Women’s Sexual Organ Health

In the early 1960’s a woman who was in the yoga class I ran in Amersham approached me. She looked quite nervous and tentative and told me her doctor had just found a growth in her vagina and she asked whether I knew anything that might help deal with the growth. Her doctor had told her he wanted to watch what happened and would examine her again in a month.

I had never dealt with anything that serious before but mentally thought about what I knew about the yoga postures. Something I had observed often when women used the head stand or the shoulder stand was that not only does it drain some of the blood flow to the legs and hips, but when some women come out of the posture their genitals make a farting noise as air has been taking in by being upside down. I used to tell the class that that was normal and healthy.

The upside down postures I realised had a very important role in the yoga use of the head stand, for traditionally it was said to be done for three hours a day for three months. Then after that time it had made major changes in the physiology and psychology of the person. Of course the past yogis did not live in a world dominated by the need to work 8 hours a day to earn money. So they had all day to use the postures as many of the practices were designed take hours to do, so I only managed to get the headstand up to 30 minutes and the practice of Uddiyana  (raising the abdominal wall upwards,  many times  while holding breath after exhalation) 1200 repetitions a day. At the time I was working full time to earn enough to clothe and feed my family.

Having myself experienced the changes the upside posture does I suggested to the woman, who I will call Jane, to use the headstand, which I knew she was capable of, for at least ten or more minutes a day. I honestly didn’t know what difference it would make, but it was the best I had.

A month later Jane approached me again and this time she told me that the doctor in his examination had told her that the growth was not getting larger, which if it had would have been a bad prognosis. I had the feeling that Jane now had a sense that she was now no longer feeling her body was working against her and she had a tool to work with.

A month later Jane arrived telling me she had just seen her doctor and he had told her that the growth had disappeared. She was looking radiant, and I was feeling what wonders the body can do with being upside down.

The headstand.                          The shoulder stand.                          An example of a near practice of Uddiyana