Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a birth doula, hypnobirthing educator, and pediatric sleep consultant.

Samantha is a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.

Today, we have the honor of interviewing Chantal Blake.

Chantal is a womb steaming therapist and writer with a professional background in nursing, environmental engineering, and peri-steam hydrotherapy.

She weaves the fields of medicine, environmentalism, and holistic self-care into fascinating and practical instruction for women of all ages.

She is going to talk with us today about embracing our cycles and how women and girls can embrace their periods.

And I am so stinking excited for this conversation.

This is like a new passion I've had over the last few years.

So thank you so much for being here with us today.

I'm so glad to be here.

I love talking about periods and cycles and not too many people see the connection between how we honor our cycles and how we honor births and how we honor postpartum.

And it's been a conversation I've enjoyed really playing with and exploring with people.

So glad to chop it up with you.

Yeah, I also think that people often come to us, I also am a hypnobirthing educator and in class, I talk about how pain does not have to be an inherent part of the laboring process.

And I often have people come to me and go, oh, my periods are really painful.

So does that mean my birth is going to be really painful?

So going back and having people be able to understand their cycle from the beginning and honoring this process from the beginning and kind of taking away the stigma of it is really fascinating to me.

Yeah, and I think even just what is period care?

What does that mean?

Oftentimes we're like, oh, period care is the product that I use, but the actual care that you give to yourself is really a glimpse into the care you would need after birth potentially.

There's some similarities between what our bodies need while we're menstruating and while we're having our postpartum bleeding.

So that'll be nice to draw those, connect those dots for people.

I am very excited to talk about all of this.

Ciarra is totally passionate about all of this.

I know absolutely nothing about any of it.

So I'm just excited to be here and learn today.

So can you tell us, how did you get introduced to the practice of vaginal steaming?

When I lived in Turkey, so even though I was born and raised in New York City, I've been living outside of the United States for the past 15 years.

And I would say, how many years ago?

A couple of years ago.

So if my son was one year old, this means it was seven years ago, I lived in Turkey and my yoga teacher happened to also sell and distribute Yoni steaming herbs or vaginal steaming herbs.

And I remember I would see her packing these herbs that she was sourcing from all over Turkey in her home.

And she's like, have you heard of Yoni steaming?

I was like, I feel like I have, but I don't know how or what the context was.

And then fast forward a few years after that, I went to see an Arvigo abdominal massage practitioner.

And so this is a traditional type of massage that's really aimed at bringing circulation to your womb, as well as supporting its ideal positioning.

So in Central American heritage and other heritages as well, the actual positioning of the womb impacts how it functions.

So for example, if a womb is considered dropped or tilted, it won't have optimal blood flow.

It won't have ideally like ideal functionality.

So there's this idea that if we keep supporting the womb to make sure that we're not putting so much pressure that it's like prolapsing and too low in the pelvic space, that it's not retroverted and tilting in the pelvic space, we can make sure that uterine function is ideal.

There's this idea that if a woman's womb is centered, her life is centered.

And when it's not centered, then that's how it follows.

That if the womb's out of balance energetically or physiologically, then as a result, the woman's life is out of balance in some way or another, so before the massage, she said, okay, we're just gonna start with some vaginal steaming, so you're just gonna sit here over these herbs.

And there was something that was very intuitive, like, yeah, sure, I'm going to just sit over your pot of herbs, why not?

And I remember the experience being relaxing and soothing, and then it was followed by the massage, which makes sense, right?

Bringing blood flow, warmth, it's going to help whatever adjusting needs to happen to be a bit more effortless, right?

The tissues are warmed up, it makes a lot of sense.

And this is an external massage, just not an internal massage, just so everyone's clear on that part.

So she's doing this abdominal massage, and as she's massaging my abdomen, she's telling me, you know, it would be really good for you to continue steaming because you have irregular periods.

I've had irregular periods since puberty, where I don't get periods like clockwork every single month.

And so she said, if you have a steaming practice, it can help your periods to be more timely.

And I left that experience trying to keep up with the abdominal massage that she taught me, but I really was interested about steaming as a practice.

So I, you know, just started grabbing whatever herbs I could find.

I would find like fresh sage and basil and rosemary, and my husband would tease me saying, it smells like a pizzeria.

What are you doing in here?

And I was like, oh, I'm doing the steaming practice.

I think it's gonna help me regulate my cycle.

And even initially, just the awareness of my cycle, I didn't realize how I usually don't keep track or keep count of what day is it for me?

What phase am I in?

It's just like, oh, period is here, or it's not.

But when I knew that I needed to steam before the period started, it attuned my awareness to where am I in my menstrual cycle?

What day is it for me?

And so just even that awareness started to be a way of building a connection with my body and its cyclical nature.

And then it did actually help me to have more regular cycles.

Pregnancy and in birth in general helped to regulate my cycles much better than when I was younger, but the steaming helped as well, where I could predict and anticipate that my period was not gonna skip months the way it used to when I was a teenager or in my 20s.

And this was, sorry, before or after?

You said this was after you had your son.

So you had how many kids by then?

The first time I steamed, I had two children.

And how many children do you have now?

Do you have two children or not?

I have three.

Three, okay.

So this was kind of your introduction to it and what made you start teaching other people about this?

I was blown away by how something so simple could be shifting so much in women's lives.

I mean, if you, some people find the claims outlandish, like how could steaming, it's just herbs and hot water.

How could it possibly help people conceive?

How can it possibly get rid of period pain?

But I really believe women and I believe our collective intelligence.

And if we know that women have been steaming on every inhabited continent for generations, there must be something to it.

It would be different if this was unique to one culture.

So sometimes people will brand steaming as being a Mesoamerican practice, or they'll brand it as a Korean practice.

But actually we can look to Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia.

We see evidence of steaming historically all over the world.

And there's no apparent connection between why it's practiced in this way.

This is not like there's a common philosophy, a common language or a common religion or a common ideology.

It's just scattered practice of steaming, which I think really emphasizes that it really is an extension of herbal medicine.

It's just how we've learned to apply the use of herbs for womb health, reproductive health, sexual health, et cetera.

So when I was thinking about how something so simple, so many women would report and continuously report the improvements they were seeing in their lives as a result, I thought this is what I want to do.

If steaming can help women have a little less pain and help them recover more quickly after birth, then why wouldn't I want women to have this tool?

So that's when I certified with Kelly Garza at the Steamy Chick Institute.

And then it really got interesting because I realized steaming was doing so much more for women than just getting rid of pain and helping them heal after birth.

That's so cool.

Yeah, and you can't just say that.

What was it doing?

Oh, it was a teaser.

So what I found was that it was helping women deal with issues that their doctors and their gynecologists had nothing to offer.

You know, they were just saying, well, we can put you on another form of birth control.

In some cases, people were being told, well, it's not really gonna shift until you like have a baby.

So maybe that will be your pathway out of pain and these reproductive health challenges.

Very unsatisfying and very dismissive when you think about it.

So women who were bleeding nonstop, for example, or being diagnosed with ovarian cysts, fibroids, or just having debilitating pain like pass out, have to call the ambulance kind of pain, they were finding relief with steaming.

And it's really hard to believe that these are people who followed all the prescriptions.

They were very loyal, dutiful patients, very obedient in following the prescriptions and they still were not finding relief, nor were they finding understanding.

In cases like even one woman that I worked with, she wasn't even consistent with steaming, but still steaming shrunk her ovarian cysts and she was being threatened with surgery.

And her scans were sent to me and I saw that the cysts were no longer at a size where she needed to be operated on.

And this was just some occasional, when I remember kind of steaming, not even a dedicated focused effort.

So what I find because of the engineer in me, I really value efficiencies.

I was like, how can this one thing shift so much?

Generally, we need to make all of these lifestyle changes to start get a handle on like our pain and our challenges.

We need to modify our diet and our stress and our lifestyle and, you know, root out toxins and do all of these things.

But I find it to be such a powerful catalyst to start to turn the tide.

And it just motivates and inspires women in a way to be like, oh, wow, like I didn't have to be experiencing all this pain for so long or my body is not broken.

It just needed to be supported in a different way.

So that's what I found really amazing initially.

And then the larger conversation of how women were building trust in their bodies was like, this is major if people are trusting their bodies, not just in menstruation, but just throughout the entirety of the menstrual cycle, if they're starting to cultivate this body literacy, like, okay, it may start with when I see brown blood, this is communicating this to me, or when I see clots, this is communicating this to me.

And so it goes, it takes you from this relationship of like, oh, these yucky things about my period that I can't stand, to really framing it as, oh, your body's communicating, and we're gonna respond in a really loving and appropriate way.

And then it just gets women getting really excited about how they can decode what their body is saying to them every single month.

You really get to see the reality of the period as a fifth vital sign, because you're looking at it, you're engaging with yourself in a way that you never knew how to.

So interesting.

I feel like you're just telling the story about my life, honestly.

I had that experience as a younger woman and teenager of just that debilitating pain and all these different things and was told, well, try birth control, and we can't really do anything until it affects your fertility.

That's what I was told.

If it affects your fertility, we can look at it.

Otherwise, you can just deal with it.

And so I wish that I had known about this and heard about this as a younger woman before I had my children, because it was so frustrating at that age to have all of this stuff going on and just knowing like, oh, well, for two weeks out of the month, I just have to take 600 milligrams of ibuprofen every four to six hours to manage this.

And that's awful.

Or take all these hormonal birth controls that were just wrecking havoc on my body.

So I wish I had heard about this as a young woman.

So what age do you recommend starting to steam?

So there are cases where even younger folks have different issues with their vulva, right?

Like even a girl who hasn't had her period.

So generally we would encourage that the year leading up to the first period or monarchy, right?

Around 12 years old, but usually when we would encourage a steaming practice, even if it starts just once a month, it's a really gentle introduction into period care and just self-awareness.

And it's such a gentle practice, but there are cases when even younger girls will have cysts or bumps or rashes and a very, very mild steam supported with a practitioner can be helpful in those cases.

We even have a practitioner, her son struggles with constipation and steaming actually helps him relax his pelvic floor and relieve his bowel.

So when he gets really backed up, she prepares a very gentle, warm steam for him and she'll have pictures on Instagram with him on the steaming stool.

Cause ultimately it's steam and as long as the steam is safe and gentle and warm, not scorching and scalding, which is sometimes people's association with steam, as long as there's a gentleness to it, aside from even the herbs, right?

Herbs are another level of which herbs and how much of it to use, just water, just like the healing impact of water, I think we really forget, like saunas and bath houses historically have been an extension of healing practices, right?

Just the experience of either being in water or being in steam.

So I really love introducing steaming as post-period care as well.

So when a young woman has her first period, when it's over, it almost brings ceremony to the conclusion of her bleed.

It's like, okay, it's done now, and this is how you're going to support your womb so that there's no stagnation.

There's nothing that's being carried over from one period to the next.

Because sometimes when we have a period that starts with very old blood or brown blood, this is what we recognize as stagnation.

And so it can be really helpful for making sure that that uterine cleanse is totally complete.

And then she's entering her next menstrual cycle without any residue of blood that was retained or left over.

So you're less likely to start your next bleed with brown spotting or brown color.

Even sometimes young girls even have like black blood, like really old blood.

And steaming is such a great way to make sure that circulation is moving, blood is flowing, and she's getting this complete urine cleanse every month so that this compounded residue and incomplete cleanse does not compound into a condition that she might need to be medicated for, might be suggested medication for later on in life.

All right, you guys, I'm like obsessed over here.

I'm geeking out completely.

Okay, I'm gonna give you like my introduction to vaginal steaming.

Nobody asked me, but I'm telling you anyway.

And it's that I had listened to Raleigh, the creator of Steamy Chick.

I think it was on Birth Queens, but I listened to her, which is the podcast that made me know I wanted a podcast four years ago when I first started all of this.

And I've listened to her on a couple of different podcast, episodes of different podcasts.

And so I learned about it, it blew my mind.

Like the things that you're saying, that this is a way that our body helps clean itself and a way to add ceremony and to embrace this cycle and that it has been happening for so many years through all different cultures.

And that in America, we're really kind of the outliers that we don't do anything to support our menstrual cycle.

And I had a woman who is a midwife reach out to me and ask me, she's a friend.

And she was like, this is, I don't know, maybe three years ago.

She was like, hey, I have this steamer, this vaginal steamer in my closet.

I'm trying to make space.

Do you want it?

Like we bought it thinking that we were gonna help women after their birth, we were gonna bring it to their birth and, or after the, I'm sorry, to the postpartum followup meeting and let them steam and we just haven't been doing it and I just need to get this stuff out of my closet.

Do you want it?

And I was like, well, how much do you want for it?

She goes, I don't, I just want it out of my closet.

I was like, sure.

And it is a steamy chick steamer.

I mean, these are not cheap with herbs and everything.

And so I took it and by this time, I had already had a hysterectomy.

So for me, I knew that I probably was not going to need this for myself, but I knew that I had a daughter who was about 10 at the time and I'm like, one day she is going to and I have so many friends that have period issues.

I would love to be able to just lend this out to them.

I'm a doula.

If anyone ever wants it, I'm happy to bring it to their, you know, postpartum follow-up or whatever.

And so it just kind of sat in my closet for a long time.

And because I had learned about all of this and you know, being a birth worker, there's a lot of conversation about vaginas in my house.

And my daughter has always just been super open with me about everything because she hears me talk about it.

She asks questions.

It's an open door in our house to talk about.

And so she knows that you shouldn't have like darker blood.

That does mean that you have old blood.

And she knows that, you know, period cramping is a sign of dysfunction, which is hard to say out loud to people because so many people experience period cramping, but they're like, well, what do you mean that that's dysfunction?

Everyone has it, Ciarra.

It can't be dysfunction for everyone.

Well, it is though, like we're not supposed to be in debilitating pain every month.

And so my daughter knowing all of this is really educated about it, but we don't get any education about how to support our cycles.

She's gone through the sex ed in school and they've talked about all of, oh, there are periods, but they don't talk about what you do during them.

They talk about, like you said, period products to use and how often it should come, not what to do to support that experience.

So when I got this vaginal steamer, one of my friends used a doula and she'll listen to this and she'll know that it is her.

Your name starts with a P.

I told her about vaginal steaming and she laughed so hard at me.

She's like, Ciarra, this is ridiculous.

Like, what are you even talking about?

And she sent me a bunch of funny gifts about like, you know, like a clothes steamer, like you sit there and steam your clothes, like a handheld one.

She was like, are you going up to people with this?

No, but, you know, as an adult who had had six children, she had never heard of this.

We don't know how to support our periods.

And y'all, I have a 13 year old, I'm gonna pat myself on the back for one second because I finally did something right.

She had old blood, like maybe, I don't know, two or three weeks ago in her cycle.

And she was like, she texts me from, I'm downstairs, she's upstairs.

Mom, I have dark blood, what?

I don't, I shouldn't have that.

My period stopped a week ago.

And she's going through some illness.

And so I just figured her body's a little off kilter.

And I said, okay, well, that's probably old blood.

And she replied with, can I try the steamer?

Like, I was so excited.

I've, you know, loaned it to my friends and my stepmom and things like that.

But my daughter wanted me to go bring this to her.

And so at like 11 o'clock on a weekday, cause she homeschools, I'm bringing a steamer up for her and putting lavender in it and doing this.

And she sat there for 20 minutes and had her response that we need a softer seat.

She did not want to sit on a wood box.

So, okay, she's bougie, but she wanted to steam.

And so can you talk to us a little bit about kind of introducing girls to things like this and helping this mentality around it and having it not be a shameful thing and a thing that we embrace and that other cultures, you know, what kind of their ritual is around this?

That was long-winded.

I'm sorry, but I'm so excited.

I love that.

I love her enthusiasm about like just that it's so normalized.

And I think, you know, just having it around is so potent and you can be steaming too.

Like, don't think it's just for menstrual cycles, like even post-hysterectomy, you know, there are other things that we experience in steaming can still be really supportive, but I love it, I love all of it.

So I have a 13-ish year old, she'll be 13 in a couple of weeks.

And it's really tender that, you know, she was looking forward to steaming when she would see me steam like one day, when I have my period, I'm gonna steam too.

When I have my moon cycle, I said, yes, we can steam together.

But for whatever reason, she wasn't keen on steaming before the period started, the year before.

She said, no, I'll just wait until I have it.

And so when she had her first period, and then we steamed together.

And I think it is so beautiful.

And like you said, it's surprising that even birth workers think it's something that's so far and are strange, because really steaming has been an extension of herbalism, folk medicine.

And I am confident that that's why steaming has lasted and been protected and preserved for so long, is because when you have a strong midwifery culture, a lay midwifery culture, not necessarily a medical midwifery culture, that access to herbs using steaming has been the most universal way that steaming has been used internationally.

So when you look around the world, there are many cultures and many countries where they don't steam at any other time, but after birth.

If they do steam, it is after the birth.

And so even when you talk to people, they were like, you mean that thing we do after birth?

You're suggesting I do that every month or to address this issue.

So steaming after birth is, it's not a stretch of the imagination to consider that, someone in our lineage steamed after one of our ancestors were born, right?

So with girls steaming, I find that their bodies respond so quickly, I guess, because they're still developing.

You'll have a teen who'll steam like one or two times and it just knocks out her cramps.

Whereas when you work with someone who's in her 20s or 30s or even 40s and you've had pain for decades, one steam is not gonna shift everything that quickly.

You might have to do a little bit like a more committed steaming practice and some dietary changes and all of these things.

But I think because girls are still developing, I think that's why teens, younger menstruators, I feel like their bodies are just still so malleable, just like so willing to shift.

And it's so much easier to just protect what's going right instead of waiting for things to go wrong and then have to address it.

And I really hate that girls are really put on this track of medication from so early.

You have any period problem, whether it's cramps or acne, anything hormonal.

It's like, okay, we'll take birth control and everything will be fine.

And it's like, well, what if we had other tools to offer?

What if we can let her know like, oh, what you're describing is showing that you're estrogen dominant.

And these are some ways we can help lower that or your period is showing that blood circulation needs a little bit more support.

Like if we could actually just start with the conversation of literacy, then there are so many other things we can do before buying into the pharmaceutical pipeline of one medication after another.

Even if you're being offered just pain medicine, pain medication over long-term has health consequences as well.

So, I mean, can you imagine if we were letting young women know from the beginning that if you're feeling pain before you're reaching for medication, you could try a steam.

You can make some ginger tea.

Like there's even studies that show that fresh ginger tea has been equally, if not more, effective than certain pain medications for getting rid of menstrual cramps.

So imagine if we just put all of these things in their toolbox from this early stage instead of them believing that I either suffer and deal with it or I take what my doctor is prescribing to me and move forward with that.

So yeah, I'm really passionate.

That's a big part of my book is to really present like a buffet, all of the possibilities, all of the things you can do for yourself before feeling like a drug is your only source of relief.

I'm so excited to link your book in the show notes too so that people can see what that is.

I, you know, it's crazy that we just keep putting band-aids on things when really what we're doing is we're treating the symptom, but not the cause.

So it would absolutely make sense that for a 13, 14, 15-year-old, it's easier if we're starting and steaming and clearing out just one layer, a couple of layers of residual.

Whereas, you know, a woman in her 40s has had how many years now, 25 years now of cycles that maybe have not been super functional and maybe her body for some reason wasn't clearing that out.

And now we're working so hard to undo years of just putting a band-aid on and taking pain medication.

And so I think that is where my passion comes from.

I was like, I get to start fresh with this little girl who can be excited about this.

And she even said, I think it was the sixth grade class where they're all talking about, you know, telling them about their periods in the little sex ed class at school.

And she was like, mom, none of these kids had any idea, anything anybody was talking about.

I could have taught the class.

It was annoying, like how basic the information was.

Like I wanted more.

And she said, and it's so silly how these girls think it's gross.

It's literally your body cleaning itself, it's clean.

I was like, I know, honey.

And she hadn't even started hers at this point, you know?

But we have to shift the way we talk about these things.

We cannot dread it.

It has to be something that's not taboo.

I was told by a friend that I was on my period, you know?

And my daughter's like, oh yeah, I'm not gonna horseback ride today because, you know, I'm on my cycle and so I'm a little bit more tired today and I just need to embrace that and allow my body to rest.

And like, my husband's like, what do you mean that she's just gonna rest for a few days?

I'm like, well, that's what women should be doing.

I'm sorry that all of the women in our lives have just worked to the bone and not given their bodies breaks, but we've got to give our bodies breaks.

I love that.

I always tell people there's nothing more productive.

You know, people say, oh, that's so lazy.

Why do you think you should have time off just cause you're bleeding?

It's like, I literally produce an egg and tissue.

I may even produce a baby and milk and you know, like the female body is always producing.

It's in constant production.

So I'm laughing because similarly with my daughter, so I had unschooled my children for a really long time, but last school year was their first time in school and she was on her period and she shared it with her friends and they were like, like, are you happy about this?

Because she was just like, I have a period.

It was such an exciting thing.

And they were like, you don't feel pain?

And she's like, no, I don't.

You know, like she just thinks it's the most amazing thing.

So it really does feel so healing to see that my daughter is having this completely different experience of menstruation of her body, of what the expectation and the standard is that I didn't have, my mother didn't have, my grandmother.

I even talked to my grandmother about her first period and it's so healing even for her to know that I'm doing this work and that her great granddaughter now has this totally different positive experience that she didn't have.

Yeah, I think that that relationship piece is just so huge.

I think, I mean, I personally, I call myself a menstrual cup evangelist.

I am a huge fan of the menstrual cup because it's helped me to connect with my body in a different way.

And also I don't have to use things like pads or tampons anymore, which is just wonderfully magical.

But it really has helped me to connect with my body.

And I see vaginal steaming as a very similar practice of just kind of embracing that.

And how wonderful is it that these young girls can be excited about this natural part of their existence rather than dreading it and thinking about the cramps, which was my experience.

My very first period, I had cramps that were just terrible and it was scary.

And it made me really dread that happening every month for the rest of my life.

I remember thinking that when I had had my period for about six months, I was like, oh my gosh, I am gonna have to deal with this for another, I don't know, 30 years or so.

How awful is that?

And thankfully it's not quite like that anymore, but it was a scary thought as a 12-year-old girl, 13-year-old girl.

So throughout our lives, how can steaming help a woman's cycle throughout the different cycles of our lives?

And are there specific protocols that we should be following?

Yeah, I think at the basic level of self-care, steaming after the period is really great.

Whether it's one day or three consecutive days is generally a universal prescription or recommendation.

We generally don't encourage steaming while menstruating because your arteries are open, you're already having blood flowing and heat and warmth further dilates vessels that we wouldn't want to bring on or increase bleeding while menstruating.

That's very different from postpartum bleeding, whereas with postpartum bleeding, the uterine artery is closed and you're just clearing out the matter that's already inside the womb.

So we generally don't steam during menstruation, nor do we steam during the majority of pregnancy, but there is a way to safely steam to prepare for labor once you're full-term in a pregnancy.

But I really feel like it can accompany a woman through all of her different stages.

You have just that general support of making sure that the period is healthy, that the womb is cleansing itself, and that there's adequate support there.

If a woman is having fertility challenges, difficulties conceiving, steaming by its nature, it's increasing warmth, it's increasing lubrication, it's helping women to see more fertile cervical mucus, which is important for conception.

And in some cases, steam by its nature is just very cleansing and clearing.

So if there is backed up mucus, if there's tissue, if there's old blood, if there's anything obstructing the path that's making conception a challenge, then steaming has the way of helping to clear out those spaces and cleanse it out, whether it's a blocked tube, where there's just an abundance of mucus, and women tend to have really thick mucusy discharge, which could be really problematic.

So in the case of conception, you have this support of just making sure everything is clear, that there's good blood supply and blood flow so that you're getting peak ovarian function as well.

Of course, people are like, how can steam reach ovaries?

It's not about steam reaching ovaries or even steam reaching the cervix.

The point is that vaginal tissues are very porous, they're very blood rich.

You have herbal properties that are entering the bloodstream in the area of the pelvis, right?

So that's what's happening.

So yes, you have the steam can make contact with the vulva, maybe some part of the vagina, but you have furthermore like the warmth, the blood flow and the herbal properties are moving through the system and moving through the tissues in the pelvic space.

So during times of fertility, trying to conceive it's very supportive, then we would pause any steaming during pregnancy until we're full term.

What we find with labor prep steaming, labor prep steaming is really helpful for helping a mother relax, as well as loosening some of the tension that could be in the pelvic floor and the tendons.

We even have a practitioner in the Czech Republic who's been phenomenal at teaching hospital staff how to steam women who are in active labor because sometimes they come in an early labor, they install, she's anxious, things are not progressing.

So it's now becoming, I think they're in at least 16 hospitals now.

She's trained nurses and doctors, midwives, how to offer steaming in a hospital setting and what they find that it helps women to reestablish their labor pattern more steadily.

And they find a lower incidence of tears.

Cause if you can imagine, you're bringing more blood supply to the perineum, the same concept when midwives are putting like warm compresses, right?

More blood flow, more elasticity.

There's a practice in the Czech Republic.

I don't know if it's in other parts of the world, but women would prepare for birth by using this type of perineal dilator that stretches their perineum.

And so this is one of the ways this practitioner discovered it.

She found that when women were steaming, they were able to get more elasticity and stretch like a measurable amount of more centimeters stretched when they were steaming prior.

And then they just carried that into the birthing setting where they found lower incidence of tears and the ability to kind of move along what appears to be a stalled labor.

And then after birth, that's the most universal way to steam.

In some cultures, there are different ways of approaching it.

Some people steam in the early postpartum for the first number of weeks, days, months, you know, generally we're trained to offer steaming for 30 consecutive days after a vaginal birth.

In the case of a cesarean birth, we wait until the incision is healed.

And so at six weeks, then you would start your 30 day steaming practice.

That's really helpful for clearing out the lochia, reducing any risk of infections.

It also helps to make sure a mother's period begins after birth in a healthy way, that there isn't any leftover residue or pregnancy matter.

Even in the case of a pregnancy loss, if we've had early pregnancy releases with a practitioner, because early pregnancy releases, there is a risk of hemorrhage.

So usually we have to work closely with the practitioner to make sure that all the appropriate protocols are in place.

But that's another space where steaming can be really helpful for just physically like releasing any tissue, but even the emotional release that might be needed.

Sometimes moms even report that after birth, they feel their milk coming in when they steam.

It's very regulated.

Like it's very just like a down regulating, relaxing activity.

We do have oxytocin receptors in our pelvis.

And so perhaps there's some stimulation there that gives that sense of letdown that we see happening there.

And I think even for when women experience menopausal symptoms, then even post-hysterectomy, we find that steaming is really supportive.

Even sometimes elders are dealing with vaginal atrophy or dryness or hot flashes and night sweats.

One would think, oh, well, I don't menstruate anymore.

This is no longer useful, but you still have a pelvis, you still have a vulva and steaming is still supportive in those ways as well.

Gosh, that's so cool.

Like how you just walked us through the life of a woman and that we can use that.

You know, you said something that made me think of a question, which is you're saying you don't recommend during your menstruation that you steam because it opens the blood vessels.

What about, and this is a very ignorant question, I'm sure, but what about when people use heat packs on their lower abdomen?

Is that actually not beneficial then?

They're using that to help with cramping, but is that actually a negative response?

It is.

No, it's a good thing.

We do want warmth while steaming.

So we also would recommend like warming foods, warming teas when you're menstruating, because anything that's going to improve blood flow is going to be useful.

We just don't add the effect of steaming as well on top of it.

Okay.

It's like there's already enough going on.

Let's not increase it even more.

Okay.

And then you've mentioned a couple of times that, you know, you could do steaming with no herbs, just plain water and that's fine.

But you did also mention herbs and that, so are there certain ones that should be, I know you can't give us a full herbal class right now, but are there kind of typical like, oh, right after menstruation, this is super helpful or anything that, I don't know, you want to say about that?

Yeah, the afterbirth probably is the most common, like it's the most universal approach to steaming afterbirth because the uterine arteries are closed.

We're not really working with the menstrual cycle.

We're just clearing out what's there.

So in that case, we would use herbs that are cleansing.

They tend to be in the aromatic family of herbs.

So things like herbs like rosemary or rose, like blood moving, blood, like just overall cleansing herbs tend to predominate, oregano, basil, these herbs that in general tend to be very aromatic and we cook with them.

The pizza.

They also tend to be herbs that are really great at just moving blood and cleansing.

So I think that's pretty universal that wherever a person is, you'll find that the property of herbs, the type of herbs that they're using are going to be blood moving herbs, a menagogues as they're called in herbalism.

However, outside of that, the only one pretty benign herb that wouldn't really alter anyone's cycle in any significant way would be mint.

So mint is one we always say it's pretty, whether it's spearmint or peppermint, it's pretty benign.

It does have a cooling sensation, but some herbs actually have the effect of shifting your menstrual cycle.

So if you tend to have very long menstrual cycles, like if they're more than every 30 to 35 days, there are some herbs that can help to bring that in.

Again, those menagogues can be really helpful for bringing in the length of your menstrual cycle.

Sometimes we tend to think these things are so fixed or arbitrary, but herbs can shift things quite gently.

And similarly, if someone has a very short menstrual cycle, if you're having periods like every 25 days or less than that, there are some herbs that we use to help lengthen it.

So we don't have really broad prescriptions on what herbs are safe for everyone to use, other than mint, for example, or adding like sea salt or apple cider vinegar, or just plain water.

It's pretty universal for anyone that those are all quite benign, that there's no chance of it shifting your period in a way that could be problematic.

So for example, if you're a spontaneous bleeder or a really heavy bleeder, I would use herbs that are anti-hemorrhagic or hemostatic to reduce or manage the tendency for your body to bleed, something that's a bit more discouraging of bleeding.

Whereas if your period has been missing for a month, or you have a lot of stagnation and brown blood, I would want to use the opposite spectrum of the herbs, herbs that encourage cleansing, encourage blood moving and bring it on.

So there's some nuance there.

Well, I just used lavender for my daughter not having any clue what it was going to do.

So I guess I'm going to go Google that.

Yeah.

I hope I didn't do anything wrong.

Lavender is good.

I think lavender is good.

But I don't know about her cycle, so we can have an offline chat if you want.

Right.

I'm like, I just was like, oh, this is calming.

I don't know what I'm doing.

See, I need to take a class.

And people can.

People can take these classes and become steamers.

Like you're using these terms and I'm like, gosh, this is so cool.

It makes me want to go get trained myself.

And some of it could be intuitive.

If you're willing to play around with it, you can see like, you know, this herb, it grows in my yard and I'm curious.

Like you can approach it with a certain amount of curiosity.

There are some people who are more like intuitively connected with herbs where they feel herbs calling them and I can't speak to their experience.

But if you're willing to approach it with curiosity, you could play around and see like, you know what?

I've got some rosemary growing.

I wonder how that's going to impact my cycle, how I'm going to feel as I'm steaming.

You could play around with that and see.

But in terms of like a practitioner advising from a therapeutic perspective, then we have certain protocols that we apply and certain contraindications that we screen out for.

For example, also if you have tendencies towards infections, if you have a tendency towards getting infections quite quickly, we have a protocol where you do really shorter steams.

You don't steam for a really long time because in traditional Chinese medicine, a tendency towards infections tends to be associated with the temperament of excess heat in the body.

We would use cooling herbs if there's this presence of excess heat, and we would do really short steams to limit how much heat that person is exposed to, especially if someone has something dormant like herpes.

Too much heat, too much aggressive steaming could bring on an outbreak in some cases.

There are sensitive cases that we do screen for.

I think we've covered a couple of these already, but are there times where vaginal steaming is contraindicated?

I know you said during pregnancy, we wouldn't necessarily want to do that, maybe not during your cycle.

Are there other times that would be a no-go?

The one other time would be when you have a burning itch.

If you have an active infection and you already feel like a burning sensation in your tissues, then adding heat on top of that would be really aggravating.

Usually, we work on herbal soaks.

We will actually do herbal baths and soaks to address the sensation, that burning or that itching sensation before transitioning to a steam, for example.

That's the other major case.

Then the other things, it's just how we steam might be impacted by what else is going on.

If you're having hot flashes, you would do really short steams.

If you're dealing with fibroids, then maybe if there's no contraindications, you would do longer steams or more frequent steams, so there's some nuance there too.

I just thought of this other question and we don't have it on here, so I'm going to throw it at you.

But one thing I'm thinking about as you're talking about, we don't want to steam during burning itches and different things, and all of the herbs and things, is how does this affect the pH and microbiome of our vulvas?

So, you know, a common criticism that doctors will kind of blanketly give is that steaming is unsafe.

You could burn yourself, you can give yourself infections, because their concept is thinking you're adding moisture, you're adding warmth, and that just sounds like a party for microbial activity.

So there's very limited research on steaming, but there was research done.

It's on Steamy Chick's website.

She has like a reference database, and in the limited research that exists, what we find is it tends to restore, you know, like balanced pH, restore vaginal flora, because, you know, you're using whole herbs and all of their properties.

We never use essential oils in steaming, so make sure everyone's clear on that.

It's just too strong and too potent.

But because you're using whole plants, plants by nature are balancing, so they may have some characteristics that might be really addressing like, you know, maybe antibacterial in nature, but then also other elements that are restorative.

So I think the other clue that we have that is not disruptive to pH and vaginal flora is that women who have been in cycles of recurring infections are able to break those cycles and no longer be as susceptible to infections because you're treating an active infection with herbs that are like anti-viral, anti-yeast, anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, but they're not just killing off all of the bacteria, making you more susceptible for another infection to really set in.

So what we observe in practice is that women seem to be developing a more resilient and robust vaginal microbiome.

So that every little thing is not taking them to an infection every single sexual encounter, every single dip in the pool, every single hot summer day, you know, like whatever.

Sometimes you just can see that there's this pattern of really intense sensitivity, but with a steaming practice, we see more resilience and more capacity to not be running from antibiotic to infection back and forth.

So can it help treat things like, or maybe not treat, I guess, but prevent things like UTIs and yeast infections?

Yeah, we do use steaming to treat UTIs and yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, HPV, even sometimes when moms test positive for a strip, right?

You know how sometimes there'll be a swab before birth.

We will use, we'll steam with herbs that are, like we said, antibacterial, antiviral.

And sometimes these moms will do a repeat so that they can opt out of being put on antibiotics when they go in for birth.

So it's almost like it's resetting your microbiome and your pH and helping your body do what it needs to do rather than, you know, I mean, you think of douching.

We heard about douching all the time from our mothers and grandmothers.

That used to be a big thing.

And now we know that that's not great for our bodies because the vagina is self-cleaning, but this isn't necessarily cleaning.

It's not like going up in there and cleaning anything.

It's just helping your body to reset and do what it wants and needs to do.

Yeah, I really like how there's a practitioner.

She did a really great post because some people say to think that we need to clean our uterus or vagina is this very negative idea.

It kind of reinforces this idea that women are filthy, menstruation is filthy.

But she said, we're talking about cleanse, which is different from cleaning.

There are times when our bowels are not moving very efficiently, and we might need to support a cleanse, which is just a very gentle way of helping your body do what it's already designed to do.

And I see steaming in that same light.

It's just a gentle kind of container of support and nourishment, so your body can do the self-healing that it's really designed to do.

So I guess that would be the, yeah, similarly, like you were saying, it's more supportive of what the body is wanting to do, kind of getting some other things out of the way, perhaps.

I love that we've sparked Samantha's interest here.

She's coming up with her questions.

She's interested.

People can't see me because we're on a podcast, but as she was asking those questions, I'm like smiling and nodding like, yes, you're in, aren't you?

You're going to get passionate with me.

You know I love the research and the data involved about it.

It's cool.

It's exciting.

I know.

So this has been just absolutely fascinating.

Chantal, I'm so thankful that you came on and shared your knowledge.

Will you please tell people how they can find you if they wanted to maybe get a consultation with you to have you kind of help them figure out what would be good for them in terms of herbs and a steaming protocol, and if they wanted to read your book, all of these things?

Yeah, everything is at honoredwomb.com, so H-O-N-O-R-E-D-W-O-M-B.

And so at honoredwomb.com, that's the same handle that I use on Instagram, Facebook and threads.

That's where you'll find how to book a consultation or register for a course or become a member in our private community where we do these ongoing classes because we basically need to undergo such a massive reeducation.

It's not just like a one-time session, but then sometimes we have critical issues.

So if you need to, if you want to explore how steaming can support you as an alternative to what you might be doing or what might be proposed for you to do, like if you're being threatened, like, well, if you don't do this, you're going to need surgery or we're going to need to do this or that.

I really think you have nothing to lose by trying steaming.

And even if you don't feel it gets you where you want to go as fast as you want to get there, it feels good.

And anything that makes women feel good is worth doing as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, absolutely.

I find myself, you know, I'm in the suburbs out of Austin, going to my kid's kindergarten assessment.

And here I was, a woman's talking to me about, we're in a group of ladies and people talk about all sorts of things.

And somebody is complaining about something to do with their cycle.

And I was like, oh, I think she was needing an ablation is what she was told that she needs.

And I was like, okay, so I'm about to sound crazy, but I'm a birth worker.

So forgive me.

But have you heard of vaginal steaming?

You're like, no, what's that?

Okay, so don't judge me, but I am going to, can I have your phone number?

Cause I'm going to send you some links to listen to part of the podcast.

And it's funny, I mean, but I just, I want people to know about this.

And you're right.

We need to go like massive undertaking of a reeducation, just like we do about Birth and we'll swim in it seems.

We just need more conversation.

We need more awareness.

We need to more embracing of who we are and that it is okay to talk about these things and to share with each other.

So yeah, this is, this is priceless.

Thank you so much.

And I will be getting your book and I'm going to be digging into your website and seeing what courses you might have that maybe I can take.

But it was really lovely talking to both of you.

I'm so glad that you even made space for her for us to have this conversation because it's really part of the larger cycle, not just what's happening with birth and the immediate postpartum, but how do we actually cultivate a sense of sovereignty and self-responsibility for our wombs, our vulvas, our vaginas, like these are intimate, sacred parts of us.

And I would really love for us to know what we can do to support ourselves before just like handing ourselves over to speculums and investigations and ultrasounds when we used to have an intuitive sense of knowing how to support ourselves before getting to like the point of major intervention.

So thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for coming on.

This was awesome.

And I can't wait to go do all of the research now because that's what I'm all about.

I want to know all about it.

Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby.

Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.

You can look him up on Spotify.

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