Hi sister! Welcome back to another episode of a Taylored Adventure to Happiness. If you are new, welcome! If you are a regular, I love ya, I love ya, I love ya!
This episode is really fucking juicy. Seriously, this is some next level juiciness. Today, we’re gonna dive headfirst into sexuality and self-pleasure practices. We’re talking Yoni mapping, somatic sexology, healing sexual trauma, and so much more goodness!
Are you cringing yet? Maybe you’re hearing this and thinking “yeahh, no Taylor I do NOT wanna hear this stuff.” Is there shame and ickiness that this topic is bringing up for you? Is your body resisting diving into this? Well, stick with me, because that means this episode is specifically meant for you. When we resist something, it means that there’s growth on the other side, just beckoning us to move through our barriers.
Sister, remember that sexuality is healthy — it is beautiful. Remind yourself that society and the patriarchy have taken that beauty from our sexuality and embedded shame in us. Please trust me and hang through this one. You will get so much goodness out of it. And if you’re on the flip side and you’re super psyched about talking about sexuality, then you’re gonna love this just as much!
Today is extra special because I got to bring in the lovely Julianne Vaccaro. If you don’t know Julianne, she is a somatic sexologist and a health and spiritual life coach who helps women self-heal so they can reclaim their erotic goddess. She went all-in with me to unpack the energy that has built up in our womb, from small trauma to big “capital T” trauma to everything in between.
Y’all this one gets so good, and I hope you can get as much out of it as I did. So let’s dive into it, shall we?
A Bit About Julianne Vaccaro
Julianne Vaccaro is a Somatic Sexologist, Spiritual Mentor, and Women’s Holistic Health and Life Coach. She helps powerful, purpose-driven women self-heal, awaken their feminine, and come home to their body to reclaim an abundant life of freedom & pleasure.
Julianne helps women reattune to their bodies so they can receive more pleasure and see more success! She is all about tapping into your sexuality in order to affect the rest of your life in the most beautiful ways possible. And she has some incredible stuff for us today, starting with her journey to becoming the wizard of spirituality and sexuality that she is today.
From Fixing to Fulfillment: Julianne’s Journey To Somatic Sexology
I asked Julianne about her path to stepping into her divine gift of teaching somatic sexology. And believe me when I say this girl has had quite the journey. If you have ever been frustrated with trying so hard to fix yourself and get to a place of fulfillment but couldn’t seem to find the key, this gal gets it. She has been through it all, from perfectionism to disordered eating to self-discovery.
This journey all started with the idea of fixing her life to become her highest self.
“My journey started about eight years ago. I started in the health and fitness industry, and it all started from this place of fixing. I wanted to fix myself, fix my body, fix everything about my life that I didn’t like.” – Julianne Vaccaro
She started out as a holistic health coach, also doing personal training and teaching yoga and kickboxing. But as she attempted to reach a higher level in her career, she struggled with perfectionism and eating disorders.
“I just completely sacrificed the relationship that I had with myself. All of my holistic practices went out the window and I found myself with all of the eating disorders that I thought I had kicked. They were in my life again and were so much stronger [than before] … My body was the vessel for celebration and it was also the thing that I took punishment in when I didn’t feel worthy enough.” – Julianne Vaccaro
Wow. How true is that? When we don’t feel worthy, our own bodies are the victims. When Julianne realized how much she was sliding into extreme behaviors, she decided to turn her path around and focus on self-love and self-discovery. She set a goal of balance in her body and mind, trying to find the place without extremes. But you and I both know that place is really hard to find, isn’t it? Balance is that sweet spot where we align ourselves with our frequencies, and it’s not an easy journey.
“It was hard. There were a lot of ups and downs. I was trying to blend aesthetics and bodybuilding with holistic practices … starting at square one and healing from the inside out. And so I started to just chip the layers away one by one … I started to just be able to go a little bit deeper into myself, healing the relationship that I had with my body, healing the relationship with food.” – Julianne Vaccaro.
Although this was a step in the right direction, she wasn’t quite ready to reflect on the deepest, wounded parts of herself that were sabotaging her happiness. She found herself turning to substance abuse, repetitive abusive relationships, and self-abusing behaviors. She tolerated the toxic behavior of friends, family, and others in her life because of the abuse she tolerated from herself. Sister, I’m sure some wounded part of you can resonate with this. It is so easy to let abuse creep into every aspect of our lives when it is ingrained in us not to love our inner selves.
Finally, at the end of an abusive relationship that caused her body extreme sexual trauma, she decided to examine herself from a much deeper perspective, the perspective of her own sexuality.
“I ended up finding out that I was pregnant, and it just knocked me down on my knees and really allowed me to open everything and go back to my childhood traumas to look at every single layer, but from a much deeper perspective. And it was the greatest gift of all because it really allowed me to look into my sexuality. Sexuality was the last thing that I wanted to dive into … [But it was] the greatest catalyst for so much growth in my life. I started to dive into cinematics and sexology, I went through a really big healing journey with that modality. And it was a huge sexual awakening.” – Julianne Vaccaro.
This awakening led her to become a somatic sexologist and woman’s holistic health and spiritual life coach. It allowed her to open the hard shell that had been capturing the soft, beautiful goddess butterfly that she is today.
“Sexuality is just the last thing that we go to when really it holds all of the secrets and all of the keys to expansion.”- Julianne Vaccaro.
Although it was the last thing she turned to, in hindsight she was able to see exactly what pushed her towards somatic sexology. Re-entering relationships triggered grief that she had never been able to access. She could not find intimacy with her partner because of so many repressed emotions.
Y’all, I know so many of us can probably relate to this. When we are so out of touch with our own womb space that intimacy triggers trauma and paralysis. As Julianne found, somatic sexology can heal this trauma and free us.
What Is Somatic Sexology And How You Can Incorporate It in Your Life
So what exactly is somatic sexology? Julianne had all the answers about it that I was looking for and I’m sure you are too.
“Somatic sexology is kind of the blend to two different practices. Somatic therapy or somatics just means dealing directly with the body. And then there’s sexology, which is love and intimacy in relationships.” -Julianne Vaccaro
The somatic portion of somatic sexology is focused on the body and the energy that flows in and out of it. We often don’t think of emotions as energy. But Julianne explained that everything is energy, and when traumatic experiences occur, our body can collect them. These don’t have to be “big T” traumas, such as the loss of a loved one. It could be small traumas, ranging from the ending of a relationship to your dog dying to your mom telling you that you looked fat in a dress when you were ten years old.
A lot of times we tell ourselves that we don’t have trauma, just because we may not have a significant memory of abuse. This was preventing Julianne from addressing her sexuality because she didn’t believe she had trauma. But true healing came when she realized that science has shown that small traumas can compile and have the same psychological effects as “big T traumas!”
The truth is — and this is important — we all have trauma. And the emotions generated from these traumatic experiences are forms of energy. This energy gets stuck inside our body if we do not fight back.
“When we are in a situation that maybe doesn’t feel safe, we’re going to have all of this energy rise in our body. And let’s say we don’t get the opportunity to fight back. That energy gets stuck…it ends up showing up in patterns and muscle areas of tension in our body.” – Julianne Vaccaro
Isn’t this stuff is so raw and so applicable?! Think about the last time you’ve had some sort of pain in your body that you couldn’t explain. Maybe you chalked it up to stress, or just plain ignored it. But what if this pain is the energy that is stuck in your body from trauma that you have not addressed? Somatic healing addresses that in the most beautiful way.
“What we do in the somatic healing is we actually give your body the space to act out those unhealed memories and those traumatic experiences so that you can actually take your power back.” – Julianne Vaccaro
The sexuality component comes in when you can clear those blockages and release that emotion. Then, and only then, can you have the space to become a pleasure seeker and explore your womb space. Julianne explained that much of the repressed energy we are talking about is stored in your Yoni (a sacred term for vagina). The goal of sexology is to turn away from a place of pain or fear in sex and find a place of relaxation and surrender. Sexology is all about clearing the blockages so you can reach a place of pleasure and turn on.
Is this stuff juicy or what?! The best part is that you can start the practice of somatic sexology right now! Julianne gave some great tips on how to open yourself up to your sexuality, starting with self-pleasure.
I know — you’re probably cringing right now. But remember that reaction is based on what you have been taught about self-touch and sexuality. There is often so much shame around the topic of self-pleasure, and it is important for us to examine where that shame comes from in order to heal from it.
Healing From The Shame Revolving Around Self-Pleasure
Think about hearing your own voice during sex. Or just the idea of self-pleasure and self-touch. What emotion does that evoke? I know for a lot of us its shame. We have been conditioned by society to feel shame around our sexuality. Julianne made the incredible point that this is because when women do fully embrace our sexuality, we are insatiable. It’s a threat to mankind. So the patriarchy has shut down women’s sexuality because we are so powerful when it is fully activated.
Ok, so how do we heal from this shame? The first step to healing ourselves lies in figuring out where the shame came from in our lives and being compassionate with ourselves.
“For so long when I engaged in sexual activities or even if I did self-pleasure, it wouldn’t feel good. It wasn’t a thing to celebrate. It was something that you do in quiet. What I think is important to shift is the story and how we’re relating to it in general. So if there is a lot of shame … search to look at what the messaging around your sexuality is and what you were taught about it? … It is often not our own shame. It’s shame that we have collected from our parents, or maybe our religion or our school” – Julianne Vaccaro
Once you have figured out the source of this shame, you can start to move through it and heal. One of the ways that Julianne recommended to do this was through Yoni mapping. If you want to understand Yonia mapping, well Julianne is the girl for the job. She explained it so perfectly and I’m vibing with all of it!
“Yoni mapping is a practice where you can take a glass ball or wand and map your Yoni like a clock, starting at 12 and going all the way around. Look for areas of tension and areas of pain or numbness. And then hold those spots … lean into it and use breath and sound. You might get images, you might get memories. But you can use breath and sound to move through some of that and start breaking it, moving it so that even the sensation comes back in those areas of numbness.”- Julianne Vaccaro
I love it. I just recently got my own Rose quarts wands for that exact process for womb healing! And Julianne also recommends a Jade egg to bring energetic presence and healing into your womb space and enhance your practice of somatic sexology.
Why You Should Go Listen to This Episode Right Now…
I often hear people saying, “Well, I’m just not a sexual person. I just don’t have a sex drive.” But most likely they are just avoiding unpacking what they know they need to unpack because it might be some heavy shit. And so maybe you’re hearing this and you know what needs to be healed, but you’re terrified and don’t know how to go about the process. That’s ok! Just take baby steps, and allow yourself to use the tools that Julianne has graced us with today. Listen to what feels good and continue to choose the better thought that serves you right now, not what society says is shameful. Unpack that energy that is stuck inside of you and dive fully into your sexuality by releasing that energy, that trauma. And sister, eventually, over time, you’re going to able to be that fully erotic goddess that you dream to be.
Go listen to this episode right now to get more beautiful, easy, tangible tools from Julianne about healing. She’s got it all, right there for you to take! One last thing that she said stuck with me:
“Remember that our body is made for pleasure and what we’re worthy of receiving that. And I think that’s when we can start to release that shame and the guilt and start to relearn what and love really is because sex and love are the same frequency.” – Julianne Vaccaro.
Damn straight. You are so fucking worthy. You can find Julianne on Instagram at @juliannevaccaro and she also has a podcast called The Reclamation Project, which is on iTunes and Spotify.
She’s also the founder of the goddess initiative, a methodology to peel back the layers and heal the relationship that you had with yourself, your body, and food. And you can go even deeper with her mastermind mentorship program, the goddess reclamation. Check out her website here!!
Sister, thank you so much for being here with me today. Thank you for living this life. And remember, always choose happiness — because, well, why the fuck not?
https://www.juliannevaccaro.com/aydfwaitlist
juliannevaccaro.com
instagram.com/juliannevaccaro
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-reclamation-project/id1408105420
Key Takeaways:
+ I took punishment when I didn’t felt worthy enough
+ Going a little bit deeper within myself
+ Everything is energy, even our emotions
+ Healing your traumatic experiences
+ Going back to that place of pleasure
+ How do you get your sexuality to tune in
+ It´s all about pleasure and relaxation
+ How we get numb to pleasure
+ Self-pleasure is the most healing thing that we can do for ourselves
+ We usually shut our voice down
+ The direct connection from our vagina to our brains
+ Our vagina is the base of our feminine power
+ We as women, create new birth and new ideas
Standout Quotes:
“Sexuality is the last thing that we go to, when it holds all the secrets and keys to expansion”
“When we don´t have the opportunity to fight back, the energy sticks in our body”
“Self-pleasure is a really good way to know your body, what turns you on and what you like”
