A brief history of yoni massage
What role has tantric massage for women played in the East and West?
A brief look at the history of massage devoted to awakening female awareness through sexuality
Yoni massage in India and China
Originally, yoni massage was a spiritual treatment practised for thousands of years in both India and China to heal and empower women. These practices took place in the Temples of Tantra. Yoni massage was an ancient form of sacred healing intended to free women from trauma and overwhelming emotions.
Treatments were performed by the high priest, or Daka, who was a male healer.
Yoni massage in the West as a treatment for hysteria
Vaginal massage (yoni in Sanskrit) was performed in the West to treat female hysteria. The diagnosis of hysteria was used in 19th-century psychiatry to describe a type of very intense neurotic attack, generally experienced by women. Hysteria derives from ancient Greek hysteria and means "that which comes from the womb".
Female hysteria was a supposed illness found in women and was subsequently removed from medical records in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association, when it removed all hysteroneurotic disorders from its list of illnesses.
Vaginal massage in Ancient Greece
"In the 4th century BC, Plato argued that a woman's womb wandered through her body, strangling other organs and causing shortness of breath. Five hundred years later, the physician Galen called this hysteria: "A disease of the womb caused by sexual deprivation, to which passionate women are particularly susceptible. Prolonged abstinence from sexual stimulation, it was observed, could produce anxiety, loss of appetite, insomnia, fainting, erotic fantasies, increased vaginal lubrication, pelvic swelling and a tendency to cause trouble for others. Marriage was a commonly prescribed remedy; in more severe cases, the ovaries were sometimes removed.
Yoni massage performed with hands or sex toys
"However, manual stimulation by an experienced doctor, producing healing paroxysms, was regarded as a temporary cure. By the mid-19th century, as women flocked to this increasingly popular treatment, hysteria became a frequently diagnosed illness in Western medical practice." This was when vibrators were born, as yoni, or vaginal, massage was too lengthy and tiring for Western doctors, given the demand for it. Some say that vibrators, or sex toys, desensitise the yoni, while manual yoni massage increases sensitivity and improves the overall health of the yoni, or vagina.
Tantra Yoni massage for past trauma and abuse
Women who experienced sexual abuse in childhood often cannot even remember the cause of their sexual dissociation because of the freeze response associated with the abuse. These traumas create the deepest blocks, reducing the capacity for orgasm. Yoni massage helps release these traumas and emotions so a woman can feel free again.