Yoni Massage

"Name what you're letting go of as you undress," she instructed softly.As I slipped off each piece of clothing, I spoke into the space: “With this shirt, I release the memories of my ex. With this skirt, I let go of my body shame. With this necklace, I surrender my need to be perfect.” One by one, I set intentions, until I was bare, ready to sink into the massage nest she’d prepared.The room in her mountain home was filled with a warm breeze that poured in through the open windows, caressing my skin. Tibetan chants and incense filled the air, small altars were scattered throughout the space. My body was treated as sacred, worshiped like a Goddess, gently massaged with oils by another Goddess in the temple she had created. She pressed into points of tension until they melted. My only task, as instructed, was to remain present—and for once, that came naturally.

Yoni Massage, a tantric bodywork ceremony centered on the female body, meant to release any blocks standing in the way of my full potential for pleasure. Yoni, a Sanskrit term meaning “sacred temple,” reclaims the female reproductive organ as a source of divine strength. To explore my sexuality in such an intentional, mindful way felt like a gift I hadn’t even known to wish for.

The journey here was long and winding. My earliest sex education included the Soviet Encyclopedia for Girls, followed by glossy magazines with their empty promises about how to be desirable, how to ‘please.’ I thought I was learning a lot. It felt so forward-thinking and cool to learn how to be a sexy chick and get the best out of life. I learned that porn actresses were always faking their screams because, apparently, it was impossible for women to experience vaginal pleasure and that really cool girls use vibrators for external stimulation and ask their lovers cunnilingus. This, however, taught me little beyond the basics of external pleasure. It was a decade later, in Thailand at a school called Agama Yoga that I rediscovered my body in a spiritual light, bridging sexuality with something greater than myself. I learned that spirituality doesn’t have to be separated from ordinary pursuits, including power, money, relationships, and intimacy. Tantric teachings suggested that pleasure could reach beyond the physical—that we contain a transformative energy that can take our consciousness from the lower chakras of survival and desire to those of the heart and all the way to a divine consciousness. 

In my mind, these ideas sounded revolutionary, but my body had only known the pleasures of vibrators and cunnilingus, and even so reaching a clitoral orgasm felt like random luck. Internally, I didn’t really feel anything most of the time. I became intrigued by the idea that I could find pleasure that ran deeper, and through careful guidance, I arrived here—laid out before Suriya, a seasoned tantric yogi.

From the moment I entered, I felt welcomed by her presence—soothing, gentle, fully grounded.

I was nervous but she reassured me that there were no expectations from me, and that I would never receive things that I didn’t want. We started our ceremony with a consecration, surrendering ourselves to the divine consciousness. Removing every item of clothing as though leaving all worldly concerns and insecurities behind.

Once I lay fully exposed, her hands covered me in warm, fragrant coconut oil. Her only instructions were to breathe, to let go, to simply receive. “This journey is yours alone,” she said softly, “there’s nothing to give back.” Her touch treated my body with a reverence that dissolved my anxieties. We spent nearly two hours in full-body massage before she began to focus on my yoni, the least explored part of me. Her touch treated my yoni as a sacred temple, true to its name. But what touched me more than her hands was the atmosphere accompanying every touch - exceedingly kind, gentle and unconditional. I could feel that nothing was needed from me, there was no hurry, no desire, no lust. Pleasure had always felt like an exchange - here is your cunnilingus, afterwards we’ll need to switch; I am done already, sorry you didn’t finish in time.

As her hands moved to explore pressure points around my abdomen and pelvic floor, she guided me to different vaginal pleasure spots, ones I’d never heard of—K - for kundalini, P - for posterior fornix, A - for anterior fornix (or more deliciously, Amrita - the Sanskrit word for the nectar of immortality), and the infamous G-spot as well as the cervix. Each had its connection to energy centers within the body, each with its own element—earth, water, fire, air. Gently, she explained that our yonis often store tension, even numbness, from past traumas and emotional burdens.

Suriya used one of her hands to move across my body, from my yoni upward to my throat in order to spread the energy all across my body rather than keeping it localized. Her other hand massaged my pleasure spots, where I began to feel sensations, but not pleasurable ones by any means. Only some pain and a great deal of shame. At the same time, I found myself drifting into an altered reality, where my mind wasn’t very active and all the parts of my body felt as though they were vibrating in unison. I began to see visual distortions, as though Suriya was morphing into figures from my past, even taking on my grandmother’s face, the one who’d banished me for being too free, too sexual.

“You’re judging me,” I whispered.

“I’m not judging you,” she replied gently, “but it’s alright if you feel that. Let yourself feel it fully, dive into whatever emotions come up.” Given permission, I felt my own anger rising, along with the vulnerable ache of shame, exposing wounds I hadn’t known still bled. Her voice was soothing: “This is Shakti energy. it’s a healing energy, just let go, surrender, let her flow and go where it needs to go, just get out of the way, trust it.”

Gradually, I felt myself surrendering to the sensations—moving from pain to warmth to pleasure that wasn’t just physical but something vaster, encompassing, like a psychedelic experience. The teachings of Agama began to make sense in a visceral way: the pleasure rising beyond my body, bringing a sense of cosmic oneness, a connection to something beyond myself, beyond sexuality. Bliss and love pulsed through me with a rhythm that erased my boundaries, filling me with energy that was both intimate and boundless.

When Suriya stopped, and sat by me in meditation, a peaceful quiet filled the room. I still felt expansive and needed time for my energies to settle, like a transition from sleep to wakefulness. As I slowly gathered myself, Suriya spoke again: “there is one final ritual–name the new qualities you’d like to take with you as you put your clothes back on.”

As I reached for my first piece of clothing, I murmured, “With this, I carry the knowing that love and bliss are my birthright, a freedom always within me…”

This was in 2018 on Koh Phangan, Thailand, with Suriya Nikko.