Vaginismus as a Sacred No—And the Path to a Deeper Yes (A Spell for Reclaiming Erotic Trust After Pain)
If you’ve been living with vaginismus or pain during penetration, you’ve probably been handed tools—dilators, numbing creams, pelvic wands. Maybe even Botox.
But no one handed you the most important thing:
A new way to listen to your body.
In this episode, I’m offering you a reframe that could change everything.
What if vaginismus isn’t dysfunction, but a sacred no?
What if your body isn’t broken, but brilliantly wise—closing, not to hurt you, but to protect you?
This isn’t just about symptom management.
This is about reclaiming your erotic trust.
It’s about learning to hear your body’s no—not as a problem to fix, but as the beginning of your deepest yes.
✨ In This Episode, We Explore:
Why vaginismus isn’t just a muscle problem—it’s a whole-body pattern of protection
What it really means when the vaginal opening won’t relax
How pelvic treatments that force opening may lead to collapse—not healing
The difference between collapse and functional rest (and why it matters)
Why pleasure can’t wait until after the pain is gone—it’s part of the healing
How to stop treating your body like a mechanical fix-it project
What becomes possible when you treat your symptoms as sacred signals, not failures
🌀 For Every Woman Who’s Been Told to "Push Through":
This episode is for you if:
💔 You’ve tried every physical intervention and still feel disconnected from your body
💔 You’re afraid you’re broken or incapable of intimacy
💔 You’re exhausted by goal-oriented healing and long for tenderness, slowness, truth
You don’t need to "fix" your vagina.
You need to befriend her.
You need space to feel, space to open, space to trust your own yes again.
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The DSM-XXX
🌀 Desire & Somatics Mythos
✨ 100+ page reference guide: a RADICAL RECLASSIFICATION of what our culture calls sexual dysfunction—and what your body knows as sacred. 🌿
👉 DOWNLOAD HERE
DSM-XXX: Desire & Somatics Mythos is our 100+ page reference guide for anyone who’s ever been told their sexuality is dysfunctional—when really, it’s just been misinterpreted.
Inside, you’ll find:
✦ Reframings of so-called “sexual dysfunctions” like pelvic pain, vaginismus, anorgasmia, through a trauma-informed, pleasure-centered lens
✦ Somatic context for things like low libido, pain, dissociation, and numbness
✦ Radical translations of what your body might actually be saying when it doesn’t follow the cultural script
✦ Alternatives to diagnosis culture that honor nervous system rhythms, safety, and truth over performance
👉 DOWNLOAD HERE
🔥 Join the pleasure rebellion
Sacred sex ed, somatic rituals, and a radical return to your body.
💌 Stay Connected
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Your no is sacred.
Your body is wise.
And when she’s ready…
She’ll show you a yes so deep, so true, so yours—
It could only come from you.
🌹🌀💋
transcript
If you feel like your body has betrayed you, like pleasure, something reserved for other people, something you have to earn or something, you're always getting wrong. This little corner of podcast land is for you. I'm here as your radical rageful mama bear fiercely defending your right to feel good in your.
Body and sharing. What I've learned from years of crawling around in the underbrush of embodiment, like a slightly overeducated for is witch, because here's the truth, pleasure isn't a side dish. It's not fluff, it's not luxury. It's your body's way of saying, I'm alive, I belong, and I have power. Welcome to the nature of pleasure.
I'm Nicole Siegel, certified psychological body worker and creator of the body. Compass method, and this is where we unravel the quiet codes of your body, the hidden intelligence beneath desire, and the organic of your erotic nature.
I was chatting with a friend yesterday and she was telling me about her sister who has dealt with pain during penetration for five years now, and is finally experiencing some relief because she has found, a few. Interventions that have helped her. She's gotten Botox to essentially tire out the muscles.
And she's been using dilators for a really, really long time. And this just made me want to set my own hair on fire. Hearing this. It. Knowing what I know, it is so incredibly painful to hear about females that are experiencing vaginismus and pain during penetration that don't know these three essential truths about out.
When your body and your vagina are responding this way to sex and to penetration.
And one, the very first one is that this is not just a physiological issue.
I am gonna get into the anatomy of the vagina a little bit, very, very simply because I am no doctor. But what I do know about the vaginal opening is that it opens and closed based on a few factors, and it's not. Always that something is just simply wrong with the muscles in that part of the body.
We have this thing called sphincters in our bodies, and they're a ring of smooth muscle that open and close different sphincters are of governed by different systems in the body. In sexological body work, we are taught that the two sphincters in the anus the inner and the outer sphincter are one.
The outer is, you can consciously control it. You can open and close it, but the inner. Is governed by your autonomic nervous system, which means that it opens and closed based on how safe you feel and how comfortable you feel, and how embodied you feel, and how warm you feel and cold you feel, and, all of the mysterious ephemeral parts of your experience of being a physical human being. That's what determines whether it is opened or closed and the vaginal opening acts. Very similarly in some articles, you'll see that the vaginal opening has been categorized also as a sphincter as is their urethra, which is where the P comes out.
Sorry for anyone that didn't wanna hear things get graphic, but hey, that's what I do. So if the vaginal opening is considered a sphincter, and we have defined a sphincter as this ring of muscle that opens or closes based on how safe you feel, that means that if you are experiencing painful penetration and VA or vaginismus it.
Is very likely that it is not just a physiological issue. It's not just something that you can solve by manipulating the tissues physically like they do at pelvic physical therapy, and it's likely. Not gonna be something that's a hundred percent solved with something like dilators or numbing cream.
And so that is number one, that it is when you're experiencing these, these symptoms, it is not just a physiological issue. The second point that I wish every female knew, if you are experiencing these things or know someone that you love, that's experiencing these things, is that the road to complete integration and healing?
When it comes to vaginismus painful sex, painful penetration is not just about the goal orientation of getting your vagina to open there. Is a lot more to this because your body is an entire self-regulating ecosystem
and the symptoms that you're experiencing are very far down the manufacturing line of what your body is doing. Meaning that if we want an intervention for a symptom, we don't start at the site and the symptom of where this is happening, we have to go way further back in the process. With this specific issue, like vaginismus, your vagina is really, really closed, like a tight fist.
The, ah, there's a cardinal outside my window. It's probably trying to regulate my rage. You have to go way back. And so if you're dealing with a very closed. Vaginal opening in very tight muscles in the pelvis. The way, the perfect way to fix that is not by trying to just open them up, like force them open.
What that actually does later on later down the line. What I've seen in many of my clients is that yes, it will tire those muscles out. It will exhaust them. Exhaust them, and they will go into collapse. So they will technically. Be looser. But if, you know, if you've, if you're a nervous system nerd, you know that collapse and rest are not the same thing.
Collapse is that the system has been overtaxed and , we freeze, like a computer freezes. Like you can't click anything, everything's frozen while it catches up, that's collapse. Rest is intentionally putting the computer in sleep mode or turning the computer off. Sorry for the tech metaphor.
I know this is called the nature of pleasure, but you know, gotta gotta work with whatever comes to the body at the time. So the, the goal with, these symptoms is that you want to get the vaginal muscles into functional rest, which is again, not collapse. So we're not trying to tire them out to the point of exhaustion.
What we are trying to do is to nurture them into believing and knowing deeply, like embodied, knowing that it is safe to open up. It is safe to open up. And if you think about it that way, then you kind of get a better idea of how far back we have to go in the production line of what it's like to be in your body.
Because if what you need to feel is that it's safe to open up, if you just let yourself sit in that that topic for a moment, you are probably noticing right now. Many things coming up that prevent that from feeling true
📍 If you've ever wished someone would just hand you a pleasure map and say, start here, I have got you my free video series, the Three Best At Home Sexological Body Work Practices For More Embodied Sex is like a sexy little user manual for your nervous system. They're gentle, juicy, and designed to be done in your bed on your time with no mirrors, no pressure, and no one watching unless you want them to grab it in the show notes.
Your body's already curious.
as women we have a lot of experiences in our daily lives and acute experiences that basically mount a lot of data that tell us that it's not safe to open. Especially open our most intimate areas.
The trick here is being so loving and patient with your entire system because your system is an organizing. It has an organizing logic in itself and that logic. Is always going to tend towards pleasure, vitality, fulfillment, and wholeness. We just need to create experiences and spaces where , it can grow into that easily.
Okay. And the third point. That I wish every female knew that was experiencing these symptoms is that pleasure does not need to be something that happens after the challenge is solved, after the pain is gone, after you've solved the problem. That is like, oh my god, so much fire.
That's like trying to navigate a very dense forest. Without using the map that someone has given you. And the reason why is the following pleasure is not only a guiding force, especially in this part of the body and the pelvis. It's not only a guiding force and a map for you to get exactly where you wanna go, but it is also a a fountain of resource for you as you're navigating all of these challenges, meaning that you can experience pleasure as you're experiencing pain.
Which is going to make processing of that pain so much easier and much more doable. Pleasure is gonna be a guiding force for you because it also is going to help you get to the place you really wanna go, which is that not just that you don't wanna experience pain, right? It's that you want to feel great in your pelvis, you wanna be able to connect with your partner.
In this, this beautiful, intimate, easeful way. And if you're connecting to pleasure in every single moment as you're doing that, you're always going to have the very next step towards getting closer and closer to that goal that your body can actually take right now. Centering pleasure in healing vaginismus and painful sex the most important awareness that you wanna have as you're navigating these waters.
Remember, the body always knows how to get back to wholeness. Your body is your compass and pleasure. Makes sense. It operates. Within logical premises. And if you've dove into my material, you know that I've outlined six principles of pleasure and we won't get it into them now 'cause we don't have time.
But. Just know that there are logical ones and zeros of pleasure that your body is already participating in without you even consciously entering into that. It is just the grid system that we all naturally operate on, and all we have to do to get back to a fully pleasurable, loving relationship with our body.
Our pleasure and eroticism is to remember what it's like. To fully be in our bodies and allow for our body's organic nature to really come through.
All right. That's enough sacred rage and sexological wisdom for one episode. Your body's listening now. Go do something delicious with it. Check the stone notes for whatever magic I've mentioned. And if you want to take this deeper, I've got resources for you. The show notes are stacked, free practices, juicy courses, all the good stuff.
Now go drink some water, touch your body like it's a miracle, and I'll see you in the next one.
📍 Trying to revive the vibe in your relationship. Don't start with lingerie. Start with reset your erotic rhythm.
