Women have moved on from their $15,000 gold vibrators and vaginal steaming appointments, and have gotten on board with the latest Gwyneth Paltrow-approved trend: $55-66 crystal yoni eggs that come in a variety of sizes.
These yoni eggs that go inside the vagina are suggested by Paltrow’s team to have special healing powers. And between its appearances on The Bold Type and The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the yoni egg, which according to Goop, supposedly “activates and strengthens your vaginal muscles” and “increases sexual energy, health, and pleasure,” are clearly having a real moment.
“It’s almost like women had been whispering about it, and I finally caught the wind,” 37-year-old sexuality and women’s empowerment coach, Lynn Wolfbrandt said.
“I bought my first one online, I remember using it and not really understanding what I was supposed to feel,” she continued. “It wasn’t until I got a medium-sized nephrite jade yoni egg and signed up for an online course on the jade egg that everything started to click. The first time I used the new egg was mindblowing. I really felt like I was on ecstasy afterward. My entire state of mind had shifted.”
“I’d spent so many years having casual sex, or just throwing a tampon in my vagina with kind of no regard for her. This blessing was the beginning of an intentional relationship with my vagina,” she added.
Wolfbrandt is only one of thousands of women who have started the yoni egg practice since it’s debut on Goop in 2017, of which the company sold 3,000 and almost immediately sold out, according to The New York Times. And ever since then, hundreds of new yoni egg suppliers from traditional sex shops to Amazon and Etsy have become available, which have sold thousands more of eggs and has allowed women from all over the world to connect with their vagina.
But as Sara Coughlin, a writer for Refinery29 pointed out, “if you push past the curtain of contemporary wellness marketing, you’ll find that the [yoni egg] has ancient roots — and means more than Goop would have you believe.”
For over a millennia, women have used the yoni egg to strengthen and tone their vaginal and pelvic floor muscles. With the practice even being dated back to ancient China, where women used the yoni egg to “access sexual power, awaken sensuality and maintain amazing health into their old age,” according to yoniegg.com. But over the past few years, as the new crystal healing trend hit the world hard, the yoni egg has come back hotter than ever. And although crystal healing energy as Jaya Saxena, a writer for Elle says, “is probably a load of bullshit” — it’s a load of bullshit that she and many women around the world have grown to love and appreciate.
“Crystals have become a part of the modern American obsession with wellness. It’s concept that stemmed from what was probably a healthy distrust of modern medicine and, combined with money, miseducation, and cultural appropriation, resulted in a lot of white women doing some weird things to their bodies in the name of self-care,” Saxena explained in her article on the Goop jade egg.
The sexual wellness industry has also grown in recognition in most recent years, especially women’s sexual health, which is expected to be worth $32 billion this year, according to a recent study by the market research firm Technavio. Making it easy for the yoni egg to become the new accessory that women 18 and up will continue to add to their nightstand. Just as 18-year-old mother, entrepreneur, and founder of Mama Solaris, Sia Natara and 24-year-old psychology student Moon did.
“In my practice, it has been an incredible enhancing tool in my sexual and creative life,” Natara said. “After giving birth to my son, I completely lost touch with my yoni [vagina]. Being that I have always been a very sexual person, it was disappointing to find that for months after giving birth, I didn’t enjoy sex very much. I also found it very difficult to channel my creative flow, and as an artist, that was devastating. After implementing the yoni egg into my self-care practice my sex life was enhanced in so many ways, and my creative life was too. I was able to use it to work through unseen blockages and enrich my daily life. For that, I am so grateful.”
For Moon, the yoni egg became a tool that helped in her healing process from emotional trauma caused by her parents and a breakup. “The year before getting my yoni egg I went through long periods of anxiety and depression. I developed a lot of unhealthy coping mechanism and habits,” she explained. “I think my yoni egg was a catalyst to this journey of healing that I’ve embarked on where I’m working on healing emotional wounds and unlearning those unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms. I’m also, unlearning self-concepts that led to my traumatic breakup and replacing them with healthy ones.”
The yoni egg experience is unique to each of its users depending on their intentions for using it and how it affects them when they’re not using it. But the process relatively stays the same, according to gemstoneyonieggs.com. Usually beginning with a person giving their egg a bath in salt water and meditating with it, and then inserting it into their vagina. Typically, a person then connects with their yoni [vagina] and taps into their sexual energy through breathing and squeezing exercises while also focusing on themselves, their body, and their sexual energy. But since the yoni egg practices rise, many yoni egg users and endorsers have been frowned upon by sexual wellness experts and gynecologists, who have publically disapproved of the practice, including Paltrow, who was mocked for selling yoni eggs with unsupported claimed benefits on Goop.
At the time Paltrow debuted the yoni jade egg on Goop, a California gynecologist wasted no time calling Paltrow out on the trend, saying the idea was “the biggest load of garbage.”
“Nothing says female empowerment more than the only reason to do this is for your man!” Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco wrote in a blog post addressed to Paltrow. “And then the claim that they can balance hormones, is quite simply, biologically impossible…As for female energy? I’m a gynecologist and I don’t know what that is!?”
Last year in September, Paltrow’s site, Goop even faced a $145,000 lawsuit which she settled over concerns involving some of the claims made about the yoni egg, according to Vanity Fair. And ever since the lawsuit, more gynecologists have voiced their disapproval of the yoni egg practice.
“Many people have this idea that if it’s natural it must be good, useful, and not harmful,” Lauren Streicher, MD, an associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, and author of Sex Rx: Hormones, Health and Your Best Sex Ever told CNN. “To which I always say, arsenic is natural, but that’s certainly harmful.” But thousands of women have continued to use the yoni egg and have even found the experience to be safe and invigorating as long as it’s used properly.
“The safety of it depends on whether or not you use it properly. For example, lifting a 20-pound weight isn’t inherently dangerous. But if you have bad form and push your body past its limit, you can hurt yourself. Same goes with the yoni egg. It’s important that you use it intuitively and listen to your body. It’s not made to be worn for long amounts of time or to be used to lift extreme amounts of weight like you may see trending on the internet. It’s meant to be a gentle, yet powerful practice,” Natara said.
The yoni egg may not be a tool for every woman to use, but one will never know if it’s right for them unless they try. And for the many women that have, they have found the experience to be life-changing. Including Wolfbrandt who has been using the yoni egg for over four years and says that it was her first step on a path of a sovereign sexuality and less dependence on partners.
“Yoni eggs are tools that empower women, truly, because they connect us with our sexual energy and pleasure. They help us become sovereign, more self-connected, and less dependent on someone else to please us,” Wolfbrandt said. — And when it comes down to it that’s what it’s all about, connecting with yourself and finding and awakening your inner goddess. — And who wouldn’t want the chance to express and connect to their inner goddess!?
This is really interesting, might have to look into it!