Yoga for V Pain Classes! AWESOME

I will be teaching a dedicated Yoga for V pain class this fall in Oakland and I am so excited!!! It's been a long time coming, but I finally found a good venue at good time and a decent price. Live locally? Check it out!

Why will this class be so totally awesome?

1. Discretion! I am renting a studio, not operating under their umbrella, so the class title won't be on their schedule anywhere. The studio is on the third floor of the building and the main ground floor entrance leads to another business as well (a women's clothing store) so people won't know why you're walking into 1635 Broadway. Maybe you just want an awesome new dress or are taking some other yoga class, amirite?
2. EVERYONE will have some kind of v pain, so you can ask all your v pain questions in a safe, confidential space.
3. It's a series! We'll have five classes to dive not only into anatomy but also a variety of yogic approaches that you can both practice at home or use to modify other classes you take.
4. It's a series Part 2! That means it will be the same group of women each time. You don't have to be brave enough to meet new people every time, just the once. It'll be like a book club for your vagina...
5. Come as you are! V health is so glaringly overlooked in yoga classes that it doesn't matter if you are a newbie or a seasoned practitioner, you will learn something new and awesome.
6. Come as you are Part 2! It doesn't matter if you have a diagnosis or not. Show up and we can help point you to resources you may be lacking.
7. Beautiful space! We will be at Barefoot Movement, all hardwood floors and high ceilings and original windows. There are mats to borrow (no charge) if you don't have one, and plenty of props to use for what a colleague of mine's 3 year old daughter calls "cozy yoga." You'll see why...
8. Convenient time! 7pm Fridays, but not all in a row so it won't mess up your social calendar...
9. Free street parking after 6pm, across the street from the 19th St BART station, and close to many bus lines.
10. Finally meet some other women dealing with this crap and have a good laugh and a good cry and eat some chocolate already!

You can learn more at my website faithcornwall.com, or head directly to my MeetUp group to sign up. $75 for 5 classes (that's $15/class, on the low side of average for the Bay Area.) Handouts will keep you caught up if you miss one!

Be there or be square!

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PS Did this post get your brain gears crankin'?

Feel free to start a conversation below (it's okay, you can be anonymous)!

Lube-a-licious! Interview with Sarah Mueller of Smitten Kitten

Woo hoo!

I am so excited to share this interview with Sarah Mueller, an employee at progressive sex toy store Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I didn't know how much I didn't know about lube until talking with the fabulous Ms Mueller!

We like to assume that personal care products would not be on the market if they were not safe for use, but sadly that is not the case. Sarah's research led me to throw away all of three of my water-based lubes and replace them with more v-friendly versions.

Listen to the interview to learn more about lubes and how to select one that will enhance instead of harm your v health! You will notice that we reference some charts and educational materials Sarah made in the interview - you can see them below.

(If you're not sure what lubes can do for you, check out last week's post here.)

If you have follow-up questions you can hop on over to www.smittenkittenonline.com and Sarah will hook you up!

Without further ado, the interview:

...and the material we reference in the interview:

Click here for the link to the World Health Organization Advisory Note: "Use and procurement of additional lubricants for male and female condoms: WHO/UNFPA/FHI360." 

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PS Did this post get your brain gears crankin'?

Feel free to start a conversation below (it's okay, you can be anonymous)!

Any interest in a Facebook forum?

One of the features I would really like to have on this site sooner rather than later is a forum, a way for you to connect with each other. I have looked into various ways of doing this, but for many reasons (time, money, lack of technological expertise) none of them are going to happen any time soon, with the exception of a "Closed" Facebook group, the most private of the three Facebook Group options. (You can learn more about the levels of privacy Facebook offers groups here.)

Would anyone be interested in joining such a group? If so, let me know where to find you on Facebook - I can't start one without people to invite to it.  I also would like to know what you are interested in in terms of ground rules for the group. What guidelines would make this space safe and appealing? (You can respond in the comments below if you would like to start a conversation, or contact me privately here.)

If you aren't interested in a Facebook group, but would be interested in some other type of forum, please let me know why Facebook wouldn't work for you and why the other option would.

I know that all of you have knowledge and experience that is just sitting there waiting to be shared and leveraged! If there is some other way that you would like to participate in some kind of group support, holler at me.

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PS Tomorrow I am headed out of town for three weeks of much needed vacation! Woo hoo! I don't plan on writing unless the spirit moves me, but I will be watching my inbox, so if folks want a Facebook group I can probably toss that together on the road. 

Good News in San Francisco!

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the first Integrative Care for Chronic Pelvic Pain Symposium in San Francisco. 

It was an evening event: dinner, presentations on successful examples of integrative care, and brainstorming on how to improve integrative care in the area, followed by networking.

This is a really exciting development! The attendees were mostly physical therapists, but there was also at least one gynecologist, sexologist, another yoga teacher (!!!yay!!!!), a homeopath, naturopath, and a specialty compounding pharmacist.

At the end we filled out forms saying how we would like to continue the group: how often we would like to meet and what topics we would like to learn about. 

I am pumped that this group is starting, and super excited that I get to be a part of it.

For those of you in the Bay Area, I now have more resources to refer you to, yay! 

I'll keep you posted on how this works out. Maybe it could be a model for other cities?

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In other news, I won't be posting this coming Friday or Monday as I will be at a yoga teacher training. It's on post-partum care, and I'm going because it's one of the few teacher trainings I could find about the female pelvis that isn't about pre-natal classes...eye roll.

Ah well, I'm building on what's out there. :)

Have a great weekend!

Evidence-based Medicine Part 3: How is this relevant to me?

In Part One of this post I discussed the general background controversy of evidence-based medicine (EBM,) and some examples of how that is playing out in the pelvic pain world.

In Part Two we looked at a big ol' red flag that is not being discussed in the EBM controversy.

In Part Three - that's this one! - I break this mess down and discuss how it applies to you and the health of your lady parts.

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What does all this discussion about the strengths and limitations of EBM  mean for you?

Rather than waiting for someone else to fix us, we have the opportunity to step up and be in charge of our care. Be a partner rather than a patient.

To start, you'll want health care providers who have experience working with your issue. They have a higher probability of following the research out there, and will have the most anecdotal evidence to guide their suggestions.

You can find some of these people through "Find a Provider" pages at the International Pelvic Pain Society, the National Vulvodynia Association, and the American Physical Therapy Association's Section on Women's Health.

If you can't find anyone in your area, you can always try contacting someone close by to see if they have any suggestions.

What if you don't have access to someone with this experience? 

Then you need to be proactive and find the doctor who is most willing to take the time to find what little research there is, and combine their knowledge of your situation with the information they get. You can find great tips on how to do this within the limitations of our convoluted and time-strapped medical system in the book "Healing Painful Sex: A Woman's Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing and Treating Sexual Pain," by Deborah Coady, MD and Nancy Fish, MSW, MPH. (Which you should totally have anyway - in my opinion it's one of the best and most comprehensive books out there for V pain.)

No matter what doctor you have, you will have to be willing to take risks and try new things, and be prepared for some of those things to not work. No need to despair if that's the case. Bring your new information back to the table and keep working on the puzzle.

Since your doctor is going to be more humble about the limits of their knowledge, they are more likely to be open to whatever feedback and research you provide. 

How do you find research? You can access it through the NVA. You can also participate in studies through the NVA, helping to create more research. (FYI they recently overhauled their site, so if you haven't been there in a while, check it out.)

Another way to incorporate EBM into your care is to research information from studies on related topics. For instance, Dr Dean Ornish has extensively researched the impact of lifestyle choices on chronic illness.

If you are interested in trying something that doesn't have evidence behind it, or that is outside the bounds of Western medicine, your doctor may be more willing to support you than a doctor who is used to relying on evidence alone. Your experiment stands to benefit not only you, but others as well; your doctor can add your experience to his or her anecdotal evidence.

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A great example of someone who successfully healed with zero evidence of any kind is Sarah Kennedy.

Faced with painful sex but never getting an official diagnosis, she stumbled upon a technique called Orgasmic Meditation. Invented not for pelvic pain but to enhance one's sexuality, OM involves gentle repeated stroking of the clitoris, alone or from a partner. Boom. Regularly practicing OM healed her V pain and she is now a life coach who specializes in helping women experiencing painful sex and low libido. You can learn more about Sarah's story and her coaching practice here.

Even if you feel like you are running out of options on the EBM for V pain front, there is always something else out there. The world is a big place.

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It's true that we don't have as much evidence to go on when it comes to treatment for V pain. That doesn't mean we can't benefit from EBM. More importantly,

The lack or existence of evidence on treatments for V pain is not the sole determinant of whether or not we get well.

These bodies are ours and no one else's.

And we are 100% capable of taking care of them.