 4 sheaths, one more subtle than the other: the physical sheath, the energetic sheath, the emotional sheath, and the mental sheath.
#1 The Physical Sheath consists of Your Physical Matter
It is the flesh and bones of your body. The energetic sheath is more subtle than the physical body. It penetrates the whole physical structure, and because it is so subtle, it also extends out from the physical body.
#2 The Energetic Sheath Is the Blueprint for Your Entire Being
What is programmed in your energy body is what will manifest in physical form.
When your energy structure is influenced by either physical or mental problems, it will disturb your energetic frequency and show up as problems on your other layers.
When it comes to healing, it is very important that we don’t underestimate the importance of our energy structure. Whatever is present at the level of our energetic sheath, is bound to manifest in the physical body. This explains, for example, psychosomatic symptoms: a strong emotion such as grief can result in physical health problems.
#3 The Third Layer Are the Emotions
Your emotional sheath is an even more subtle layer than the energetic one. Energy can be perceived to a certain extent in the form of warmth, tingling sensations, or subtle field distortions. Emotions are even more difficult to perceive. Have you ever watched an upset woman do the dishes? Even though she’s standing with her back to you, you can ‘feel’ her anger, right? This means that you are perceiving her emotional sheath. This emotional layer contains your emotions, feelings, moods, and impressions.
#4 The Last Sheath, and Most Subtle Layer Is the ‘Mental Body’
This layer refers to the abstract aspects of your mind. The mental sheath contains the mental concepts that determine your view on life. For example, some people’s main driving force in life is to create a stable life, to build a home, and achieve stability and security.
Whereas someone else’s spirit is driven by experiencing and giving love. This is an example of 2 people with a different driving force or mental sheath.
The 4 sheats theory demonstrates the layers we are made up of.
Keep in mind that they are all interconnected and related. Trauma can be created at any of the 4 levels — physical, energetic, emotional, or mental. The effects of the negative experience will manifest throughout all the layers.
That is why sexual trauma is more than a negative sexual experience.
It is not even the experience itself. It is the result of that experience on the many different layers of the being. Once we know that, it becomes suddenly obvious why conventional approaches to dealing with sexual trauma are not always successful as they tend to only address the problem only on one layer.
Sexual Trauma & Depression
Many women who suffer from sexual difficulties also have emotional problems such as mood swings, heaviness, sadness, and depression. It is also known that women who have a healthy and fulfilling sex life, report being happier than those who are unfulfilled.
Moreover, depression often kills your sex drive. Feeling low, heavy, and anxious is often the best libido-antidote.
There seems to be a very important connection between our sexuality and emotional well-being.
The role your sexual fulfillment plays in your emotional health and happiness cannot be overestimated. If you suffer from chronic sadness or depression, it might be important for you to take action and address both your sexual difficulties and depression.
It’s important to figure out what lies at the root of your problems and address these seeds of pain.
When I work with people 1-on-1, I help them to find these deeply rooted impressions and develop a tailor-made therapeutic program for them — because we are all different and need different things to heal and grow.
Whether you are suffering from depression, have sexual difficulties, trauma, or a combination of all of them, Yoga Therapy has practical methods that allow you to heal from the inside out.
Healing Through Yoga
As I mentioned before, sexual trauma is not always the result of rape or abuse. We can also develop sexual problems through emotional pain resulting from a break-up, rejection from a partner, relationship problems, stress, and lack of confidence, just to name a few.
Sexual problems can manifest as pain during sex, frigidity, lack of sensitivity, not being able to relax, or not enjoying sex. Some women tell me they feel blocked in their sexuality, while others are simply unaware of the fact that they have much more sexual potential.
Yoga Therapy addresses all 5 layers of your being, and their interconnections, to achieve sexual healing. Yoga, and the Tantric systems of Yoga, in particular, consider the sexual energy to be the most powerful energy in our system.
Harmonizing and balancing your sexual energy is therefore of vital importance to your overall health and well-being.
Yoga Therapy uses a variety of techniques to facilitate sexual healing. There are visualization techniques to send healing energy into areas of pain, meditation techniques to cultivate self-love and forgiveness, breathing techniques to enhance sexual sensation, massage techniques to develop awareness, stretches to relax the pelvic floor, and strengthening exercises to train the vaginal muscles. All these can be applied therapeutically to achieve optimal sexual health and sexual pleasure.
Written by Deniz Aydoslu for Beducated Mag
