Name: Ms Doreen Nyiramugisha
Role: Wellness Coach – Wellness Together, kenya
QN: What does Sexual wellness mean to you as an African Woman?
It means embracing mindfulness practices that enhance vulnerability, heal pleasure blocks, and engaging in the pursuit of knowledge and the skills needed to make informed, healthy decisions about my sexual self as a holistic embodiment.
Understanding holistic sexual wellness encourages me to be sex-positive and empowers me to make healthy choices that align with my values when it comes to dating, relationships, and sex. I have found deeper intimacy arises from owning who i am as a sexual person.
Holistic sexuality essentially breaks away from the notion that sexuality means “feeling sexy” in a societal way. It doesn’t mean six-pack abs, expensive lingerie, fancy wine, and weekend getaways. Those things are major perks, of course, but sexuality is in the way we laugh, the way we move, the way we love and show love. It’s every part of our being, and we can embrace that wherever, whenever, and with whomever, including nobody but ourselves. I call this Orgasmic Living.
When we find ourselves in a space where we’re unable to express our true sexual nature or
needs fully, it can lead to repressing emotions that find another route to seep out of our skin and manifest in different ways. And usually that doesn’t do us, or anyone around us, much good. As Carl Jung wrote ‘the source of all evil is not our shadows but in the repression of our shadows’, and it’s important to keep an open heart when we look deeper at ourselves, i have found
Do i prioritize sexual wellness?
Yes
How?
By staying body wise. As an African woman i still harness the voice within, that sixth sense about my body’s wisdom and still use my intuition to connect with nature’s healing herbs.
By curating wellness rituals that help me find me, heal blocks to my pleasure like shame, guilt, self-judgement is how wellness leads me. Using sensual dance, guided energy healing meditation while I Steam my vagina with cleansing, purifying, nourishing, and calming herbs that i personally grow, tending to my womb and honouring my menstrual cycle as was passed down to me from puberty, I live and move confifenyly, stay balanced, grounded, but mostly helps me return to my body’s wisdom and sensations that guide my desire. I use seed cycling, essential oil cycling, adaptogens to keep my sex hormones balanced. I am a sensualist and allow myself to infuse this energy in all my life’s aspects
Connecting with and integrating my shadow self is a gift my 20s allowed me. I remember seeking knowledge from a sex therapist when i was 25 years just to add on to the Senga vibe i had already gotten. The enchantress in me sought depth. This has seemed essential in helping me truly understand what fuels my desires, relationships and need for pleasure, and what’s been imprinted into my/our subconscious. As there’s still so much inequality in sexual expression, creative freedom, ignorance about self pleasure and people pushing down what was intended to help set us free, it’s vital that we break the stigma and talk more openly about it together. Without a healthy sexual relationship to self, we can’t have a conscious relationship or partnership with someone else. We need to be able to understand what we like, what we don’t like, and how to communicate this mindfully and respectfully, just like in any other area of our lives, and not to settle when our fundamental needs don’t get met. And of course, compromise and patience are key to helping us move through these new territories, if we are open to exploring.
Over time, in my holistic sexual wellness practices and teachings, i can confirm that as women rising in this area, denying and repressing our desires aren’t positive ways to live, but instead we can choose to reclaim power over our inner world by connecting with our feelings and cravings. We can try to embody the very essence of our divine self, and in my case as a woman, the limitless depth of the divine feminine. Delving deeper into womanhood and this feminine energy has been an incredible eye opener and something that my soul calls for more of. Tapping into unseen, sensual, erotic, unspoken and fierce energies that lay dormant inside of us is a powerful act and one that I’ve found we as women explore with increased self-love, age, through deep conscious intimacy, by ignoring judgement, and also after processing significant emotional pain. And this is why I love being a part of my women’s circle called Sensuous Woman, because when we share together it’s pure fire, vulnerability, openness and laughter.
Today, I embrace my sexuality on all levels and this energy flows and expands creatively, curiously, playfully, softly and fiercely into other areas of my life as well. I am also fortunate enough to have had a strong, empowered female role model in my mother when I was growing up and have always been encouraged to go where my sensuality and creativity have teased me. As soon as i announced to her the magical coming of my menses, she sent me to my elder and married sister who had knowledge passed down to her from our Senga (paternal auntie) about the sacredness of a womb. It is her that taught me the parts of my beautiful vagina and how to nurture them, the shape of my womb and her divine creative purpose, why i bleed and how to nurture my bleed. She made me feel like being a woman is divine and it has felt that way since. I grew up feeling powerful for possessing an organ where I & God create, where pleasure emanates, where vulnerability sits and for that, i have never allowed anyone to shame or ridicule me about being a woman but made everyone who came by through an orgasmic experience feel like they have encountered heaven on earth. That knowledge and power i promise to pass down to the women after me, and those around me.
QN: What has been your biggest Lesson or realization about sexual wellness?
Embracing pleasure as a revolution and it was a real discovery for me… Agency, self-soothing, co-regulation….aaahhh….game changers.
Holistic Sexuality helps women explore and create a space—in a relationship or not—for their authentic and genuine flavor of their own erotic desire and pleasure.
Overall, conscious intimacy, orgasm and sex are healers. They’re great for our self esteem, they decrease depression, improve our immune system, can lower blood pressure, burn calories and help us sleep better.
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Biography:
Doreen has always unapologetically followed her passion and was lucky to discover what she loved earlier in life. While working as a Tv and radio host, she spent most of her days talking and connecting with people from different walks of life.
After her media days, Doreen ventured into nutrition because of her love for good healthy food. It was clear for her audience and those around her that she was drawn to all things wellness. Organically she grew into her role as a wellness coach.
Her start can be described as unconventional. After leaving Uganda where she was born and raised, she found herself in a completely different environment, which made her approach to wellness pivot to ‘sex, sexual health and hormonal imbalances’ in order to help break the taboo and silence culture in an atmosphere that hides away from sexual awareness dialogues.
Doreen’s path was also influenced by her personal experiences and years of practicing what she preaches. She believes one cannot deliver others when he/she needs delivering. You can’t give what you don’t have. Having a close relationship with herself helped her master her highs and lows, learn to set boundaries, build mental blocks to thrive.
Today, she spends her time sharing nutrition, sex, sexual health and hormonal imbalances resources with busy women and young girls.