Exploring Yoni Massage: A Personal Journey

Author: Jessica Lloyd
Senior Naturopath | BHSc(N) | ISSVD, ISSWSH, BSSM, ATMS

Last reviewed: November 10, 2025

We’re sitting in a sushi bar when my friend points out a poster advertising a healing vaginal massage called yoni mapping. Yoni is Sanskrit (Indian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist, take your pick) for vagina or womb.

The wording of the ad is intriguing. It talks about letting go of sexual guilt, blissing out your vag and discovering the ‘magical superpowers of your vagina’. Oh hell yes, I want that. I haven’t even finished reading the ad; I know I’ll be doing it. I feel bold, confident even, booking my appointment for the next day.

But, I’ve got 24 hours to freak out. Will she make me orgasm? Is part of this mapping allowing a stranger to coax one out of me, to prove how open and ‘naturopathic’ I am? Will I cry? Will she know all my secrets?

I feel a tangy mixture of embarrassed, excited, and nervous.

I show up.

Bonnie’s studio is set up at a house in the bush, where she has a pretty, airy room set up with mats on the floor. It’s a gorgeous, warm day. I’m nervous, and to my dismay, giggle, mostly because I am really, truly petrified about what Bonnie is going to do to me.

Like most women, the only experience I have of my vagina being touched, besides by me, has been in a sexual or medical context.

Come what may, I dive in. Well, Bonnie dives in. My only job is to lie back and try to calm down.

Hang on, Feelings McGhee!

I feel incredibly childish for being so nervous. I am a grown-up 35-year-old vulvovaginal specialist naturopath; open-minded, curious, and, I like to think, in situations like this, I would act a lot cooler.

Not so. I blush like a 12-year-old in sex ed.

We chat about the process: she explains her utterly pure intentions for my vagina (and delicate soul), then casually asks me about my relationship with my vagina.

Huh?

What is my relationship with my vagina? I don’t know how to answer her. All I can say is, “I don’t know.” I repeat this several times, as if every time I say it, it will help. But, I don’t know. I have never thought about it. Nobody has ever asked me that before.

Bonnie waits patiently for me to speak, so I blurt out the answers I think she’s looking for, but to my further embarrassment, frame them as questions. “I like sex? I have good orgasms? I have not been sexually abused via my vagina….?” Cringe.

Obviously, I haven’t told her anything much. I’ve tried to paint myself as I want her to see me: a cool professional peer with a perfect vagina. She rewards me by saying I’m quite in touch with my yoni energy. Phew.

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Bonnie explains that I’m one of the lucky ones, that all women have ‘vaginal baggage’, though it doesn’t have to be as drastic as sexual assault. It can be as simple as having sex when you don’t want to, which, let’s face it, most of us have done. A small weight lifts off me. Maybe it’s not so bad.

Then she asks: Have I always totally respected my body? Definitely not. The small weight drops back into place. And so, she says, my vaginal energetics need work.

What I’m really afraid of.

I decide to treat the session like an experiment, ‘work’, rather than the spiritual experience promised by the word ‘yoni’ and this tranquil bush studio in the hippy capital of Australia. I’m afraid that I’m supposed to be more ‘advanced’ than I am, more spiritually connected to my own body.

The truth is, underneath it all, I’m afraid that when Bonnie touches me with her special, advanced yoni energy, all the shit sandwiches I’ve eaten in the name of dysfunctional men will purge from my tolerant, patient, long-suffering vagina. The plethora of dull, painful, or confusing sexual experiences, the swathe of agonising, gross vaginal, bladder and cervical infections. Out. Messily and unexpectedly.

I worry I’m not ‘advanced’ enough because I’ve swallowed that all down and haven’t seen it come back up. Will it come up now? Am I ready? It feels like a lot.

Bonnie lays out the plan.

The session is three hours long, split into three sections that melt into each other. First we’ll talk, then she’ll massage my body, then she’ll stick her hands in my vagina.

The massage will relax me for the vaginal treatment. In the vaginal massage, she’ll assess all the different structures inside my vagina and cervix, and will point out my G-spot and a new one, the A-spot (which I have never heard of).

I think she’ll find the secret chamber and let the gremlins out. I’m ashamed of how out of touch with my own body I feel, in the face of how in touch Bonnie seems. I feel ashamed of letting my beautiful vagina be the receptacle, the sponge, of any ugliness.

I ask her directly if I am going to have an orgasm, and she says that sometimes it happens, but it isn’t the norm. Whatever happens during the session just needs to be allowed to happen. I have to relax.

I try to be cool. (You know how well that’s going.)

I have to make a conscious effort to stop trying to control the experience, to delay my million and one questions. I get naked and lie face down on the mat.

The massage was different.

As Bonnie works on my whole body, I realise that this intimate massage with no sexual pressure feels like a first. It’s freeing and wonderful. She wasn’t looking at my body as a feast, but just as a body, a person, that was hers to care for.

The areas avoided by other therapists are numerous, and don’t just include the crotch. There are the tendons in the crease of the panty line; the big muscles in our buttocks that literally hold us upright; and our breasts, which have a multitude of muscles criss-crossing beneath the nipple and mammary glands. Then, the constellation of pressure points in the pelvic area.

Bonnie goes everywhere. I can’t overstate this: it’s amazing.

Bonnie grazes my clitoris and I panic.

Bonnie rolls me over onto my back. She hangs my knees over hers, which is surprisingly comfortable. I am spread-eagled with my vagina directly facing her. She massages my legs. Being in this vulnerable position with a stranger rubbing my thighs is actually ridiculously relaxing, and joyfully, not sexy at all.

The actual vagina-touching begins with a labial massage. As a finger brushes my clitoris, and it feels good (gasp!), I become concerned that Bonnie is going to turn me on with her special yoni touch, and maybe this experience will involve an orgasm after all.

My spiral is short-lived and lacklustre. Now that I’m here, spread apart and totally relaxed, a friendly orgasm during a vaginal healing session doesn’t seem that weird after all, right?

Bonnie finds a poppy seed in my labia.

During the labial massage, Bonnie finds a ‘poppy seed’ in my right labia minora, which I ask to feel myself because I have never heard of such a thing. It is hard to find. It does indeed feel like a poppy seed.

I ask what these are, and Bonnie says they are like little knots, which can be rubbed out with a bit of rolling between the fingers. No big deal.

Poppy seed gone, Bonnie goes in.

With plenty of warning and lube, Bonnie’s fingers enter my vagina and start probing around gently, her asking me how each part feels. She explains what she is doing, where the area is located, and what it signifies.

I am pleased when she says everything seems to be in order, but I am still waiting for the ‘big reveal’ of my secret shames and pains. Or an orgasm. I am not sure which I’m most afraid of.

But, nothing happens. I don’t cry, which surprises me. As she works, it feels like I’m getting the well-honed body treatment I’ve paid $300 for, yet an experience that money can’t buy. It feels like she is unwinding my body from the inside out. I feel calm and relaxed.

Massaging the inside of the body via the vagina.

The vagina, cervix, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, bladder, and their threadings of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissue support the lower half of the body. Everything else sits on top of these organs, yet nobody ever inspects their structure, positioning, or levels of tension. Are they knotted? Pulling? Shifted in the wrong direction?

We chat through my treatment as Bonnie works methodically, carefully, precisely to loosen and free these structures. I learn that my cervix points directly down, not out. I have a ‘mare’ vagina. Bonnie also explains that the shifting of the uterus and cervix can be why some women are unable to get pregnant for no apparent reason.

The treatment doesn’t hurt at all, but it also doesn’t feel particularly pleasurable, which of course I’m deeply relieved about.

Bonnie withdraws…

Our three-hour session comes to a relaxed end, and Bonnie withdraws herself from my body – carefully and slowly, she says, so I don’t feel abandoned. She leaves the room to wash my vagina off her hands, and I lie alone with my eyes closed, seeing how I feel.

…and I emerge.

A feeling washes over me, of feeling nurtured. I burst into surprise tears. The feeling of having a loving creature care for me in this deeply intimate way feels profound.

Incredibly, the lower back pain from years on a computer, several days straight on a motorbike, and two years of IBS is completely gone. I just feel nothing in my entire pelvis, which is so rare. I feel awesome. Reborn!

I walk out very happy; I have gotten so much more from my experience than I could have ever imagined. I learnt that I didn’t have emotional gremlins hiding in my vagina (and it was cool that if there were, I was going to face them), I was ok with an orgasm if it happened, and that vaginal massage can completely alleviate lower back pain. All big deals for me!

I jump back on my motorbike, wind in my hair, sun on my face, and cruise up the highway into the bright blue skies to visit my next friend, who doesn’t know it yet, but they are going to hear a looooong story about a vagina.

There’s truly nothing like being in the capable hands of an experienced practitioner. Five stars, Bonnie, thank you!

Where to find Bonnie

You can find Bonnie, a somatic sexologist¹, embodiment teacher, and pleasure educator, at bonniebliss.co.

References

1.
Simonelli C, Fabrizi A, Rossi R, Silvaggi C, Tripodi F, Michetti PM. Clinical sexology: An integrated approach between the psychosomatic and the somatopsychic. Sexologies. Published online January 2010:3-7. doi:10.1016/j.sexol.2009.03.008