 Hello, everyone. Hi, everybody. Welcome to our vlog from the Kamasutra to 2020, where we answer your questions, your concerns, and your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So, Anvita, as always, a fascinating question for you, but this one makes me particularly happy and you'll see in a minute why. So it's from a young lady and it says, does the Kamasutra say it is a sin to masturbate in front of a mirror? Because according to Hinduism, it was a sin to have sex in water. Now, the reason that I find this question so delightful is because it just talks to me about self-esteem and body image and all those other things that are so relevant to us at this stage. It has come to us from a young woman rather than a young man because a lot of our questions on masturbation are generally asked by young men. So it's very, very nice to know when a young woman is actually exploring her pleasure in talking about it to us. Very quickly, just to answer the couple of things that she said, yes, in ancient times, it was considered simple to have sex in water or more appropriately to ejaculate in water. It was not permitted. You could have sex near the water. That was supposed to be great, but not in water. As opposed to whether the Kamasutra talks about masturbating in front of a mirror. So mirrors are a fairly new addition to our lives. In the time of the Kamasutra, which is around 300 something 80, mirrors had only just been started to be manufactured. So they were very tiny at this point and most women would have won this very tiny mirror on their thumb in a set in a ring. So I don't think it would have been possible to actually have masturbated in front of it. However, having said that, a woman's pleasure or a woman, the idea of a woman pleasuring herself would actually often have been done in company anyway. A woman's pleasure was considered very important. So it wasn't something that she would go off and do in little hidey holes or dark dingy corners or on her own. It was considered to be so important, so special, that often she would have had help to pleasure herself or to masturbate. So she would have had maybe her friends or maybe a lover or even maids depending on her social status to actually help her pleasure herself. So Anvita, as you probably noticed that in this particular email, the young lady is not really asking us whether it's okay for her to do it or not. She just wants to know what our ancient texts say whether it was simple or not. And I think that makes me believe that she is quite happy to explore her own body and that gives me a sense of real delight to think that here is somebody with such good self-esteem. What do you think? Yeah, for me, it's an absolutely powerful image because when we think about women looking into their body in front of a mirror, immediately the ideas of body and self-esteem come up for me. But she is fearless. She obviously seems to like herself and like her body. So for me, it's a really, really powerful image. I think it's an amazing image of women asking. And mostly because I think a lot of women that we know, especially women of the older age group, they've never really looked at their vagina. I know it sounds like a really silly thing to say because, you know, you're born with this body, you live with this body. But most women have never really looked at their vagina because it's supposed to be a bad thing almost. Yeah, like most women who come to our therapy rooms, a lot of them, and it doesn't matter from which culture or where in the globe they come from, they haven't seen their vaginas. And if we just step back and we think about it, in most households, vaginas are not called vaginas. They're called by some other name. They are seen as something that you should be ashamed about or they're dirty. You know, there's so many times we are sad, cross your leg and say it, don't open your legs and say it, don't show your underwear, don't show it. There is a safety element, but a strong message which is present is that this is something that you should hide. This is something that is dirty. This is not something that, you know, you should be looking at or touching or, you know, really engaging with. So they have grown up with that idea and therefore even at later ages, like 40, 50 year old women would come and say that they've never ever seen their vaginas. You're so right because a lot of times people will say, I mean, I know growing up, you know, you'd be told this is chichi and this is dirty and don't do that. That's disgusting and so on. So you're actually taught almost to hate a part of your body and it's a very important part of your body. Yeah. And directly linked to that idea is that women are not allowed their sexual pleasures or sexuality, right? So men to a certain extent can have sexual pleasure or they can have sex because it's a need or because they need to receive pleasure from it. For women it's mostly like, oh, you need to have a baby and that's why you need to have sex. So in some ways they're denied their sexuality as well. So it's not only not having a relationship with a vagina. It's also saying you shouldn't be a sexual being. Like sexual pleasure is not something that is accessible or okay for women. So this idea of actually masturbating in front of the mirror says to me, I actually want to have sexual pleasure. I'm okay with, you know, pleasuring myself and I want to engage in sexual pleasure. So that is why it's such a powerful idea. So if she was to come into your clinic, what would you say to her? Well, I don't think it seems like she has a problem. But to other women, one of the first when there is a sexual problem in women come to us, one of the first exercises that we give is we ask the women to look at the vagina. So we would actually ask them to put some pillows under their pelvic area, raise the pelvis, open their legs and get a compact mirror and look at their vagina. That's the first exercise we actually give because like I said, women rarely have seen their vaginas and they don't. There's very little psychoeducation or there's very little sex education. So many times women are unaware of what their vagina looks like, what are the different parts of it. So it's kind of like, look at it, educate yourself about it. And then further along, we might actually ask them to sit in a shallow tub of water or water and massage their vagina because that's when you get a sense of what parts like give you a rousal and what parts actually make you uncomfortable. So you have to explore it a little bit to understand it better. I guess yeah, a formal relationship almost with it, isn't it? Yeah, you need to. We, you know, take care of all other parts of our body. You know, if your hand feels dry, you say, oh, let me go and apply some cream or something like that. But if you're not looking at your vagina, how would you know that if it's dry or it needs some care or it needs some help or how are you actually going to actually know what it looks like? And if it's changing or not changing, if you've really never looked at it. So what I found fascinating was that you said that in your clinic, you would recommend that women take a little compact mirror to look at themselves. I said at the beginning that in those days back in the 300 and something 80 in the time of the Kamasutra, women had only very tiny finger rings with sorry, thumb rings with a little mirror in it. And they couldn't have used it. But maybe they actually did use even that tiny little mirror for pleasuring themselves after all. Why not? I know it's just because I guess at that time there was also this whole idea that pleasure was a good thing and a woman's pleasure was encouraged. So I guess they would have had a lot of other ways and means of getting there. Now interestingly, talking about the fact that women never look at their vagina or a lot of women don't add a group of young girls with me the other day. And one of them said to me, oh, you know, I'm not sure that I like that area at all because it's much darker than the rest of my body. And I said to her, well, actually everybody's is like that. And all the girls in that room were actually shocked because they'd all thought that about themselves thinking that something was wrong with them because their vagina is darker than the rest of their skin. But they didn't know that it was like that for everybody. And I was just thinking how sad I mean that we've, you know, there are so many of these fears that you grow up with, which is why I guess you're hearing all this stuff about vaginal surgery, sorry, cosmetic surgery for the vagina and things. That is becoming a big problem, the cosmetic surgery for the vaginas. And that is always problematic because when it comes to, you know, there's no, there are no models and both men and women fear that there is something wrong with their vagina or their penis. So many times we've had people come and say, oh, but my vagina doesn't look like other vaginas or my penis is crooked or it is longer or shorter or wider or color, you know, like the color you're saying every vagina, what I really want to say is every vagina and every penis looks different. There is no set model, there is no perfect type, there's nothing like that. And we always recommend people to go to this website called The Great Ball of Vagina, where they actually make casts of different vaginas and you can see how vaginas come in all shapes and sizes and, you know, so there's no color, but they come in all different shapes and sizes. So sorry, talking about the different types of vaginas and things, is there something that we could give as a piece of advice to try and understand your own body a little bit? I mean, is there something there that we would say, well, you know, if you find this, then this is what you should do or something? As not really, obviously, as you start exploring your vagina, one is that, you know, women need to understand that there are four different parts that there is clitoris right at the top, which is get stimulated and you get arousal. And then there's the urethra from which the urine comes out and then the vulva in vagina, which is the same, which is a much bigger opening. And a lot of times women are very scared that how can a finger or a penis or a baby come out of this thing? And, you know, it's only when you explore that you realize it's a muscle and it will expand and contract, depending on the need of the body. And then the fear goes like they're so scared sometimes, so really educating sometimes it's really important. But like I was saying, the massaging of the vagina helps you understand to have some idea of is the vagina wet? Is it dry? Does it need some lubrication? Are they, you know, is it hurting at certain points? You might have like injured it for some reason. So all those things you would only experience if you were actually touching it and understanding it. You know, a few a couple of years ago, no, I think about five years ago in India, they brought about something called the vagina lightening cream. And I mean, I cannot even begin to tell you what how cross that makes me just to think about it. But basically the advertisement around it was that if your sex life is not very good, and if you apply this vagina lightening cream, everything will be absolutely wonderful and your home life will become blissful. Yeah, well, I hope it doesn't exist any longer, because I can tell you now that your vagina looking fairer or whiter is not going to impact your sex life. Like it requires something very different than that. And that's kind of the lack of education, right, that we can fall for something like that. And well, fortunately now even the fairness creams are no longer being called the fairness cream. So hopefully this cream doesn't exist in the market still. Absolutely. So in closing, Anvita, one last piece of advice. One last piece of advice would be if through this video, we actually can have few women look at their vaginas, that would be amazing. And once you look at your vaginas, if you have questions or you build a relationship with your vagina, or you explore it further, we are here, and we're happy to hear what you felt, what you saw, or if you have further questions, please do write them in. So as always, we'd like to say that exploring your body, exploring your pleasure is a great thing. We are not over here to tell you whether you should or you shouldn't. That is entirely your decision. And always remembering that if you are going to do something so long as you are not being aggressive or violent, either to yourself or to your partner, we encourage you to actually explore your sexuality and certainly get more familiar with your body. As always, on the YouTube channel, like, comment, and subscribe, and send us your questions on info.seema.anand at gmail.com. And don't worry if you can't remember that, the email appears a little bit later at the end of the video. And we'll see you here next week. See you next week.