This eye-opening episode, wrapping up our special Wednesday episodes honoring businesses that are making an impact on the community, explores the truly uncomfortable subjects that are in our lives and making them comfortable for anyone to discuss. Our guest, Paula Bruckner, owner of My Vagina Coach, explores the struggles she had with personal issues affecting her excretory system, and how it became her mission to help women her age and older with the struggles of feeling embarrassingly uncomfortable. By bringing light to this subject, she becomes one of the most transparent guests on the episode to share why we can start the conversation of taking care of ourselves and making things normal for all of us to open up amongst each other.

Guest Bio

Paula helps Generation X women feel confident to be able to exercise without judging themselves so they can improve pelvic floor functioning through movement. Through her offerings with her business, My Vagina Coach, she provides personal training (through guided in-person and virtual classes), along with on demand opportunities that work on a wide variety of issues relating to issues that may be involved with this area of the body.

@Myvaginacoach on Instagram

YouTube Website: https://youtube.com/@pmb152

Business Website: https://myvaginacoach.offeringtree.com/

• What Is a Death Doula? – Cleveland Clinic (https://health.clevelandclinic.org/death-doula/) - This article explains more of the concept of a death doula, which was discussed towards the end of our conversation with our guest. Learn more about the benefits of having emotional support towards the end of life for anyone that may be struggling.

Visit Our Website: https://speaking-from-the-heart.captivate.fm/

Visit Our Business Website: https://www.yourspeakingvoice.biz

Support The Mission Of The Business! Donate Here: https://speaking-from-the-heart.captivate.fm/support

Intro/Outro By: Michael Dugan, Podcast Host: Voice4Chefs

Welcome to the podcast where relationships, confidence, and

determination, all converge into an amazing, heartfelt experience.

This is Speaking From The Heart.

Welcome back to episode number 39 of Speaking From the Heart, and

this is the final episode that we'll have on a Wednesday for now that we've

been featuring several businesses that have been truly impactful in

the ways and the unique opportunities in which they've been able to help

serve the community as a whole.

No matter where you live, no matter where you're at, we can always think

of opportunities of businesses that are making a big difference and speaking

from the heart, and I really want to thank all of the Wednesday guests that

we've had to be able to complete this grand opportunity to give back, and I

thank everyone that has ever supported this podcast to get to this point.

It is deeply, imaginally, appreciative for all the things

that you have supported me in.

Today we have Paula Bruckner.

Paula helps Generation X women feel confident to be able to exercise without

judging themselves so they can improve pelvic floor functioning through movement.

Through her offerings with her business, My Vagina Coach, which we will definitely

talk about right in the beginning of why I have such a unique take on her business

name, she actually provides unique opportunities through personal training

in person or virtually along with her on demand opportunities to work through

a wide variety of issues that might be involved with that area of the body.

Now, let's be real.

All of us go through these sort of situations in our lives, and the

very things that we talk about are probably the most uncomfortable things

that we would never imagine talking about with someone else, but me as

a podcast host, I will say this.

This was one of the most open conversations I have ever had about

my fully functioning body, and even though I giggled so much with this

episode and even some of the people I have shared this episode with, I

will not deny for one second that all of us have gone through these sort of

situations on our own, but the fact that Paula has lived it and is willing

to help others defines, a whole new generation of people that can be supported

no matter how uncomfortable it is.

That is what truly makes people speak from the heart because

they need this sort of help.

With that, let's go to the episode.

All right.

I'm here with Paula Bruckner.

Paula, thanks for sharing your heart with us today.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

I have really enjoyed just our conversation before this, and yes, full

disclosure folks, I probably will be saying vagina a lot today because that

is the name of her business, My Vagina Coach, and I know that I am going to

be ridiculed for the rest of my life about this episode, but that's okay,

because I said to Paula even before we started that I'm okay with it.

I'm just a male just living in a female world right now, and that's okay with me.

That's right.

You're going to do great.

I am, and you're going to do great too, so Paula, I want to

let the audience know a little bit about how you got to be able to start

this business because they know a little bit about it and what you do.

Mm-hmm.

But can you elaborate on how you got to this point where you wanted

to help people with the pelvic area?

Yeah, so 2021.

I had a very severe pelvic floor problem myself and it

was actually not in my vagina.

Oh, okay.

It was in my rectum, so this is something that it can affect men too-

Yep.

Because everybody, everybody has a rectum.

Unless you have a-

Everybody poops.

That's what the book I read growing up, so-

That's right.

Yep.

So everybody poops except for me at that time.

Mm.

So I had to go to a lot of pelvic floor physical therapy.

It was a really traumatic time for me because I was just feeling sick

all the time, and I was not able to do the things that humans do, and so

I had to go to pelvic floor physical therapy, which I didn't even know

was a thing until I was doing it.

I was going three times a week and not to get too graphic, but they massage

you internally so that the muscles can relax, so I don't do that because

I'm a personal trainer, but you can do it to yourself, and I've had to

learn how to do it to myself too.

Anyway, it was a time when I just really felt alone and I didn't feel

like anybody had ever gone through that before, at least anybody that I knew or

anybody that would talk about it, and I'm sure lots of people go through it.

The thing that I have, I think is like the statistics are a third

of women who give birth have it.

It's a fissure.

It's really incredibly painful, and so healing from that, my muscles

all tensed up in my pelvic floor, so you have a pelvic bowl inside

your pelvic muscles, and the bowl is made up of different muscles.

There's actually, I can't remember the exact number; it's either 25 or

28 different muscles down there, so there's a lot of teeny tiny, intricate

parts and some of mine were seized up.

Coming out the other side of that, I thought, "Oh my gosh, I really need

to help other people", because it was horrible and I don't want anybody else out

there to feel like they're alone and that they have to do this alone because one,

it might be taboo or two, their partner's sick of hearing them cry about it, which

my partner was definitely like, I've had enough, like this is too much information.

This is too much every day, but it's consuming when that's when

you're sick and you're struggling with just simple body functions.

It's horrible, so anyway, wanted to help people as much as I could.

While all this was happening, I was taking my 200 hour yoga teacher certification,

and right after that I launched into my personal training certification, and

so I could work one-on-one with people and then shortly thereafter, I got a

certification for corrective exercise for pregnancy and postpartum, which I

don't typically target postpartum women.

I can work with them.

My specific target is pelvic floor.

I would like to mostly work with women my age and a little bit older women who

are still peeing their pants and their kids in college or their kids in high

school and they just haven't taken the time for themselves to rectify something

that the medical world is telling them is wrong with them, and telling them they

need a cure for, which is a diaper or a period panty that you're peeing into, like

they're just telling you, "Oh, it's okay.

This is just something that's going to happen."

It's actually not okay and there is something you can do about it.

My mission is to help women who are like me, one, to be there for them if they need

a friend or somebody to talk to, whatever; I mean, I call them personal training

sessions, but you can sit there and talk to me for the whole hour if you want to.

Can I ask you a question about that?

Sure.

Because that's really interesting to me that there's only

28 muscles really around that area that make a big difference into

all the things that you listed and-

Mm-hmm.

I was sharing with you some of my family members, more specifically my mom-

Mm-hmm.

That has gone through a lot of different things

in her life more recently.

Mm-hmm.

And I know that it can be very uncomfortable.

Yes.

And I shared with you about even being uncomfortable even talking

about this because I'm a male.

Right.

Right.

But, but at the same time, even with the gender differences, I

know that this is something really important and it's often overlooked, so-

For sure.

Is there something that even as somebody like me that's maybe

healthy in that area, and even thinking about what some of the things are

that we could do, are there exercises essentially that we could practice?

Yes, so first, just to kind of touch on what you're talking

about, if you're a dude or if you're a lady, whichever one, if

you're experiencing constipation, or if you're peeing your pants,

because men can pee their pants too.

If you're experiencing erectile dysfunction, any of those things, they're

all considered pelvic floor dysfunction, and there are exercises you can do.

The one that has gotten the most press over the last 10

to 20 years has been Kegels.

I'm not a fan of Kegels.

I do not suggest anybody I know do Kegels, so if there's only one

thing that you retain from this conversation or this podcast about

vaginas is stop doing Kegels, please.

Mm.

They are appropriate for some people, but for most

people, they are not appropriate.

The woman who is peeing her pants specifically, a kegel is something that

can potentially worsen the situation.

We have muscles that are hypertonic and hypotonic.

The hypotonic muscle is the muscle that's too relaxed, and sometimes

people are peeing their pants because it's hypotonic, it's too relaxed, but

usually the case is that they're peeing their pants because it's hypertonic.

Imagine this, your pelvic floor, you're holding a brick.

As the day goes on, you're holding this brick because

your pelvic floor is hypotonic.

It's too tight, so it's already gripping and try to hold this

brick, and along comes a sneeze.

That's like throwing a second brick on really quickly.

What's going to happen?

Your muscles are already fatigued, they're already gripping, and so when that

stressor comes on, the second brick or the sneeze or whatever it is, the jump,

the cough, that's when the pee comes out because the muscles can't get any tighter.

A lot of times if people are doing Kegels, it really feeds into that because they

think a Kegel is just a contraction.

If you're doing a real Kegel, you need to contract and then you need to relax for

at least twice as long as you contracted.

Mm.

So the elasticity of the pelvic floor is really what we're after.

Some really great exercises that you can practice at home are a cat cow,

so that's when you get on hands and knees, all fours, and you arch the

back and then lower the belly towards the ground, so if you need a visual,

just Google "cat cow yoga position", and you arch the back and then you

let the belly drop towards the floor.

When you're doing this, make sure your pelvis, which is sitting on top of your

femur in your leg, which is that big thigh muscle, your pelvis during the

cow, which is when the belly is pointing towards the ground, your pelvis is also

tip towards the ground, and then when you do the cat, which is the arched back,

your pelvis is kind of tucked under.

We want to make sure that the pelvis has good rotation on that femur and

that is helping with the cat cow.

Another position you can do as a deep squat, so that would be like if

you grabbed onto a doorway when you were in the doorway and bent your

knees and took your butt down to the ground as far as you could go.

Some people are more flexible than others.

Some people can drop all the way down, and some people can only drop partially the

way down, but that's a really good one.

That actually releases the pelvic floor muscles and specifically the

back pelvic muscles because the sit bones in the pelvis, which are the

little bony protrusions, like if you stuck your hand under your butt right

now and you felt there's like a bony part in there; that's your sit bone.

Oh, I just felt it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you feel it?

Yep, I do.

So when you do that dropping motion in the doorway, drop your butt down.

Those sit bones come apart, and so the pelvic bowl relaxes, so

that's a really good one to do right before you do number two.

Mm-hmm.

Paula, I love that you're giving my listeners some tips because some people

are probably like, "I'm never going to do this in front of my significant other",

but I think it's really important that you do something for yourself, because

like I just mentioned earlier, it's 28 muscles, everything has a muscle if we

don't use it, we lose it, and I even tell my own clients about that too.

You've got to practice when it comes to some of these

techniques and be consistent.

Yeah.

That's really the role of a coach, so I love the fact that you

are open to, "Well, maybe not today, because I see that you're upset.

Let's talk about why you're upset", because it is an

emotional process in itself.

Yes.

So I want to actually get into that with you.

Sure.

Because I know what you shared earlier, your testimony, my heart goes

out to you that you went through that.

Yeah.

Was that painful in the sense of not just the physical, which I know there

had to be definitely physical discomfort.

Oh yeah.

But was there some emotional concerns, maybe some long-term

things that even thinking about it today, is there some things that

you still are processing with that?

Is that something that you use as experience with your clients too, to kind

of associate or relate to them, because I know that sometimes even for me, I have

to be open and transparent about some of the things that I go through, because,

to be a good coach, you should be your best authentic self, so I'm just curious.

Tell me a little bit about that and how you kind of process that even to today.

Yeah, like I said, I felt really alone and it's hard to not have your

body work properly and I'm only 42 years old, but I can't imagine, as I age, more

and more things are going to go wrong, but this is a pretty fundamental thing.

If you're human, you need to eat, you need to poop, so not being able to

do that stuff, maybe someday when I'm 80, I won't be able to do a squat?

Okay, great.

I don't need to do a fabulous squat in order to live my life,

but I'm still going to need to be able to have a bowel movement.

It was tough, and there's not really a support network out there that

I know of, but I'm sure that I can create, so that's what I want to do.

I want to support people and let them know they're not alone because I felt

alone, and I also want to let them know that you don't have to be an exercise

queen to take care of your body.

You can do a little bit every day or every other day, and you can give

your body what it needs in order to move properly and do the things that

you need to do as a human being.

Bodies are complicated.

I tell that to everybody.

They are so complicated.

They're so hard to figure out, and especially people, just the lay person.

I mean, not everybody goes to the gym to exercise.

I'm not-

I'm guilty as charged with that.

Right?

I'm not the personal trainer that's going to tell you, "You have to do this.

You have to do that.", but just like you were talking about before, consistency

is key so that it is that infinite, whatever, 1000%, 100%, where if you do

a little bit every day, it adds up, so I like to think about it like if you're

brushing your teeth for four minutes a day, you can also take care of your pelvic

floor for four minutes a day and have similar results to brushing your teeth.

You can keep the bad stuff away.

I know that you have just started this.

Mm-hmm.

And first off, I want to commend you for the fact that you're bringing

some awareness to something that even I don't think about on my daily basis.

I'm thinking about, "Yeah.

I have to balance my checkbook.

I have to do the clothes and-

Right.

Make sure I change the laundry, make sure I change my bed sheets.

Oh yeah.

I need to work on my pelvic area."

This is just something that you don't normally think about, so-

Right.

My question is this.

I know there has to be people that are probably snickering right now,

and I know that all of us can be-

Let them snicker.

Let them snicker.

That's absolutely true, but some of us are just saying, "Well, you know, I'm

not going to be old where I need to really worry about this", so when you

tell people, "Well, you should start now", is there a reaction that you

generally get, and if so, like how do you address that, because not only do I

find this fascinating, but I just feel like some people are very skeptical at

the same time and my podcast has always been about diffusing the skeptical and

just taking charge of being able to do the things that you need to do in order

to take care of business, and that's including this kind of business, so-

For sure.

Yeah.

So I'll give you two answers to that because there's

two things that are coming to mind.

One, if nothing else other than don't do kegels comes out of you

listening to this, the other thing is get yourself a squatty potty.

If there's nothing else you do to take care of your pelvic

health, then get a Squatty Potty.

If you bring your knees above your pelvis when you're having a bowel movement,

then it puts your rectum, which is the exit door, the rectum comes through

the tissue and the butt, it aligns everything properly so that the feces

can pass through, so if nothing else, don't laugh because you have to poop.

Everybody has to poop.

Yep.

Right?

Yep.

So there's that.

The second answer to this is, nobody comes to me and says, "I need to be made aware

of this", or "I didn't know about this."

Everybody who has been drawn to me are people who feel like I do.

They feel like they've either been through physical therapy or they

need physical therapy, or physical therapy didn't work, or they don't

know what to do with themselves.

They're still peeing, they're still having pain.

They're still having pain with sex.

They can't have sex.

There are so many things that I think, especially women don't talk about and

don't have a recourse, like, let's just think about it for a second.

A man can't have an erection.

We have a pill for that.

A woman is peeing her pants.

Most every single mother who has had a child inside of her pees their pants.

Almost all of them, like literally, how many times have you heard a mother tell

their child, you're the reason I pee.

I have-

I've heard that a lot growing up.

I can't jump on the trampoline, right?

I'm sorry, mom, if you're listening to this,

I have heard you say that.

I'm just going to acknowledge that and I understand now from listening to Paula.

Go on, paula.

So a lot of people, I think, are just drawn to my message

because I'm talking about it.

A lot of women are okay with saying, "Okay, yeah, I pee my pants, or I have

to cross my legs when I sneeze, or this or that", but not many women are going

to come out and say, "I can't have sex with my partner because it hurts to

insert", or, "I can't poop because I have a fissure because when during childbirth,

I ripped", or whatever the case may be.

It's almost like the peeing thing is okay, but the other stuff not

okay to talk about, and I'm here to tell you it's okay to talk about it.

It's okay to be emotional about it, and it's okay to get help about it.

With that said, you provide coaching opportunities

for people like that, so-

Yes.

Can you walk me through like what a typical conversation would be

for somebody that would be interested, just so that our audience sort of has

an understanding of, when we meet Paula-

Mm-hmm.

It isn't just about a vagina coach, it's about so much more, which

you have really gotten into the weeds.

Mm-hmm.

Literally the shit about-

Yeah.

So I'm kind of curious how you do that.

My ideal client is somebody who wants to come

see me for personal training.

I also offer yoga classes online and in person, and I am hoping to add,

like you said, a coaching component.

I have a beta program right now, which could very well be more than

a beta program when this comes out.

If you come to me and you say, I'm having X, Y, Z, typically, if it's

something that has been pervasive and is affecting your quality of life, I'm

going to want to see you one-on-one for at least 12 sessions, at least.

It's probably going to take more like three to six months.

We can address it as quickly or as slowly as you want, and it's also

going to depend on are you going to do the homework that I give you.

How invested are you in it?

I do take on postpartum clients.

I love working with them.

I also take clients who are older.

I just had a lady come in today who's 63.

If you do come to me in person, I have a litany of questions I ask you.

Nothing's off limits, because I'm not going to come home and talk to

my husband about that information.

I'm going to make a treatment plan based on what your answers to your questions

are and how your body is moving.

A lot of these things can actually be healed or minimized with exercise and I am

trained to watch and see what's happening and figure out how to correct that.

That's the nature of the certification that I have.

The other thing is if you're just saying, "Oh, I need like a maintenance plan",

or, "I kind of want to do this, but I'm not sure it's for me", or this or that,

I have in-person yoga classes, I work at a yoga studio called Just Plain Yoga.

On Thursday night at 5:30, we have a pelvic floor yoga class.

It's pretty well attended.

It's in the Camp Hill area and people come from all around to participate;

Harrisburg area and surrounding.

You can also take that online, so if you are further away, we do a hybrid model so

you can take the class live and then you can have access to the video for 24 hours.

With My Vagina Coach, I have another program that's

called Morning Yoga Program.

That's 10 to 15 minutes twice a day.

That's like the brushing your teeth version, right?

Yep.

And those are recorded and if you want to watch them, they're available

to you with my membership for a month, so you'll get two lives a week with me

on Zoom, and then the rest of the days of the week, like if you want to do it

five days a week, you can have access to the video recordings and watch them and

quote, unquote, brush your teeth with me.

Paula, I appreciate you sharing all that, because I think for

some people just having that access to it is really important so that-

Yeah.

They can work on those sort of things as well, and it's all

about access and just being able to-

Yes.

Provide not only the knowledge that you personally have

experienced; the firsthand accounts-

mm-hmm.

But even the people that you interact with and, which is my next

question, because I've worked with a lot of people since I've been open, and I

know that you've just started yourself.

Mm-hmm.

Is there somebody that comes to mind, and again, I always say to

people, please don't mention names.

You don't have to mention their names.

Of course I won't.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I respect the confidentiality because I think that's really important

so that we can build that trust and relationship with people, but is there

somebody that stands out in your mind that you've already, in your short

time, started with this and said, "wow, I'm making a great impact and

that person was the reason why."

Can you elaborate a little bit on that feeling of euphoria or

what that person did to really achieve what they're going through?

Yeah, so I have been working with a young lady, she's postpartum a year.

She had twins.

She was on bedrest, so a lot of strikes on her pelvic floor, her poor pelvic floor.

She started with me.

She was very down on herself.

She had gained some weight.

She was having a lot of problems, and the twins are getting bigger, they're

active, they keep gaining weight, and she's not able to keep up with them.

We've been working together about six months now, and she has made

a lot of progress and I will tell you, she is very determined.

She does all the homework, because she wants to get her body, quote unquote,

back in shape, but really what she's doing is keeping up with her children.

She's able to lift them at 20 pounds.

She's going to be able to lift them when they turn 30 pounds.

She's still going to be able to lift them when they turn 40 pounds

because she's sticking with it.

She's getting stronger and we've rehabbed her core, so basically, especially once

you've been pregnant, if you think about a person from the side looking at them

from the side, the rib cage goes up because there's a big baby bump, so like

chest goes up, rib cage goes up, that's called rib flare, and then the pelvis

tilts down because big baby bump, so just imagine a pregnant lady with a big

belly, pelvis, turns down, ribcage, turns up, you have the babies, and guess what?

Just because the babies aren't there anymore doesn't mean that stuff gets

unstuck, so you have to do a lot of work rehabbing that and she has done

a fantastic job and I'm super proud of her and all the gains that she has

made, and it has been super rewarding to watch her use the tools that I've given

her and get herself to a point where she's like, "I'm not fatigued when I

take my babies to swim lessons anymore."

Is this different from being a doula?

I've heard that-

Oh, yeah.

Term too.

Can you talk about that for our audience, because I know people

know what a doula is, but-

Mm-hmm.

Can you distinguish the difference between that, because

I think that's really important.

I only know a little bit about what a doula is.

A doula is a person who can help you through the birth.

Yes.

Don't know if doulas help after the birth.

I'll help you.

I'll help you out.

WebMD.com mentions-

Okay.

Thank you.

That a doula is a person who provides emotional and physical support to

you during your pregnancy and childbirth.

They're not medical professionals.

They don't deliver the babies or provide medical care.

Right.

But they have been trained, they usually pass an exam to help

women, pregnant women especially, and their families during that experience.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So hopefully that helps a little bit.

Yeah, so they're more, let's just say of a person who can help

you through more emotionally or say, "Oh, I had this during my pregnancy.

You're doing okay.

This physical thing is okay", or whatever.

They're not a doctor, they're not a trainer.

They're not really a coach.

They're doula.

Did you know there's also death doulas, so you can have somebody go through

death with you as well as birth?

I had no idea.

Yeah.

And I've been learning a lot.

Apparently it wasn't just about vaginas, it was about death doulas.

Now I'm going to have to go Google that for my listeners.

I might have to put a link in about what a death doula is in case you're

interested, but I'm sorry, go on, Paula.

Yes.

I never heard of that before.

I'm going to go learn some more though.

Well, I highly suggest interviewing a death doula.

It's really interesting.

A friend of mine became one, so I know more about death

doula than I do birth doula.

Public service announcement real quick, if there is a death

doula listening to this episode, please get in contact with me.

podcast@yourspeakingvoice.biz.

That's right.

That's right.

Go ahead.

So they actually, I guess, almost like hospice.

If you know you're dying or even if you just think you're at the end of life,

let's say you're 65, and you're like, "Okay, I want to have death doula just

in case", they go through all your whole life with you, and they talk about

your regrets and your accomplishments, like so many things that they can go

through with you and sometimes they can help people really get a lot of

resolution and I think sometimes when people get that resolution, especially

when they're kind of on death's door, it gives them enough to kind of tap out.

Yeah.

And say, "Okay, this is it."

Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Paula, we're near the end of our time, but-

Let's talk more about vagina, come on!

Conveniently enough, we're near the end of our time here, but I do

want to give you the last few minutes.

Give us a nice recap because you've been awesome to just be so open

and share all this information.

Mm-hmm.

If people want to reach out to you and-

Mm-hmm.

Just learn more, maybe have more of a specific conversation with you

about somebody in their family, maybe something that they're going through-

mm-hmm.

Can you just tell us a little summary of your business and how

they can get in contact with you?

I'll give you the last few minutes.

Thank you.

If you go to my website right on the very front of my website, there's a

little button where you can say, book a call, and that book's a 15 minute

call with me and you can figure out if we're a good fit to work together,

whether that's at a yoga class at Just Plain Yoga, in my morning yoga program

like we talked about, where it's kind of like that maintenance, brushing your

teeth type thing, or if you want to work with me one-on-one personal training.

I currently don't have any clients via Zoom, but I'm not opposed to

that, so if you're far away and you're listening to this, I can

take clients on in that nature.

I will also have my coaching program a little bit further through beta and it

will be more of a personal training style coaching program with exercises that

you can do to help your yourself out.

Like I said, I am not a huge proponent of like exercise, exercise, exercise.

My platform is actually I help Gen X women feel confident to exercise without

judging themselves so that they can fix pelvic floor dysfunction through movement,

so that's kind of my big platform.

Stop judging yourself.

You don't need to judge yourself.

You don't have to be this size or have this amount of fat or

look like this or have lashes.

We just want you to not pee your pants.

Paula, first off, there has been many times in my life that I

thought, "Man, it'd be really cool to talk to somebody related to this

sort of thing", and there's been other times in my life I'm thinking, "Why

did I ever get myself into this?"

I've had a lot of mixture of emotions before I even hit the record

button, folks, about this whole interview, but Paula, I want to be

honest with you because I like to speak from the heart for a moment.

Thank you.

There's a lot of people that go through this sort of stuff, and

they don't take it seriously, and for you to take it seriously, given what

your experience has been, and to do it in a way that helps others: bravo.

I really mean that because a lot of people can easily say, "Yeah, whatever.

I think I'm just going to pass on this and not really think about it", but when

we start to make decisions like that and we start to build that upon everything

that we ever do in our lives that, "Oh, we'll get to that later", or, "Eh, I'm

not interested", it starts to become our mindset, and I find that your mindset

is something that is impeccable because not many people would say, "I want to

play around with pee and poop", or, "I want to deal with all kinds of different

things that come from the body and all kinds of excrements", but here's the deal.

We all go through it.

Yes.

And that's part of us being human, that-

Yes.

Those are going to be uncomfortable subjects, but if we're

able to ask for help, that's what's truly important, and I think that

you are providing a service that is allowing people to have that hope,

and I want to give you some words of encouragement somebody that is

starting out myself as a business.

You talked earlier about the community and trying to form something like that

do it.

I'm not kidding.

Do it, because it's so helpful to just surround yourself with people that have

gone through it, or currently going through it, might be in the starting

process of going through it, because they're still waiting for a diagnosis

and you've dispelled a lot of myths on this episode about the importance of

doing that, so for that, Paula, thank you for sharing your heart with us today.

Thank you for Speaking From The Heart, and I really hope much success for

you, not only in the continuing of your business, but to also captivate

and dispel the myth that it's okay to talk about vaginas and talk about the

pelvic area because if Josh Smith, this podcast host can do it, being a male-

You can do it.

Anybody can do it, so thank you Paula.

Thank you, I do, just real quick, now that you said that,

I do have one community outreach program that I do that is free.

Great.

It's a monthly book club.

It's at Just Plain Yoga.

It's on Thursday night, so if you want to come and go to my class and

go to the book club, it's the fourth Thursday of the month and we read

different either self-help books or books about sex or vaginas or menopause.

We have on tap the Good Sex RX, the Vagina Bible, a couple Brene Brown books

so far this year, if you check that out-

Brene Brown is my most favorite author ever, so I have a couple of

her books on my bookshelf behind me.

Yes, maybe you'll come since it's only in Camp Hill.

It's true.

On a Brene Brown month.

I'll tell you what, you send me the invitation.

I just might.

Okay.

Paula, thank you again.

I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

I want to thank Paula again for being on the show and being the

most completely open person that I have ever interviewed or potentially ever

interview on Speaking From The Heart, because let's face it: did you know that

you had 28 muscles in your pelvic area?

I didn't.

Did you think that we would talk about Kegels and not doing them?

I didn't think so.

Did you think that we talk about rectums and vaginas?

I certainly thought in a million years that I would never have to

approach that subject, but here we are, but that's the deal.

Sometimes life throws amazingly difficult curve balls in which you have to

literally catch, and that's the whole thing is that Paula saw me laughing

so much during this before we even hit the record button, and she understood.

As a matter of fact, she was so understanding that she was even the one

calming me down before we even hit the record button, because it was one of those

subjects that you often don't hear about, but we all go through it and I know that

you listening to this, you might have somebody that you know, even if you're

not going through it, someone else is, and we have these generations that are

going through all kinds of different medical issues that, even in the last

century, we never saw would ever emerge.

Let's talk about the things that we do want to talk about then if we're really so

cancer, heart disease, emphysema, heart palpitations, chronic

heart failure, indigestion, Crohn's.

Those are some of the many things that I've heard in my life with some

of the family members that I have going through some of those things,

but yet, do we laugh about that?

Absolutely not.

Why should we laugh about these sort of things, even if they

are the most embarrassing?

Now I get it.

Maybe some of you listening to the episode are thinking, "Well, I

wasn't laughing at all, so I don't know why you were laughing, Josh."

Touche, touche, and I totally understand that, but yet, even with the things that

we had to go through with this episode and talk about, and even though it made

me uncomfortable, it made me feel sick to my stomach that we had to talk about it,

it made me glad that we did talk about it.

What are some of the things that make us

absolutely sick of talking about, because we're so afraid of being unwilling to

share in those uncomfortable moments?

Paula is one of those guests that has now defined my whole entire podcasts because

she has been able to share some things that often we don't want to talk about.

We often feel discouraged because if we did share it with somebody, it would be

so embarrassing that that other person would never feel the same way again.

It isn't about maturity because sure, maybe I needed to grow up a bit, but

yet at the same time, it's about the maturity of knowing that we all go

through these different experiences and having the respect, no matter

where we're at with those situations, is what's so vitally important.

Now it's true.

I have clients that come through the door and do talk about some of the

most embarrassing things in their lives, but it's not about pee or poop.

It's not about vaginas or dicks.

It's not about all those different types of body organs that we often giggle about

we often don't say, because we know that it can be viewed as being very, very

embarrassing and not appropriate, but did you know that there was a death doula?

I didn't know that either, and here we are at the very end of the

episode talking about death doulas.

I had no idea that people would do that to make their end of life more

comfortable, but that's the thing.

Don't judge, because you don't know where those people have come from.

It's so easy to fall into the trap of judging, and it's in the same category

as being able to make a stereotype about someone or some class of people, and you

know that not all people are the same way.

We're all unique as I even said in a more recent episode with one of my

guests, talking about the fact that we all have a unique identity in which

we can share, that we can create, and that we're able to do what is necessary

or what is really the priority.

We have to find ways in which we have to adapt, even if that means we have

to get our old squatty potty out and do it the way that we learned going back

to basics, and that's what I truly most utterly respect about Paula and anything

else that she said in this episode, whether you agree with it or not,

because these are the things that allow us to understand the human condition.

This allows us to understand that there can be relief from the different

types of things that we go through.

These are the things that allow us to perform the exercises that can

be life altering and change the outcome of the rest of our lives.

That's exactly what I do for my clients, whether that is through life coaching,

whether that is through business development, whether that is through

professional development, whether that is being a better public speaker.

Those are the things that we're able to create quality for, and even if we

have those setbacks, just like Paula did for many, many, many years, we

can still stand up and know that we are able to walk confidently forward

working through some of the most embarrassing things that often we don't

realize are happening to each other.

We need to have more awareness.

We need to pay attention.

It is just one of those things that we've even talked about in some of the more

earlier episodes of this podcast, and it's all about being an active listener,

but now Paula has taken it to a new stage in which I have to elaborate more on

because it's not just the active listening in which you are able to discuss and

articulate what that other person said because you've been paying attention.

It means about fully understanding; living in that person's shoes for one minute,

and knowing that you can go through that experience of feeling uncomfortable.

In Toastmasters, we have something quite like that called a Table Topic.

If you ever visit a Toastmasters Club as a guest, you'll always have that opportunity

to do that, in which you speak one minute extemporaneously about a subject that

is given to you, and for those that have never tested that theory before of trying

to speak for one minute, especially if you have never done it before, it is

the most uncomfortable, embarrassing thing that you ever thought possible.

You almost want to sit down and be forgotten.

You'd wish that you never got called on or even volunteered because

guests are optional in participating.

If you think that's embarrassing, if you think that that's really

discouraging, then I think then you really understand why I did this

episode then in the first place.

I could have said to Paula, "No way.

Why would I ever have a business called My Vagina Coach on Speaking From The Heart?

Do I speak from my vagina?

No, I speak from my mouth.

It's not in the pelvic area", but that's the whole point of this.

We all know that we can be very uncomfortable with some of the things

that we normally don't want to do, and Paula is testing that theory and

pushing it to become more comfortable.

She is the epitome of what this is all about: being able to become

comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Being able to learn from the different varieties of different

opportunities that we have in our lives.

This is what it's all about because we can do this.

If we're willing to do this, we can learn from each other.

We can push through.

We don't have to judge.

We can work those 28 muscles in a pelvic area and be even more healthy

than we ever thought possible.

That is why this was the most important episode yet to do, because

we are learning to not do this alone.

We are learning that we have to give ourselves the priority.

We know that the longer that we feel embarrassed and afraid, we're never going

to make progress, but what if we just took us short amount of time and we worked

on ourselves just a little bit each day?

Those days turn into weeks.

Those weeks turn into months.

Those months turn into a year of improving ourselves, and that is the most

important thing that we could ever do to treat ourselves, not only with respect,

but with confidence, relationships, and determination combined into the

ultimate best version of ourselves.

That is what makes this truly important.

Thanks for listening to episode number 39 of Speaking from the Heart, and

again, thank you so much to all the businesses featured on these Wednesday

episodes, and I look forward to hearing from your heart very soon.

Thanks for listening.

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Visit us at www.yourspeakingvoice.biz for more information about potential

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