We were lucky to catch up with Naema Pierce recently and have shared our conversation below.

Naema , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I came up with the idea of offering this level of Women’s Pelvic + Sexual Healing because there is a major gap in women’s reproductive and sexual care across the board and I was tired of having personal experiences of painful, uninformed, and traumatic “health care” experiences myself, and I was tired of hearing friends and peers experiencing it too.

First let me offer some context of what I do. I am a holistic, integrative Pelvic Specialist and Sexuality Coach who specializes in ceremonial Pelvic Healing for Women. I have both an in person practice where I offer my hands on/hands in manual therapy and I work online with women in the format of courses and 1-1 mentorship containers – all in an effort to help women overcome pain, shame, numbness, and sexual disconnect so they can feel pain free, turned on and erotically confident.

My online mentorship is a transformative journey for women to reclaim and embody their sexual essence fully – focusing on sacred sexuality, self love and self worth. The online 1-1 and group course work I do with women takes women on a journey of diving deep into their body and nervous system to reprogram limiting and old conditioning, patterns and narratives that have kept them living small or stuck in a rut, and into an updated and more empowered relationship where they can thrive erotically. I have a methodology I created to systematically take women on a journey of this reclamation that focuses on 4 primary pillars: creating embodied safety, rewriting sexual response system, mastering your pleasure body, and the “Pelvic Pathway” which offers self hands on healing practices.

The in person sessions I offer consists of hands on manual bodywork therapy & somatic exploration that centers abdominal, womb and pelvic healing and vitality. This work includes thorough full body work and pelvic work that can include internal vaginal + anal work. I call this “hands on, hands in somatic pelvic healing”.

Let me paint you a picture of what it looks like when women receive in person work from me…

The minimum amount of time I work with a woman is 3 hours. She walks into my studio space and we begin by grounding her and I into the space together and I walk her through exactly what will happen each step of the way. The lighting is low, the air smells of essential oils distilling, and everything is cozy, comfortable and warm. As we connect, I start to go over exactly what is possible in the session and how it will work.

These sessions are equally centered in physical healing AND emotional/somatic healing. I am doing thorough and practical hands on manual bodywork that is rooted in science and physiology, but as we work with the physical body, we also work with all of the emotions, memories, thoughts, sensations and experiences that arise for her as I touch her tissues. Our bodies as humans, hold everything. All of our unconscious and conscious beliefs and memories, and when we start to touch and manipulate these tissues, all of that can start to come to the surface. And this happens on an even greater scale, when we are working with the specific areas of our abdomen, organs, womb and vaginal environment and the themes of sexual well being – some of the most intimate and vulnerable areas in the body & topics of the human experience.

So my client understands that anything that arises in session for her is available to be explored and tended to, and that this is a co-created body healing experience. Which means, they are not being asked to lie there in stillness while I “fix” their body, but instead they are being invited into a co-created healing experience where they actively participate in their healing process. They participate in their process by using practical tools and practices that I teach to them before they get on the table to help them submerge themself into the experience of being in deep listening to their body. Some of these tools include breathwork, sounding, movement, naming sensations with words, describing memories and feelings that arise, releasing emotions, and through the support of my guidance, we start to uncover some of the stored emotions and memories that are in the body that have created the very tension patterns and disconnection my client has been limited by.

In this check in, I make it clear that she is in charge every step of the way through the session and with my support, I help to develop the right dialogue and “safe words” that she can use if something feels off to her. The overarching umbrella of the session is centered in her being in charge, in her power and no longer enduring ANYTHING that doesn’t feel right. This in it of itself is usually the most transformative piece for my clients, because they usually have never been in a healing environment where they were honored and respected in this kind of a way.

After a thorough check in, my clients are usually teary because she feels like a prayer has been answered…she’s been wanting to be listened to and honored in this way, instead of fearing what might happen as she vulnerable exposes her body and areas of pain. Ultimately, my main focus is creating deep, unwavering safety for the women that walk through my door. Here we are re-writing the experiences they’ve have had in the past of their bodies not be honored, respected both in and out of the medical industry.

Then we dive into the hands on portion of the work for 3 whole hours. I work slowly because from everything I have learned about neuroscience and the nervous system (and from my own bodies wisdom) – our bodies need time and patience to unwind decades of tension patterns. Our bodies need loving, supportive, deep attuned listening to unwind and rediscover true safety. This is a paradigm that is very different from most bodywork and health care practices where practitioners push hard and fast to “open” the body or simply look past the emotional and mental experience of the client on the table.

When we separate the mental/emotional and physical – it’s quite hard to make change that actually lasts. Because our bodies can only uptake the healing touch when we feel safe. If a client is holding back their emotions, slightly guarding under the touch being offered, or feeling frozen to speak up, true healing isn’t occurring.

This is why my work is so effective for women and why it creates lasting change (sometimes in a matter of 1-3 sessions). Because I work with the body, emotions and heart in a slow, titrated way, that allows lifelong tension patterns and dysfunctions to release, and a level of true safety in their body to be restored.

Throughout the session it is not uncommon for women to release long held anger, grief, sadness, for them to recall memories that had long been pushed down, for them to heal and create a new relationship to their trauma, for them to write a new story around their challening birth experience, for them to feel their pelvic tension literally melt away under their breath and my touch, for them to rediscover an expansive sense of power and wisdom that comes from their womb and pelvis.

All the while healing issues like: prolapse, nerve pain/damage, incontinence, painful menstrual cycles, tilted uteruses and more.

The female body and all that it holds is wildly expansive, wise and strong – and women rediscover this inside of these sessions.

This is how I work with women, and it’s changing lives….

I specifically created my Somatic Pelvic Healing Sessions to fill a major gap in the women’s pelvic health world. First off, when it comes to women experiencing pain, numbness, disconnect and trauma from their pelvis – it’s still widely not even known that you can get physical, hands on support for these types of issues. But secondly, the only support out there is one of two – go to your OBGYN or a pelvic physical therapist. OBGYNs are simply not trained to support holistically conditions like pelvic pain, numbness, nerve pain, hormonal imbalances, organ prolapses, and more. The main solutions here are surgery or drugs. It’s a dead end because there are way too many women taking hormonal birth control or other drugs that are only masking their symptoms or having unneccesary surgeries, hysterectomys, & biopsies done to our beautiful cervixes and bodies which leave a permanent mark.

Then there are the physical therapists. Now I will say that I have experienced a couple of more conscientious pelvic floor therapists (so I’m not saying all pelvic PTs are bad), I am grateful that this care does exists. However…the pelvic PTs still are practicing in very clinical setting, are usually not supporting/counseling on some of the most critical aspects that create pelvic dysfunctions in the first place (sexual beliefs, sexual conditioning, sexual education, sexual trauma, traumatic births, etc), and they typically see clients for 30-60 min. In my opinion, that’s not enough time and space that a female client needs to be able to truly open and heal in her pelvis on every level. I can’t tell you how many times I have had clients in my office telling me how their pelvic PT or OBGYN created more tension, stress and trauma in her body and system because they moved too quick, too fast and it was not as consensual and informative as they needed.

I have had numerous clients that have worked with pelvic PT’s on a weekly basis for over a year and have made little progress, and been told their condition might not improve. Then they come to me and in 1-3 sessions, 90-100% of their physical symptoms are resolved AND they feel more empowered, more confident and more at home in their body than they ever have before.

This is the beauty of integrative somatic pelvic healing and why I am so passionate about offering it to the world. Because women have been underserved for far too long and women need a different level of attuned care than any medical profession teaches.

I’ve never met a single woman that hasn’t had trauma stored in her body, womb or pelvis. Even if said women has never had an “explicit assault.” All of us women have trauma stored in our bodies from living in a world that is still patriarchal in nature. And when I say patriarchal, I mean a world where where women are still not being represented and/or standing in equal positions of socio, economic and political power while ALSO navigating a daily experience of sexism, rape culture and sexual assault.

One out of every 4 women have been sexually assaulted or abused. We women need this care because we hold so much known and unknown tension and strain around these realities, both physically and emotionally. If we don’t intentionally seek opportunities to feel, move through, and heal these aspects within us, they begin to rule our lives and bodies and keep us in feelings of pain, shame, and disconnect. This work is a movement of supporting women to take back their lives and bodies, live from their fullest and truest essence, and own their erotic and sexual power as something not to be feared or shameful, but to embody it as a sacred, powerful, beautiful part of us, which it is.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Problems I solve: I help women overcome pain, shame and sexual disconnect so they can feel pain free and erotically confident.

I got into this work from a variety of different personal experiences. One of the primary ones was when I fell on a staircase when I was 18 years old leaving my restaurant job and cracked my tailbone. I proceeded to be in excruciating pain for the next 1.5 years. I was unable to sit without pain and discomfort, unable to do daily activities and felt a boat load of shame, sadness and anger that my body was “doing this to me”.

I eventually found a woman that practiced holistic pelvic therapy. We did 2 sessions working intra-vaginally and anally, and my pain was gone. Voila.

This was a pivotal moment when I just knew that every woman had to know about and have access to this kind of support. So I set off on my journey of getting deeply obsessed with women’s reproductive health and sexuality. It was all I wanted to read or talk about for a long time (even still to this day!)…back then I would go around talking to my friends about the beauty of their menstrual cycles and sharing the new knowledge I had just learned about the miraculous cyclical nature of our wombs and bodies. I was an avid explorer of my own pleasure body, but always carried layers of shame around this from religious conditioning, So I learned how to work through that and created a new narrative with my bodies sexuality by taking various programs, courses and classes on communication, self love, and sexuality so I could have a new, more empowered relationship to it.

And then I wanted to share that empowerment with my closest friends, peers and every woman I knew. Because it fundamentally changed who I was as a women. I went from feeling shameful, scared, in pain and disconnected from myself, my voice and body…into living pain free, having more nice thoughts in my head than self critical ones, and discovered oceans of pleasure in my body.

I studied the human body and pelvic body in depth carving my own education because there isn’t a through pathway for the type of work that I offer. Because women’s sexual and reproductive health is still highly underserved and understudied today, it still means a lot of the traditional pathways of education in these fields are not super high quality and effective. A lot of the healing strategies centralize in drugs, surgery and long, slow and painful procedures that don’t give full results.

So I carved my own path and studied with mayan midwives in Guatemala and Mexico who taught me a TON about pelvic and womb hands on support. I have done numerous Female Pelvic Hands on trainings in Canada where holistic pelvic care is ‘a bit’ more mainstream. And countless other courses and perfect fit opportunities from other teachers in the realms of osteopathy, visercal maniupulation, cranial sacral, somatic experiencing, and various nervous system and trauma trainings. And I continue to study as much as I can ongoing which isn’t hard because I am simply obsessed.

So many years ago a dear friend said, “Naema if you like to talk about all this stuff so much, why don’t you teach it?”

So I did :)

I started teaching workshops and classes on menstrual cycle health, sexual health, and sacred sexuality and now I am where I am today. I’ve been offering this manual pelvic healing in person for the last 6 years and I brought my business online in 2020 during covid where I started to create an online movement and presence where women could be supported through my guidance in the comfort of their own homes doing deep pelvic and sexual healing. And in many ways, I feel like I am just getting started.

I am devoted to this work, my heart is fully behind it. But even then, I have sometimes fantasized about having a ‘normal job’ where my hours are made, I go in, do my work and then leave my work at work and have my home life at home.
Because I am not going to lie, being an entrepreneur is hard work. It takes serious self discipline, time, energy and devotion. From doing all the online marketing, to creating courses, to the 1,000 of hours of sessions I have held, and being a one woman show doing it all (not to mention the topics that my work is built around are some of the most taboo topics out there)… it’s a lot to say the least.

I have had moments of questioning and reconsidering what I am doing. But then I always land back to doing exactly what I am doing, because my heart and soul can’t have it any other way. It’s my truth. At least that’s how it is now, and I am always open to wherever I am guided by my soul in the future.

As for future dreams….I desire to open up a school or training program to teach other practitioners how to offer this hands on somatic and coaching work so that more women across the world have access to their highest liberation and power. We need more hands on deck. Literally.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

This has been a growth journey!
For my bodywork practice, I’m not going to lie it was as easy as putting together a good webpage and having a clear, honed in niche. I am offering something quite unique so it attracts the right people fast and because I am in person with this, whenever people search for “womb healing” or “pelvic healing” in this area, I pop up. It’s been fantastic.

For my online clientele it’s a different story. I’ve used instagram, youtube, and email as my main online marketing platforms. And I have also had people find me through google searches on my website. What I have found to be true is that having authentic connections and conversations with people is what converts interested people into paying clients the most. I genuinely have an interest in the people that are interested in my work. When they comment on my content, I ask them questions, I get curious and have real life conversations with them like a normal human. People can feel this authenticity and connection and it creates a relationship where we can both then thrive.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

A lot of what helped me build my reputation was through offering a very integrous space for women to transform and I continually center all of what I create thinking about how I can best serve the person in front of me. When people feel integrity and get to experience the power of transformation because of that – they spread word about it fast. And when people step into my containers, whether that’s in person, or online through my courses or 1-1 mentorship – they actually get transformation! They actually have the change they want! And I have been able to offer that to people because I’ve put the time into studying, practicing and continually reforming my methods to create a methodology that actually transforms.

In the fast moving world of business and marketing, sometimes it’s easy for people to start selling quick fixes or to dampen their magic because they are trying to fit into something that they “think” their client might want…but in reality, if the thing your selling them doesn’t actually work, but it’s too much of a quick fix and not actually getting to the root of the issue, then you won’t have repeat clients and you won’t have previous clients spreading word for you.

So I think it’s really important to get clear on creating a very effective process/product that actually delivers the end result your selling. That is integrity. And that’s not to say that I am promising my clients everything I am selling, I’m not. I can’t actually promise things in my line of work because a lot of the journey of my client’s transformation takes place from them putting into practice and putting to work what I am teaching and supporting them with. I promise that I will deliver 100% and give them everything they need to thrive. And then I actually do that. That’s what builds a stellar reputation.

Secondly, I think what has helped me build my reputation is that I have stood confidentially and offered what I have even though some people would say it’s too out there, scary, “too much”, etc. I didn’t dampen my magic, I didn’t dampen my message or my intention. I let myself be my full unique self and that makes my offerings unique and therefore stand out. I think that in this day with technology as robust as it is, and every answer to every question just at your fingertips, it’s really important to maintain a soul connection to what I create because THAT speaks to people. That’s what creates a powerful experience for women, instead of selling people more knowledge they could get anywhere. Creating powerful, unique, and soul touching offerings is what makes my work unique and speaks to so many women profoundly, which helps build a strong reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.naemapierce.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naemapierce/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywaANEFlCtTdE2QwWnC1FA

Image Credits

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