The Opening: When My Womb Found Her Voice

In a previous season of my life, I co-owned a community and healing arts studio with a dear friend. It was there that I had an encounter that would quietly change the direction of my path and mark the beginning of a deeper maturation.

On what I now think of as an auspicious day, I met a magnetic couple whose presence immediately awakened my senses and stirred my curiosity. Robyn introduced herself, and within minutes we had slipped into one of those conversations that bypasses small talk and dives straight into something deeper.

As the conversation unfolded, she told me that she and her partner would soon be co-facilitating a training in Bali called Self:Cervix, only a few months away.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what it meant, but something in me was listening.

Looking back now, I can see that day clearly: one season of my life was quietly coming to a close, while the threshold to another had just begun to open.

They had rented our studio that weekend to host a couple's training on intimacy.

That same evening, I arrived early to prepare the space for something very different—a performance where I would be opening for Marya Stark, the award-winning vocalist, composer, producer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist. Marya is a modern bard—storyteller, poet, and muse—and over the previous year, I had been working with her in a rather unusual way.

I wasn’t studying voice to become a singer.
I was learning to speak from my wombspace.

Marya guided me through practices that helped me find a voice that came not just from my throat, but from somewhere deeper in my body. Out of that work, an opportunity emerged that we eventually created together: she would come to our studio in Utah, and we would host an intimate performance for our community and friends.

My reason for stepping onto that stage was more personal.

I was in the middle of a journey to meet and transform the heartbreak and fear that had taken residence in my wombspace—what some traditions call the dark night of the soul. That year, I was being held by several mentors, each working their particular kind of magic to guide me through a different part of the process.

There was Marya, helping me find my wombspace voice.

There was Giuliana, founder and host of the community storytelling gathering called The Bee, who was helping me prepare to stand in front of people and tell my story.

And there was Martin Shaw, a mythologist and bard whose retelling of an old Siberian story “The deer woman and the moon man” had found its way into my hands. That story became the one I would carry into my performance—with his blessing.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without my business partner and dear friend Angela, who patiently held space for my unfolding and waited, with remarkable generosity, for me to find my way back to myself.

Looking back, it was one of those moments in life when many paths converge at once—when the choices before you have the power either to sink you or to rebirth you.

This was one of those crossroads.

And I had no idea that the mysterious training called Self:Cervix, mentioned casually earlier that day by Robyn in our studio, would soon become another thread woven into that same turning point.

When I first entered the non-traditional training called Self:Cervix, I had no clear sense of what awaited me. I only knew that something in me felt pulled—curious and quietly called—to understand the deeper intelligence of my body.

The training lasted thirty days. We worked six days a week, and the days were long—often from eight in the morning until eight at night. It was immersive in every sense of the word.

After a few weeks, I began to notice a pattern. Each morning someone new would quietly share a story from the night before—a session they had experienced with a woman named Nirmoha. I later learned she was a certified Biodynamic Breathwork coach and one of the assistants in our training. She was originally from New Zealand but lived in Ubud, where we were studying.

Nirmoha had a presence that was difficult to put into words. Petite in form, yet powerful in her stature, she carried herself with an effortless grace—like a woman shaped by many stories. There was something about her that felt otherworldly, as if she held a quiet well of ancient wisdom within her.

I wouldn’t say she was intimidating exactly. But where I was in my own process at the time, I felt a nervousness around approaching her. Part of it was that I didn’t quite know how to frame the request that was forming inside me. It felt awkward, even a little incoherent in my own mind.

Ironically, the training itself was centered around somatic consent practices—learning how to listen to the body, name our desires, and make clear requests. Yet even with those tools, I still felt shy. There were moments during the training when I had to gently push myself into unfamiliar territory.

It wasn’t a violation of my consent. If anything, it was part of developing my body awareness and learning to use my voice in ways that didn’t yet feel natural. I was practicing how to name what I wanted, even when the words felt clumsy.

Sometimes that’s what embodiment work asks of us. We step into the unknown, rehearsing movements that feel slightly awkward at first, simply to create a baseline. From there, the body slowly recalls a language far older.

And somewhere inside me, the request I wanted to make to Nirmoha was beginning to take shape.

In my session with Nirmoha, I arrived with a simple but vulnerable intention. I wanted to experience pleasure in my own body without awkwardness, without shame, and without the quiet voice inside that told me I might be doing something wrong. I wanted to experience the sacredness of my body for myself.

We began with a slow body scan and breathwork. As my awareness moved through my body and eventually settled into my pelvic floor, something unexpected happened. When my attention touched the space of my cervix, it felt as though a portal opened. My body dropped into a deep, quiet meditative state.

In that stillness, a voice inside me became very clear.

I opened my eyes and told Nirmoha that I wanted to explore self-pleasure while being witnessed. I explained that I didn’t want to approach my body in a performative, mechanical way. I wanted to learn how to feel what my body actually wanted.

Together, we created the container for practice. Nirmoha had a beautiful space set up for my journey. She sat in one of those papasan chairs across from me in the shadow. She explained that I could use movement, breath, and sound if they arose naturally to help regulate the energy moving through my body. There was no expectation for me to perform or even become aroused. The only invitation was to explore.

The agreement was simple: I would explore self-pleasure for as long as it took while she held witness, and then we would integrate the experience.

What happened next surprised me.

The state I entered during the body scan stayed with me. It took a little time to settle into my body and soften the chatter of my mind. Then something shifted. My mind grew quiet, and it felt as though a deeper intelligence within my body had begun to guide me. I took several deep physiological sighs and returned my attention to my cervix, almost as if asking it for guidance.

As I began to explore, something shifted in the way my body responded. The patterns I had relied on before seemed to fall away. Instead of directing the experience from my mind, I felt as though my cervix itself was guiding the rhythm of the exploration.

My body began to feel buoyant. The pleasure that built didn’t feel forced or mechanical—it felt like it was enveloping my presence. Breath, movement, and sound began to emerge naturally as the sensations increased.

Time felt strange in that space. My mind, which I had expected to be full of self-conscious thoughts about being witnessed, became incredibly quiet.

When Nirmoha eventually let me know that twenty-five minutes had passed, I was genuinely surprised. It felt as though time had expanded.

During the integration, I shared with her what had happened.

What amazed me most was how easy the pleasure had been to build once I stopped trying to control it with my thoughts. My movements were minimal, yet my body felt alive with sensation. At one point, I felt the movement happening from inside my body outward—like my cervix was a jellyfish dancing around my fingers, courting me deeper into the experience.

An ocean current of sensation moved through my pelvis and rippled outward through the rest of my body, like effervescent bubbles spreading through my nervous system.

But perhaps the most surprising part was this: for the first time in my life, there was no embarrassment, disgust or shame during internal exploration. For years, exploring internally never quite held my attention. I would inevitably retreat to the first gate, the proverbial doorbell, where pleasure felt predictable and easy to access.

I couldn’t believe how different it felt. When I stayed with the discomfort long enough for it to change.

That session revealed something to me that I had never been taught—that the body carries its own intelligence when it comes to pleasure. When we slow down, listen, and allow the body to guide the experience, an entirely different relationship becomes possible.

Moments like this were part of what opened the doorway for me into the deeper work I now share with others.

March 9th, 2026