Vaginal de-armouring and what I learn as I become a tantrica

“On the journey of life it is the process that counts, not the destination.”

I don’t know who said that, but it sure is real. Myself included.  The thing is, a few years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to recognise the truth in such an “obvious” statement.  Instead, I would have thought that it was quaint, or worse, touchy-feely silliness. New Age.

What is vaginal or yoni de-armouring? The idea that stress is held in our vaginas in much the same way as it is held throughout the body. The process of de-armouring is helping the body to let go of those things.

As part of my developing practice as a Sex Worker, I belong to a community of tantric healers.  Over 95% of us are women, there are two or three trans-girls (assuming that is how they identify) and the rest are men.  At one point, advice for deeper study of Tantric Arts came up, and there was some reverence placed at the feet of a European Tantric group that holds regular, queer-inclusive, courses, retreats, get-togethers, and they came highly recommended.

As I perused their website, I was also drawn to the various practitioners and thinking about how much I wanted or needed some of the services that they offered.  I wanted to book and this was encouraged, and in the end I did.

I flew and took a train to get to this person, and over the course of three hours, she guided me in self-touch, teaching me how to hold myself, touch myself erotically, and more importantly, how to get myself off.  She taught me to put down the toys, how to breathe, and how to be present with myself for pleasure to arise.

I get easily distracted.  The ADD brain is not conducive to sitting sill long enough to masturbate.  At least mine isn’t.  Hence the appeal of the right vibrator and two minutes and away!  It isn’t working for me.

I have written about how trans women have a life-long relationship with dilation.  It comes hand in glove with a neo-vagina.  I don’t think I will ever get enough of the airport security people, invariably men, wanting to open my carry-on luggage and see what that roll of hard plastic is…passing through Hong Kong today, the young guard was puzzled by five dilators, all progressively larger.  I made a plié, and as elegant a rendition of what I did with them, including the whimpering and he turned his eyes down and blushed and let me put them away immediately.

As I was guided through self-touch by the Tantrica, I she showed me how to hold my vulva, as a way to help to relax my pelvic floor.  It is a process, and one I am learning to do more and more.

In my other posts on the Tantric Retreat I attended, I refer to peak experiences and also to moments where I nearly left.  The vaginal de-armouring was just such a session.

I had been looking forward to it.   It was one of the reasons I was there.  It had been a huge draw.  But when the time came to set it up, the rules were announced before a break, and it was announced how it would work.  One of the facilitators came to me and told me that the head facilitators would come and talk to me about who I would do it with.

Their answer was to suggest a man with lots of experience of vaginal de-armouring.  I mean, I suppose, I should explain what it is.  Vaginal de-armouring is based on the same principles as somatic therapy, something which I am a practitioner of.  That our bodies store the stresses of life.  The vagina is no different, and for women is the locus of much sexual trauma, feelings of shame, body image, inadequacy and other complex emotions.  As a trans woman with a neo vagina, the situation is identical.

Well, I can’t say what my face looked like when they suggested a man.  And he was physically very man.  Physically, energetically.  He was the manliest man present.  They said to think about the suggestion.

“Does he know?”

“No, we haven’t suggested it to him yet.  But we wanted to give you the first choice.”

“That’s very sweet, thank you.  Can I think about it?”

“Yes, of course.”  And it was very sweet of them.  Very considerate.

I went outside to walk to the other building where my room was and fell into walking side by side with the “slut” who ended up with seven men.  She asked, “are you all right?”  Gosh I love women.  I just shook my head.  I couldn’t really talk.  I mouthed that I couldn’t talk, or made goldfish mouth shapes with my mouth.  I wasn’t really with it.  I could feel overwhelm coming on.  And I just gave her a look of ‘I can’t’.

For some reason this created distance between us.  I guess that sometimes with women we are just supposed to let go and cry and get it out, and then make a decision.  I am not quite there yet.  I couldn’t talk to her. Suddenly there was no air anywhere for me.

Instead I went to my room and bawled my eyes out.  It was crushing.  I couldn’t breathe, and I sobbed.

I felt like I should leave.  And running away is my way.  It has been my way since I was born. The Leaving Personality. I can always run away and hide.  

When we were asked to articulate our objectives for the workshop, I had spoken about my body, getting to know it, getting to know my vulva and vagina, but also how I was dealing with a history of sexual trauma from men…that I don’t have a positive association with any form of male sexual energy…and that I am a dyke—I put up a force field to keep men away, and I wonder if that was just to say, don’t touch.

In the opening hours of the workshop men had been friendly to me.  My immediate reaction with a man is always to default to the negative.  I don’t trust men.  And with one man, two, I immediately felt creepy-guy energy.  Others, that they wanted something.

Turns out creepy guy was flagged as a creepy guy by other women on the retreat, and so he left…was invited to not stay any longer.  And I wonder, because I don’t believe he did anything, but the energy is off.  I also don’t think he ever touched me, sensing my desire to keep him away—it is hard to tell as sometimes we were blindfolded and random people were touching.

As one example, there was an exercise for which we could be blindfolded or not but would lay out toys next to us that we were willing to have used on us.  When the two-thirds of the group was not laying on matts waiting, they were outside being debriefed.  I was in the third and final wave to receive, and had elected to keep a blindfold off, even though I did keep my eyes closed.  A woman, who was an effective den mother to me on this retreat, even though we barely spoke, came to my head and kept men away.  And in the end, I was attended to by a group of four women who wanted to give me a delightful experience of erotic touch.  It was sweet and kind of her to do that.

One man did come, one of the few that I liked, and he asked if he could join, but I said no.  We were almost done, and it seemed a new energy to introduce.  I apologised to him after.  He had been one of the men who had approached me in a friendly way on the first hours, but I was a little bit standoffish, as I often am with men.  Unless they pay.

And I guess in this aspect I failed.  Given that I am becoming a sex worker, even if I already am and have been for years, it is only now that I am beginning to escort…and that is going to mean men.  Something I have to get used to.  Did I get any closer to finding my way into this?  No.  I think in this aspect I failed.  Or didn’t really try.  I just don’t want men around me, or touching me.  Even if it was a man who had his fingers inside me and got me to squirt.  Go figure.

So when I came back from our lengthy break, I was going to tell them that I would sit the vaginal de-armouring exercise out.  That I couldn’t do it.  But before I had opened my mouth, they told me that they had discussed it and one of the facilitators was going to do it, someone who does it for a living, the same woman who taught me about touching myself, and whose calm presence made me feel okay about being there in the first place.

So, I lay on my back, propped up on pillows, puppy ped beneath me, in a gynaecological position in a room with 20 women in similar positions, as men made themselves comfy between our legs, and I was with a woman.  When I speak of peak experiences, this was definitely one of them.

My vagina is tight.  Will it ever be loose?  Not at this rate.  Dilation keeps it loose, so the natural forces in my body now are keeping it tight.  Should I ever get around to the much-needed pelvic floor therapy, there is a chance I will deal with that.  We shall see.

She slid the lubricated, gloved fingers into my vagina, gently, tenderly.  She worked systematically, touching, feeling, finding spots of tension, and resting there, drawing my attention to them, asking me to breathe into them.  At first it just felt odd, and we studied each other’s faces, spoke of nothing but what she was doing, what I could feel.  And then something changed.  There was more there.  Emotion.  Raw energy.  And it welled up with some isolated feelings that were unplaceable, but rippled through me like magma, one thick, fat bubble of it.  I shuddered.  I groaned quietly, and she encouraged me.  And I began to breathe in a way that a woman giving birth breathes, to cope with the pain.  She encouraged me to breathe deeper, and I deed, quick, deep.

And as I got closer to my edge, I noticed that all of the women in the room were going through something similar.  The collective wail was so utterly female, the space had been transformed.  Raw female energy swirled and swooped through the air held aloft by our cries.  The sound was loud, crying, sobbing, screaming, enraged, howling with pain, with love, with everything.  It would have been deafening were it not for its beauty.

The levee in me broke, and long hidden feelings poured forth, rolling down my cheeks as tears, spilling out over my chest as sobs, stabbing out from my throat as wails.  And she encouraged me, encouraged me to let it go, to let it happen, to surrender to the feeling.  And for once in my life, I did.

Afterwards, if the word “integrating” ever meant something to me, this was it.  People asked how it had been for me.  I am sure that they had all noticed that I had been working with a woman, the only woman to be doing so.  Curious men.  Nice men.  Yes.  I came to discover that there were nice men there too.

Whilst I never got there, I began to think about being fucked by a man.  I have only ever been fucked by a woman with a strap-on, and after having done this for one of the fellow women participants, she noted that “the real thing” feels alive in a way that a dildo doesn’t.  I assume that she is always right on this, but I’d love to hear from any ladies who have experience with this, and who have found that some types of dildos get close or are indistinguishable from the real thing.

What I love most about using a strap-on with a woman vaginally, is that for some perverse reason, it brings us closer than I ever felt when having the real thing.  Why?  How?  Because I can focus all of my attention on her.  I can look at her eyes, into them, at her chin, at the softness in her face, and can just feel her.  That this way that we look at each other has completely changed.  None of the distraction that I might have felt from my own pleasure, or worry about whether I would cum or not cum, or was hard or not hard…none of that noise is there.    Instead, what is there is pure connection.  Yummy.