Welcome to the libido lounge where we focus on all things love, lust, and libido. We believe that fabulous sex is important to health as exercise and good food. Hey, everybody. Doctor Diane, your libido doc here. Welcome back to another episode of the libido lounge. I am so excited to have this next guest with me today, my good friend, Alexandra Durgin. Thank you so much for joining us today. You, love. Oh, I love you the lounge. It's so good to be here. Someday, we'll do these in person.
I'll be really loungey. Well, today, we're gonna talk a little bit about pelvic health, about vulvar health, and really how these are tied into sexuality. Before we jump into that, I do want to make sure everybody really knows who you are in the world.
So let's start with just, like, telling us a little bit about why you really love working with women and working with pelvic health and a little bit about your work in the world, and then we'll dive into the, you know, the juicy actionable stuff around pelvic health, bovar health, and sexuality. K. Amazing. Yeah. So my name is Alexia Durgin. I am a women's specialty registered nurse and founder of Origin Pelvic Care.
And Origin Pelvic Care is hands on ceremonial pelvic care for the body of women, serving in the realms of sexuality and pleasure, reproductive care, and the birth continuum. And, really, I love what I do so much and believe in pelvic care so much because we as women deserve to be so well in our womanly bodies and to experience our life from this deep inhabited well cared for well tended place.
And that really just the rise of reproductive disease, the rise of pelvic disease, the rise of sexual pain, the rise of birth trauma is our bodies screaming and attempting to language that they need to be cared for in a way that they are not receiving. So for me, it's really a reparative practice of sexual health as whole health.
And, you know, I also really kind of believe in this resurrection of womb lineage of this way that it used to be where the body of woman, you know, was previously just so reverentially taken care of because we know that women are leaders. Women are powerful. Women are the carriers of life. And as such, we need to take care of our women and that when women are well, I really believe the world is well. So that's a little bit about what I do and why I do it.
Yeah. Yeah. Helping helping women be cared for and and carry help to carry the world. So it's really, really important work. And since this is libido lounge and we're here to talk about libido and sexual health and these sorts of topics, like, let's kinda jump into the pelvic health, the bulbar health, and what is going on with, say, dysfunction in these areas?
And when we have dysfunction in these areas, how that's really tied into sex drive crashing, loss of interest, loss of desire, all of those sorts of things. Totally. Totally. So, yeah, for me in in my world of origin pelvic care, we're always looking at these, like, core waterways, these core rivers, these core flows of the body, And that's the blood flow, the lymph flow, the nerve flow, and the energy flow, and the way that they move through the womb and the ovaries and the whole pelvis.
And really what's true for most of us as women is we've never received pelvic care in our lives. And if anything, really difficult experiences far outweigh positive experiences around our pelvic health, around our menstrual health, around our reproductive health, and sexual health. And, really, that sexual health is whole health.
And so to have a sex drive, to feel radiant in our bodies, to feel alive sexually and sensually in who we are and within our tissues and sex centers as women, we have to look at the health of those places.
And when we're not receiving a pelvic care or when we're feeling like we don't actually belong or are safe in our sexual body or womanly bodies, then what's happening deep down at the level of the tissue is that blood flow is halting to our sexual spaces, that our tissues are becoming more tense, our muscles contracted.
A lot of us actually live in a very hypertonic, expression in the musculature of our deep pelvis in the lobotomy, which are really kind of like the lining of our intravaginal space and that we're actually so tight and inhibited in our deep pelvis. And so that has immediate and massive impact on our capacity to reach higher states of pleasure, to be aroused. It impacts the blood flow, the filling of blood in our erectile networks. It impacts the nerves. I always kind of share this story.
Like, if you're a little nerve and you're going through, you know, this garden, but it's dry and it feels tense and dehydrated and malnourished, you're gonna send one signal versus if you're like a little nerve swimming through this beautiful lush, juicy, alive, well cared for, loved garden, you're gonna be like, yeah. This is amazing. You know?
And then and then when our muscles and our tissues and the fascia and the environment of our pelvis is tense, then we also have less lymph flow, meaning that toxins are hanging out around these tissues that can create soreness and aches and dryness. And then again, we have the energy flow. How freely and fluidly can our sexual energy move through our deep pelvis involve a or again, are we in that contracted armored protective space within our bodies?
And so pelvic health, sexual health, whole health, we must look at the health of our tissues and the flow of these core elements that are feeding and enlivening and providing for the health of our body here. Thank you. There's so many things in there that I think are key, and and one of them is something you said kinda early on, which is how really ignored this part of our body is. Right?
And and it's, like, it's very interesting to think about how easy it is for people to say go get their massage or go get their chiropractic work. And all of that is wonderful, but none of that really gets into these deeper tissues where we hold so much. Right? And so there's so much that can can happen there. And I'm wondering too even from, like, an emotional side of things. Like, how much do you feel that when you're saying, okay.
These these pelvic tissues, these pelvic muscles are in this kinda hypertonic, this really kinda tense state a lot. How much do you think that is actually, at least in part, also from emotions, from trauma? You know, it doesn't have to be big trauma. Could be. But I'm even talking about little small traumas even, you know, in this arena. Totally. Totally. Yeah. That it's so emotional. It's so emotional, and I'm sure that you've had that experience as well in your work.
And, you know, for me, as we slowly move through the body in an origin pelvic care ceremony and we slowly arrive to the vulva or to the vaginal opening, just that caring, attentive, attuned touch, the emotions start pouring out. And as emotions that we've been holding and harboring as women are released, it's like that armor, that density, that just, tightness begins to let go from the tissues and the tissues soften. And as the grief moves, blood moves in.
And as the anger moves, blood moves in and our tissues begin to transform and finally let go from those deep holding protective patterns that we have carried for years and decades as women that have just gone so bypassed, so overlooked, and so under tended. Yeah. And I think most people can relate to that on it's a easy thing to, I think, understand when we think about, like, oh, when we get angry, like, most of us aren't, like, ready to go and have sex with our partner. Right?
When we're feeling these kind of emotions, there is this natural shutdown. So then those kind of things over time can certainly cause more and more of that tension to to build up. And and I think it's also an important conversation because so many times when it comes to pelvic health and sexual health are so focused on hormones, right, which are amazing and yummy and juicy and part of it.
But this piece that you're bringing up is, you know, around the pelvic health and around the tightness and the tissues and all that is such a really not talked about enough piece with with sexuality and with little libido. So if you if it feels okay, I would love for you to do your top tell us your top three tips for people to actually really help heal their pelvis, help their vulva. So what can you give us from a tip perspective? Totally. I love this.
One for me and where we start in my hands on practice is always just, like, breath and internal orientation. And so that might look like consciously breathing into the hips, into the bones of the pelvis, and just noticing, can I, like, exhale into those bones just a little bit more? What I find so much is that we are constantly trying to mimic a sense of being held in safety in our tissues, muscles, and pelvic ligaments versus having access to our bones as women and our hips.
But to soften into our hips and to inhabit our hips, that can be a very vulnerable thing. You know? But for me and the tissue repair and in the integrity of the pelvic bowl, we have to reaccess presence to our hips and orient to them so that all of those tissues that forgot that they don't have to do all the holding can begin to unwind. So one, like, presence and orientation. And then two, you know, do I feel like I hold more tension in my pelvis?
Do I have any known pain or discomfort in my pelvic bowl, or do I feel soft and supple and dynamic and juicy and alive? And if we are aware that we're holding pain, then really what's happening is that we're hearing the voice of our body asking for care right there. And I always tell my clients that where there is tension and pain, that is your body languaging. Come love me here. I need support here. So that would be two.
And then three would be, like, really observing what are, like, the narratives that I am holding in my pelvis. What are the belief systems that I'm holding in my pelvis? Because if we're carrying belief systems that this part of us is dirty, unsafe, wrong, not enough, then we're going to be chronically tensing and holding in our pelvis.
And so we have to get really clear with what are these conditionings and belief systems and stories that I'm living through that are impacting the health of my body. And do I want to continue my allegiance to those stories, or am I ready to write a new story for my womanhood where I am safe, able to be cared for here, able to be loved here, able to be alive and sensuous and sexual here? Like, really, what are these undercurrents? And do I wanna keep them? Are they mine or no?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It's, it's so wonderful to tie in the embodiment, the feeling, the safety, all of that. And I wanna make sure everybody knows that this is a prequel to a future very, very upcoming soon talk that you and I have done that will be on our sexual dysfunction and sexual health summit. So you guys will get to to hear more from Alexandra on that. So that information will be on the show notes of how you can register for free.
And the last thing I wanna say is we'll have information on how to get ahold of you also in the show notes. But how do people get ahold of you? What do you wanna wrap up with? Yeah. People get ahold of me, on Instagram at at origin pelvic care and as well as originpelviccare.com. And I feel like just to wrap up with, there's so much more for our womanhood, and we deserve to be so taken care of in our deep pelvis and sexual and reproductive bodies.
And it just is so exciting to watch what happens in women's lives when when we receive this quality of care. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. I know this has supported everybody so much, and thank you all for listening to another episode of Libido Lounge, and we'll see you all next time. Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge. Please don't keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends.
You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at mylibidodoc.com.