kim_vopni (00:01.951)
hi susie thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode i'm really excited to chat with you and learn more about what you do and we were talking off line and i was saying how when i read through your bio and all of the amazing certifications and courses you've taken if i was a hands on practitioner i would want to have the same bio as you i love what you're doing
suzi_zobrist (00:25.9)
amazing thank you i'm really happy to be here and be talking with you kin
kim_vopni (00:29.791)
yeah thank you so maybe start out with introducing yourself in the sense of what it is that you do and what your practice entails and how it relates back to pelvic health
suzi_zobrist (00:41.72)
yes thank you for asking so i i feel like i want to take one step further back because it feels like it is important as to like well why did i come into pelvic health which i oftentimes call pelvic care and when i was thirty years old i was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and ended up having a radical historic to me and it left me really numb and disconnected from my pelvis is like i had you know
a scar i couldn't really kind of get my breath past the scar certainly not down into my pelvitdiafram and you know that impacted a lot of different areas of my life and so it began this personal journey of like how do i literally heal myself and turned myself back on again and i've been a long time yoga teacher gosh well i've been teaching yoga since nineteen ninety nine but you know before that was a student
and so you know using the tools that i had at the time and and at that time which was now more than twenty years ago now there wasn't a lot of there's so many more options for us than there were twenty years ago thank goodness and so i began to seek out different people to help me with my own healing and just the kind of person that i am got so excited about everything that i was learning in
transformation that i was experiencing that i became their students and it's been a long journey of healing and so my bio you know i have lots of different experience and so where that has led me is wanting to really be able to provide care for folks that needed and so in particular like a like a a massage therapist but i'm not doing what i call straight massage like if you need to feel good
rub down you're not going to come to me right you want to really i'm really specializing in pelvit care and so sessions are very different and every i want to say wom bodied person um has a different story that they're holding and their body and so part of the way that i work is i listen to the story and then i have all of these tools and how do i help support them for healing and so
suzi_zobrist (03:11.64)
might mean that we do breath work or there might be movement or might be hands on so there's different elements that i bring i offer scar tissue remediation and different you know hands on work and guided practices and ultimately what i'm wanting to do is to be able to teach the people who come to me how to care for their own bodies it's like i carry this body of knowledge
wisdom from my lived experience and i want to be able to share and knowing that not everything i offer will be the right for everyone right but everything i offer is like okay well try this let me know and and then they have like resources to be able to continue on their healing and to take care of themselves long term so to come back around to the work that i do i am a long time educator
and so i offer different courses and workshops and i have a sacred body school and so i offer online mentor ship sharing the resources deeper dive you know containers for people to come in and work either group or one on one and then i also offer in person one on one i think i call them emersive experience where people come and they spend multi days with me and we do deep
transformational work and that then a lows for the hands on care that is i want to say is really my gift a long time hands on practitioner but i'm not limited to that and so that's what i'm doing and very much focused on on pelvic health pelvic care uh in everything you know in regards to that
kim_vopni (05:04.991)
amazing so can you talk a little bit about the types of people that would come to you for that immersive care that you are talking about what sort of what are some of the more common i know i don't everybody has a different story but what are the common symptoms that people come to you with and how do you help them move through that through that immersive experience you talk about
suzi_zobrist (05:30.7)
well oftentimes i find that the folks that are coming to me have kind of gone the traditional medical route and what they have been i want to say prescribed hasn't really worked for them and so part of the way that i work is i want to look at whole body and what's getting missed and so i want to really hear someone's story and kind of track back to like like key moments key pieces of their store
because what's showing up in the body symptom wise might not there's more to it and so how can i listen and i have a way that that i kind of look think about it it's like through these different lenses if you will and i'm happy to share a little bit more about that these different domains that i kind of like when i'm listening to the story i start to kind of put them into these different places so i can map out what's going on and what needs to be
kim_vopni (06:19.191)
please
suzi_zobrist (06:30.56)
dressed right do we need to look at their you know experiences that they've had in their life that they're still holding emotionally is there something going on physically like their structure or an injury um and so just start it's like a map and i start to kind of piece it out and that's why every person is different and then we can start to go in and apply these different therapies or remedies or um i don't really like to use the word treatment
but these different practices that can start to address some of these missing links in their healing and so people come to me they might have you know multiple symptoms i mean like a simple i don't want to call it simple but i oftentimes will see i've done a lot of post partem care work because the a baby just pass right through that pelvis and so there might be
multiple things going on for that person and they may be had a cessarian birth or maybe there was tring and so then it's like oh well we need to address some scar tissue there might have been past experiences of difficulty or violation or wound loss that might be being held there and so if we just address i want to say that physicality like you know that's what doctors are really great at doing
then we miss some pieces right and so that's where i where i really feel like what sets my work apart from you no medical is really looking at what's missing how do we address the whole person the emotions even the spiritual pieces right it's like the whole pulling the threads of the story all the way through
kim_vopni (08:23.671)
and how would your obviously you are your yoga instructor you are a massage therapist so that's a piece of the training that you've had along with the other courses that you have taken in certifications but if we look kind of we compare it so obviously i have been preaching pelvic floor pelvic health physical therapy for years and years and years which does incorporate internal
work which is similar to some of what you would do some scar tissue work as well how does it how does it differ how would your work differ from what a physio does
suzi_zobrist (09:05.36)
well i've been to many many physical therapists for my own healing journey and really appreciate the practice and it's been incredibly helpful for me one of the pieces that i'm doing differently is the sessions that i'm offering are much longer in length there like three hours four hours five hours long so that we can go through the layers of the body
so it's like i can't just go right to where the wound is or the pain is or even like address the pelvic diafhram tissue i mean i can do that just go right to it but there's more that needs to be addressed and so i like to work more from outer to inner so i want to be able to establish relationship and trust and unknowing on a spirit level with the people that i'm working with and so that's like start
with a conversation and we start to develop trust then helping them kind of come into their body and that might be through a guided movement practice where they start to feel safer in the space that we're in as i'm guiding them so i haven't even put my hands on them yet and teaching them are helping them bring their breath back home into their bodies again then the hands on work is going to be whole
body but we're going to work again outer to inner so wanting to address like where those tension patterns are to come into the fascia of the connective tissue of the body to get into the jaw you know to work some of the places where we can get really bound and really held and help those places kind of like unfurl and open before we kind of go in and start to address what might be kind of bound tight
in the pelvic diagram because there might be a lot of trauma and wounding and it's like we have to be careful that we don't open up pandora's box there right and so i'm really listening to each person to their nervous system to what is right in doing a lot of communicating back and forth and if there's anything that like there might be a moment where it's like we've done enough and then if we have multiple days then we can pick up where we left off and we've already establish
suzi_zobrist (11:35.3)
a whole deeper level together and then i am you know doing more we could say treatment style so of someone's coming to me for in continents or pelvic oregon prolapse or might be cesari and just thinking about more specific things then i might have certain hands on techniques that i'm going to want to help you know too
to alleviate the tissue and again it takes time to really be able to go there so you know that's one of the ways that that i'm doing things a little bit differently i feel like at this stage for me it's really hard for me to do a short session you know i just want to and so in so many ways we get multiple sessions at once which is different than doing physical therapy you go on a regular basis and you've got a shorter appointment and shirt
kim_vopni (12:11.811)
hm
kim_vopni (12:23.331)
m hm
suzi_zobrist (12:35.26)
different approaches to it yeah
kim_vopni (12:38.271)
it sounds almost like a retreat so coming to you is like going on retreat with the benefit of having one on one with the with the retreat host in a way would that be fair to say
suzi_zobrist (12:48.74)
well for sure you know and then i live in a beautiful place and so there's something about traveling and being able to be in a new location and that's part of what allows us sometimes to go to those places that need healing yeah and then i feel like the other piece that i bring in is the spiritual and i this is just my opinion that i feel like we need to
kim_vopni (12:52.471)
hm
suzi_zobrist (13:18.56)
address the spiritual whatever that spiritual is for them i feel like it's we have this body and there is there's a great mystery to it and so when we're on a healing journey can we call upon something that's larger than us and it might be for some god or creator or mother earth the divine whatever works for you but it's kind of like that deep belief in ourselves and that something else is here sup
porting us and so there is this piece of the spiritual that needs to be addressed which feels a little different to me than the energetic right it's hard to differentiate but um as i mentioned earlier one of the ways that i work is through these different domains nd i've kind of added in the spiritual as one of as one of those domains and
i'm happy to mention what they are if this is a good moment um yeah so i like to look at the physical body and that's like your your muscles and your bones and the way you're built and the way you move and the exercise you do and what kind of injuries you might have just like this physicality and that's like the bio mechanics of the body then i also want to look at the biochemical bodies like what do you eat
kim_vopni (14:21.671)
please yeah
suzi_zobrist (14:49.1)
um your hormones any drugs medications um you know anything kind of in that blood health category looking at that then wanting to look at the emotional body what kind of experiences have you had in your life what's going on for you right now that's all here in this body and then wanting to look at the scar tissue so what kind of injuries
have you had surgeries uh birth but even like our energetic um emotional scars to you know it's like it leaves adhesions behind in the tissue and then i kind of think of it like it's sitting in the middle between those four pillars is that spiritual piece right there in the middle so when i'm listening to someone's story i'm gathering all of this information and then it's like what's getting missed and how do we bring this healing or this
tending to that and i have lots of different ways that i do that it just depends and you know really listen to my own spirit to about you know this is let's let's see where we go with this
kim_vopni (15:56.051)
hm
kim_vopni (16:03.351)
that's very cool so would you let's say three to five day immersive experience for a person is it is that your only person for those three to five days or do you have like does that person have a however many hours session and then leave your location potentially go stay and then potentially another person comes in or is it that one person working with you independently for that three to five days
suzi_zobrist (16:29.9)
i uh i just work with that person i just we do some work ahead of time on line they arrive and then i'm just really with them and oftentimes the sessions as i said are four or five hours long and i'm just we're just really it's like for me i think of it it's like coming into ceremony you called it a retreat which it is a retreat but i think of it it's like we're in a healing ceremony together and i'm going to hold that and then that time
we're together at the time we're not together and just be in that space for those days so i just schedule one person and you know everything else kind of falls away and i'm available and it's deeply deeply transformative for the people it feels like my greatest offering you know to to be able to do that kind of work
kim_vopni (17:25.411)
can you share uh obviously no personal details but can you share a couple of client experiences of people who've come and had that so weird when they came to you what was their struggle and what was their transformation over those three to five days
suzi_zobrist (17:43.64)
well i have a client that came to me and they
oh gosh they're also complicated right it's like i can feel like my my kind of my whole being like it's like my hands and my heart know them because i've been talking to them and touching their bodies right so and i'm very much a feeler that's kind of how i move in my in my life so i'm just kind of feeling myself taking myself to to my clients and remembering them and you know so there's
you know there was one in particular that came who was struggling with they had a radical history to me they had had before that multiple pregnancies that didn't take that and then that led to it wasn't because of that but they ended up having a radical history to me later they were experiencing tremendous tightness and pain in their pelvic
diafram muscles disconnection from their womb space they were having issues of continents hemroids and well a lot of pelvic pain as i said lost connection to their i want to say like their sexual fire it could use the word libido to as well and had really kind of lost their way and they
ame to me and we spent four days together like five hour long sessions and we just took our time and again here's like there's more story underneath it right because then it's like well then there's all of the childhood stuff that kind of arose and the different moments in their life where they felt out of their power or had felt violated in some way
suzi_zobrist (19:52.88)
all of the grief and sorrow and loss for the pregnancies the the hopes and dreams that they had of being a biological mother and and so it's like this whole like unwinding and you know there's layers upon layers which is why i always want days and hours with someone you know it's like at the end it's like what twenty four hours of hands on care that
kim_vopni (20:14.251)
hm hm
suzi_zobrist (20:22.82)
that they received and then then they came back again like a few months later because they went home and they did all of this work and this whole other piece was revealed that needed to be addressed and they came back and we did another two days together and um and you know we're still in contact and we still talk and so it's very um you know they have
suzi_zobrist (20:49.04)
just
feeling so much more liberated and connected to their self and so much more joy and happiness i've been kind of laughing because they send me i call it this sunday update they just boxer me on sundays and give me an update and how they're feeling and what they're doing and the things that they're working through and i just you know witness it and they're on their way so many things were unlocked for them and so much healing was brought to their body and it's a journey
so i always feel like sometimes on the healing path and i can say this is true for me too that i feel like if i just do it all right if i eat right exercise do the scar tissue re mediation or whatever it is do my yoga all of the things that one day i'm going to wake up and i'm going to be healed and what i'm learning is it's a journey and they're going to be parts that resolve other things that are is challenging
kim_vopni (21:42.991)
m
suzi_zobrist (21:51.7)
difficult but kind of sitting where i'm at now it's ben like what twenty twenty three years since my history to me is i might be added for the rest of my life it doesn't mean that i'm doing anything wrong this is my human experience in my human life and so i always am wanting to communicate that to everyone is that we're not failing at this right and there's going to be moments when we dive in and we do a lot of deep healing work
we have to learn to walk with it we have to integrate it and beat it and the practices that we have integrated that are working that we continue doing them when we find ourselves in a challenging moment we go i'm resourced i remember what it is that i need to do like if i feel stress or tension and all of a sudden my pelf diagram gets tight and i start having pain it's like oh yeah that's right i need to
remember to take some time and relax and bring some breath and do my movement practice or whatever it is for each person right and then we bring ourselves back again to that balance or to that equilibrium yeah
kim_vopni (22:58.971)
hm
kim_vopni (23:06.191)
that's amazing um can you talk and sort of explain what scar tissue remediation is so we've talked with other practitioners on the podcast about the influence of scars on muscle function and potentially symptoms or maybe things not working as well as they could or should be what does the like when you say remediation what's your
how do you approach it what does that mean
suzi_zobrist (23:40.28)
so when the body has an injury or it might be a surgery and there has been you know a wound basically the body needs to heal and so it lays down this adhesion this scar tissue then at some point everything is healed but that scaring that adhesion is kind of laid into the tissue and it has this ability to still kind of travel through
the connective tissue it might start to wrap itself around different organs or kind of travel along the different pathways of the of the faa on the inside of our body it's kind of like unseen and so over time and you were just saying that you've been talking about this on your podcast over time it can start to impact our structure or create tension or paint in places that may be completely unrelated to where the original scar site
was and so with the remediation and wanting to say that whatever kind of scar you have it's not too late to begin remediating it right it's it's not like we are like i've missed the window like thinking about someone who's had a cessarian birth for example might have a scar there and the scar isn't just what we see on the outside of our skin it's moving through all of the layers of tissue and maybe even coming into
um into the organs like with a cessarianscar into the uterus and so what remediation the way that i work with remediation is wanting to start to place my hands and we can do this at home on our own self to right and so anyone who's listening is like you first just bring your hands on to the scar and kind of the way i think about it is we first want to start to bring some breath in there because there's been some kind of of
severing maybe of the way that the blood and limp and nerves and everything is flowing in that area because there's been an injury so bringing breath into that space and awareness and presence then starting to without any oil or anything on the on the hands we want to start to stretch the localized area and then start to um you know take our hands further away
suzi_zobrist (26:10.12)
and create a little tension and stretch so we're kind of like unbinding any place where the tissues kind of stuck because sometimes we've got skin and fatha and add a post tissue the fat you know all these layers and when the adhesion heals it they all adhere together so we want to start to create some suppleness and some movement between the layers
of tissue again and the hands on work is really what helps kind of loosen up that binding then you can also bring in my favorite is castor oil and you could do castor oil packing or astro oil on to the area and you know i've had a lot of experience with scars just from my own scar tissue on my body and i've you know been doing hands on work a long time but it almost feed
s like um how do i want to say there's like attention or like a kind of rope feel and when you get in there with some heat and some castor oil you can kind of feel where those restrictions are and then you slowly start to tease them ease them apart we never want to force and you're not going o be able to just you know don't don't think oh i'm just going to remediate this scar and it's going to disappear again
so work in progress it's like twenty percent more movement and we can create tremendous shift and change on our body in some ways it's like we unhook the scar the way that it's traveling i kind of think of it is like you know in the corner of your house when you get those spider webs those cobwebs that go every which way that's kind of have in my mind's eye i visualize scar tissue and i'm like okay so i want to get in there and start to unhook
kim_vopni (28:01.331)
m
kim_vopni (28:07.111)
hm
suzi_zobrist (28:10.16)
of those threats right and so an example is i've had three abdominal surgeries one of them was a engine hernia repair and that's been my worst because they put mesh in there and that and then they hooked it to my pubic bone into my hip and so then my leg like my quadraset muscle and then my bladder and the muscles of my so as have all
kim_vopni (28:12.171)
hm
suzi_zobrist (28:40.06)
and of like pulled down tight right in it's kind of like a black hole in there and everything gets pulled tight there so we got to it's it's a restriction but what's happening then is it's impacting my right shoulder because it's pulling me down on that right side so then i end up having right shoulder pain and it's shortened my right leg because it's pulling that right quad so i end up with left ankle pain and so i'm constantly in there on binding and lengthening
and now someone else might go my ankle hurts but because of my experience and my knowledge i'm like my ankle hurts because my scar is pulling and so i need to loosen that tissue so that my body is not bound right and so that's part of what part of what i what i do and you know i said i see a lot of post part folk that will come in and you know scars can show up anywhere on the body and weak
kim_vopni (29:19.491)
hm
suzi_zobrist (29:40.14)
start to bring touch and sometimes when we've had a scar there's the other piece about scars is that the experience and the emotion sometimes gets bound in the tissue as well and so sometimes it's not easy to touch our own scar or while we're remediating it we might have um emotion that comes up so just not being surprised because when i first started remediating my s
after my historic to me from from the ovarian cancer i literally lost my voice for like six weeks the amount of grief that came pouring out of my scar now i was not sick it was like it landed in my lungs this grief and i was like wow that just came rolling out and even to sometimes with the remediation you might taste like the anesthesia if you had had a surgery it's like it starts to get kind of
it gets loose and you know you can taste it might be memories that surface and so um i always say that we want to take our time we're not here to just like plow through our tissue and i'm gonna mediate a scar and it's like know this is a moment to really bring great care and tenderness and if it's too much to take a break you know we're in such a culture where we just we push end
give a hundred and ten percent and i'm like just take your time do less we really need less doesn't mean less doesn't mean don't do anything we want to we want to be tending to ourselves in the way that our nervous system and our in our body our heart can can navigate uptake it
kim_vopni (31:22.451)
hm
kim_vopni (31:33.051)
hm when you're when you're talking about the scaring and i've heard and been using cast oil for many years for for lots of different reasons but knowing that actually was len heat in kimberley being with them when time this is many years ago and the talking they were the first ones who told me about about the powers of scar tissue and castor oil but the other thing that comes to mind is after a surgery so i'm thinking myself i've had a prolapse repair and many
the people that i work with have had in continent surgeries or prolapse repairs or um let's let's leave it at those two for now the most common ones and there's a belief that so we need the scaring to happen that's part of the healing that is required and there's a there can be a belief that if i now go in and do scar tissue remediation type work or break up some of that scar tissue then it will weaken that area
and it removes some of what the purpose of that scaring was was to create some tightness does that make sense that's that's a belief i'm not saying that's right but that's what an interpretation is sometimes how would you help people think of that differently
suzi_zobrist (32:51.54)
well what i can i understand what you're saying and what i can relate it to is i was just talking about my herneamesh right and so there's this real like hands off like you don't want to mess because you don't want to dislodge it and you don't want them to create a problem and i'm not talking about you know going in and scrubbing away on the you know the mesh that's there but there's these lines of tension that's what i want you to kind of think about
kim_vopni (32:59.071)
hm
kim_vopni (33:13.011)
hm
suzi_zobrist (33:22.0)
is we want i think about like a repair right like a prolapse repair we're wanting to to create some level of tension there so that the organs have support again and so in some ways we don't want to mess with that but we do want to kind of feel around to the different layers of tissue around the site because that scar is you can really move and travel
and tension also can create disconnect and numbness and restriction and our mobility so we want to kind of when we come to the tissue think about well how does this tissue want to move so we're not again not forcing like i'm a craniosacral therapist as well and so much of that craniosacral work is i mean so different than like deep tissue right is like you're literally like holding the bones and the soft gent
touch and you're like all right how does this this body want to move so when you come to a scar how does this scar want to move so you come in and you make contact with it and then you can feel for there's like an unwinding that happens it's not like your go n and trying to strip and you know dig in and you know we've got to be much more gentle with with our bodies especially mean external body
yes we want to bring care but we've we've got this tough skin on the inside of the body in the vulva vaginal rectal space is we want to bring great care and the tissue is different and it's such a like a direct connection into our nervous system and so less is more here and so it's just like gently kind of like easing i think of it's like that like the opening of a flower petal you know yeah and this
kim_vopni (35:19.611)
hm hm
suzi_zobrist (35:21.4)
as to when we the other piece i think about with scars is that if we can allow like we have a story there was a journey before the surgery for using surgery as an example and then the healing if we can begin to speak and acknowledge are pain our fears are kind of like those unspoken things while we're in contact with that scar and we're deeply it's like we're deeply
and into a part of our self that has been wounded in that it's like the body is like oh you hear me and then unwinding happens we might cry we might sigh we might have big feelings that come that's okay that's the way the body releases right so that's also part of scar issue remediation it's not just about castor oil on to
tight tissue
kim_vopni (36:23.031)
m i love that i love that explanation so much i want to move on to what is in the social media world anyway in the pelvic health world a little controversial which is one steaming this is a practice that i've never i've never done however i am intrigued by it i i think that there can be tremendous value in there and you have some strong opinions opposing
that you can be injured and you can burn yourself and there's no medical research and and i always come back to that you know i think evidence and research can be beneficial and i also think that there's also a term that you had used that i used as well as there's a lived experience and there's also um so many different practices and cultures around the world that have therapys if you will that can be so beneficial so this has always it's a practice that i've never tried
but it's always been intriguing to me and i would love to learn about why you chose to incorporate it how you incorporated into your immersives with people and dispelling some of the myths about why we shouldn't do it
suzi_zobrist (37:39.44)
yeah so
one steaming also called pelvic steaming or paranel steaming vaginal steaming is another term there's lots of different terms and then in different languages there's other terms as well for this practice and basically what it is is you are working with different plants herbs we could say that have certain properties that can be really healing for the tissue and in particular we're talking about you know
the vulvar tissue here and also survix uterus and so we can gather these herbs and make basically i think of it like you're making like a big pot of tea and then you sit over the steam and you allow those the water it's really the water the fire and the earth and the air to come and bring healing to your vulva and you know there's a lot more to it than that
but just for the listeners that have no idea what one steaming is like what is that that's kind of the basics of it but then there's lots of reasons why you might do the practice and there is also a few contra indications so like a few of the contra indications this is that so basically what the steaming is doing is it's bringing warmth moisture the healing properties of those herbs carried in that
up into the vulva up into the vagina servi and up into the uterus and so it can be incredibly helpful if someone is struggling with um menstral or regularity or painful periods or anything in that regards thinking about the uterus so as the as you cycle and the the uterus you know
suzi_zobrist (39:41.88)
is that lining and then it's left off with your with your menstralcycle this is where the steaming can be really helpful so you can steam like four days leading up to your menstral cycle and it helps prepare your womb or your uterus to release its lining and then you don't steam during menstral time and then you could steam four days afterwards so any tissue that might have been left behind through
the folds and ripples of the uterus can also help it to soften and release so that's one of the ways that steaming is used also post partem time so after birth steaming is a beautiful practice to be able to help the uterus kind of shrink back down any of the lochia or any of the you know time from birth like really helping to bring
healing and release to the uterus so that's another time that it's used now for me i don't have a uterus and so i'm using steaming more for so sometimes folks have um pelvic pain or they have lost touch with kind of their arousal centers in their tissue and so there's something really beautiful about this is like a ritual
where you're gathering your herbs and you're preparing this tea and then you're taking time to sit and to be with yourself and specifically with your volva tissue that warmth and that heat and that it's like it's like doing a son for your yone basically right and so then it brings like all the tissue like the tension that we hold in the pelvic diafram there can be great release in it all
kim_vopni (41:30.571)
hm yeah
suzi_zobrist (41:41.9)
so brings you back into connection again with this tissue so it's not just some place down there you know that you're actually like tending to to this place and so this is you know one of the ways that i that i also use the steaming and so it can be for therapeutic reasons like if you're really trying to help support the uterus in particular or it can be just really for relaxation and connection
kim_vopni (41:48.711)
hm
suzi_zobrist (42:12.82)
you can and you can steam you know somewhere between it again depends on the person but somewhere between ten and twenty minutes and there are a few contra indications one would be if you're trying if you if you think you might be pregnant or you are pregnant you're not going to want to steam if you have an i d in again because we're not wanting to disrupt
the protection that you're that you're wanting from that i u d if you have any kind of an active i fection so might be a yeast or an s t i of some kind and you have an active infection then that hot water hot steam might actually create irritation in the tissue this steaming can also be really helpful if you feel like your
microbiom of the vagina is a little bit out of balance maybe it's from a new partner or just where you are in that time of month of your cycle steaming kind also kind of help to bring you back into more neutral p h balance as well and of course you know there's not all these medical studies done on it but you know i just say you can try it out for yourself and it's going to be you know for some people
for others and different plants have different healing properties and you know it's a whole body of work that's for sure but i have found it to be really helpful uh there's something really you know how you like to go to the spot right i mean i don't know if you do but i like to go to the spot i mean massage hot tub sana steam room give me a steam room any day it's kind of like having that kind of spot
kim_vopni (43:49.871)
hm
kim_vopni (44:01.831)
m hm hm
suzi_zobrist (44:12.14)
experience more directly you know in a specific area of the body and i was surprised the first time i did it how sensual it felt i was like oh i can see that there's really something to this so if you're feeling like your fire went out and you want to kind of get in the mood this is another know another tool that it can be used in that way as well
kim_vopni (44:17.951)
hm
hm
kim_vopni (44:31.331)
hm
kim_vopni (44:39.211)
yeah
after my birth i used herbs in in my bath so i would have multiple baths each day and the heat was so soothing and i remember my mom would you know she would take the herbs and as you say steep them similar to tea and pour them into the bath water so had i known about one steaming at that time to me i feel like i absolutely would have done it and then post post off which is now
two and a half years ago m i actually use red light therapy which i liked the heat and the benefits from the red light but looking back i actually it didn't even occur to me to do it but now when i'm thinking about it i'm sort of wondering why i didn't do it i did i did herbs in the bath like i did with my post partem as well but i think it's a beautiful practice and the way you've described it i really think
again it's not going to be for everybody but it can be there can be so much healing that comes from the soothing sensations the warmth the just the time to sit and focus because it's often a part of the body that we're trying to not think about because we may have shame or trauma embarrassment or symptoms we're trying to not feel any more and and having that dedicated time as you say we spend lots
i'm going to the spot and having facials for a dedicated part of the body and you know we talk about vaginal moist raisers and estrogen for the vagina we spend so much time on our faces i think we we need and would benefit from some time with our valves and ervaginas too
suzi_zobrist (46:29.14)
for sure and just listening to you is kind of reminding me to that i always think about like our ancestors before we had modern medicine and uh that we this body of ours it's like how did we tend to our menstralcycles and to any pain or discomfort or child birth or whatever it might have been back in the day and it's like so this is what i love so much about this
ming practice is you're working with the elements of the earth and it's like we are remembering again that these herbs these plants they have healing properties we eat plants every day is our nourishment for our food we have different medicines that we use from the plant so it's just another way to apply their healing properties that's the earth with the with the water which is the steam and that heat is the fire and the way that the steam moves
the air these are our basic elements and somehow in our modern life we have gotten so far away from these basic things and so that's one of the reasons i love the practice so much is like oh yeah we need to remember and to me i think of it that's like the spiritual you know it's like we need to remember these just simple basic uh self care techniques doesn't have to be fancy
kim_vopni (47:56.511)
and i wonder i'm just you use the example of a span in my mind i'm just thinking ou know when we so in the world that i there's not as many practitioners like you that we know about anyway in and around i'm in vancouver um we know the world is becoming more aware of public floor physio which is great and as you're talking i'm thinking okay when we go to a spa for facialiser
oftentimes some sort of steam or hot cloths that go in the face to open up the pores to allow the treatment to allow the serums to allow massage or whatever it is and so i'm now i'm like wouldn't it be cool if we go to a pelvic floor appointment whether it was with you or somebody and we sat on a we had a yoni steam first to help get us connected to help
suzi_zobrist (48:47.88)
yeah
kim_vopni (48:56.391)
vite some heat and you know what i mean i think that would be that would be yeah
suzi_zobrist (48:59.74)
be amazing i know that i know that there you know you're alki about social media i know there's a few places that are doing this in particular and thinking about new york where that's part of that treatment i think i might know a few an oregon as well but it's like yeah you're like bringing in relaxation and softness and suppleness to the tissue before you do any kind of more direct work to it you know yeah it's such a beautiful
kim_vopni (49:12.431)
hm
kim_vopni (49:26.271)
hm yeah i think that sounds yeah yeah i i i think i want to go do it now want to get i want to get wedded
suzi_zobrist (49:29.26)
practice
suzi_zobrist (49:37.18)
you should and you know one thing i want to say is you can keep it simple you know there's all kinds of um you know you can get a yoni steam stool and all that fancy stuff and i just say you know keep it simple i sit on two yoga blocks and or you could sit between two chairs or you know you can create something it doesn't have to be fancy the main pieces is that um you can determine
kim_vopni (49:53.351)
hm
suzi_zobrist (50:06.74)
how hot your steam is by how close it is right you would mention that's one of the things that people talk about well yes you could burn yourself but you know we could do when we wash our hands as well so however much heat you want is going to depend on you know how how close you have that steam to your body then you also want to thinking about like a son you want to wrap like a towel or a blanket around your waist and your legs so that you hold that steam
kim_vopni (50:18.391)
hm
suzi_zobrist (50:37.12)
because if you just sit on a pot in the open air it's just going to dissipate really quickly so that's just kind of another little trick but you know don't let all of the fancy gear keep you from doing it and it doesn't even have to be herbs it could just be you know water you know just playing water but you could keep it really simple
kim_vopni (50:49.411)
right
kim_vopni (50:53.211)
yeah
kim_vopni (50:57.291)
there's many just i know we have to wrap up here but there's herbs for all sorts of different things and i'm not expecting you to list off all the different but what are some of the more common herbs that would be in like i'm just thinking of a store here in vancouver where you can go and you can purchase perennial healing herbs pre mixed i think of witch hazel i think of camameal are there some that are more commonly used in yon steam
suzi_zobrist (51:25.4)
m
well it's going to depend on that's kind of a big big question but it's going to depend on why you are using the one team right so it might be so different plants have different properties some are going to be more astringent or cleansing some might be more like anti i call them the antis you know anti bacterial antiviral you now antifungale then there's going to be some that are going to be more moisture ising
then there's some that might be more uh what do i want to say cleansing or drawing and so it just kind of depends on what you what you want and then there's a beautiful balance where you don't want to just put all these like i want to say medicinal herbs in your steam pot and then it just kind of smells like like like a bunch of weeds you also want to bring in some things that smell beautiful like lavender or row
or camomile you know and they all have their own healing properties to or like citrus orange you know something that that delights the spirits you know while while you're having the experience but you know mug ward or mother ward is a really great herb to use rasberry you know that's a well known women's herb as i said lavender rosemary um sometimes you know like a little
yeah so just thinking about about those and there's lots of people out there that are making blends i have blends that i make to and i don't keep it a secret you know you again it's i'm not here to make money off of one steaming herbs is just like i'm a resource and so you know you can go out and take a look i didn't know that i was going to work with plants i never thought of myself as an herbalist but then many years ago the plants called to me and said you need to make one steam herbs and i was like real
kim_vopni (53:27.231)
oh
suzi_zobrist (53:28.46)
okay guys of course of course i'm going to work with plants for the one
kim_vopni (53:30.131)
uh
kim_vopni (53:34.611)
yeah i love it i love what you just said where it sort of it delights the spirit and i think that's a really beautiful place to end off here with at so much of the work that you're doing is helping people find that delight in their spirit i think again and yeah i really appreciate you sharing all the amazing things that you do and thank you for joining me
suzi_zobrist (53:57.82)
yeah thank you so much it was so wonderful to talk with you today
kim_vopni (54:02.271)
thanks so much susie
