Rosie Rees is a leading sex and relationship coach, founder of crystal sex toy company Yoni Pleasure Palace and creator of the well-known 3-hour women's nude yoga workshop Naked Awakening. I’m so excited Rosie is here to help us explore naked yoga – and why it might be time to ditch the vibrator.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and more.
Broadcast: May 28, 2021
Duration: 38:40
Here is a snippit of our conversation…
Creating a safe, supportive space.
Amy: For those who aren't aware of nude yoga, can you share how you started it and why? Like, what are the benefits of doing it without clothes?
Rosie: So when I moved over to Perth, I moved in with a guy who I didn't know, but I met him on Facebook and he had a room. He called it a beach shack and it was perfect. It was exactly what I needed. I didn't realize at the time he was a nudist, he used to walk around the house naked, like it was totally normal. And I remember being so shy and just like, ‘Oh God, this is so weird’. And he said ‘When I'm not home one day, why don't you just feel what it feels like to be naked and free in your body?’ And so I did, when he was out, I would just roll my yoga mat outside in the backyard and come home from the beach and start doing a yoga practice naked. I vividly remember looking down at my body and being like ‘Ugh,’ like I really did not like what I saw. I was nit-picking and I didn't like how my belly wasn't flattened. My nipples were not the right shape or size. And I just couldn't believe it - it's like stripping off the clothes brought to the surface all these beliefs that I didn't even know were there about my body. And I was so critical. And I remember one day I started to get more comfortable in my skin, and then one day I remember a beautiful meditation I was having, it just was crystal clear that I needed to start holding women's nude yoga workshops. You always know when you're on the right path when things sell out. And when things just start going in your favour because when I started holding the workshops, women were having these transformations that I was having, that I'd had with myself. So what I think is so powerful about nude yoga is there's not many places that you can get naked in a really safe, honouring space. Like let's face it, the nude beach – even the creeps in the sand dunes, it's not fully safe. I wanted to create a really safe, sacred space for women to come to. And it's very gentle. It's very feminine. It's very slow - but I wanted them to have the opportunity to sit in a circle in a beautiful candlelit space and actually just witness all body types. Women of all ages, shapes, sizes, colours, backgrounds – it’s amazing what happens in a space of three hours. Women who are so anxious to turn up and all their fears and insecurities coming up. And then by the end of the workshop, they are walking around the space naked giving hugs to the strangers that were in the workshop with them at the start and just completely different people. It’s such a beautiful process of unveiling and being vulnerable. And then they just start to hold themselves differently.
Empowered, connected – and free.
Amy: I was going to say, when asking for feedback on how they're feeling I dare say many would say empowered and liberated – just learning to connect with your body and learning to appreciate your body, every bump and every wobble and every curve, and all of that. When you're seeing other women around you who are naked, who are looking beautiful in every way, it just must be so empowering.
Rosie: That is the word that they use. They feel empowered. They feel at peace, they feel free. They feel unrestricted. A lot of them feel like sexy as well. Like they go home and they have the best sex of their life or their best self-pleasure of their life. Or they conceive a baby. I've had three women that have actually fallen pregnant the night of nude yoga because what I believe is they go home to their partner a different woman. They go home without all the heaviness. A lot of women say they feel lighter physically, and emotionally lighter after the experience. And because they’ve just been witnessed and seen by 20 or 30 women, they're able to go home to their beloved, their partner and be fully seen by him or her. And that can lead to a really beautiful sexual experience. So even though the nude yoga itself is not a sexual event in the slightest, it's very sensual.
Ditching the vibrator.
Amy: Now Rosie, just to change the subject slightly, I believe that you threw out your vibrator in 2013?
Rosie: So I went to a Jade egg workshop in Bali… After that experience of putting the egg inside of my body and having quite a sexual awakening, when I came home to Perth, my body, my Yoni just rejected it. I didn't want that kind of masturbation experience anymore. And it was interesting. I had been using it since I was about 19 and I loved it because back when I was early twenties, I wanted to learn how to make myself orgasm because I feel like that was an empowering thing for a woman to know. And I'm so grateful for using a vibrator to learn how my body worked. However. I kept using it, and like five years down the track, you know, you need it hot, you need it faster, you need it more vigorous. And it can be quite a desensitizing experience for some women, not all women, but for me, it was taking longer and harder to orgasm. And I also felt a bit depleted after the experience and I felt a bit icky. I wanted to start using this Jade egg inside my body. I thought to myself, ‘I would really love to masturbate with a crystal wand’. And so I talked to my supplier about creating some designs and then I started using their crystal dildos and it was beautiful. It was life-changing. It still felt beautiful, and I wouldn't need that vigorous vibration to get off. And in fact it probably did take me three to six months to actually have an orgasm without a vibrator. And, I haven't looked back since - I literally haven't touched a vibrator since 2013.
There’s no going back.
Amy: I wholeheartedly agree that it's a good thing to do. I gave one up myself for some time. But one question that I'd love to ask is do you feel that there is absolutely an argument for them for some women who are not able to have an orgasm without them, or is that something that you believe can absolutely be learnt?
Rosie: I believe it can be learnt. I believe we are a little bit lazy and maybe we don't want to put in the time and effort because let's be honest, it can take longer without a vibrator. There's nothing wrong with using them. And I definitely don't want women to feel shamed out of using it, because I'm so grateful to the vibrator because it helped me learn my vulva and my body. So women who want to have their first orgasm or want to have a quickie, I call them genital sneezes! All I want women to know is that there's another kind of orgasm that's available and it doesn't mean it's better or worse, but it does come from internal pleasure. That's what I'm really passionate about - waking up the sensory nerve endings inside the vagina. The vagina is full of erectile tissue essentially. And that's what happened for me. When I started using a Yoni egg, like a month after using it pretty much every day, my partner at the time gave me my first G-spot squirting orgasm, and I literally didn't believe they were possible. I thought I was broken. I thought they were a myth. People just made up stories about them. I had a guy tried to make me squirt years and years and years ago. And then all of a sudden it started happening and I was like, ‘Okay, there's something in this’. The egg, or whatever I was using, starts to bring more muscle and blood flow inside the vagina. It starts to feel more alive. I think with women, if you do have a vibrator and you’re like ‘Oh my God, I don't want to quit my vibrator!’ I would just say the next time you buy something, mix it up. Try a different way.
