I’ve just been reading about a woman who went to a “women’s forest gathering” in northern California to participate in a jade egg ceremony under the redwood trees, and it struck me, like a tin of processed peas hurled squarely to the temple, that I am not living a fully enlightened life.
When it comes to embracing an alternative lifestyle, I’m not playing with the full deck. Indeed, I suspect I might be a couple of slices short of a cosmic pan. You see, in all 55 and one quarter years of my ragged existence I have never, ever spent a day with a jade egg in my yoni.
Your whattie? My yoni. Whati is a yoni, you aski. “Yoni” is a Sanskrit word for the female genitalia, meaning “sacred space”. Okay?
In fairness, while half the population have a yoni, we could be forgiven for not knowing that they were calledi that.
I came across one final article that I simply could not resist sharing with you: a Q&A on the subject of 'Jade Eggs for Your Yoni'
So there I was, Sunday morning, content in my yonic ignorance, the slight muzz of a hangover-ette whispering in my brain like an unscratched itch, my mouth closing on a slice of old white toast spread with a dollop of genetically modified peanut butter.
I had been half reading something edifying on my laptop screen about herbaceous borders or the return of the deckchair when I found my fingers buckling over the keyboard and then, unbidden, typing the word “Goop” into the search engine.
I had sworn to myself that I’d finished with Gwyneth Paltrow’s online lifestyle magazine. I would unfollow the damn publication and stop subjecting readers of this column to its mind-boggling content, I vowed. And I will stop, honestly. It’s just that I came across one final article that I simply could not resist sharing with you: a Q&A on the subject of “Jade Eggs for Your Yoni”.
A favourite among concubines in ancient Chinese temples as a way to please the emperors, it seems jade eggs are cracking on and may even be enjoying a comeback. Thank goodness for Goop, eh, providing a kind of beginner’s guide to those among us willing to insert stone eggs into our vaginas in order to please our masters.
The piece begins with a pocket guide to yonis in general, which are, apparently, "inner sanctums" from which we access our "power and wisdom". However, the unenlightened among us (dragging ourselves around the supermarket in baggy leggings, flinging pork chops into the trolley and going home to binge-watch First Dates) can sometimes use our yonis as a "psychic trash bin, storing old or negative energy".
Fear not! If you think you may be guilty of storing negative energy in your yoni and need a bit of help to intensify your feminine energy, invigorate your perineum, delight your bladder or send your uterus into orbit, pop down to your local jade store, grab yourself a heavy green stone egg and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Then sit back (carefully) and imagine all that eggy energy filtering up the spine and flowing out through the top of your head. Hey, what’s not to like?
Some housekeeping tips first, however. “When you first get your egg, boil it for a few minutes to make sure it’s clean. Your yoni is your sacred space, so it’s like making sure your feet are clean when you enter a temple.”
What is she saying? That it is totally normal for women to walk around with jade eggs falling out of their vaginas?
You can also, the writer suggests, put your egg out under the light of a full moon to cleanse or recharge it. (Word of warning: don’t try plugging it in, eating it, or accessing your emails on it – that doesn’t work.)
The yoni owner who wrote the article also suggests that before one inserts an egg – which, of course, you’ll have kept carefully stored in silk wrapping – you might like to “place it on a beautiful piece of fabric, light a candle and maybe even burn some sage”.
As a general note, do be careful not to set the lovely piece of fabric on fire when you ignite the sage as this could lead to unforeseen consequences, much more serious than when your newly inserted, moon-charged egg drops out of your yoni, as apparently it can do!
“If you stand up and the egg falls out, don’t worry,” the writer assures us. “It’s totally normal.”
What???
What is she saying? That it is totally normal for women to walk around with jade eggs falling out of their vaginas? Yeah right, and tea cups swinging from their nipples and banana trees growing on their backsides.
I’m pulling the Goop plug. I’m outta here, leaving the jade eggs unfertilised.
You’re on your yonio baby.