Ada 0:00

Welcome to all things Health and Abundance podcast. This is the podcast where we discuss different health and abundance related issues and come with real tips and advice. Today we are going to talk about healing the womb and reconnecting to your feminine energy. I've been going through this journey of self-discovery for as long as I can remember, and lately I've been looking to find the answers and the deep healing inside of myself, in my body, in my heart, and in my womb instead of different yoga and ear Veda practices have helped me in regulating my cycle, I still have a long way to go when it comes to being connected to the home, and that is one of the reasons why I really wanted to bring up the subject of womb healing today. So that others who, like me, are working on healing their own. Then that's some real tips about how to go about doing that. And today with me discussing womb healing is Victoria Vandal. Victoria is a spiritual teacher, mother and a passionate Eugenie. She shares her holistic knowledge with great dedication in her unique yoga and self-care training for women, as well as in international retreats and workshops. She supports women to get in touch with the inherited wisdom of their own bodies. I actually met Victoria while we both were studying yoga therapy at Yoga Point in Acid, and I am so lucky that I happen to share the room with her. And we became friends and have been friends and in touch ever since. Welcome, Victoria, I'm really happy to have you here with us.

Victoria 2:02

Thank you. I'm so, so happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation and I'm really excited for our conversation.

Ada 2:11

Yeah. Me too. Can you start by telling us a bit more about yourself? Your journey? How that has developed and how that has led you to focus on women health and wellbeing?

Victoria 2:21

Sure. So basically, I would say my background, my whole academic journey is business oriented, and I studied business and I worked in business in a media industry, and it was not fulfilling came to the point where there was this, this really loud calling of my soul to change something. And I had no idea what I should change. And so I just basically quit my job and, and went abroad to Miami, actually to party and to direct myself from not knowing where I want to go. And there I found yoga, and I had my very first actual yoga class in Miami, and that's where everything changed. And I decided to keep traveling to South America. And I did my first yoga teacher training. And and then I, I felt like I need to go to the root of yoga. And I traveled to first to other countries in Asia and then eventually to India. And I kept traveling and doing teacher trainings in different and different countries and at different schools and ashrams. That's where we met. Yeah. 2s And eventually I ended up in Bali. Where I kind of like I knew I would stay there. So I had the idea of keeping Bali for a later destination. So I travelled a lot before in Asia. Then I ended up in Bali at some point and my heart was, I don't know, like burst open. I felt like I come home and I decided to stay there and I got a job offered as a retreat leader in a yoga retreat center in the north of Bali. So I was teaching yoga and practicing yoga a lot before, and there we had new guests every week, and we had consultations with the guests where they told us what their their conditions are, their challenges are, and why they came here. And most of our guests were women, and 1s their problems and their challenges was were often women related problems. And I felt that yoga and like yoga program, we had there did not have answers like sufficient answers for those challenges. And and what happened alongside of that? I was living on the north coast of Bali and literally waking up with the sunrise and going to sleep with sunset because there was nothing around. And for the first time, a menstrual cycle synced with the moon cycle. Wow. And I learned so much from the Balinese worshiping the moon and the moon cycle, and having those new moon and full moon rituals. And I went to the temple with them and and I realized how close the moon cycle and menstrual cycle are and how interrelated it all is. And I started to learn more about the menstrual cycle. I started my own cycle and books about it and and eventually decided I need to I need to, yeah, focus more on that because this is where so like the menstrual cycle literally is our inner compass for everything we do as women. And so I learned more about the menstrual cycle. I did trainings with women who teach about womb yoga, about womb health, about the menstrual cycle, and eventually also left a retreat center and went back to Austria to to start my own business. And that's what I do now. I basically work with women through yoga and self-care, through yoga and shamanistic approaches and. And personally I have healed a lot. I would say within me, I mean, we're always on a journey, right? But a lot has changed since I started to do women's related yoga practices and rituals, focusing on my on my female health and my womb space on my pelvis.

U2

Ada 6:36

It's amazing. Sexually healing the pelvis. The womb area actually heals. Probably the whole of you, right? That's where our power is.

Ada 6:47

Absolutely. In our womb. Space lies our power, and we're so often living in our heads and our hearts and doing from like a mind perspective. I'm learning from a really wonderful medicine woman, and she always says the brain of a woman is in her womb. That's where our intelligence, our wisdom lies. And the more we connect with this really incredible, powerful place, the more we feel connected to our intuitive wisdom. The more we feel stability in our lives, the more clear we can navigate through life. And also, something really important I would like to mention is that we're speaking of energetic womb space. So the center of the womb space, even if the there has been done hysterectomies so that the womb is removed, you're still working with the womb space and you're still energetically able to connect and to connect with that power and the womb space.

Ada 7:54

Wow. That's amazing. So actually, even a woman that for whatever health reason, had to had her womb removed, she can still connect.

Victoria 8:04

Absolutely, yes. How do you do this? How do you help women with this? Like more concrete?

Ada 8:10

Yes. So what's a very simple and key practice that can be done so easily is literally to use your breath and your awareness to connect with the pelvis space. So there is a mudra called yoni mudra. Yeah. Quick explanation. Yoni. So it can be translated. It's a Sanskrit and Old Indian word from Sanskrit that means the origin, the door to the universe. And it's also a description of the woman s pelvis of their womb and vagina and vulva. So it can be described as yoni. And it's a very, very beautiful word to use for our power center. And so yoni is description for that. And there is the uni mudra, which is literally just forming a downward facing triangle with your both hands and placing it upon your womb space. And then breathing either in a seated position or lying on your back, or whatever feels comfortable for you, or standing and just placing the yoni mudra in this way. I mean, there are different versions of the unit, but I like to just use this very simple version of a downward facing triangle, placing both hands on the womb and really trying to breathe into your pelvis, not just into your in your chest area and upper body, but really get down with your breath into your pelvis and and stay with your awareness in your pelvis. So literally just bringing prana energy and awareness into your pelvis. And then there is a continuation of the practice that you can do to also connect your heart space to your womb space to just kind of like. But I can also you want me to explain it now?

Yes. Please. Please do that because I'm really interested as well. While you're speaking, I'm getting goosebumps throughout my body. It's amazing.

That's so beautiful. It's. Yeah, I feel you very much because that's what happened to me when I first learned about all those practices women's health and and womb yoga. So if you like, you have your hands placed on your womb and you breathe into your pelvis and you kind of like notice how you soften in that area, because what happens is that we're very often tight in our pelvis, in our hips and in our jaw.

Are they connected?

Are very much connected. So as an animal in the womb of the mother, your jaw and your pelvis are still together, and then the spine develops and then. This is why those two areas are so connected. And by breathing into your pelvis and at the same time softening your jaw, just making very small movements with your jaw. You often notice that kind of like it drops, like you drop into that, 1s you know, like you breathe out and it softens a little bit. And so I would, I would recommend to just do this and have the hands in yoni mudra. Breathe awareness into the pelvis. And after taking a couple of breaths, a couple of minutes here, you can bring your hands from your mudra to your heart in Anjali Mudra, which means Namaste mudra. Like your hands, just fold in the heart as you inhale and then as you exhale you form again Yoni mudra downward facing triangles down like wiping down towards your womb space. And then as you inhale, bring your hands again up into your heart. Wow. Exhale yoni mudra to your womb. And you can just repeat that for a while. And it does something because what it does, it connects your heart with your womb. And there is a saying or. Yeah, something that I stumbled across a couple of times during my research is also that the heart is often referred to as the the light heart, so to say, and the womb is the dark heart. So there is like those are the two hearts of a woman.

And you connect those two hearts through this practice. And how? And what are the results of it?

You feel it instantly, and you nourish your heart space and you nourish your womb space. And what happens is that a flow starts like an energetic flow. It's called the 1s uni energy. So there is an energy channel twin your heart and your yoni, and you activate this channel so that they are communicating with each other, so to say. Because oftentimes we are kind of disconnected to the womb space. So it's easy for us or for most of us to connect to a heart. Right? The heart and what we often learn in, in yoga is that we strive to move up like we move energy up. We always strive to go up, up and out of the body often. And in yoga and in women's rituals, what we do is we try. We work a lot with the apana flow, the flow, the downward flow to connect your heart down towards the womb and down into the earth to ground, to work with those lower chakras even more and to send the energy down.

Wow. And and this helps in so many ways, on the one hand, to feel more grounded, to find more stability and security within yourself, and to feel more connected to that inner wisdom as your heart and your womb are more communicating and more in that flow.

If someone is trying this and working with it, and at some point they realize they become aware that their job is tight, does it mean that they have to go back to their breath and work with their job, because maybe there is tightness in their own area? Absolutely, yes. And there are so many beautiful exercises also to bring more vitality and movement and like feminine and curvy movement in your pelvis. So everything that where you make circles with your pelvis also some sort of like sensual dance where you because often in yoga what we do is like those very like. Regions and region as you go up and down and twist and. But there is not much movement in your pelvis. U2

Makes sense of it since it was developed by men for men.

Recent history men are those practices have been passed on from men towards men who go further back and especially more into the history of Tantra. Yeah, a lot of those rituals were given from women. Or were women initiated at other men, in those into those rituals and practices.

So amazing. Is that so?

And there is the saying that, and I love it very much that yoga is the sun and tantra is the mother.

So that's so amazing. I've had some episodes about tantra, different types of tantra. So it's really amazing to to hear this. Okay, maybe a bit out of this context we are talking right now. What does it mean that it is the mother? It means that first came Tantra and then yoga as a result of tantra.

That might be what I mean. There are so many layers to those questions and answers, right? But that one interpretation that and Tantra was was there before. I mean, we don't know any of this, right? Yeah. 1s But yeah, for me it resonates very much. And for me, the women's. Approach towards health and also yoga is yeah, for me, those tantra principles just resonate a lot where you really try to stay in your body. You embody fully your life here on earth, not trying to transcend your body and move somewhere up and out, but actually stay grounded and work more with Pachamama, with the earth like ritual down into the earth. And so that's yeah, it really resonates with me. U2

So these are very tantric practices, actually tantric and yoga practices you work with. It sounds like that. It sounds very much like that. Can you maybe explain a little bit to this transcending, getting out of your body kind of meditation and being inside of your body? And what I used to do a lot was astral traveling, right? And channeling, and it was so much fun lately has been a lot of that, a lot of coming inside my body and trying to find the answers inside my body. And I have heard that from so many people around me, it feels like there is this kind of feminine energy becoming stronger. Maybe on earth, I don't know. So tell me a bit more about that.

Yeah, it's so beautiful that you say that I'm getting goosebumps right now. Yeah. So what's happening now is that we are kind of like embracing the feminine energy more, right? And we are asked to embrace the feminine energy more. And I would say that previously we were conditioned and yeah, I would say conditioned to function more in a masculine way in our daily lives and also in the ways we practice yoga or whatever meditation practices. And to me, it also it feels like that now as the feminine energy is. Is finding her way more back into both women and men, right? It's not just such women we both have. We have all feminine and masculine energies within us, but especially for women. It's so essential to connect with their feminine energy, because the bigger part of our energies is feminine. And that means to, as we just said, or also, as you said, to stay in the body, to connect with your body as your spiritual practice. So I would say that the focus of men is easy to go up and out. And also there are so many grades, meditation teachers and also a love to dispense and all that he does. And that's all about like going up and out and manifesting and doing all of that. And that's that's awesome. It's nothing wrong about it. Definitely more natural for us to travel in our own ways, but more within us. And to find, as you just said, those questions within us, in that inner universe and also through connecting with our pelvis and through through connecting with our menstrual cycle. So there's also something I would really love to talk about more is the different phases of a menstrual cycle, because we we can split our menstrual cycle into four phases. So there is one. The first phase is your inner winter. That's when menstruation is happening. That's and we to keep it simple we say it's seven days menstruation. Then there is like seven days of inner spring. That means when the energy comes back and also more the upward energy comes back and you feel like more socializing and getting out, and you feel more confident again and also more happy to interact with the outer world. And then you move towards ovulation, which is the inner summer where you have like the peak of energy. You feel very much confident and outward oriented and also very often also very content within yourself. And then there is the transition towards inner autumn when you go towards menstruation. And that is often the time that is most or difficult for for many women we also call it premenstrual time and PMS and all those things. And what happens is that our world and the way we function, or we're conditioning our world is that we move. We do all the time we perform. We're very much in our masculine energy. We. We are doing and thinking and performing and getting better and even more. And then there is this time in our menstrual cycle where we're actually asked to become quiet and to dive into our inner universe. Your intuition, connect with our intuition. And that is a very, very valuable time for a woman s spirituality. Because in her inner art, before menstruation starts is where she's very, very sensitive, very connected to signs and her her own inner translation, I would say. So it's a very good time for contemplation, for feeling what is actually here. How do I feel? Where do I stand in life? Where do I want to go? What's working? What's not working? Because the answers are there. You can find those answers way more easily than in other faiths and also during menstruation. So the inner autumn and inner winter are very, very relevant and valuable times for a woman's spirituality. And that's where we can very easily connect with that inner wisdom.

Now. That's beautiful. But how can one embrace practically this feminine energy in order to connect more? Both men and women, actually.

So as I mentioned before, basically we are very much in our masculinity while by doing performing. Thinking and functioning in a way in that world that we live in. And what we need more of all of us, is to simply just be and not do to kind of like drop your agenda and just receive and enjoy. It's also a lot about enjoyment and sensuality and enjoying and observing and getting in touch with nature, just sitting in nature and watching and just doing and also doing, of course, doing something without any goal, without trying to get somewhere, being creative, all sorts of creativity, but without trying to get somewhere, because we are so conditioned to always get somewhere and a very goal oriented, linear way of functioning.

Achieving achieving, achieving, yeah,

achieving. And the feminine is very much about embracing that way and going with in cycles and circle and in like way more intuitive and creative and not focused on any goal. And by that, what happens is that our nervous system regulates and we. We tune in more with what we actually want, what our sole purpose is, rather than trying to fulfill requirements that come from the outer world. And so to me, it really means getting in touch with my body again, and not so much with the head, your mind more into your body and embracing creativity and simply being and breathing and not.

Can it be an easy way to just, for example, in the evening when you're done with work, with cleaning, with everything that is supposed to be done during the day, just sitting with your body, for example, instead of watching Netflix or whatever.

Absolutely. So there is meditation techniques for women that include the body. So basically also somatic movement where you just also step even like a yoga practice without a structure can be very nourishing for the feminine. When you step onto a mother, if you don't have a mat just wherever you are, and to see how your body wants to move, and then see if something wants to occur from that, from just being and sitting with yourself and breathing and observing your body, and then see how your body wants to move and stay in touch with your body. Wisdom. Your body knows how she wants to move, how she wants to be moved. And combining this, not having like, oh, and I need to do some citations and inhale arms up, exhale down and then the butt literally more just circling your pelvis then raising your arms, stretching like those very creative ways of connecting with your body I would say.

So I assume there hasn't been much ashtanga practice on your daily practice anymore. I remember as practicing Ashtanga.

No, it was so much fun. And actually, you know what? I practice according to my menstrual cycle. So there are how is that so in my inner spring and inner summer. So that is more like the active time in the cycle that I just explained. That is where we often have like this inner urge to do like to have because not need our structured. We need our masculine energies as well, right. And need that fiery energy. And so, especially during my inner summer, I love to do Ashtanga yoga and workout and high intensity interval training and like really get and Pilates. I love to do Pilates. Those things I very much do in my inner summer. Sometimes. Also in my inner spring I also go for more like conditioned training in in inner spring and then inner autumn and winter. I move very much towards my feminine practices more centrally, more dense, more somatic movement, womb, biogas and all of that.

Okay, so is that actually a thing? What we are taught in very traditional ashrams that one shouldn't be practicing, let's say in the winter time when you are going through your menstrual cycle or through the bleeding. Right? So I remember we were told that that we shouldn't be practicing. But in the Western countries, I hear it all the time. Yes, of course, if you don't have physical pain, you can go ahead and do a standard, do whatever you want. So what do you think about that?

That time in in the ashram. I remember this one lecture where we were told to basically just sit and chant mantras during menstruation and not do anything. I remember that too, because I was kind of getting angry.

I was also having a reaction to that.

very much because our wrong interpretation, like I do believe that. Especially back then, I was very much in that kind of energy. Oh, I can do what men can do while I am bleeding, you know, I'm like, come on, I can do this. I'm not like the the weaker one. I can definitely do this. And that's also what we see a lot in this, like feminist movement that that women try to be the better men, not embracing their feminine body, not embracing their cycle, not embracing their nature. And that's very toxic in the long run for us. I think it needs a different form of communication. Back then, I also felt like, yeah, not very respected when I heard that. Or you when you plead you to sit there and chant mantras, 1s it was more like, we need the we need to be educated about our bodies and we need to educate ourselves why? It's essential to kind of like really unwind during menstruation and recharge and rejuvenate and connect with our creativity, because that's a very essential time for us to if you think in cycles to let things go that no longer serve us in terms of our lives, in terms of creative projects we work on, in terms of everything, so that new things can be reborn when we come out of menstruation. So if we keep going and if we keep doing, and if we often also hold a lot of tension in our pelvis, also the blood cannot really flow and things get stuck in our pelvis in the womb space. So it's so essential to relax in our pelvis and to unwind during that time so that we can move towards inner spring and move on with our creative cycle and projects and and in our Western world. That's so it's so funny that we are told also, my very first teacher training, my teacher told me, oh, it's no problem if you do headstand in during your menstruation, you can do everything during menstruation. That's how we function in a Western world. Women can do everything all the time in every day in their menstrual cycle, just like men. But we have to learn that. Or remember that women's bodies work differently. And now we cannot take off work for half the month. Of course, that's not what's possible, but we can pay attention. We can understand. Okay, there is a different quality right now during my inner autumn and my inner winter, and I try to influence those areas in my life where I have influence. For example, in my inner autumn, in my inner winter, I try to not socialize so much. I try to not do hardcore practices all the time. I try to adjust whatever I can in order to support my needs as a cyclical energy.

What kind of practice? You mentioned somatic practices. What? But more like concrete. What type of practice should a woman be well, practicing during this period?

During menstruation?

Yeah, the period before. So it means autumn and winter and during menstruation.

So during. So what I practice and also what I teach a lot is womb yoga where we it is a form of yoga practice where we there is one practice. For example it's called yoni namaskar, like the salutations of the yoni. Instead of sun salutations, we practice yoni namaskar, where we include this practice that I mentioned in the beginning with bigger movements and also in all positions we basically. Create space in the pelvis. We move our pelvis, which we have the awareness primarily on our pelvis. So this is what I really recommend during men's inter autumn and in menstruation. During menstruation, often it feels very good to practice yin yoga, to be just passive, even restorative yoga to really just open and surrender and learning to surrender because that is also a very essential quality during menstruation. To surrender.

Yeah, of course it's feminine energy, right. Learning to surrender. Wow. Beautiful. Do you have any videos on YouTube or anywhere?

U1

But this one began at the moment just in German, to be honest. But I, I do work in one on one sessions in both languages.

Okay. And online as well.

Online, yes.

So that's amazing okay. So that's a possibility. I hope you will soon publish something in English.

I can actually do that. Yes, I will write it in mind. And as soon as I find some time, I will. I will record something.

Yes. How about bringing more balance to our hormones? I find that many women have hormonal issues. Is that also connected to exactly what we talked about? That they are not connected to their inner power, to their creativity, to their feminine energy.

So the whole topic, hormonal health is huge, U2

I know, and I'm just mentioning it's like by the end I know

just scratched the surface on that something I would really I think that it's very, very essential to understand is that our nervous systems and our hormonal systems are so strongly interrelated. That means if our nervous system is always on whack because we are just constantly in stress mode, constantly doing, constantly stretching our boundaries, constantly stressing our nervous system that has a direct influence on our hormonal health, on our hormonal systems. And if we work against our cycle, if we do not flow with the energies that I just mentioned throughout the cycle. So it definitely has a huge impact when we start to understand how the menstrual cycle works and not just understand, but feel the different qualities of the menstrual cycle, it has a direct effect on your hormonal health. That is my experience. That is very simple. It's so simple to just as a first step, bring awareness to the different phases of your cycle. And there's one book I would actually really like to recommend. It's called Wild Power from Alexander Pope and Shani, who they founded Red school, and they do a lot of work. The menstrual cycle on on women's health in general, where they really in detail explain those different qualities and different stages and how women feel throughout this cycle and how you can how you can use those phases. So that is something that directly influences your hormonal health. And of course, food intake is such a huge topic to as I mentioned, there is so much we can we can look at when it comes to hormonal health, but to keep it very simple and and short, I would, as a first step, recommend to get more in touch with your body and to understand and the qualities and feel the qualities of your menstrual cycle through meditation and yoga, Yin yoga and just being basically and really balancing the nervous system, balancing the nervous system. Also yoga nidra,

I was just about to ask you about that. Does yoga Nidra help with that? I know that you have been practicing it and teaching it so you can.

It is a very, very, very essential practice that helps us to unwind and to breathe out and to let go and to surrender and to rest. It is the yoga of rest, right? And it's the yoga of letting go, and it's the yoga of dying or so to let it just die or needs.

There's something you can recommend online, some yoga nidra, because I know we have those yoga leaders from the ashram, but I don't think that they are open to the wide public.

One of my very dear teachers. Her name is Uma Dinsmore, Italy, and she's a British woman, married to an Indian man and wrote a book called Yoni Shakti, which is such a great book. She talks a lot about the yoga history, and she is actually the founder of Womb Yoga, where I studied yoga, and she also has great practices in there. And she's a wonderful yoga nidra teacher. And she has. So it's called, I think, Yoga Nidra network. And also when you Google intimately yoga Nidra, there are plenty of yoga on YouTube and also on her website for free. And it's a very different, also a feminine form of yoga nidra, I would say 30 years and wonderful woman fighting for more rights of women in yoga and also talking about abuse and all of that. And like she's she's really fighting, fighting for us.

I'm definitely going to check her out. And are there any last messages for women or actually men as well who want to connect to their feminine side?

So one message I would like to to leave is that I really, really warmly invite all women who are still menstruating to connect to their menstrual cycle and for all women who, for whatever reason, do not bleed any more, or not at the moment to connect to the phases of the moon cycle are cyclical beings, and those faces and cycles have a huge influence on us. And we. The more we connect to our cyclical nature, the more we tap into our feminine power. And I really also warmly invite you to talk about your menstrual cycle with your partners, to also teach them about the different qualities so that they can have more understanding for you need in the different phases. And the one more thing also each. So there are, there is the menstrual cycle, there is the moon cycle and there is the Earth cycle. So then the seasons of the Earth and all those cycles have an influence on us. And to just have this bigger understanding that the Earth is cyclical, and I am a woman who is cyclical, and those cycles influence me extremely. And to just be aware, just awareness is the very first step. And for all women's second thing for all women and men and all genders in between. Try to as much as you can, get into that state of being versus doing, being, receiving, breathing out, spending time in nature, dancing, doing things for fun, without any goal or any way to get, and also without any intoxication, just and to connect with the feminine quality.

Beautiful. Is that why so many women are affected by full Moon or New Moon? And then hear that many women can't sleep before the full moon and during the full moon? And I remember I was like that before. Not anymore. But that's the reason, right?

I mean, the moon influences all waters on Earth, right? We know that ebb and flow is happening through the moon. So of course we as human beings are made 70, 80%, 90% of water at different approaches. Of course, the moon influences us all beings and also women and men. My partner, for example, he is very much sensing and feeling the moon and the different qualities. So yes, we are all very much influenced, influenced by full moon. And also a lot of births happen for moon, and also a lot of accidents happen on full moon because there are like a lot of energies. Yeah, too, especially during full moon, to kind of find ways to relax your nervous system, to balance your system.

Amazing. Okay, last question before I let you go. How can people get in contact with you

and have a website which is also still in German only its

google translate works, so it's fine.

Awesome. So victuryoga.com and also on Instagram Victoria Yoga. I'm happy to get in touch in Instagram. I'm mostly write in English. So that's that's all for all. And yeah, would love to be in touch. And thank you very much Adam for the beautiful conversation for inviting me.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. It was really like getting up with a friend. It was beautiful.

Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Ada 42: 18

All right, now it's your turn. Let me know what health and abundance subjects you want me to cover in the future. Do that by commenting on the post on Instagram. Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much to Victoria for being here with us today. If you liked it, please leave a review at Pod chaser.com. Just search for the podcast and write it with review. And if you have questions or you want to book a session with me, or if you want to be a guest on the podcast, please do let me know on Instagram or just send me an email. You can find my email address at other Romani dot and on.

In the next episode will be talking about getting healthy with diet training and by healing hormonal issues. And remember you are always great in your health and abundance. What do you choose to create today?