We thought we’d heard the weirdest Gwyneth Paltrow vagina recommendation when she told us to squat over a bowl of hot water and herbs… until we heard that she wanted us to put jade eggs inside our vaginas. Is this a helpful ancient healing practice, an example of silly pseudoscience, or a real and present danger for female health? We decided to find out.

According to Goop, which sells both jade and rose quartz yoni eggs (yoni is the Sanskrit word for vagina) for between $55 and $66 a pop, these objects are “a guarded secret of Chinese royalty in antiquity.” Purveyors of crystals, including the eggs, note that the practice of using jade eggs has been around for more than two thousand years, hailing from an ancient Taoist tradition linking a strong pelvic floor with increased life-force energy.

Activist and blogger Shiva Rose explains on Goop that while the eggs began as a tool used to “please the emperors,” concubines later found them so empowering that they started to use them for their own pleasure.

Today, Goop claims that yoni eggs can be used not only for muscle tone, but also for chi, orgasms, hormonal balance, detox, and “feminine energy in general.”

How Do Jade Eggs Work?

The healing claims of jade eggs are really twofold. The first characteristic is the crystal energy that many attribute to a specific kind of jade known as nephrite jade.

As Rose explains to Goop, “Nephrite jade has incredible clearing, cleansing powers.” She, and other crystal aficionados, claim that nephrite jade has the ability to take away negativity, balance the menstrual cycle, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase kidney strength.

The second purported element of the egg’s strength comes from its physical form, which presses against the muscles of the pelvic floor when inserted. Physician Dr. Rachel Carlton Abrams notes that the egg can be made of any stone – rose quartz is common – as long as it has the same shape, noting that the egg is best used as a sort of counterweight with which to do Kegel exercises.

“It’s helpful for feeling the pelvic muscles, learning how to relax the pelvic muscles, learning when you can strengthen the pelvic muscles,” she says, noting that many women use the egg to heighten sexual pleasure by increasing both awareness of and blood flow to the pelvic region.

Are Jade Eggs Good for You?

The moment that the Goop article was released, the Internet was inundated by experts claiming that using jade eggs was a useless practice.

“There are no studies or evidence to show that jade eggs help with orgasms, vaginal muscle tone or hormonal balance,” Dr. Leena Nathan, an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, told the Washington Post. “Jade does not result in hormonal changes, even when inserted in the vagina.”

Some even noted that using jade eggs could be dangerous, including Dr. Ursula Balthazar, who says that women using jade eggs to strengthen pelvic floor muscles can actually experience the opposite result.

“It can actually erode the tissue that it comes into contact with and end up weakening the muscles,” she says.

California OB-GYN Jen Gunter notes another issue with the practice: infection.

“Jade is porous, which could allow bacteria to get inside, and so the egg could act like a fomite,” Gunter wrote on her blog. “It could be a risk factor for bacterial vaginosis or even the potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.”

Abrams, however, is one physician who believes in jade eggs, calling the hoopla “ridiculous.”

“It’s a freaking stone egg,” she says. “We’re not talking about putting sponges in you, we’re not talking about sharing it with other people. It’s a pretty benign object.” Benign, that is, as long as it’s being used properly.

“The only way I’ve ever had women be injured with a jade egg is if they try to insert the egg when they are too small, menopausal, too dry, or trying to force it,” she says. “And any good teacher is not going to advise you to do that.”

Method, then, is an important part of the jade egg experience — and somewhere that it seems Goop has steered people wrong.

Rose suggests on Goop that women sleep with the egg inserted, something that Gunter told Vox was “scientifically absurd,” noting that it can lead to toxic shock syndrome, much like wearing a tampon for too long.

Goop also suggests that women wear the jade egg while walking around, which Gunter says can actually cause women to clench their muscles too much, leading to pelvic pain. Release, she notes, is part and parcel of building any muscle, including pelvic floor muscles.

“Contracting constantly is like doing half of a bicep curl and not finishing it — that’s not how you work on a muscle,” she told CNN.

Abrams recommends getting advice from a professional, such as Saida Désilets, one of the foremost experts in jade eggs (though not a doctor).

Abrams even has some suggestions of her own: by running a string through the egg and attaching a small object to it — Abrams suggests a bag of beans — a woman can see in the mirror the control that she has over the egg and learn to isolate different muscles.

Rose also has some suggestions, including boiling the egg to ensure that it’s clean before going through a series of exercises while lying on your back.

“At the start, you can simply have the egg in and begin becoming aware of its energy and presence,” she says. “Then there are muscle tightening things you can do in stages to feel the various sections of the yoni.”

“It’s a very old practice,” says Abrams. “It’s a very safe practice, if people do it in the right way.”

Alternatives to Jade Eggs

Of course, if the idea of a jade egg is a bit tough to swallow, there are other ways that you can reap many of the same benefits.

Gunter suggests using weights specially designed for help with Kegel exercises, such as the ones profiled on Cosmopolitan. These weights are made with medical grade silicone or plastic and are not meant to be worn for long periods of time, thus reducing the risk for infection.

There are also other exercises that you can do that will tighten your pelvic floor without Kegels, like squats, and even products like curcuma comosa that you can use as an herbal treatment.

Whatever you choose to use, be sure that you check with a doctor beforehand, keep any objects you put in your vagina clean, and never do anything that hurts or feels uncomfortable.

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So Gwyneth Paltrow has proven herself a legit health and wellness professional. Her collab with Juice Beauty now has the goop brand extending to skin care. Here’s a look at GP’s new beauty products.

When I heard Gwyneth and Juice Beauty teamed up to create skin care, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. Not only is GP hot on the health and wellness front these days, but who doesn’t want to know what she’s using on her skin?

The line includes cleanser, facial oil, moisturizer, night cream, and eye cream. Plus, the product I was most looking forward to sampling, a facial exfoliant. If you follow goop on Instagram you’ve likely seen GP modeling this product, which makes it all the more irresistible.

There are certain aspects of every skin care line that are important, aside from the contents. What do the products smell like? How do they feel? And will they look pretty sitting on my bathroom counter?

The goop products come in nice, generously sized containers (always a plus!), with a modern matte finish. They are lightly scented in a totally good way, and def look pretty enough to sit out. Now for the ultra important part … how they behave.

goop by Juice Beauty Product Line Up

Luminous Melting Cleanser: You know how a cleansing oil or balm is better for removing makeup and the day from you face? This rich balm feels so luxurious going on to skin. I recently read that massaging the face in upward, circular motions helps to keep wrinkles at bay and this is the perfect time to work that into your routine. This cleanser makes skin feel clean, soft, and supple. Comes with a muslin cleansing cloth for easy removal.

Exfoliating Instant Facial: Definitely the star of the show, this exfoliant works in two ways. It is a creamy mixture with uber tiny granules to slough away dry, dead skin. But this skin smoother also contains fruit acids, plus alpha and hydroxy acids, to really get down to healthy skin and up the ol’ glow factor. I have sensitive skin and only leave this product on for around a minute. I would recommend using this one at night for smooth, radiant skin.

Enriching Facial Oil: Always my favorite component in any skin care line, this one does not disappoint. A mixture of yummy plant and seed oils that hydrate, plump, and support the skin. This oil blend gives skin a moisturized feel and healthy glow, but is super light and sinks right into skin. An ideal one-two punch for any facial oil.

Revitalizing Day Moisturizer: A light, non-greasy moisturizer for day designed to hydrate skin, fight wrinkles, and brighten the complexion. I love the softness and supple feel this moisturizer gives to skin, and it truly does seem to make the complexion look brighter.

Replenishing Night Cream: Every decent skin care routine needs a good night cream. This one is made with aloe vera and fruit acids to be both gentle and anti-aging. Reduces lines and firms the skin while you sleep.

Perfecting Eye Cream: A puffy soufflé of moisturizing eye cream that hydrates skin without being greasy. This one could be used day and night to keep lines at bay and brighten tired eyes.

goop by Juice Beauty products are made with some certified organic ingredients, ranging from 78%-99%, depending on the product. As for price, yes these babies run toward the higher end as you likely imagined given the celeb creator. Items range from $90-140 per product and you can purchase the Discovery Set of trial sizes for $125.

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Image via goop.com

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Gwyneth Paltrow seems to have her hands in all things organic. And if her most recent personal health obsession turns out to be legit, then the all-natural star may soon have her hands all up in your vagina… figuratively, speaking, of course.

Paltrow knows that any woman who enjoys having sex could benefit from using lube from time to time. But, unfortunately, most lube isn’t organic—and we all know how much Paltrow appreciates organic personal care items.

So, Paltrow is now on a quest: a quest to find the best natural lube on the market. And while you may think her inspiration for finding the holy grail of organic lube was personal, it wasn’t—she was inspired by Lily Tomlin’s character, Frankie Bergstein, in the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie.” In the series, Bergstein has a running joke about developing yam lube.

Honestly, we think Paltrow is onto something—no matter where she got her inspiration from.

After Paltrow was visited by the sexual lube inspiration fairy, she went on a search for a lube she felt was worthy of being sold at Goop, her company. Luckily, her search was successful.

Paltrow is now selling Organics Natural ($13) and Organics Natural Gel ($15). Both products contain water-based solubles, and organic extracts of hibiscus, green tea, and aloe. The products aren’t sticky, easy to wipe off, and won’t stain sheets, clothing, etc.

In addition to finding two great natural lube alternatives, Paltrow’s company also interviewed Maggie Ney, N.D., the co-director of the Women’s Clinic at the Akasha Center in Santa Monica, about all things women’s health related. Ney talked at length about how many lubricants have toxic ingredients that can harm the reproductive system, vaginal dryness, condoms, and more.

A few of the interview‘s more interesting takeaways were the following:

• If you’re in a committed relationship and both partners have been tested for STIs, you can safely use organic coconut oil, olive oil, aloe vera gel, or almond oil as lube. However, if you’re trying to conceive, skip using oil because it could affect sperm motility.
• Men can be negatively affected by lube, too. The ingredients (parabens and endocrine disruptors) in some lubes can be absorbed by the penis and anus. These ingredients can affect sperm, and cause other health issues.
• Vaginal dryness can happen for a lot of reasons, but aging can really affect natural lubrication. “As estrogen declines, the vaginal skin becomes thinner and natural lubrication is reduced,” Ney says. “This can be controlled with natural lubricants like coconut oil, vitamin E oil, or aloe vera gel. Vaginal dryness due to aging can be reversed with vaginal estrogen.”

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Image of couple in bed via Shutterstock

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ColumnI enjoy a good laugh at the expense of GOOP and Gwyneth Paltrow as much as the next person; it’s fairly irresistible material. After GP announced her breakup with Chris Martin this week, terming it “conscious uncoupling,” there was a viral pile-on of inevitable Paltrow-bashing  — but this is one bandwagon I’m not hopping on.

The now-infamous GOOP post about Martin and Paltrow’s impending divorce is embarrassingly New Age-y and steeped in various Chopra-isms, but before we throw “conscious uncoupling” out with the Italian Sparkling Mineral Water, let’s unpack what it really means. Of course, all the talk of insects and exoskeletons in the post made my exoskeleton crawl. Question for another day: Why do people insist on trying to fit everything they feel, do, see and experience into a version of the Paleo diet?

I know its hard, but let’s stop cracking jokes at Paltrow’s expense and look at our own messy lives for a moment. In many ways “conscious uncoupling” is simply shorthand for breaking up without completely breaking down (or breaking your ex-partner’s head, window, or stereo system – take your pick). It’s separating your lives without including all the ugliness we associate with divorce. It may seem nearly impossible to uncouple with grace, perhaps because we all watched “Kramer vs. Kramer” one too many times. Yet breaking up with a partner doesn’t require a war footing – even if you have good reasons to be angry at your ex.

To me, the root of “conscious uncoupling” is less about endings than it is about beginnings. If there is consciousness at the start, there is likely to be more groundedness and wisdom at the (inexorable) end. To me, conscious uncoupling is a doorway to unlearning everything you’ve ever been taught about love, romance, sex and the way relationships are forged. It’s about disentangling yourself from the complete rom-com-ification of your psyche — knowing that your life is not a fairy tale, and that finding your “one and only” is not your life’s purpose. Most of all, it’s about becoming less binary, and truly understanding why we’re not really built for monogamy. (Note to Gwyneth: this has little to do with grasshoppers.)

Perhaps our addiction to the dramatic, angry, vengeful breakup stems from our deeply misguided conception of love itself. Marriage, that sacred institution, will continue in an endless loop toward the inevitable fifty percent divorce rate if we continue to seek mates the way our ancestors did (and I don’t mean our Paleolithic ones). After all, marriage is a merely a convention – an apparatus birthed by capitalism that indicates ownership of property. We’re choosing our own partners now (at least we think we are – I’d argue that consumerism plays a huge role in our mating dance) but we’re still enmeshed in the constructs and contracts of the Victorian Age.

And as much as we’ve advanced since the first sexual revolution of the 1960s, relationships are one arena in which we’ve made much less progress than we think we have. Sure, women aren’t chattel anymore, but we continue to announce betrothals with engagement rings, a blingy down payment on a future sex partner. Considering the way we treat sex workers, it’s rather interesting that few balk at the idea of men symbolically buying their future brides with diamonds. Just sayin’.

These are institutionalized conventions that we haven’t shed yet, and it may be a while before we do. Before we can leave the antiquated concept of marriage to the annals of history, we have to first make it legal for all humans – we’re at least working towards that. Besides, it’s helpful for filing taxes.

I know I mention “Sex at Dawn” ad naseum in this column, but the poly community has a lot to teach us about jealousy, ego, and co-dependence – the downfall of many a short and long-term relationship. There’s a term often used in the poly community called “compersion” defined on Wikipedia as: “… an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy.” So instead of feeling jealous when our partner experiences pleasure from a source other than us, we feel pleasure derived from their pleasure.

Think about that for a moment. Do you feel joy when your partner does? Or does the idea of your lover experiencing happiness unrelated to your body, your ideas or thoughts or worldview, make you a little bit uncomfortable? What all of this really comes down to is that in an ideally balanced world, one where “consciousness” is not just a buzzword, we’d embark on relationships already whole. It is when we take our broken selves and try to solder them back together via a relationship that we fail. Not that we need to be whole before experiencing love — that would mean that very few of us would get the chance to be in relationships, as wholeness is a lifelong project.

The issue here, and the one embedded in the concept of “conscious uncoupling,” is that wholeness can only come from within. No partner can make you whole, even if you temporarily believe that to be the case. If you seek validation (sexual or otherwise) from others — you’ll always come crashing back to down to Earth, utterly defeated. Instead, the life-project, the bucket-list item, should not be “finding love” unless it starts with finding authentic self-love first.

We are fixated on forever, and we need to loosen our grip. Some of us will find and partner with people who will be our life-long loves. Some will even manage to have a thriving sex life for decades, even though this is quite rare. Some will be intentional serial monogamists (like me). Some would rather be alone, either after a long marriage, or no marriage at all. So let us go forward consciously coupling, uncoupling, and whatever comes in between. As long as we know that nothing is, or should be, forever.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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 Image via Wikimedia

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Will you survive a pandemic?

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion opened last weekend to reviews written by the glow of a thousand hand-sanitizer chemicals. This medical thriller tells the story of a lethal pandemic sweeping the globe as the medical community fights for a cure. Meanwhile, everyone else fights for truth, justice, and the American way – if the American way means bureaucratic angling for a vaccine while pharmaceutical companies count dollar signs from bunkers 50 feet below the surface of the earth.

Soderbergh taunts us again and again with a question that feels uncomfortably realistic: what would you do in a pandemic? Would you hunker down in your shed next to a stack of Twinkies with a shot-gun trained at the door, would you live-blog the event from your dark apartment promoting FTC-compliant homeopathic cures, or would you maintain your dignity while heroically saving the world and the last Rhesus Monkey with disturbingly gentle eyes?

Contagion offers us several lessons of conscious living in the event of a global medical crisis. Lessons of truth, lessons of sacrifice, and lessons of amazing skin tone achieved through truth and sacrifice. We’ve listed them below with spoilers. Lots of spoilers.

Handsome bloggers with questionable teeth speak the truth while the government lies. (Or do they?)
When we first meet Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), he is a “freelance journalist” storming out of the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle when they won’t cover his blog about a strange death on YouTube. (Law’s handsome looks are made blogger-real by a prosthetic snaggle-tooth.)

His character becomes a paranoid prophet to 12 million followers as he searches for the truth. But is Krumwiede really the ultimate conscious writer bound to integrity? Only his fake tooth knows the truth.

Bottled water will not save you.
Environmentalists go on and go and on about the evils of bottled water. “The plastic makes baby dolphins cry” and “The water isn’t cleaner than your tap.” All true. But as bottled water is snatched off shelves in this movie by panicked mobs, virus germs start flying about the grocery store like winged wee-beasties gunning for any visible mucus membrane.

Meanwhile, one can only assume the conscious-living folk are safely at home, sipping their tap water out of stainless-steel BPA-free containers.

Neither will hand-sanitizer.
Sure, no one listens to you when you spout about the dangers of overusing hand sanitizers. Triclosan, its main ingredient, may help create bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

So when the pandemic hits the fan, are you going to want to be facing it with an awesomely-developed immune system or a bottle of triclosan dripping all over your hands?

The importance of luminous skin in a world-saving heroine cannot be emphasized enough.
The greatest lesson of this movie is to Stop. Touching. Your. Face. (And giving germs quick entry.) But if you must touch your face, make sure it is to apply a good moisturizer.

Several of the heroes of this film are doctors who work for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO). They are played by Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, and Marion Cotillard, a trio of gorgeous women who could collectively stand on a beachfront and make like a super-human lighthouse to ships passing at sea.

If you are in touch with your humanity, you get to live.
See, it pays to be sensitive and conscious. At least if you are gentle-souled Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), who shepherds his teenaged daughter through the pandemic with a superior immune system and many empathetic looks.

As the movie’s moral Everyman, Mitch holds our hand through the scary parts and totally understands when we get up to wash them afterwards.

If you aren’t in touch with humanity, you get to kill the planet – Gwyneth.
The fact that Soderbergh cast Gwyneth Paltrow, the Queen of Unconscious Blogging, as Typhoid Mary/Beth Emhoff seems almost too literal. Ultimately, it is Beth and her adulterous ways who unleash the virus upon North America.

But while Gwyneth of GOOP can laud a “gorgeously-textured [$2595] Prada satchel” and prattle about “a delightfully laborious Labor Day weekend in Venice, Italy,” does she really deserve to get her scalp peeled back for an autopsy to reveal her brain is mush?

Corporations and governments are in cahoots. (Wait, didn’t we already know this?)
In Contagion, corporations honor the Almighty Dollar Sign over human health while the government enables them to do so. Meanwhile, doctors wring their hands at the bureaucratic red-tape they must cut through while they’re just trying to get the damn job done.

But then, maybe these are just the ravings of a crazed blogger conspiracy theorist who plays with her hair while she types. Or his prosthetic snaggle tooth. The truth is out there, people.

In the end, rhesus monkeys save our asses. Again.
H1N1, Avian Flu 1, SARS are all viruses whose vaccines have arrived the backs of animals. This movie doesn’t shy away from that fact. There’s no way PETA would approve a movie that shows medical scientists carting away rhesus monkeys in bloody, plastic bags.

But it is the gentle eyes of a sad test monkey who finally compels hero Doctor Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) to plunge the test vaccine into her own thigh. And consequently, save humanity.

We salute you nevertheless, Mr. Rhesus Monkey.

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