Pleasure — The Missing Piece in Vaginismus Treatment - A glimpse into my Work with Joy on Virgin Island Season 2
Pleasure isn't a bonus. It's the medicine!
Why would your body want to open up if it's not pleasurable?
This is the piece that most pelvic floor physios and health practitioners miss when treating vaginismus — and it's the one that changes everything.
In this clip from Virgin Island Season 2, I work with Joy on bringing pleasure, arousal, engorgment, and even orgasm into her dilator practice. Watch what happens.
Here's the science of why this works:
✦ When you're fully engorged and aroused, your body is more relaxed — there is an increases of blood flow to vaginal tissue, boosting lubrication and elasticity, making insertion easier and raising your pain tolerance naturally. The vagina is ready to open. It's not pressured too
✦ Sexual arousal and orgasm release natural endorphins and flood the body with oxytocin, which causes the pelvic floor muscles to involuntarily relax. Inserting a dilator while those muscles are naturally softened breaks the pain-spasm cycle.
✦ Vaginismus is a subconscious fight-or-flight response to penetration. Pairing insertion with pleasure actively retrains your nervous system to associate penetration with safety — not danger.
We also did something else in this session.
Joy masturbated. In my presence.
Before you raise an eyebrow — hear why this is one of the most powerful practices in sexological bodywork.
Joy arrived carrying enormous shame around anything sexual. Shame is a full-body experience — the urge to go small, hide, disappear. The fear that if someone truly sees you, they'll reject you.
What loosens the grip of shame? Being witnessed in your pleasure by a warm, accepting, non-judgmental witness. Your nervous system gets a new message: It's ok to be me — my pleasure, my arousal, my sexuality. I am accepted and loved in that.
So many people with vaginismus leave their body the moment someone else is present — jumping into protection, pleasing, managing, etc. Self-pleasuring next to someone else, without interacting with them, can give the opportunity to stay home in herself, in her own pleasure — even in the presence of another.
Joy — I am so proud of you and I love you deeply. Look how far you've come, and look at what you are now offering to other women who are walking this path.
I remind you to carry with you, into that room, the flag of pleasure. Advocating for pleasure, arousal, and full body readiness as medicine — not as a bonus, but as a necessary ingredient — the key that unlocks everything.