The Ode To Joy Podcast

Exploring Sacred Femininity with Pelvic Specialist, Naema Pierce

• Elena Box/ Naema Pierce • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Do you ever stop to consider the powerful energy that flows from your body and its intricate cycles? Today, we invite you to join us on a transformative journey of discovery with Naema Pierce, a pelvic specialist and women's sex coach. This enlightening conversation will have you contemplating your connection to your body, your femininity, and your innate creativity like never before.

Naema's life-altering experiences in the heart of Peru sparked a spiritual awakening, reconnecting her to the earth and igniting her mission to assist others in honoring their menstrual cycles and reclaiming their sexuality. Let's shatter the shackles of a patriarchal society together, and embrace the freedoms found in recognizing and celebrating our cycles. From discussing the potency of the menstrual cycle to exploring sacred femininity through bodywork, Naema's insights foster a profound understanding of womanhood and our bodies.

We delve into the eye-opening topics of intimacy, pelvic health, and the transformative power of self-pleasure practices. Naema shares her personal experiences, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting with our bodies and our sexuality, and the liberation that can unravel from opening the floodgates of grief. Encouraging us to confidently reclaim our sexuality, and utilize our unique stories for healing and connection, Naema introduces us to the exhilarating world of self-connection through sexuality. It's time to unearth our inner muse and celebrate the vibrant energy within us.


Connect with Naema:

FREE Pussy Love Liberation Practice: https://bit.ly/Free-Pussy-Love-Practice

FREE Art of Sexual Surrender Practice: https://marvelous-experimenter-9517.ck.page/4aa0e46b1c

Website: https://www.naemapierce.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywaANEFlCtTdE2QwWnC1FA

IG: https://www.instagram.com/naemapierce/


About Naema:

Naema is a pelvic specialist and women’s sex coach - helping women & pussy owners overcome pain, shame and disconnection in their pussy & sexuality so they can experience epic sex, erotic confidence and a thriving relationship to their pussy and selves. 

She helps women unlock this through her VAPPA™  method - an integrative approach to sexual liberation and hands on pelvic care. 

She is a powerful coach, working online with clients globally as well as in person in her thriving bodywork practice in Asheville, NC where she offers somatic pelvic healing sessions to women & pussy owners who are ready to get to the root of their disconnect and discover deep sexual liberation & healing. 


Naema is a total science nerd, esoterically deep, ridiculously playful, and is wildly passionate about helping you to live your most liberated and pleasurable life possible. 

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox

Elena Box:

Welcome to the Ode to Joy podcast, a show where we talk about joy how do we cultivate it, how do we maintain it and what are the things that get in the way. This week we are bringing you back another part of our very special Muse podcast series and just a heads up. There's a little bit of funkiness with my audio in the beginning, but please be patient because it's such an epic episode and I hope you enjoy. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to season two of the Ode to Joy podcast. I'm so happy you're here along with my dear guest, Naema Pierce. Welcome, Naema. Thank you, I'm very happy to be here. I'm so glad you are here to chat with us as we dive back into season two of the podcast. We had like a little summer hiatus because everybody was on vacation enjoying themselves, and what a wonderful conversation to get into today with you. I'm so pumped to dive in.

Elena Box:

So for our listener, a little bit about Naema. I've been a big fan girl of hers for a while now, so I'm really excited to bring her on for this conversation. So a little bit about Naema. She is a pelvic specialist and women's sex coach, helping women and pussy owners overcome pain, shame and disconnection in their pussy and sexuality so they can experience epic sex, erotic confidence and a thriving relationship to their pussy and cells. She helps women unlock this through her VAPA method, an integrative approach to sexual liberation and hands-on pelvic care. She is a powerful coach working online with clients globally, as well as in person in her thriving body work practice in Asheville, north Carolina, where she offers somatic pelvic healing sessions to women and pussy owners who are ready to get to the root of their disconnect and discover deep liberation and healing.

Elena Box:

Naema is a total science nerd, esoterically deep, ridiculously playful, and is wildly passionate about helping you to live your most liberated and pleasurable life. Yeah, and the crowd goes wow, wow, I mean, what an entrance, what a pleasure to have you on here, my goodness, my goodness, where to go from there, I mean. So, as we were chatting a little bit before starting our recording, I was just sharing with Naema how I really wanted her to come on, because I have recently dove into this sort of new chapter of a relationship with my specific pussy, my poussange I have so many different names for her and it's something that is so confronting and nourishing at the same time and it's something that I'm very intrigued by, and I also feel that more women need to know about this work. So thank you so much for doing the work that you do.

Naema Pierce:

Yes, it's truly my absolute pleasure, but like a deep, deep honor. So, yes, absolutely happy to do it.

Elena Box:

You're carrying the torch and I have so much respect seriously. So, wow, so many areas to go into today. But the name of the game, as we have spoken about in our previous episodes of this season, is all about the muse and our inner genius, and what is the journey that we take to really allow and unleash our inner muse to come forth to share our gifts on this earth. So I am so curious when did you first? Well, actually, let me rewind a second. Maybe you tell me if you could describe what is your. How would you describe your inner muse, your inner genius? Let's start there.

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, I mean after even like listening to you read my bio and while you were reading it I was just kind of like feeling into my body, was like it's like my pussy is my inner muse, like that's where, like the source, the life force, energy, the creativity comes from, but like also we're all the cycles of, like, death and transition and decomposition. You know, like we as women and pussy owners, like we move through this incredibly innate cycle in our bodies, our menstrual cycles, and it's like all in our core, all in our pelvic area. And, if I like really trace back even like where a lot of my journey began, more like consciously, more mentally in my life, it was when I became more aware of my menstrual cycle, became more aware of what it actually meant to bleed and being a body that ovulates and can grow a baby or not. And that was really the beginning of kind of this like macro cosmic, like aha moment of being like whoa, like I'm connected to everything around me and like seeing how my body, my female body, like mirrored the earth around me and that was like one of the biggest lightball moments for me and that was, I would like I said, kind of like the beginning of my conscious mental journey of like being like, oh, I'm interested in women's work and women's pelvic work. That's when that muse kind of like lit inside of me. I was 19.

Naema Pierce:

Then I was living in Peru. Actually, I went to Peru with one of my best girlfriends which was supposed to be like a three month trip and I ended up staying for three years and live down there and that was like a whole initiation of itself, of kind of like leaving the United States, the place I had known my entire life, going to this foreign country, that's like not all shiny. It's not like going to like I don't know, costa Rica or some like island in the Caribbean, it's like it's the Andes, you know, I was in like the high Andes Mountains and it was definitely like a huge like culture shock at first. But like throughout that whole journey of living there for three years and actually like integrating my life there, I would say like some of the deepest gold I took away from that was like it was this deep re-grounding me to the earth, like re-grounding me to my roots, to mother earth, like the culture there that I was steeping myself in. It's kind of like the best way I would describe.

Naema Pierce:

It is like sometimes here in the United States, I feel like I have to like actively practice staying in connection with my spirituality and, like myself Versus there, I felt like it was just like in my face, like God was just like in my face all the time and I was. I really needed that at 19 years old, like when I was just like who am I and what am I doing? And I'm supposed to be going to college and I'm supposed to be figuring everything out and who I am and picking my lifelong career. And I went to college for a year and I was like you know what? I need a minute to figure some shit out. So I left, went to Peru, stayed for three years, fell in love with the land, reconnected myself to the earth, reconnected to my menstrual cycle, met an amazing woman down there who's still a dear friend, who, like, really taught me like the foundations of menstrual cycle wisdom, joined women's circles and that's when, like, everything kind of lit up and it was this like deep returning and like for for women and pussy owners that have had this experience or that maybe even that have not too.

Naema Pierce:

But this, there's this thing that I see happens with women when, like when we reconnect with our own body, when we reconnect with our own womb, our pussy, our sexuality, and then we reconnect with ourselves in connection with other women doing that as well, be that at like a retreat or a women's circle, or just like one woman, a sister in front of you that you like share your journey of like a trial and a triumph of what it means to be a woman. There's this like unwavering feeling of like a coming home to oneself that does like open up, like the best word for it for me is like it's liberation. It's this feeling of like, oh my god, I'm free. Like I am free, I'm not alone in this experience, and like I have other people around me to be in this connection with, and like that there too, like that's muse, that's creative energy, like having that sisterhood, that circle of women. That again, even just connecting to the earth like the great mother, it's like you're reconnected again.

Naema Pierce:

You're like, oh, I'm not, I'm not alone, this is not my own. We all have our own unique experiences. I will absolutely honor that. Absolutely, we have it. It's not as isolating sometimes as I think it feels to us, and that's a big reason of why I just kind of took this work and fucking ran with it and have been like everybody needs to know that their pussy is the source of life and their sexual freedom and like their creative energy and will return you to like your highest magnificence possible, and so that's what I am here shouting it from the rooftop, but that's where some of the journey, the journey, began for me.

Elena Box:

Yeah, I love it and I'm so thankful for you. Thank you for answering that call. I mean even just for you to answer that call of inspiration to say I'm not going to follow what society tells me to do at 19 and go to college and earn this degree. And you allowed your I mean your body, your wisdom to literally guide you to stay in Peru and learn from the land there which what magical land to teach you there. And you know, you mentioned connecting to the earth and what came to mind as you were speaking is really the experience of being barefoot on the earth and I find for myself, you know, just this essence that you brought through of speaking about this wisdom of being a woman and this wisdom of connecting with your pussy, with your yoni. It brought to mind this feeling that I feel when I'm as close to naked if not naked in the middle of the woods, with my feet on the earth, in the ground, like feeling the soil beneath my feet, and when I allow that energy to rise up my body. It is that feeling of oneness, of this sense of like, community with all women, and if I'm lucky enough, I can be with other women on that land. And something you mentioned was like, of course, you know, maybe this isn't everybody's experience, you know, but I just, I'm just curious, you know, for someone who's listening who says, well, that's crazy, I'm like I don't want to, I don't want to listen to my pussy or whatever, like I don't want to get my feet dirty. You know, maybe just try it, maybe just try it. And all of the things that we'll speak of today is it's sort of just an invitation. And well, I wanted to bring to mind and I'm really curious about your experience with this, because I know from my personal experience and then when I speak to other women about doing this, you know, hands on hands in pelvic work, you know, within the pussy it's so confronting, and you know many women. You know the messaging that I received as a young woman was that our menstrual cycle was dirty, it was shameful, it was something to be hidden, it was something that you know, we just don't speak of, and so really, I think in our society we miss this whole initiation of becoming a woman and you know the messaging that I received was that was hide it, don't talk about it, don't connect to your pussy, don't connect to your menstrual cycle. You know, even to this day.

Elena Box:

You know, if I'm having, if I'm on my period and I'm bleeding, I'm on my bleed. To me that's a super sacred time. I tend to bleed on the full moon. So I'm just like all right, we're going in. It's cave time, womb time, you know. I let my partner know. I'm like listen, I'm going to need snacks, I'm going to, I'm going to need a loan time, I'm going to be in my little portal space, and you know the sensations that move through my body. One could.

Elena Box:

I'm lucky in that I don't have a huge amount of pain now in my period. But even that messaging of like pain is normal to have in your menstrual flow. And this is, it's totally normal. Just take some Advil. I'll speak to my mother and I'll say, oh, I'm just moving through a bit of intensity right now with my bleed and she goes it's not blood, I love you, mom, I've realized that it's not blood. And just take some Advil and get on with it. And I think, like I understand you know my mother. She's a baby boomer. God bless you, great generation. We love you. You know.

Elena Box:

I think the messaging she received as a young woman was you know, she went to architecture school, which was this very male dominated field, and I think for a lot of the women I think of the women in the 80s, like the power suits and the shoulder pads and they really had to operate in this man's world and so they had to show up, even when they were on their on their moon time, on their bleed, and so I understand this kind of shunning and this numbing of that experience so that they could achieve what they did.

Elena Box:

And I'm very thankful for the women who paved the road in terms of women in business, et cetera, et cetera, and I'm just so excited for this time where so many women are learning or relearning what I believe is very ancient wisdom and reconnecting and saying actually no, like that's not going to work for me. I'm going to honor my cycle and I'm going to literally create a life so that I can allow myself to be in tune with what my body is saying to me. So that brings me to my question, which is what was your experience in connection to your menstrual cycle, to your pussy, before you had this aha moment?

Naema Pierce:

That's a good question. Yeah, I mean similarly, like I've grown up in the same society everybody has. We live in a patriarchal society still to this day, you know, and so I grew up with all the same conditioning of the macro conditioning, be that sex before you know, religious conditioning, dogmatic stuff. We all have our unique experiences of that. Some people might live in more religious families than others, but I lived in a mediocre religious family.

Naema Pierce:

It wasn't like shoved down my throat all the time in my teenage years, but, like I grew up with the idea like sex before marriage it's a sin, it's dirty, it's wrong. Masturbation's bad, it's a sin. You shouldn't be doing it. Hide away, it's disgusting and gross. You know, I grew up in the same society of like hide your blood. I remember like being a kid and like starting to get, or like being a young woman getting my period, and like my older sister and her friends were teaching me like how to hide my tampon, to go to the bathroom, to like make it as discreet as possible. So it's like that was my, that was my reality, that was my experience.

Naema Pierce:

I will say, though, that, like I was very connected to my sexuality as a child and a young person Like I remember masturbating very early at a young age, hiding away. I mean, like honestly, I think most people do, yeah, and I think it's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly normal for us to touch ourselves as children Like I see it in my friends, young kids now even. But again, it's like the conditioning, it's the dogma that like pulls the natural animalistic instincts out of that child to make that thing better wrong. And so, yeah, like I was, I was really connected to my sexuality as a kid and even into like going, you know, going to my teenage years and such, and I remember feeling like I was slut shamed a lot in school because I was just like interested in sexuality. I was the one like making out with boys first and like I was, I was just like looked at as the slut for for a couple years and like the early years before all the other girls started joining in or whatever, it's kind of like pave on the way. That's part of my I feel like that's part of my Dharma in this world. But, yeah, I was told like sex was on pure and so that actually led to like a big part of my own spiritual evolution going forward, which was just like overcoming and reshaping that, the idea of what it even means to be spiritual, and that it's not like. For me it was.

Naema Pierce:

I remember a particular moment of like realizing that like spirituality is not just all about transcendence. It's not about like being in transcendence from this world, like to fast and to not have sex and to be celebrate or to just sit quietly and like only meditate and like not need nothing and be like this Buddhist monk or whatever, but like, actually, the most spiritual and religious states that I could access weren't about like removing my humanness and removing, like the messiness and the wild adventure of what it's like to be human. And that's when I really like found the path of like Tantra and yogic philosophy and stuff which was like which was that exact thing. It was like the first spiritual, religious type place where I was like, oh, I can be my whole human self, the one that like bleeds and that, like has crazy emotions and that, like has messy experiences and wants to fuck and wants to orgasm. Like I get to be fucking human and be spiritual, like and be connected to God, like, oh, and actually I'm feeling like I feel more connected to God and the goddess through that and like that's that was my beginning of finding Tantra and like the spiritual path that really led me to be deeply human and led me to be like in truth, like in actual truth, the truth that like I don't need to resign myself or change myself or be less human or be less of a woman, that I get to be exactly who I am right now, and like that has really been like the most unimaginably beautiful, like holy and spiritual thing that like got me even to this place till today. Like that's my big, you could say spiritual practice is like the Tantric practice, so I might have deferred a little bit from your question there.

Naema Pierce:

But like, essentially, before getting to this point of like having these aha moments, I had all the same conditioning and I think all of us women, all people on the earth like men included in this, I'll say like men are victims of the patriarchy too, but like women specifically, because that's the women I'm working with, and like we, I still like to serve the women and the pussy owners. It's like we all have this reclamation to do. I've never met a single woman that doesn't have to do some sort of reclamation process of her own self, her own sexuality, her own her pussy, her power, whatever that is, and like I see it every single day with my clients, like I've never met a woman, even the women that are like confident, they feel connected to their body, they're doing the embodiment practices, they're, you know, like understanding large pieces of the world. You know, cut me, that they've had like these different conscious awakenings. Still it's like we all have it. I still have it.

Naema Pierce:

I'm not like past this, like unawakening of, like my own pussy, my own sexuality. It's this like never ending path of self discovery. And I don't say that to make it sound like you're going to always be like doing the work to like find yourself. But it's more like how fucking lucky are we that we do get to like continuously uncover more and more layers of our power, continuously uncover more and more layers of our own like magnificence and liberation. And that to me, is like such a gift in and of itself because, like I think, sometimes we think that the kind of like peak of the mountain top, wherever we're like going for, is this place where we just like feel confident.

Naema Pierce:

We never have troubles anymore, we never have pain anymore, we never like feel down and out about ourselves anymore. But really it's like for me and again coming back to the path of Tantra and like a lot of what I infused my work with when I'm working with my publishing clients to. It's like it's not about this transcendent space, it's about how do we be with all that, what is and like? Worship your direct experience, worship the pain that, the trials, the tribulations, and and learn to find love and care and compassion in those spaces. Like that is actually the liberation when we can like be in the places of discomfort and love and accept ourselves in them enough that, like those, those parts of discomfort get to be these bits of joy and these bits of gold that come out of us on the other side we're speaking the same language.

Elena Box:

We're speaking the same language. You're speaking some truth there. You know, it's amazing because we've only really just met and that's that's like exactly what I mean. You mentioned so much. But just what you finished out there with is like how can we really witness all of the nasty, all of the well you wouldn't say nasty, but all of the kind of like crazy, you know dark bits of life, the pain, and really hold space for it, so that we can also hold space for the joy? It's, it's my, it's also my passion. So I'm really really excited that you're also, you know, walking this path of what it means to be human and to really hold, hold the full container for that, the full experience of it.

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, I mean because, like to be honest, like this is I'm getting a little meta here in my thought process, but like to be honest, so like I work with my coaching clients about this a lot and like something that comes up is like I'll ask people like what is what do you want? Like what do you really want? And people are like to just feel free and like happy and in my joy all the time. And when I read that I'm like beautiful, but also like I bet like I kid you not if we got to that point where you just were experiencing your joy all the time, if you could like get to that place where it was just like ecstasy, pleasure all the time, and then you were there and you had an opportunity to like I don't know if I can take the purple pill that like makes you experience pain and suffer again. Like I bet your goddamn self you would take that pill, because part of human experience is to feel the pain, the discomfort, the hardship. That's what makes the pleasure, the ecstasy, the confidence, the joy so damn good is by getting to touch the other parts of it and getting to learn from it, and so like that's, that's what it's like how can we love, love the times where, how can we love the things that are hard, you know, and this kind of comes down to my work with when I'm like working with someone in their body, for instance, when I'm doing my hands on pelvic healing work with someone and they actually have like physical pain in their pussy or they're like have been raped and they have this huge trauma that they're trying to exacerbate and like overcome and find themselves all over again.

Naema Pierce:

And it's not about like just wanting to orient towards like the goodness, you know, but it's like how can you bring in compassion to this pain point in your pussy? Like, how can you actually like be with it enough, find enough safety within your system, which is a practice it's not just something that you have to do all by yourself either. Find enough safety in your system where you can be there in presence with the pain point, with the experience in your body, and get so deeply intimate with it. But I mean by that is like get so intimate with it that you actually fucking feel it, like you actually go into feeling what that sensation is, what that pain point is, and like move it through your body with your breath, with your sound, with your own hands touching your own body, and actually be in this like embodied, liberatory practice of intimacy, like that is the freedom, that is where, on the through that, on the other side of that, like you find the pleasure and the joy through that experience.

Elena Box:

Well, it's deep work.

Naema Pierce:

It's deep work.

Elena Box:

It's not easy, but I think it's so it's perhaps one of the best gifts that one could give themselves is to be held in a container like that, where they're really giving themselves permission to hold and witness all of those parts that I think can be really scary to witness on on your own.

Elena Box:

I just love that you're I just love that you're doing this work in the world and so oh. So here's my next question. This is important because for perhaps someone who's listening, they're like, all right, they keep talking about pelvic work and pussy and run, but if you could sort of describe really the work that you do, like what does a typical session look like and what would someone expect to receive in doing a session like this with someone?

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, good question.

Naema Pierce:

So there's a couple different ways I work with people. I work with people both online and in person, and even the people that I work in person with doing like actual hands on pelvic care work, we usually always meet once online before or we meet in person before we get into the hands on work and do some of the like somatic coaching that I do. But I'll share about the in person work first, and so it's a ceremony. Essentially, you're walking into a ceremony, you're walking in. It's like the modern day goddess, god, ex temple. You know. It's like coming into a place where you get to be held by another woman me where you get to experience all of what's happening in your body. You get to experience what is what is within your tissues, within. So this is where I get like really nerdy, and sciency is like our bodies. When we talk about like all this nervous system work in the world, like there's a lot of great nervous system work out there. I do a lot of it myself and oftentimes I see there's like this. Personally, I feel like there's like sometimes a missing link between like actually like coming to the physical body itself, coming down to the tissue, and this is where it comes back to like getting grounded in the earth, in your physical body. We're human beings, we're made of matter. Let's get to our bodies. So what my sessions include is an opportunity to come in, and my sessions are three hours long. We sit down together, we talk. We've had a preliminary phone call before that, so I have a general idea of what people are coming in with.

Naema Pierce:

I work with women that have experienced things like they have like pain in their vaginas, pain in their public floors, discomfort with intercourse, maybe had trauma of some kind, be that sexual big T trauma or like little T trauma. You'd be a woman in this world, in society, like we all have some trauma to work through. And women who just want to like know their pussies better, want to connect themselves more, have more confidence, maybe increase their orgasmic potential, like have more juice from life with their bodies. So women come to me for a variety of different reasons and we start the work with a general check-in. I share a lot about some practices that the client can use when they're working on the table with me. Essentially, the session itself is I always like to say it's a very active, active participation process. It's not like just your general massage, where you come and you lay on the table, someone rubs you down and that's it, like you're at. This client is actively participating in their session through breath, through sound, through movement. I'm giving them guidance and coaching along throughout the session as I'm working their body from head to toe.

Naema Pierce:

So pelvic work, it's whole body work. Womb work, it's whole body work. Our bodies are one intricately connected system. We can't separate the two from the rest of our body. So I work the whole body, head to toe, literally in and out, starting like head, working all the way down, and then I do thorough intravaginal work and I also do anal work with women as well, and so that's kind of like what I'm doing inside of the sessions.

Naema Pierce:

But what this session is coming back to like it's the temple. It's the modern day temple where women can come in and be held in a space where that is non-sexual, it is non-gynecological or like clinical in nature, and it's a space to be held to feel your body, to get to know your pussy on a different level than maybe you've never felt before. Most women, most women, have never had their pussy touched outside of sexual touch or gynecological touch. That's it. It's like we're either having sex or we're getting an exam, or I'm getting poked and prodded. Where is the space where you get to hold yourself, be held and have your pussy touched, have your body touched in a way where I'm in total service to you, I'm holding points, I'm inviting in strokes that are helping to open the tissues, to soften and have and invite you into a deeper awareness than you've maybe never experienced before with your own body and your own pussy, and I could do not.

Naema Pierce:

All of the time when I'm doing this work, women are like I didn't even know this was happening, or they're asking questions like where are you inside me right now? I actually can't even tell what's happening and we're moving slow, and that because there's such a disorientation of the inner workings of our pelvic floor, of our pelvic bowl, because we haven't learned to be with them in such an intimate way, and there's no shame in that there's no shame in not knowing where somebody is inside of your body. When you're there, sometimes, like still to this day, someone's doing public work on me and I'm like, wow, where are you? Tell me what you're on right now. But through that practice and through this experience, you build deeper and deeper and deeper into reception, the inner awareness of things like your nerve endings wake up in your pelvis, your nerve endings within your vaginal canal, your pelvic floor, like it all wakes up and comes to life again. They become more supple, they become more filled with blood and like nutrients of, like lymphatic flow and blood flow is flowing to your pelvis in a way that you've maybe never had before or that was blocked before. And so it's both this physical experience of like actually enlivening the tissue and helping you on a very physical and grounded way to like overcome painful areas, overcome numbness, overcome like deep congestion in the body. But then, on this other level, it's like this radical, embodied practice of like feeling yourself fully and again coming home to your pussy another way.

Naema Pierce:

All the time, women on the table have a variety of different experiences, from like laughter and this like kind of ecstatic coming home to like wailing tears of grief and despair for like all the times they weren't touched in the way that I was touching them in that moment, for all the times that they were violated, and it's just like letting, letting yourself have that time to kind of open the floodgates and let some of it come out. But it's done the work. I approach it very, very sweetly and gently and slowly Because this work is, like you said at the you said at some point like it's really confronting this work and I imagine some people listening now they're like fuck, that sounds scary as hell, like I don't know if I want to do that work. But you do it with the right person, like you do it with someone that knows how to hold you and I hold my work with so so much deep reverence and care and we move so slow and you're in charge every step of the way and nothing is done to you. You're in total consent the entire time. We're doing this work.

Naema Pierce:

And I also like teach this work online, like I teach online workshops about this. In my coaching, I teach women how to work with their own bodies, how to work and do their own self pleasure practices. So, like I said, my clip, my work, my hands on work, is non sexual in nature. I'm not doing pleasure work, but I do pleasure work online and I help women uncover their sexuality and give them amazing pleasure practices so that they can move through different experiences in their body as well, to help them have deeper liberation with their, with their own sexuality, and their selves as well.

Elena Box:

God, oh my God, Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for unleashing your inner muse into the world, and I just think this work is so needed for every woman. Something you mentioned earlier on was that I think you said something like every single woman. I don't know how you said it, so I'll say it in the way that I will say it when I didn't. And I would like to do one of your trainings as well, but I did an online zoom training on consent work.

Elena Box:

And it was amazing to see there were women who shared afterwards. It was their first time, you know, even putting their fingers inside of them, and they were sharing later. I mean, these were women in their fifties and sixties, you know, who'd never had that experience before, and I think something you said was maybe you said this, but it was. I think every woman needs this and every woman has something that they're holding and something that they're working through, and I think also to learn tools for yourself, but then also to be held by someone else where I love this, how you put it where it's not sexual and it's not gynecological, because what a mind fuck that, as women, our relationship with our pussy Generally when it involves other people, it's either I'm supposed to be turned on right now or I'm supposed to be completely turned off right now and allowing yourself to be penetrated perhaps in either of those settings, and you know what kind of messaging that might send to our flesh and to our tissue, and you know our, our tissue really holds memory and holds experiences, and so I think what you're offering here, of allowing women and pussy owners to to have a conversation that's them within themselves, have like a deeper relationship, is so crucial. Yeah, and I had a question for you.

Elena Box:

I had this sort of revelation which I've only shared with two dear sisters of mine. Recently I had an experience where I'll just share. I mean, I, I it feels edgy for me to share, but I felt that I was pregnant for the second time and I wasn't, but I had this feeling where, like my whole pussy was just like she was, just she had this like new. I knew, but this different personality Didn't turn out, that I was pregnant, but something was happening within my body, that what I felt and I'm curious to hear if you've ever heard of this or felt this or what your perception of this I felt this intuitive sense and this might sound crazy, see how it like that my pussy, like the true face of all women, and definitely me in this moment, in this time when I was having this like deep Connection with her that all women, our true face is our pussy, like we see our face here, but like our true essence of, like who we are in the world, is our pussy.

Elena Box:

Hmm, I don't know if that makes sense even. I was like we're walking around covering our real faces up, but like really my personality, my whole self, is like she's down there, she's, she's below the belt and I'm curious to hear how that lands for your, what, what your perspective is On that.

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, I mean yes, I agree with it, and it's like there's. You know there's a couple different ways. I would like add to that, which is like you just said you're, you're, you're like Truest essence or something like that is at the pussy and like, yes, that is like one of like my things that I continuously Invite others into, is like it's all my work if I had to boil it down. It's about helping you return to your truest essence, helping you return to the you before the religious conditioning, the patriarchal Shit, the family, dogmatic, whatever that got in your way. The teachers at school, the people that like told you you should, could not do. Whatever it is like. It's coming back to the you before your trauma before all of this.

Naema Pierce:

That was like your Truest essence, the truest like innocent. You like when we we, when we hear innocent, I think we often see like the child, like just like the innocent little child and like, yes, and like that innocent child is Fucking powerful and so strong. And it's about like coming back to that Powerful you that reveled in your pleasure, that knew how to like just enjoy yourself and find joy and laugh and play and like touch your body in your crib or wherever, however old you are, shamelessly and like this is where, so like yes, I really agree that a lot of what happens below the bell or like at our posties, is like when so much is held. And this is why when we, when I discuss this work and as we've been talking today, like when you said, like it's really Confronting to go here, it's like it is because you know, like I think about this in the greater sense too, of like Society again, like when we look at society and like where are we the most choked out as a society? And like to me it's like sexually, sexually, we're really choked out. There's, you know, there's like sex, money, god those are like the three big topics of life but like there's plenty of like money talk in the world. We could all talk about money a little bit more too, in my opinion. But like there's like that's happening, religious, it's everywhere. But like what about sexuality? The only thing about sexuality that we see everywhere is usually like the religious type of stuff or pornography. It's like these two ends of the spectrum.

Naema Pierce:

And so when it comes to like I think about, it's like you want to have like the most liberation in your life. You want to like figure out or like uncover the most Within you like go to the area where it is the most choked out and that is like our sexuality, that is, our pussy and pelvis. Like and I say that because not to make it sound overwhelming, but it's almost like you get a greater return on your investment of time like go to the area where there's more there to work with and where society has more shit around, because you will discover more there. Like I always say, too like, our pussies hold some of like our greatest pain in our life, but also our greatest pleasures. It's like this huge universe of energy and feeling there. And so when you say like you kind of like looked at your pussy or felt your pussy in this new way and you're like, oh, she's like, she's like shining in this other kind of way, she's kind of like talking to me in this other kind of way, and this is the experience like I myself have had and a lot of my female clients have had, is like this coming to like Actually have their pussy be this integrated part of their body versus this thing that's like Tucked away, or this place like quote-unquote down there, you know, or like I don't even know what to call my, my vagina, and it's like integrating it with the rest of your body, letting it be a force within you.

Naema Pierce:

Sometimes I'll invite my clients and to I'll ask a question of, like, what's, what is the energy, what's the consciousness within your pussy right now? If you could like let it speak, if you could move with it, if you could breathe with it, what would that be? And oftentimes, like, I see that people are really stumped with that, and understandably so. But it's like, if I would say, like, move with your heart consciousness. Or like, show me your mind consciousness. You know you can go there.

Naema Pierce:

But like pussy, pussy energy, pussy, pussy consciousness, a lot of people are like, start to get confused because there is this like Disintegration from this area of our body. So when you describe coming home to this place in yourself, or like feeling your pussy as this face within you, it's like this work that I'm doing, holding for people, and that you can do yourself. Again, you don't have to have me just hold you in this work. This work is a lot about me empowering you to have the tools to do you do your own hands on pussy work, to do your own Pleasure practices, to do your own, like self love rituals that is what helps Uncover and to have that like deeper integration within your pussy. And yeah, this returning to your truest essence, like the core Of who you are, the core of, like life and death and rebirth and Transmutation and sexuality and pleasure, like it is, it's returning to the truest essence.

Elena Box:

It's all in there. It's wild, it really, is it really?

Naema Pierce:

is If I had to kind of offer in this moment like something practical, because I was, I was just taking a breath and stepping back and being like Okay, I've been in my like really esoteric speech this morning, I feel and if I had to offer something to you that's listening of, like, how do I begin this journey? Like, how do I begin connecting with my pussy, begin connecting with my sexuality in a new kind of way? A couple of things I'd suggest to you. Like one, just lay your hand on your vulva and just hold it. You can do it even over your pants, over your underwear, at first. I I hope you graduate to skin to skin contact. But, like, go at the pace that feels true to you, go at the pace that your nervous system needs to find safety and comfort. And lay your hand on your vulva and take 10 breaths and just breathe down into your pelvic floor, breathe into your vulva, and even whisper some loving words like I love you, I hear you, I'm here with you. I'm wanting to connect with you more. Like that practice right there who knows, will unfold just from that. Sounds small, might sound big, like is simple but is profound.

Naema Pierce:

The other thing I would suggest is to start a daily practice of celebrations One of the most fabulous healing tools ever this has even been studied in science Like when you celebrate yourself, it like it has some amazing neurological effects in your brain that helps you to reorient towards pleasure and what's good in the world more regularly. So, every day, three celebrations, and specifically with this work of like self-love around your sexuality, your womanhood, your pussy. Three celebrations of that, you know, three celebrations of what you're grateful for, that your pussy does for you or that offers to you, or that you're able to touch on your sexuality, or that you feel just about your own body, about your own personality. You know, like, within that range, celebrating is such, such, such a powerful practice. And the last thing I would suggest, too, for those of you that want to connect maybe you, like, feel connected to your body, maybe feel connected to your pussy, but you're like I want to go to the next level, though. Like I want to go to the next level with my connection to her, but also my connection to, like, my sexuality and my sexual self. What I would really encourage you to do is start your own pleasure practice, your own conscious masturbation practice, and this is different than maybe just like you know, a quickie with yourself in some sort of way. This is about like creating a container for yourself to again be with yourself, with no rush, taking away the goal of orgasm, taking away the need to like follow in a kind of step by step way that you maybe are used to, and giving yourself a container where you go into, actually practice, to be with yourself in a new kind of way, where you maybe touch yourself with different strokes, maybe you use a different toy and actually create this conscious container.

Naema Pierce:

Because a lot of the times when I hear women say that they want to up level people, for that matter, to want to up level their sexuality I noticed how, like in society too, it's like we don't actually go to practice. That you know. Like, if we want to like get stronger, we go to the gym. If we want to like learn a new skill, we like go take an art class or something. But like people are like I want to have better sex and more orgasms, but I'm like okay, well then, like, go to the gym for your sex life, it's time to practice.

Naema Pierce:

It's time to create a time where you like go to consciously practice and be with your body and that can be as simple as like holding your vulva and just doing light stroking and saying nice words to her.

Naema Pierce:

It can be actually like full on pleasuring all the way to orgasm if you're able to reach that, you know but like giving yourself the space and time to be in that pleasure, practice and use some foundational sex tools which I teach all my clients, which is breath, sound movement, like use your breath, breathe fully, connect to your breath, exhale sound, open your mouth, let out moans, let out groans, let out cries, let out sighs like, let out growls, like activate your sound within your voice, our voices as women and females, like they're so shut down as well too, like the voice and our pussies are so intrinsically connected on a physical level but also energetically.

Naema Pierce:

You want to like find more confidence and liberate your voice and like speak up and show up in the world like moan, sound, groan and touch your pussy and like be in that place of breath, sound movement and give yourself that sacred pleasure, practice, space, because that will absolutely start to take you to the next level, no matter like what your goals are, whether that's like more sensation or more orgasm or just more connection to your own self and confidence.

Elena Box:

I love that you mentioned all this. You literally said all the things I was going to say oh, what are some practices that we can share with our listener? And also I was going to say, oh, and you know, the voice and the pussy are so connected and you just went there and I love that and I'm just, I'm so excited to dive into your work and I feel that we're very much aligned. If our listener has been to one of my yoga classes, they will know that I'm always offering cues for them to open up their voices and to breathe into their bodies. What did you say? Breath, sound and movement.

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, make that your mantra. Like this is the breath, sound, movement. And make that your mantra in everyday life. It doesn't have to just be like in sex, in your pleasure. Practice like breathe when you're doing the dishes, exhale, let out some sound. When you're like eating your meal and it tastes fucking good. Like how can you actually orient your system, your body, your animal body, to being an expression in your day to day life? Like I will.

Naema Pierce:

I think there's so many things that would like help make our society more peaceful and liberated and in pleasure. And it's like let's normalize like sounding at a restaurant, being like, oh, this is so good, like this is so delicious. Or like dropping our shit at the grocery store. I mean, like you know, and actually just like I drop, instead of like what do you do normally when you like maybe trip or fall or drop something? It's like there's this cowering, there's this tightening in your body and where do you tighten? You tighten your jaw, you tighten your heart, you tighten your pussy, your asshole, like it all goes tight.

Naema Pierce:

And like we're living in a society of like hyper tonicity. Like hyper, that means like hyper tense. You know you're just like tightened up. So like how can you as much as you can in your day, like soften your actual physical body, breathe sound. And if you have charge, it's not about just like, like ignoring the charge that you feel in your body, ignoring the anger or the frustration you're experiencing, but move it through your body, like actually be, like ah, you know, and like wave your hands and shake your body and like be with the sensations that you experience in your body from moment to moment, like that will bring you absolutely more connection, pleasure, liberation, awareness, like a connection with other human beings. It's breath, sound movement, breath, sound movement, let it be your mantra Breath, sound movement, breath, sound movement.

Elena Box:

put it on a post-it note.

Elena Box:

Let's actually take a breath out, even like nice breath, yeah, and just like notice right there, like one breath I get really, really excited when I talk to people who are just expressing all that I also feel is mirrored in my work and in my life, and it just feels I'm feeling very, it's like affirmed. I guess you know I could say just like yes, of course, of course, and I'm so happy that you put voice to your work and to really the importance of this, of this work. I mean, it expands into so many other areas and so there's really nothing else I can say aside from like ditto, ditto, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow. So, my friend, because I know we could go on and on, is there anything you want to share specifically with our listener? Any, anything specific you have coming up that you want to share? Or also, if you want to share about your specific offerings I know you've mentioned them. How can people find you? How can people work with you?

Naema Pierce:

Yeah, thanks for asking. Basically, you can find me anywhere on YouTube, instagram website, naimapiercecom. I do some semi monthly workshops called Pussy Temple, where you can come and be guided through a powerful hands-on practice of reconnecting with your pussy and sexuality. It's one of the like low ticket, low investment, commitment, time wise, the way is to come and work with me and taste this work. If you're in Asheville, North Carolina, you can come see me for in person bodywork. If you're not, you can travel in. I do weekend immersions with people doing long weekends of bodywork and coaching, and then I do one on one online coaching as well. I do that in short containers of just like one session. If you want to have like an online pelvic care session or I do these, I have a program. It's a five month program called Initiatrix and it is like my signature program of taking you through your unique experience and helping you to overcome the pain, overcome the shame and really return to your truest essence of like your thriving self as a sexual being and an erotic woman. And it's just a powerful journey of guiding you through all sorts of different pleasure practices and some of the most like up to date practices that me and some of the people that I've studied with have created it around overcoming different types of trauma, and so those are the ways to find me, to work with me. I'd be delighted, just like, reach out to me on Instagram, send me a message. I freaking love actually talking to people, please do. My YouTube channel is full of like free resources. Go, check me out there. So that's a little bit about how to find me and work with me, and If I had to like maybe leave with one thing for you would be to remember the impact and the importance of story.

Naema Pierce:

I think that one thing I've taken away the most from my years of doing this work, but also just being a woman, is like when I share my story, when other women share their story with me. That's like when I find a really, really deep connection and healing with myself and with others, and there's such power to being witnessed and to witnessing Like. There's so much healing power in that. So much of the time, we think that we're the only ones who doesn't have, or like we look at someone and we're like they probably have this together and that together and they don't suffer with this, that and the other, and it's like some of you might even be thinking that about me right now, because I'm like holding this work and doing this and it's like I have had my own pussy pain that I have worked years to overcome and everyone's while still creeps up again.

Naema Pierce:

I like still have things that are challenging for me and my body and sexuality and it's a constant practice and like there's so much healing to like sit down with a sister, sit down with a friend and like share your story or like I shared I had an abortion once and like sharing my abortion story was like one of the most healing experiences for me of like hearing every time not every time, but almost every time I'd be like I had an abortion, like someone would be like me too, or they'd be like, yeah, my sister did, yeah, my best friend did and I witnessed that, you know, and so like that would be. My takeaway is just like there's so much power and being able to be in connection with other women and pussy owners around all this stuff and do that with a friend and I'm here too if you want some one-on-one connection and witnessing in that type of format as well.

Elena Box:

What's soul food? Thank you, yes, I think storytelling is a huge component of what it means to be in sisterhood with other women and pussy owners is. Let's talk about it because as, just as you said, I too had an abortion. I did a couple of episodes on it and shared that story and it's amazing how many women came forward and were like, oh my god, thank you so much for telling this story, because they too went through it and, as you said, I think, oftentimes we think that, yeah, nobody else could possibly understand, and maybe we sort of think, oh, maybe someone, but you'd be amazed how many other women have had similar experiences. And across the board, across the board Of what it means to have a pussy and and be in this world walking with one. There's so much.

Elena Box:

So, yes, telling the stories, sharing our stories and using our voices is really, really huge, and that's that's the name of the game, that's what we're here to do today. My goodness, what a pleasure and I'm so excited. So, dear listener, all that Naima mentioned will be in the show notes, so please get in touch with her, do yourself a favor and give yourself the gift of connecting with her and her work, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Naema Pierce:

Yes, it's been an absolute pleasure and again it's an honor. I do it in service to all of your healing and liberation.

Elena Box:

Thank you, and thank you to our dear listener for tuning in. I hope this has illuminated and resonated with you and perhaps given you something to think about and something to take home and practice and bring into your life. So, sending you so much love. This has been another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in, dear listener. It is my sincere pleasure to bring these conversations to you and, hey, if you have a moment, why not go ahead, leave us a review and while you're at it, why not drop us a couple of stars? It would mean so much to me to hear from you and hear how you're enjoying these conversations. I'll be speaking to you again very soon. So much love.