Ladies, do you want to know a secret?

No really, I think you should stay and hear this one out.

I’m going to tell you something about our vaginas that we all should have learned as fresh young lasses before the experiences of our later teenage and adulthood years shaped the way we looked at ourselves.

Get ready for it.

Our vaginas are all completely and utterly unique.

That’s right, you heard me.

Totally unique.

And I’m not just talking about the shape and size of them (which surely goes without saying), I’m talking about the way they’re wired.

Yup, those particular spots that fire up, that get us hot under the collar, they’re all down to our individual neural wiring. And that wiring is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints.

Unlike men, who have exactly the same hot spots (no points for guessing where those are), each woman is completely different. This means there is literally no set manual that can outline a specific formula for how our bodies will respond to any given touch in any given location across our entire bodies.

No set caress or pressure is going to work for each and every woman.

I told you it was worth sticking around for.

You’re welcome.

I garnered this incredible fact from the seriously revolutionary goddess Naomi Wolf in her book Vagina and, oh lordy has it changed the way that I look at myself and my lady parts.

No longer do I feel self-conscious about not being able to reach orgasm during intercourse every single time. No more questioning whether I should like something that I simply do not. I now know there is nothing wrong with me.

It’s just the way I’m physically wired.

I promise I won’t go into further detail, than necessary, on my own vagina’s preferences, but in the hopes that you too can move beyond your own vagina holdups, I will tell you some other incredibly helpful facts about all of our downstairs parts.

Number 1. Let’s get a quick anatomy lesson.

As already mentioned above, we are all wired differently depending on the complex pathway of nerves that each of our bodies lay out differently. Some women have more nerve structure around their clitoris. For others it’s more internal (meaning that they’re more able to climax from intercourse).

Regardless of how it’s mapped out, for all of us, that neural wiring connects straight to our spinal cord (around our lower back area) and is transmitted directly to our brains. This network of nerves means that women can experience arousal from many points around their bodies, not just the more commonly discussed erogenous zones.

It really could be the back of your knee that is your undoing!

Number 2. If we’re stressed out or can’t relax, there’s a fat chance we’re even going to get aroused let alone reach climax. 

Our wiring is intrinsically linked to our autonomic nervous system. In simple terms, what this means is if we feel unsafe, stressed, tired, nervous, have anxiety about our performance sexually or just have an inability to switch off our brains, our autonomic nervous system will be on high alert.

In this state it’s hardly going to be telling us to settle into receiving something enjoyable and is more likely to tell us to get the hell out of wherever we are because we’re probably in danger.

Hear me when I say this ladies: it takes patience and careful attention attuned to our responses to get us into the space where we can totally let go.

Number 3. For women, there really is no distinction between foreplay and sex.

Yes, that’s right, foreplay was essentially created by men for men.

All arousal, whether it includes what we deem as “sex” in today’s terms or not, is sex for women.

It’s not about events that lead up to the act that get us ready, hell it’s not even the act itself. It’s the accumulation of all of it altogether that forms a sexual experience. It is actually that kiss, that caress, that look that switches on our pleasure center and signals our body to release a wave of happy, dopey love hormones.

Number 4. Our pelvic nerve not only opens us up to physical pleasure, it is a direct portal to our emotional and creative experience of the world.

Activating our lady senses produces dopamine (as well as oxytocin and endorphins), which is one of those awesome happy hormones that regulates our brain. In fact, they say that dopamine is our decision-making hormone; it heightens our ability to know what we want and to trust ourselves and our perception of a situation. You know, that thing we call intuition.

So in essence, the vagina is all women’s portal to their intuition.

Number 5. The vagina is incredibly sensitive to its emotional environment as well as its physical environment.

This of course ties into how relaxed and safe we’re feeling, but it goes even further than that. It extends to the words that are spoken about our lady parts and beyond.

Our vaginas are so entwined with our brains that condescending comments, careless slangs, specifically directed judgements and even insensitive jokes can shut down our sensory experience. To take it a step further, what we are taught to believe about our bodies and our sexuality can affect our entire sense of energy and our overall wellbeing.

Revolutionary, huh?

If you’re anything like me you’re wondering why we weren’t taught this in school. Although, I do struggle to imagine my thirteen year old self taking this information in without giggling like the school girl I was.

Whether this information was made available to us during sex education or not, imagine a world where women are not taught to believe that their sexual experience was just like a man’s. Where women were not catcalled or objectified or belittled as we so often are. Where our sexual exploration was not judged or our sensory experience not shut down. Imagine how liberating and freeing this would be?!

If you want to know more I suggest grabbing yourself a copy of Vagina. It really is the modern woman’s self-exploration bible, figuratively speaking.

In the meantime, feel free to spread this information widely. It’s time we all learned how incredibly unique our gender really is.

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Relephant read:

3 Ways to Make A Woman Feel Truly Beautiful.

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Relephant bonus:

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Author: Sarah Kolkka

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photos: flickr