How to Find a Vaginal Steam Practitioner

AS my teacher, Keli Garza of Steamy Chick says, "Vaginal Steaming is NOT cultural appropriation, but sometimes it is..."

Steaming is both simple and complex.

On the one hand, you sit over hot water. On the other, knowing your individualized protocol of when to steam, for how long, and with which herbs, is paramount for deepened healing. This is even more so the case when seeking specific benefits such as fibroid release, postpartum healing, and increased fertility. So I recommend working with a ⁠vaginal/yoni/pelvic steam practitioner who is excellently *trained* but NOT necessarily certified. ⁠
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Now, I myself am a Certified Vaginal Steam Practitioner. I am supremely grateful to Keli Garza of Steamy Chick for the generous and expert training included in her certification courses. Without her, I may never have deepened enough with my practice to decide to start Kitara.
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However, even as a certified practitioner committed to lifelong learning, my training will never match that of some trained practitioners who are without a certification. ⁠
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Yes, steaming is a universal medicine that goes back to all lands across the globe. However my bloodline connection to yoni steaming was severed through organized religion and assimilation. In exchange for inclusion into American whiteness, my ancestors left behind an Irish “race” and their indigeneity. (Not saying all Irish immigrants did this, just saying my relations did.)⁠
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Without the ability to learn from my kin, I now seek out experts and I learn from them. I explore my own yoni steam practice - the elements, the plants, the sacral portal - for clues. Searching for ways towards an innate belonging beyond the myth of whiteness and supremacist culture. Utilizing my practice for a deepened remembrance of the earth based ways of my way back peoples.⁠
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However, through strength, fortitude, and awe inspiring resilience, some folx have an unbroken ancestral connection to the medicine of yoni steaming. These folks don’t need certifications. They have something far more precious: the wisdom that comes from generational apprenticeship. There simply is no certification that could match their training. ⁠

Placing an assumptive hierarchy on certification of any ancient practice, including steaming, is problematic because it is appropriative. It belittles or worse, criminalizes, the wisdom of those still connected to their indigeneity.

My invitation, with this post and always, is for you to work with a practitioner whose training makes you feel safe, nurtured, and held. Always question hierarchal structures, very much including one that places a certification over ancestral connection.

For a practitioner with epic steam training, including an unbroken ancestral line, check out the incredible work of Elydé Arroyo of Grounded Womb.

Please share other practitioners with intact ancestral connection to yoni steaming in the comments. May we honor and celebrate them and their training with the deepest gratitude and reverence.

With love, 

Kit