Naima B. Robert – Marital intimacy Advice for Muslim Men and Women Iffet Rafeeq + @thevillageauntie6486
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
What you are excited about today? What you
are looking forward to this weekend? I wanna
know.
Please please please spill the tea. Okay? I
want to know inshallah if it let me
know if everything's okay your end,
if you've got your your your cameras alright.
Guys, can you hear me? Let me know.
My chat is very quiet. You know, I
don't like that. Okay?
With the chat. Hey.
Sister Efedd. How are you?
I'm okay. I just can't start start my
video. I think the option for starting videos
off. Let's sort you out, my dear. Let's
sort you out. I don't know why they
would allow somebody to become
a panelist and not have
video access. It happens all the time. Zoom,
you need to get it together. Okay. So
it should be okay now because you're cohost.
So let me know if that's working for
you. Inshallah. Yeah. There we go.
There she is.
There we go. There she is. Excellent. Good
job. Right. So we are live in here
with our VIPs. Welcome, VIPs. But I I'm
so sorry. We If it, the sad thing
is we actually cannot start until the chat
gets going. So all of you in the
chat, those of you in the VIP room,
please, you need to at least give a
in the chat. Otherwise, we cannot do this.
Okay?
So I'm gonna just check on YouTube, make
sure everything's okay there
and everything is good. They're
doing what they do and that's what we
wanna see.
We wanna see people coming in live, guys.
Drop your salaam. Let us know where you
are attending from and what you are looking
forward to getting out of this weekend. And,
sis, you better make some dua for your
your your VIPs here because otherwise they're gonna
hold up the whole program.
Alright. Guys,
let's give a salaam, and let's hear where
you guys are from.
Like, it would be nice to know, like,
what cities you guys are coming from, what
countries you guys are coming from. It'd be
really interesting to know. Yeah. That would be
lovely. I'm super excited, sis. How are you
feeling?
Really, really, really excited. I'm really honored really
honored to be having this conversation
on a platform like this. It just
I feel I feel so blessed. I feel
so excited. I feel like this is this
is something that
needed to be out there for so long,
and now someone like yourself is finally doing
it.
We've all been waiting for this. No. We've
all been waiting. It's so interesting that you
say that because
the the people that I met today on
my I was out recording for a new
TV show, and they said exactly the same
thing. They said it's it's needed. It's needed.
It's about time. They said they've been getting
messages in their WhatsApp, on their DMs to
say, yes. Finally. Right? We're having this conversation.
So I'm very, very blessed and honored,
to be the host. Right? So all I
I get to do, guys, is
I I get to take the reflected glory
of all these wonderful experts that we have
now in the community.
So,
VIPs
have put queue they put questions in the
chat, So that's okay. We can accept that.
I think we're gonna get started, inshallah. So
what we're gonna do now is gonna hit
record. And then, sis, I'm gonna welcome everyone.
I'm gonna get let you tell people who
you are and what we're gonna be talking
about. And then inshallah, if you have slides,
you can share those.
I'm gonna we will have a little back
and forth, and then I'm gonna give you
the stage, and it will be all yours
You ready? Okay. Okay. Joel, I'm ready.
Welcome everyone to the intimacy
conversation.
I am so excited to be here with
you.
This is your host Naima b Robert and
I'm the host of the intimacy conversation.
We have a
an amazing lineup of guests for you this
whole weekend.
I'm not gonna be doing much talking.
I'm gonna do lots of listening, and I'm
gonna be taking notes.
And our first guest
who is going to be presenting
for us tonight herself, and she is
Ifat Rafiq. Ifat, assalamu alaikum.
Alaykum assalam.
Alaykum assalam. Very, very excited to be here.
Thank you so much.
Very, very excited to be here. I can
hear a feedback.
For accepting the invitation.
Feedback.
Okay. Let me know in the chat if
everything is okay sound wise, guys. You know,
the bad Internet follows me wherever I go.
So, Sis, why don't you tell the people
who you are and what your
credentials are in this space? Miss Mila, I'm
gonna come off for you.
So my name is,
and I am a student of DEEN. I've
been studying DEEN for a good few years.
I can still hear the feedback. Just
asking if everyone else can hear the feedback.
Inshallah, just let us know. I think I'm
good now. I think I'm good. I think
it's because you muted yourself. Okay. So my
name is Ifrit Rafiq. I am a student
of Deen from the UK.
I have been studying for
over a decade,
Islamic Sciences
with various different scholars in the UK and
internationally.
I've studied
traditional Alameda course and then, studied Arabic and
various different sciences in places like Al Azhar
University, Cambridge Muslim College,
Al Maktoum College,
a variety of different institutes internationally and nationally.
After studying Bien
and working in the community quite, for quite
some time,
I felt
a very compelling need
to do more research into marriage, marriage intimacy,
relationships,
communication,
emotional intelligence, because a lot of the questions
that I kept get getting
were to do with relationships.
And just the breakdown of the the marriage
and then breakdown of the the family
system was very interesting to me, and and
I was hoping to try and find solutions.
This kind of led me to
researching more into * education, and I stumbled
upon
a very, very rich tradition
of Islamic * education, which was fascinating as
you can imagine as a student of Deen.
I went through the whole Alameda course with
with a little bit of,
* education
related to fiqh.
But, apart from that, we we we weren't
introduced to it. So
super fascinated that scholars had spoken about this.
There are books written on this.
The only barrier was language. We had a
lot of books that were in Arabic, a
lot of books in in different languages, but
not as many Islamic education
intimacy education books in English. So
I, delved straight into it,
head first and realized that this is definitely
definitely a passion of mine passion of mine.
So now I spend my time teaching
Deen,
studying
Islamic
* education, sexology in Islam, erotology in Islam,
and trying to teach women,
what I know and what I'm learning, as
well as, speaking about well-being, mental health. And
as a side passion, I'm really passionate about
minimalism and living sustainably. So that's that's just
a little bit about me.
Naima, I don't know if we can have
a conversation without hearing the feedback. Let me
know if if that's possible.
Girl, I have no idea either. So I'm
not gonna waste anyone's time. Insha Allah. Okay.
So we had a chat, and I think
today you're going to be talking to us
about embracing your sensual self.
So, Bismillah, I think people want to hear
this because
so many of us,
this is an unexplored
area of our lives. Right? Mhmm. Whether we're
married, we're in a marriage right now, or
we're post marriage, this can be one of
those areas that we simply don't know that
much about or we haven't explored very widely.
So,
I wanna give you the stage. Just just
take it take it away. How can we
embrace our sensual selves?
Let's go. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Okay. So what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna screen share with you guys.
I made,
a small little presentation
just because I'm a visual learner myself,
and I like to,
I like to,
have I like to have something on the
screen.
Now what I would need from,
if it's okay,
if you can kind of pin both screens.
I don't know
or if you can if there's a way
if there isn't a way to
to make both the screens equal, then that's
fine. I'll just I'll just go ahead. But
I'll let you kind of explore that in
your own time, however you can do it.
Okay.
So we're gonna be talking about embracing your
sensual self.
When I think about sensuality,
instantly, when I'm teaching it and I'm I'm
connecting with women about sensuality, I'm thinking about
presence because sensuality
brings presence. It brings presence into day to
day life. It bring brings presence into intimacy.
It brings press presence into our relationship with
ourselves and our relationship with God.
So learning about your sensuality
is about becoming present
about your environment
and and who you are in this moment
and what your need is in this moment.
So
sensuality is connecting with the senses.
At a very basic level, it's connecting with
the senses, connecting with what you can feel,
connecting with,
what you can smell, what you can taste,
connecting with
how how it feels to have the ground
underneath your feet, how it feels leaning back
on the seat, how do you how do
you feel right now watching these visuals, and
what can you see in these visuals.
All of these
senses, connecting with them makes us more present
in this moment.
And what that can help do is then
understand who we are, what our need is.
And then when it comes to sensuality,
we're able to express that need and express
the desire and give out the love and
then be able to ask
and receive what we need as well. So
I'm gonna be talking a little bit about
the different aspects of sensuality
that I felt
Muslim women,
and and Muslim men in in in the
the kind of conversations that I've had with
people
struggle with.
And we'll talk a little bit about how
* sensuality
is
intimacy, I guess. Intimacy is,
is is a path to God, and it
brings us back to God. So we'll be
having I'll be giving you some of my
experiences and having the the conversations I've had
and the collective information I've gathered
from Muslim women,
across the UK and across the world,
when I teach internationally.
But
also this idea of what I've learned through
the scholarly literature
about * education, of this idea of really
connecting back to Allah, all of it essentially
brings us back to Allah.
So
when I think about sensuality,
I think of it as a multidimensional
experience. Sensuality can never
solely be a a physical or an emotional
experience.
Sensuality
has to it has to transcend past all
of your different
beings, all your different levels of existence
in order for you to get the best
out of your experience.
So you know how people speak about food,
and they say this is soul food
that sometimes we sit with our teachers or
we sit with our grandmothers, and we eat
their food, and we know that this food
isn't just
tongue deep. This food isn't just stomach deep.
This food,
it transcends your being. This food is good
for your spiritual health. This good food is
good when your grandmothers cook, it's good for
your mental health, your spiritual health, your physical
health. That food, we know that it makes
us become
more stronger and more eager to do and
worship.
So
soul, just the same way we we have
different experiences in our life that transcend
different levels of our being and don't just
aren't just restricted to the physical.
I believe
that * and intimacy
have the exact same effect. It is sensuality,
and sexual sensuality especially is it's it
it crosses all the different boundaries of who
you are.
And knowing that
is really powerful because what what does it
mean then? It means that
suddenly it's become a lot more exciting. Suddenly
there's a lot more to in
to unpack here and to open up and
to explore.
So before we open up and explore the
different levels of sensuality,
I would like to share with you guys
the the kind of the struggles that Muslims
that I've been in conversation with, the students
that I've been teaching, the kind of conversations
that come about the initial conversations that come
about when we're learning,
about intimacy. First of all, intimacy
is the fact that intimacy is for procreation
only. This is a sentence that's really thrown
out there a lot. The fact that a
man and a woman come together solely to
to create children, solely to bring children into
this life.
This is a statement that's been thrown out
there a lot, and and it seems to
be pretty well rooted in in society. I
have a lot of women, surprisingly enough, still
till this day. I have a lot of
women messaging me and,
telling me that their husbands have said, okay.
No more intimacy now because we've got our
3 kids, and we don't need you know,
we're not going to have any more kids,
and and and * is only for procreation.
It's only to to have more kids. So
this this this sentence, believe it or not,
is still pretty much kind of out there
and people
readily believe it.
Speaking about intimacy is shameful. This is another
barrier that Muslim communities have.
Speaking about intimacy in, in in a non
Hayafal way is shameful.
The speaking about intimacy
in the way that the prophet
is his sunnah in the way that he
did it, that is that is, that is,
if anything, fulfilling a sunnah. It's fulfilling, something
that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has
done. We know from our traditions that we
have got, we have received prophetic * education.
So this idea of not speaking about intimacy
and not learning
what we can do in intimacy,
experiences
and and teaching our youth, teaching our adult,
teaching the married, teaching
those who are going to get married.
This
not teaching them is
against the sunnah because the prophet
was very clear about matters that needed to
be spoken about.
There's, a narrative out there that spiritual people
don't really engage with intimacy or the idea
that intimacy reduces our spirituality. Why? Because we're
following our carnal desires, so your spirituality is
reduced because
because you are falling at the you're you're
falling to your desires, and you're weakened by
your desires.
This is not a narrative that is ours.
This is not a narrative that is a
Muslim narrative because
had,
intimacy reduced your spirituality or had spiritual people
not engaged in in intimacy,
then the best of creation, Muhammad
would have never engaged in it. If this
was not something that was
that was inherently
good, then the message of Allah
would have never gone near it. He would
have never approached it.
But there is inherently
intimacy
and connection and *. Inherently, it is sacred,
And the prophet has
he's he's fulfilled that sunnah. So by by
doing so, by looking at his his example,
we can recognize that this is not something
that takes spirituality away from you. When,
when intimacy
and the and the rules of intimacy that
God has given us have been transgressed,
then, of course, it takes away from your
spirituality. It takes you further away from God.
It pulls at the the contentment of the
soul.
But when it's done within the remits that
Allah has permitted, then it elevates you. It
takes you further. It takes you closer to
him. And the fact that intimacy is for
young couples, this is
I hear this quite a lot. I hear
this from women who are approaching menopause.
I hear this from women who have had,
like, 5, 6 children, and they're done. And
they say, yeah. I've had my fun and
no more. Like, I'm not I'm not interested.
I'm too old for that kind of stuff.
SubhanAllah. This is not
this is this is, I think,
a narrative that is used to
sup surprise female sexuality,
and and to kind of put a lid
on it. But
the idea of,
the village auntie concept
and elderly women knowing and learning and training
younger
younger women on intimacy and how to have,
a a very wholesome
intimacy life.
This comes from the idea that the older
women are still very intimately active and that
they have they're well experienced.
So intimacy isn't just for young couples. So
that was that's just a couple of barriers
that I've seen in the Muslim community,
in general. So let's go back let's take
you back to the Quran.
Everything we do as a student of Deen,
everything we do, we start with the Quran.
Allah
has said in the Quran that another of
his signs is that he created spouses amongst
yourselves for you to live in tranquility.
He ordained love and kindness between you.
Truly there are truly signs in this for
those who reflect.
So Bayna ibn Abbas
is our go to for understanding the Quran.
He he he explained many verses of the
Quran to us, and in this specific verse,
it is reported that he said when Allah
is speaking about love,
he's speaking about sexual * and a lot
of other scholars have also made this interpretation.
So let's let's look at this for a
minute.
Allah is saying from amongst his signs,
Allah has ordained for you love
I. E. Intimacy
and kindness between yourself. So in Allah has
commanded
intimacy and kindness between us.
These are signs.
So if Allah is saying that within a
marriage, I bring 2 a man and a
woman together, I bring 2 souls together for
you to live in peace and have that
sakinah,
And then between you, I I encourage love
and kindness,
and this becomes that love and that kindness
and that intimacy becomes a sign for those
who reflect What are we learning here?
That intimacy
can directly
connect and lead us to
proximity with Allah.
Because the more we reflect on the intimacy,
the kindness, the the tranquility,
the balance between a husband and a wife,
that beautiful
balance of of the masculine and the feminine
coming together, the more we reflect on it,
the more we say,
glory be to Allah who created this created
this for us.
And from, the hadith of the prophet
we know that we have many prophetic teachings.
I've given I've just mentioned 3 narrations here,
but there are so many narrations. Habiba Kandy
has, like, a a huge book in English
called a taste of honey, which I've mentioned
in the and in the resources at the
end.
Speaking about
all all the narrations that the prophet salaihi
wa sallam, nearly all of the narrations that
the prophet salaihi wa sallam has mentioned associated
with * education.
We know when the prophet taught
* education, he would make it very clear.
There was no ambiguity.
Everybody understood what was being said. The prophet
wants dispatch Sayidna Ali
to go out and announce to the people
that,
the certain days the certain days
were for eating, drinking, and sexual * just
so everybody knew. It was very it was
permitted for them to now eat, drink, and
and have sexual *.
Another haditha is really interesting, and I I
find this,
I find I u I use this under
hadith to understand masculinity
and manhood and what it means to be
a man. My husband and I, we do
a lot of work in this area of
breaking down,
the our understanding of masculinity and restoring that
balance between men and women.
And,
this hadith is really interesting. The prophet
said that every game a Muslim plays is
futile,
I. E. Waste of time, except archery, training
one's horse, and playing with your wife or
engaging
with your wife for they are real.
What I what I believe from this hadith
or this narration is that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasalam was teaching us the the qualities
of a man. He was teaching us,
about how how when a man is well
disciplined
and he's also very forthcoming with his wife,
how this can create and nurture really powerful
masculinity.
And as we know from archery, as we
know from training a horse, we've heard
that
these skills take real
precision. They take real discipline. They take a
a lot of work on the nuffs. You
can't have you can't do archery without really
training the mind
to be still, training the body to be
still. You can't
you can't train horses without having,
working on your ego. I know a lot
of
a lot of teachers that work with horses
say that it is a huge,
humble experience to to work with horses because
you can't have an ego when you're when
you're working with horses and riding horses and
training them, things like that. So
archery
refines the mind. It refines and brings balance
to to the body and that precision and
that excellence in the human
focus
and and training and that connecting with animals
and not having pride and ego, especially with
horses,
and then having this engaging with with
your wife and and nurturing her and getting
her prepared
to be intimate with you,
these are signs of masculinity.
These are the signs of a man.
I won't go into too much explanation. I
think I'll be here all day on that
hadith.
The one of the most popular narrations that
we have that majority of us have heard
of before
is this narration when the Sahaba came to
the prophet and they said,
all of the rich people have taken all
of the sadaqah, they've taken all of the
wealth, they've taken all of the barakah because
they give so much in in charity.
And the prophet
told them about certain asqa they can recite.
Reciting,
reciting
for you. He he mentioned a variety of
different forms that you could do sadaqa so
that those who are financially not,
capable could also receive the rewards of sadaqa.
And he, rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said
having * with your wife
is sadaqah.
And the sahabah were like, yeah, Rasulullah,
if one of us fulfills our own desires,
there's reward in that? And the prophet
said, do you not see that if if
you commit this in a haram way, you
will be given a sin? A sin will
be attributed to you. So if you do
it in a halal manner, then a reward
will be attributed to you. So when we
if we were to
disobey Allah
and we were to have,
* outside of marriage or outside of the
the boundaries that Allah has created for us,
a sin would be written against us.
Then obeying Allah means having intimacy
with your wife,
being intimate with your partner.
It is an act of obedience.
From this hadith, we can recognize that the
same way we
the same way we, recite Quran, we do,
acts the same way we give,
the same way that we try to excel
ourselves in in excellence, in being,
in in
in different ways, this is also a form
of,
fulfilling the right of your spouse, your your
spouse fulfilling the right
your rights
and creating and nurturing that that that love
and that kindness that we we read in
the in the the the verse of the
Quran,
nurturing that
that brings about so much reward. That is
obedience to Allah and that is bringing us
closer to Allah.
So what is the purpose of intimacy?
And I think,
I think I've asked this question many times.
I've had many different answers,
but but essentially, I I mentioned the answer
to you right at the beginning.
The purpose of intimacy is not procreation.
It's not,
it's not, believe it or not, the purpose
of it. It's it's not
to to in to connect with your spouse.
To to a certain degree, it does connect
you with your spouse, but the real purpose,
the real essence of intimacy
is exactly the same
as the purpose of everything else in this
world. The purpose
of the mountains and the trees and the
and the lakes and the deserts and the
purpose of everything else that is beautiful
in this earth.
Everything that Allah has created, the purpose of
it
is to remind us of Allah.
It is to remind us of Allah's glory,
to remind us of Allah's
power,
Allah's grace,
Allah's kindness,
Allah's rahman.
The purpose of intimacy
is exactly the same as the purpose of
why we take hikes
on beautiful mountains.
We climb Mount Everest, and we
we travel far and wide to see beautiful
beautiful scenery and waterfalls and lakes and deserts
and all of the creation that Allah has
created.
We go out there
and we see these incredible scenes and we
say wow.
Something's moved inside me. Wow.
Allah created this?
This is beautiful.
This is
this is
this is a sign. This is a sign
that there is something
create greater. There is a creator that's creating
all of this. It moves
something within
you. *
is exactly the same. Intimacy
is exactly the same. The real essence, the
real purpose of it all
is to remind us of Allah.
It is to for us to to feel
the pleasure,
to experience this connection, to experience this ecstatic,
intimate
whole relationship that we we are going through
in the state that we experience,
and to say,
This is Allah.
This is what Allah has given me in
this world,
in this temporary world. This is what Allah
gave me here. Imagine what he will give
me in Jannah.
Imagine what it will be like to be
with him.
What that will taste like, what that will
feel like, how incredible that feeling, and how
joyful that will feel if this is what
I'm tasting and this is what I'm feeling
in
the duniya, in a temporary world.
So subhanAllah,
the purpose of intimacy is
it does connect you to your spouse. It
does bring forth amazing incredible gifts in the
form of children in this world.
It does help and heal the mind and
the body, but the real essence,
the real purpose is to feel intimacy
and say la ilaha illallah.
This is my God. This is my creator
who gay who put this ability in me.
And sometimes I use this example
of
and it sounds strange to people when they
think of it, but sensuality and going back
to embracing your sensuality,
this is this is where it ties in
and it links to this.
Eating your favorite meal,
smelling your favorite perfume,
it are just steps along the way
of recognizing
Allah and being reminded of Allah.
And intimacy is exactly the same. It's one
of those stepping stones to Allah. So when
we I know my favorite food is Thai
green curry.
Absolutely in love with Thai green curry. Every
time I have the first bite of Thai
green curry,
I just feel this euphoric
rush, and I just enjoy
that taste of the coconut and the spices.
And it's so delicious. And I always end
up saying,
This is amazing. This is this is something
that was created in the dunya.
How incredible is this? What will be waiting
for us in Jannah?
And when I take that first bite, I
always feel this euphoric
sense of,
like, this is a huge gift. My god
has gifted me this. I'm so grateful for
this experience.
And then in the same way, when we
tap into other senses, when we perfume ourselves
and we smell or we smell our our
partner's perfume and it smells intoxicating, icating. When
we,
feel certain textures,
when we wear silk, or when we,
brush against something that's very soft and gentle,
it it tingles and tantalizes the skin and
it makes you
be present back into your body again and
glorify Allah for it. It reminds you that
Allah has given me
the tawfiq
to feel this pleasure.
When we do that,
essentially, we're tapping into all of these small
stepping stones to to to take us back
back to him.
So
I'm going to I'm going to give you
this statement
that * is inherently
sacred.
Why is it inherently sacred? This is an
act that god
chose to
attribute to bringing new souls into this dunya.
We have and I know this sounds like
a very basic example, but we have fruit
that grows on trees.
If Allah wanted, they could humans could have
come from trees.
We have vegetables that grow from the ground,
from the earth. If Allah went wanted, we
could have had we could have had humans
that grow from the earth and from the
ground.
We have, water that springs forth. We have
a lot of creation that comes from water.
If Allah wanted,
mankind would have come from the ocean.
Allah
chose
a very specific sequence of events
that start with
the coming together of a man and a
woman in in a very sacred union. Allah
created this
as the and attributed to it
the the focus of bringing a a new
soul into this dunya. So the the idea
of it being chosen as the means and
the method is is it shows sanctity.
Sexual intimacy is the deepest and the closest
you can physically be with another human apart
from being in the womb of your mother
when you're a fetus,
this is the closest that humans can connect.
We know that even in our salah, we
create spiritual intimacy when we're standing side by
side, brothers are standing side by side, when
women are standing shoulder to shoulder and we're
praying and we're doing sujood together, that is
physical closeness, physical proximity, and we're we're,
cultivating
spiritual intimacy amongst ourselves.
There are so many different ways when we
when we grieve, we hug each other, we
embrace each other. When we're happy, we, you
know, we we we have physical proximity. But
when it comes to a man and a
woman, especially
in in in the beautiful confinements of a
marriage, this is the closest you can be
with another human being
physically.
* also has very healing properties for the
mind and the body, and and knowing this
can really help you tap tap back into
your sensuality.
Knowing that,
your your mental health
is enhanced when you're having a wholesome intimacy
experience
And knowing that your physical health is enhanced
when you're having a wholesome,
spiritual
wholesome intimacy experience
can really help tap into that that sensual
self of ourselves.
And it's classed as an act of worship,
like I mentioned, and it will also be
performed in Jannah. We have a narration from
from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam where
he speaks about,
men and women and the spouses having *
in Jannah
and it being,
it being it being better than it is
in the dunya, and it won't there won't
be any conception.
So the prophet was teaching us about the
type of intimacy that will take place in
Jannah. Now if you think about it, the
dunya,
grief, sadness,
bad words,
everything that's lowly and and dark and, and
draining,
it stays for the dunya. It it's here.
It remains here. It doesn't go into to
Jannah. So in Jannah, Allah
speaks about there will be no sad words.
There will be no sad experiences. Everyone will
just feel joy and happiness.
But when it comes to
*,
Allah has allowed it to enter Jannah, it
to be an experience in Jannah, which means
that inherently *
is is is sacred if it can make
it and it can be permitted in Jannah.
And I mentioned all of these things because
when we think about our sensuality,
we need to think about mind, body, and
soul. And our sensual self needs to be
tapped into our physical,
and and our bodies need to be open
and ready for that for for the intimacy.
It needs to be psychological and emotional. We
need our hearts need to be ready. Our
minds need to be ready for intimacy
and spiritual.
And sometimes Muslims have a spiritual block because
we believe
based on
hearsay or information that we've picked up across
our lives that * is shameful, intimacy is
shameful.
So this idea of
knowing that inherently it was a it is
a good thing, and it's just been corrupted
by humans for their own desires. But inherently,
it is something that we use to elevate
us and bring us closer
to Allah can really help embrace
our sensuality.
So I'm gonna speak a little bit about
how do we cultivate how do we cultivate
sensuality? And then, Insha'Allah, once I've wrapped up,
I I'll I'll be happy to take any
questions.
So I think the first thing that I
say, because I am my mother's daughter, is
eating well. Eat clean. Eat good food.
That is the best way
to cultivate your sensuality. If your body is
not healthy, remember, this is the instrument.
So the the cycle the especially for women,
the the the mind is one of the
largest * organs,
and the the heart being present is is
very, very important.
And in order to in order to access
the heart and access the mind, we need
to take care of this instrument, which is
the body.
Eating well and eating clean is
paramount. It's so important.
When we have unhealthy
lifestyles, when we have unhealthy diets, it takes
an instant
impact on our wombs, on our cycles,
on male fertility,
on female fertility. It takes an impact on
libido.
It takes an impact on how we communicate
and how we,
problem solve our relation within our relationships. It
breaks down a lot of things,
when we're eating very unhealthy food and our
minds and our bodies are not getting the
right nutrition.
So a lot of what's really popular out
there is, like, foods to increase your libido.
And here's what I'm gonna say when across
this amazing conversation that you're you're gonna have
for the next 3 days, you're going to
receive information from incredible,
individuals who have have so much knowledge to
share, and we're so blessed to have access
to this. And when they when when they
when you hear about foods to increase your
libido, I want you to remember one thing.
And I've often seen this when I'm teaching
courses and when I'm working with women,
I tell them about foods that can enhance
their libido. And what we what we tend
to do is we have our set diet,
and then we add
the foods that are great for the libido.
What I would like to say is we
need to clean out the diet first,
regulate what we already are eating, and really
simplify what we're eating. Go back to basics
and back to, like, fitra foods only
and create space for these libido enhancing foods
so that our body can do instead of
just putting it on top of what we're
already eating and consuming all the salt and
the sugar and the the the junk food
and all of that, and then adding on,
like, an extra
libido enhancing
ingredient and saying, well, this isn't making a
difference for me. Clean out the palate first,
and then you'll be able to experience the
difference.
Knowing that pleasure is your right, this is
your god given right, whether you're male or
female,
knowing just really knowing within yourselves, deep within
yourselves that this is number 1, okay,
that number 2, that this is your hack.
This is something that is it is your
permission, and this is something that women struggle
with a lot of the time,
and get into that pleasure state of mind
that this is this is for me to
give pleasure and to receive pleasure.
Taking care of our bodies, once again reducing
stress.
One of the biggest libido killers that I've
seen in the students that I've been teaching
is this idea of
chronic fatigue
because of lifestyle choices.
Men and women are really in a state
of exhaustion, these 9 to 5 jobs, and
then they're running around, being stuck in traffic,
and having quick meals,
meals on the go. All of this lifestyle
that has been, especially in in in the
UK and in in certain places in America,
this very fast paced lifestyle
is killing
our body health, but also killing our libido
as well.
So come the end of the day, if
you've done a full full day's work and
and you've been dealing with the kids, by
the time you finally get to to bed,
you're
exhausted.
A lot of mothers, even if they're not
working mothers, they're they're exhausted
being with the children all day around and,
you know, especially when they're drivers and there's
there's so much to do, there's so many
clubs to get to and things like that.
Women are in a state and women and
men are in a state of exhaustion.
So whatever we can do to reduce this.
My personal,
method to reduce stress, my personal method to
live happier and be happier is minimalism.
Minimalism has changed
my life. It has made me such a
happier, more,
more less stressed person because of it. Because
I I don't have extra items in my
home. I don't have I I'm not thinking
about purchasing extra items.
Everything's very it simplified a lot of things
for me, and it's also helping me with
my my spiritual minimalism as well that I'm
trying to practice.
Knowing yourself deeply, cultivating your sensuality,
and knowing yourself deeply,
knowing yourself,
both of these 2 come together and they're
so intertwined. Knowing who you are,
what type of person
you would like to be,
knowing,
what relationship you have with your parents and
how that affects your intimacy,
what relationship
you have with the world and how that
affects what type of intimacy you want to
receive,
knowing, that your your job role, your role
in the house, your role outside of the
house, knowing
that your friends and all of the things
that amalgamate to who you are
affect
what you want in the bedroom,
affect how you behave in the bedroom. We
have many, many, research studies, many kind of
articles out there on how
people in positions of power, like a certain
type of intimate experience, people in who don't
have a lot of power in their life,
enjoy certain types of experiences. People with certain
unhealthy relationships with their fathers have gravitate towards
certain sexual experiences.
So knowing who you are,
knowing your story,
recognizing
why you crave certain things in the bedroom,
based on based on your your history, your
life history,
really helps. Because if you can figure it
out within yourself, then you can then articulate
this to your,
to your partner.
Also recognizing that certain
certain desires that we have are gravitating towards
unhealthy or covering up unhealthy
unresolved issues and traumas that we have. So
knowing yourself can really help cultivate your sensuality.
And nonsexual intimacy, platonic touch, and very powerful,
deeply,
intellectually stimulating conversations are always
a great way to to build up your
confidence of who you are, build up your
confidence in that space with your partner,
build a connection that's outside of the sexual
and the physical. There's there's there's just connection
and there's a deep deep profound respect and
love for each other that can help then,
later when you're we're trying to cultivate our
spiritual, our sensuality.
So I'm gonna finish off there, but I'm
gonna give you guys just, some further resources.
Habiba Kande has a book called the taste
of honey, and this is all about Islamic
Eratology in Islam. This is where he's just
jumped at loads of narrations and loads of
a hadith,
on the the prophet sali wa sallam's
all the conversations around * education, around the
prophet sali wa sallam's time. And then he's
created a smaller, much more easier book to
read, women of desire,
which is,
which, which a lot of, Muslims kind of
go for that one first and then a
taste of honey.
Sexual intelligence is a great book to understand
why
why you are the way you are, why
you crave certain things, and what you actually
want from * and intimacy.
And better * through mindfulness is is pretty
useful. In terms of courses, Angelica Lindsay Ali
has art of art of seduction course, and
she has quite a few other courses going
on. And myself, I teach, the sensual woman
course, which is very long, 14 hour course,
fully unpacking
and discussing
how to prepare ourselves for intimacy.
So how to prepare the mind, how to
prepare the body, and how to prepare the
soul
for that intimate experience in order for it
to be a very wholesome and happy
experience. If you need to get in touch
with me, these are my details inshallah. Just
screenshot them if you can. And Inshallah, I'll
be taking questions now, I think. Yep. Right
on time.
Naima, do you want to read out the
questions, or shall I just read them out
myself?
I've got some here.
So before we go any further, guys, please
make dua for the sister. That was
a really
a really thought provoking
and
well thought through presentation that the YouTube chat
is loving it.
So many kind of mind blowing,
really mindset shifts
when it comes to, you know, to to
to intimacy. Right? Because people are not used
to thinking about it the way you laid
it out. So
that's absolutely amazing. Guys, please go and follow
sister Ifat Rafiq right now and put in
the chat when you've done it. Because put
done in the chat when you've gone on
Instagram.
And if you like the way that she
teaches and you're interested in learning more, she
does have that course, and we will send
information out on the email list to everybody
who's interested. Inshallah.
Thank you.
That was really, really wonderful. I have got
some questions
from the Instagram and from the q and
a. So this I thought this was a
good one.
This says, the dialogue is mainly about men,
but how do you deal with desire as
a woman, especially when you're ovulating?
What do you think of that question?
I get this question a lot, but often,
as single women because I teach about the
seasons of the cycle, and I teach teach
about, like, in in different stages of your
cycle, there's your libido is in a different
way.
You have different experiences and you are different
in in the 4 different stages of your
your menstrual cycle. So I do talk about
this a lot, and I always get this
question that as a single woman, how do
we how do we manage our desires,
when we're ovulating?
Now I don't know if this specific question
is about managing desires,
but you're right. A 100% right. A lot
of the conversation is always directed to the
men.
Now the conversation is definitely
directing towards women with Ostada Angel Ostada Angelica
out there.
Quite a few women are now stepping up.
And in female only spaces, we are teaching
and we're speaking about this. So there is
a lot there's a lot going on on
especially on Instagram, there's a lot going on.
But when it comes to ovulation,
if if you are married,
then this is the time that actually you
can really thrive in your intimacy. This is
the time where you take charge. You can
ask what you want. This is the time
where you really you can flourish. You're a
lot more confident in your body. Your your
your skin in your ovulation phase should be
glowing. It should be great. You should be
feeling really confident.
And and this is the time where women
can actually become very multiorgasmic.
There's a lot of, like, there's a lot
of power in our bodies, and we're very
capable of of achieving a lot in intimacy
in terms of intimacy. But if you're single
if you're single,
there is there are certain things that we
can do to balance down our hormones. So
if if our estrogen levels are imbalanced, sometimes
the estrogen can tip on on the other
side, and there's a very subtle imbalances, but
they feel like a lot. And there's certain
foods that we can do to bring back
estrogen and and and just learning about, you
know, what foods to eat in the certain
types of, say, seasons of your cycle is
really useful.
And then just keeping an eye on estrogen
levels also really helps.
Knowing that women have a lot of testosterone
in their body these days due to,
we have we have, like, synthetic estrogen in
our bodies because of the plastics and, you
know, all of that kind of stuff happening
all around us and the water that we're
drinking from the taps.
But at the same time, have knowing that
testosterone
is also playing a part in this, like,
hypersexuality.
And as a single woman, I can understand
it might be hard. So if you're single
and if that's something that you're struggling with,
exercise
definitely helps, but
relaxing exercise. So it has to be, like,
more tai chi, more,
mindful focused and exercise. If we can channel
that energy into focusing
and disciplining the body, it can really help
with sensuality.
And I know
I know when I say this, and I
know scholars say this and people switch off
when they say fasting because this is what
the prophet
has prescribed that when you fast, it reduces
your desire, but but stay with me. Right?
Don't don't switch off completely. Right?
Because
if in your ovulation phase, that is the
highest form, that's when you're when you're at
your peak when it comes to your sexuality.
You don't have to fast the entire month.
You don't even have to fast 10 days.
Ovulation days are just 3 to 5 days.
If of those 3 to 5 days you
only fasted
2 days,
it would significantly
reduce your desire. It would significantly and and
I've worked with women who have used this
technique to avoid
* and * and these * addictions that
women have just by fasting 2 days, sometimes
3 days. That's all they need to control
and just curb that desire for that month.
InshaAllah, the prophet commanded
it. And if you can't fast,
just reduce what you eat. Reduce the portion
and reduce how much we eat and what
we eat. Clean out the diet.
And it so if if if you're somebody
who has low blood pressure, somebody who's managing
your blood sugar levels, and you can't completely
fast, then
just eat less, and that will control and
curb that desire,
That's the first time I've actually heard practical
advice
for, you know, single women, single people on
how to deal with desire. So jazakAllah khayram
for that. And it's, like, really practical as
well.
Something else that occurred to me as you
were speaking is also watching what you are,
ingesting in terms of media. Right? Mhmm. You're
actually consuming in terms of media that may
be
leading you to a heightened state of arousal.
Do you think that that could be a
problem? A 100%. I I was having this
conversation a couple of,
I think a couple of
weeks ago in in a group setting with
women as well.
Netflix
Netflix is full of
TV shows and TV series that are
directed towards female psychology and to heighten that
that experience of, like, something as something like
Bridgerton. Bridgerton is out there. Bridgerton
is like female *
because it knows exactly what the woman wants
to hear. And it it's curating
exactly the scenes of it. It's curating.
It's curating exactly the scenes that a woman
wants to a woman wants to know, wants
to feel, wants to so things like I've
had a lot of messages from a lot
of women saying, I watch Bridgerton. I'm struggling.
I don't know what to do. I'm not
married. I don't wanna suddenly marry anybody.
And what what do I do? And I
just can't help myself. So
remember, when the prophet
was talking about suhba,
remember that TV screens and entertainment is sukha.
It's powerful. It can become you. I know
there's a lot of people that say that
I watch a TV show, and I start
acting like that character. I start thinking like
that character
after, like, 2, 3 days of watching a
TV show. So this is very powerful software.
And just as we wouldn't sit in bad
software like that, we wouldn't sit in scenarios
where we would watch people having, you know,
*. We wouldn't sit and watch that on
a screen. This is it's still sohba, and
it still affects
us. Soft, man, and it still affects us.
Wow.
Guys, please tell all your friends. Make sure
that you share this video, guys. Like the
video. Put your comments in there, and make
sure that you share it and subscribe to
the channel.
So let's let's let's do a 180.
What does it mean if you don't have
desire at all?
Okay.
So
the initial reaction
that that I would my initial reaction as
somebody who works with the seasons of the
cycle is that something's imbalanced. There's something there
that we can work with because naturally,
you don't need to be somebody who has
desire all month long. But naturally in your
ovulation phase, there should be a certain level
of desire. There should be something there that
that you're working with. If there's absolutely
nothing,
then
my
my instruction to you would be to check
into your hormones, check into the balance, check
into,
whether your estrogen levels are okay, whether your
progesterone levels are okay, whether your testosterone levels
are okay, just tapping back into that. I
think
getting it checked from your GP, I think
it'll be really useful in checking that out.
If there's no desire at all and your
hormones are okay, then it might be psychological.
So there may have been something
somewhere down the line that's happened in your
life. It couldn't it doesn't have to be
an extreme traumatic experience. It could just be
small
informations that you've picked up along the way
that you feel like, okay. That's that I
I don't I don't like the sound of
that. I'm gonna stay away from that. And
then and then especially as Muslim
Muslim men and women, we hear a lot
about stay away from *. It's bad. It's
sinful. Sin. Sin. Haram. We hear these things,
and your brain slowly starts to switch off
on that. And it can cause a condition
called vaginismus
when psychologically
we we're shut off from the idea of
intimacy,
and then it has physical manifestations.
Right?
So if hormones are well and balanced and
you're a happy, healthy person,
trauma in your life, definitely look into
what it is that restricts you from approaching
intimacy and and what it is that you
feel,
that that is the barrier.
Psychologically,
things like anxiety, things like depression can really
reduce libido. I know a lot of people
today,
because of their depression,
their libido is completely,
completely shut down, or it's on the upper
opposite end. If they have depression, they sometimes
become hypersexual.
So there's, yeah. So my initial reaction of
no desire
could be that something might be out of
balance and maybe that's something to explore.
Fantastic.
So we've got some questions, haven't we, in
the chat? We can maybe take 1 or
2 before we have to,
before we have to
make way for our next speaker. But, guys,
the books that the system mentioned, you'll be
able to rewatch the video.
You they're all available on Amazon, and,
yeah. Go ahead, educate yourselves, you know, educate
your spouses,
have the conversation. What questions have we got
in here inshallah?
So can we just address this really quickly
before you go, right?
And that is you mentioned and thank you
so much for mentioning it. But you mentioned
* addiction amongst women.
And that's not something that people talk much
about.
Is that really happening?
What's going on?
Sister Naima, if I could tell you what's
going on in my DMs. If I could
if I could tell you
I had,
I had one
girl
as young as, like, I think she was
11. I think she was 11 or 12,
and she was saying I'm addicted to *.
I'm addicted to *.
And
for some reason, the Muslim community,
we
we are we still think that this is
a men problem. This is a male's problem.
This is not restricted to the men anymore.
Anybody who has access to the Internet has
access to *.
Anybody who's has access to, you know, Wi
Fi or anything like that.
Everybody is susceptible to this,
especially our young teenagers.
But
*, *, addiction, I think it's so widespread
now that we need to start having very
open conversations about it, and we need to
really, like, bring it bring the conversation out
there, especially for women,
because there are a lot of,
* that's now tailored to women. A lot
of women are kind of gravitating towards it,
and the it has gone as serious as
I have a I have a handful of
women
messaging me saying that I've been watching *
for so long that now my sexual orientation
has decided to go one way or the
other. Uh-huh. So it it it's it's definitely
serious, and it's serious enough to be affecting
young children. It's serious enough to be affecting
married women.
It's serious enough. They're married married women, especially,
I think the most of my messages are
from married women who watch *. So, it's
it's definitely something that needs more conversation. I
think you have a a a segment on
*
on on this
conference. Right? Yes. Yes. We do.
That's gonna be good.
Okay. So please, sis, before you go, tell
everybody
again where they can find you and how
they can work with you.
Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so
much, first of all, for for letting me
on the be on this platform. This has
been such an honor. I just wanted to
let everyone know and tell everyone that sister
Naima has been an inspiration for me when
I was a young girl, and I first
walked into an Islamic,
Islamic bookstore, and I all picked up from
my sister's lips. And I was really young
then, and I don't even know if I
could connect to the book, but I her
name has been in my life
for, like, 2 decades.
So thank you so much for your presence,
and thank you so much for allowing me
onto the space. And if anybody does want
to connect with me, I'm on Instagram. It's,
at Ifit Rafiq. That's my full name, Ifit
Rafiq.
And, I have an online institute for Islamic
Studies and Well-being, and that's the Blue Lantern
Institute, and that's membership based if anybody wants
to join. And I have a course called
the sensual woman if anybody wants to learn
how to prep the mind, body, and soul
for intimacy. Thank you so much.
Thank you so, so much.
Right, everybody. Please do share your takeaways in
the chat.
That was
really, really, again, as I said, thought provoking,
a wonderful,
a wonderful introduction, I think, to your work.
So may Allah bless you. May Allah accept
your efforts.
Bless you and your spouse in this, you
know, this journey that you're both on. And,
hopefully, this will not be the last time
that we see you on this channel.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Hello, guys.
Let me know what you thought of that.
Yes. Ikram says, Defo, a great taster
for the sensual woman. Okay. For the sensual
woman's course. I love that.
I see the village auntie in the in
the in the room, but I'm not able
to get her to be a panelist. I'm
not sure why. So, sis, let me know.
Just send me a chat. Let me know
if everything is okay your side. All of
you out there in YouTube, please make sure
that you have
subscribed to the
channel. Make sure that you've liked the video
and that you share it. You can share
the live link,
this is a live stream so we're just
gonna go all the way through inshallah,
And I'm super super excited. You guys know
already. Okay? You know what it do because,
this is not the first time that I've
had the village auntie, my good my friend,
sister Angelica Lindsay Ali, the village auntie herself.
Not the first time I've had. I've shared
this platform with her. Zoom knows that we
go way back.
Sis, how are you doing?
You're muted.
How are you?
How is everything your end?
Everything's good. I, I'm working from home today
and trying to get my children prepared for
the 1st day of school in 2 days.
So Wow. Oh, mate. Do You know what?
Can I just say firstly, I want to
say to everybody who's here watching, we've got
a few VIPs in the room, but we've
got 100 of people on YouTube, and I
know this is gonna be seen by 1,000?
Guys, I need you to know, sis, the
last video that we did together
I don't know. It was a 130,000
views, a 170,000
views? Crazy.
Yeah. And
and I you know, I had I have
to say I had some anxiety about having
this conversation today. Not because of you, because,
you know, we could talk all day every
day Yeah. Up, down, left, and right. We
could definitely do that.
But the comments
that people made,
the way that people were just offended and
appalled that how dare I be talking about
these things.
I have people in my inbox threatening me.
Oh, no. I had people,
tech fearing me. I was just like, what
is wrong?
Oh, no, sis. Oh, guys, what are you
do you guys showing me up on the
channel? What's happening? SubhanAllah.
When I look It has nothing it has
nothing to do with you
at at all. I think it has to
do with people projecting their insecurities.
And the day that we filmed that, I
actually had a photo shoot for a friend
who does makeup. So I had makeup on
and I had on eyelashes, And I didn't
think anything of it. And then I was
like, is it the is it the eye
shadow? There's a problem. It's like, sis, you
didn't have the right eye shadow. Shadow. Okay?
We just know that. Okay? That's what happened.
Oh, so today, I will put some lip
gloss on because I don't want my lips
to be chapped, but I ain't put no
no more no no other makeup.
Up.
So, you know, it's actually really,
it's really interesting that we were having this
conversation specifically about the cycles of desire. Because
I was in a cab today with sister
Umkhailha, who you guys may have seen. We
had a conversation on the marriage conversation and,
you know, I got into the car.
And she's you know, she got into the
car. She said, and
she put her hand on my arm and
she said, sis, I wanna commend you for
this intimacy conversation that you're going to be
doing. I was like, oh, okay. Thank you.
She's like, no. No. No. Seriously. Seriously.
This is a conversation that needs to be
had. And you know, one of the first
things that she mentioned
was about the changes that women's bodies go
through. Was about how it starts one way
and then it moves into something else and
we have literally
no education about this. No no we we
we're not forewarned. And, you know, we we
had this conversation.
Yes. But the amount of
sexualized
content that there is all around us every
single day,
we still know so little
our bodies and how our bodies,
you know, operate. SubhanAllah. So I'm really excited
for your talk today. Really, really excited. Tell
the audience who you are if they don't
know who you are, girl. I'm gonna come
off video because you know already how it
goes.
My name is Angelica Lindsey Ali. I'm known
on social media as The Village Auntie. I'm
a certified sexual health educator. I also work
in reproductive health.
I am a public health professional. I've been
working in the field since 2003,
and I
I curate,
women's only spaces where we talk about sexuality,
we talk about spirituality, we talk about life
changes, we talk about family,
reproductive health,
and I'm just excited to be back talking
to my girl, Naima, about, something that we
don't
talk enough about. So I'm really excited for
this conversation today.
I love it, sis. Now as I've said
before, guys, my apologies because I know you
guys have been coming for me in the
comments. And if you knew that people talking
about having a GoFundMe
to support my internet because my internet is
so bad because everywhere I go, I'm followed
by bad Internet.
So I would like I don't want this
anything of, you know, to to disrupt our
learning from you inshallah.
So we're gonna be talking about you're going
to be talking about cycles of desire,
marriage, motherhood, and menopause. So I wanna give
you the stage inshallah. Bismilasis, take it away.
Alright. So,
yeah.
I have never been,
quiet about my age.
It is not something that I've ever hidden
since I've been on
a social media stage. I've been doing this
work,
in earnest
since
around 2001.
I started in 1998
as a way to heal my own, sexual
health issues. I'm a victim of sexual assault
and sexual trauma. So I really got into
this work not to inform anyone else, but
to heal myself. And along the way, I
was in contact with women from West Africa,
women,
from the Caribbean, women from the United States,
older women who taught me about different ways
that women heal themselves through herbs, through somatic
therapy, through movement, dance.
And one of the things that I noted
was these were older women. I was in
my early twenties. These are women in their
forties, in their fifties, sometimes in their sixties,
and they were fully resonant with the place
that they were in their lives at that
time. There was no desire for youthfulness.
There was no desire to, you know, get
fillers or Botox or any of these things
to appear young. And so I think from
a very early age, I got the understanding
that
sexiness,
and I know that's a trigger word for
a lot of Muslims, and I know people
are gonna say, oh, stuck for the lie.
You shouldn't be talking about sexiness. But when
it when it comes to a woman wanting
to feel desirable to her partner, to her
husband,
this is a very real concern. But what
I saw in these women who were older,
this was not really an issue.
They were fully comfortable in who they were.
So that was my first
understanding about sexual desire across the lifespan and
what it means for women as we go
through different cycles of life.
So
let's let's talk about it. When I when
I teach my rights of passage class for
women, foundational womanhood,
and when I teach my my course art
of seduction, we talk about the 4 stages
that a woman passes through.
See how the fledgling.
This is a woman who has,
she's a she's prepubescent.
She hasn't yet started her menses, but she's
learning. She She's learning from her sister. She's
learning from her mother. She's learning from the
women who are modeling femininity and womanhood around
her. There may be curiosity about the different
shapes
shapes that a woman's body can have because
she's still although she may be getting taller,
she still has the body of a child.
Then you move into the phase of
a nurturer.
The nurturer,
this phase and these are all phases that
I came up with myself,
so you can write them down. It starts
with the fledgling. So that would be birth
to right before the onset of menses. So
for my daughter, for example, that will be
birth to age 12. I have a set
a 9 year old daughter who's still in
that fledgling stage. They're absorbing. They're learning.
They are building the internal script that will
dictate their sexual lives in the future.
Then you have the nurture, that is from
the onset
of menstruation
until prior to the onset of menopause.
The nurturer phase for some women, depending on
your life expectancy,
can be the longest period that you live.
It is a period that is marked by
pregnancy, if a woman chooses to give birth.
It can be marked by
issues with fertility for women who have challenges
with fertility.
It is marked by a lot of labor.
The nurturer phase is when a woman takes
on various roles.
She becomes a person of utility in her
family and in her community. She is mother.
She is auntie. She is teacher. She is
sister. She is worker. She is builder. She's
Sunday school teacher. She's Quran teacher. Everything is
about output.
What can you do? And while she is
nurturing people physically, there may be a depletion
mentally. So many women in this phase
suffer from,
emotional,
spiritual, and often physical
burnout because of the mental load that we
have to have. Again, this is not just
for women who are married. This is not
just for women who have children because a
lot of times when we have these conversations
about sexuality and desire and and women's life
cycles, we always put motherhood in there. Motherhood
was not written for everyone. Allah
did not make right for it that every
woman has to have a child and will
have a child. There are women who definitely
have,
serious issues around fertility that they have to
deal with from a physical standpoint and also
a mental standpoint. Now all of this,
becomes a form of fatigue.
Then
during this stage, you also have
the ending of
puberty.
We often think that puberty ends when they
graduate from high school. That's what I used
to think before I I really started studying
this. I thought puberty ended,
at the end of high school,
when I turned 18,
I was done with puberty.
Even though I was confused,
I was crying all the time, I was
in an emotional wreck, my body was still
going through changes, and it wasn't until later
that I learned that puberty actually doesn't end
until you're about 24, 25 years old. So
all through university,
this explains
why I had so many problems with understanding
where I was in my life because I
was still my body was still growing. My
brain was still developing. So during that nurturer
phase, lots and lots of things are happening
internally
and socially that can affect a woman's approach
to her body and approach to desire.
Then you have the onset of menopause.
I am going to be the first woman
in my immediate family to go through menopause
because as an African American woman,
my
community, many women in my community,
my sisters and mother included had hysterectomies
very early
due to a number of reproductive health concerns.
We don't have a a a we don't
have enough time to talk about the history
of slavery and colonialism,
and systemic racism
and institutionalized
oppression that has affected the reproductive health of
black women in colonized spaces, America being one
of them. But my mother and my sisters
both had different forms of reproductive cancers,
reproductive system cancers that meant that they had
to have his hysterectomies in order to save
their lives.
So they never experienced menopause.
They don't know what menopause is and the
majority
of people that I hear talking about menopause,
are women who are much older,
in their sixties.
They're often white women, often women, you know,
with big,
mansions, and they're they're on television talking about
having hot flashes. So menopause seems like this
very strange thing that only happens to old
people.
But during that menopausal phase, that's that 3rd
phase
of womanhood and I call that
the discoverer
phase. It is discovering a new
way to live. You get a whole new
body.
It may not be the body that you
expected. It's not the body that society thinks
that you should like or that you should
have. But the discoverer phase is a very
special phase. Out of the 4 phases of
womanhood, you have fledgling,
you have nurturer, then you have discoverer. Discoverer
is my favorite because as you noted, it's
the most misunderstood, the one that we don't
talk about enough. So the discoverer
phase starts at the onset of menopause.
What is menopause?
Menopause is highly irregular
or the complete absence of menstruation.
A lot of people think that your period
has to stop completely in order for you
to have entered menopause, and that's not true.
If your cycle was normally every 28 days,
lasting for 4 days,
and then you go 67 days, and then
you have a period for 2 days, and
then you go 72 days, and you have
a period for 5 days, and then you
go a 104 days, and you have a
period for 7 days, you are entering into
that phase known as perimenopause
before menopause starts. If you have questions about
that, I am not a medical doctor. You
can seek out, information from your reproductive health,
doctor or reproductive health specialist.
But menopause,
I like to call it a second puberty.
Think about what you what you went through
when you first went into puberty. Right?
Skin changes, might have started having acne.
Your body would start to grow. For girls,
you start to grow *. That new bile
phase with with new * that are forming,
they can be very painful and sore.
You get cramps for the first time if
you experience cramps.
You may have difficulty sleeping because of discomfort,
you know, with your menstrual cycle.
Mood swings and mood changes because of the
different levels of hormones in your body,
you may start to experience changes
in your hair.
So your hair might start to feel a
little bit different. All of that comes back
in menopause.
All of it comes back in menopause. And
you would think since this is the 2nd
time that our body is experiencing this that
we would be used to it by then,
but it doesn't quite work like that. So
menopause, the the onset of menopause generally comes
between ages 4555.
I always tell women, look at the history
of women in your family, you generally follow
that pattern. For example, I started my period
at the age of 12, my daughter started
her period at the age of 12. My
youngest daughter is 9, she's probably gonna start
her period around the same time. So if
your mother didn't go into menopause until 57
and it's out of that 10 year range,
45 to 55 that the the Journal of
American Medical Association has has,
dictated,
it doesn't mean that it there's anything wrong.
Right? So between 4555.
And menopause itself can last
5 to 7 years, but but as long
as 14 years. And during this time of
menopause,
you experience some of the same things that
you might have experienced,
during puberty.
You experience
changes in the skin. So the skin,
instead of having,
the cystic acne that I had in my
youth, right, I might develop,
eczema.
I might develop breakouts. They call it adult
acne. Those are your hormones reacting in the
body. Right? Also your diet and lifestyle have
things to do with it as well. But
you also may experience a loss of skin
elasticity.
It's what causes wrinkles people. Okay? It's why,
you know, people have wrinkles. Kim Kardashian, she's
definitely not a model,
for me in any way, shape, or form,
but she is a cultural model for a
lot of people. She recently said that she
would do anything to keep looking young, even
if it meant eating,
human waste. She would she would do anything.
I think it I think that's what she
said. I'm paraphrasing. But she said she would
do anything so that she could appear youthful.
And that's that push against the natural process
of aging. Menopause
is completely natural. You can't stop it,
you can't prevent it, but you can ease
into it with information. So
and you may not have all of these
symptoms. Right? So you have the the the
thinning of the the skin on the face.
You also have the thinning of the skin
down below.
The the the skin of the vulva can
start to thin as well and you can
start to experience,
in some extreme cases, muscle atrophy. So the
the vaginal muscles may not, be as strong
as they were before if you're not exercising
and using them regularly. Vaginal dryness is also
a thing,
that can can occur. Osteoporosis,
so, bone fragility,
changes in bone density,
night sweats, waking up at night and you're
like, oh my gosh, you know, it's December,
who turned the heat on?
Hot flashes during the day where you have
these extreme temperatures in the body,
and also PMS like symptoms.
Now I don't like that
that phrasing,
but peep I use it because people will
know what I mean when I say PMS
like symptoms, but moodiness.
And that moodiness is coming from
the intense changes. It's like your body is
is making itself over anew. It is finishing
out this period of utility
for a certain period of your life and
shifting it to something else. So in addition
to the mood swings that you may have,
you may also experience
headaches.
All of that when it comes together can
lead to a decrease in sexual
desire. So let's talk about sexual desire. There
are some questions, I don't know if I'm
supposed to answer
these at the same time.
Someone says if puberty ends at 25, what
does that mean for marriage is done prior
to that on the health of the woman?
Nothing.
Having * before the age of 25, before
you have completed puberty, does not mean
that you shouldn't be having * before the
age of 25.
What it means is being being careful
and gracious with yourself and understanding that your
body is changing. It's understanding that the the,
not lamenting at 25,
right, or 26 or 27
when you look in the mirror and your
body starts to resemble your mother or your
auntie because now you have hips where you
didn't have hips before, you have backside where
you didn't have backside before,
your * start to take on a different
shape or a different fullness, this is just
letting you know you should be gracious with
yourself because this is your what your body
is naturally
designed
to do. If you get married at 16,
get married at 17, that's totally fine. Just
don't expect to have the same body at
26 that you had at 17. That's why
I'm talking about that, and also note the
mental changes. What advice do you have for
women? Okay. So we'll we'll we'll we'll get
to the the the marrying and and and
younger men younger women
part in a bit.
So
menopause
is often seen as a phase of life
where
women, and even doctors say this, there's a
decreased sexual desire.
I'm just gonna say, I don't think that
that's all necessarily true for everyone.
Some women may experience decreased sexual desire. However,
I think we have a misunderstanding
of what desire is. So let's talk about
desire versus arousal.
Naima, should I answer the question now, or
should we save that question about marrying younger
women until the end? Oh, no. We can
do questions at the end. Okay.
So when I was younger,
my mother is 30 years older than me,
almost exactly 30 years older than me. It's
interesting because my my mother's almost exactly 30
years older than me. Almost I'm almost exactly
30 years older than my son.
My mother would tell me when I was
a teenager, Let me preface this by saying,
I'm a say this as nicely as I
can. Don't comfort my mom in the comments.
That's the best way I can say it.
That's the nicest
Okay? My mother is not a Muslim. My
mother is a clinical psychologist.
This may harm the sensitivities of some Muslims.
But my mother would tell me when I
was a teenager, you haven't seen anything yet.
Wait until you get older. Everything is better
when you're older, including *.
I kept that in my mind because my
mother
said this with a level of knowledge that
let me know that she knew something and
I didn't. I was not having * as
a teenager. I didn't know anything, but that
stuck in my mind. She said * and
everything gets old get gets better when you're
older. And she would talk to me about
how a woman's * drive actually increases when
you get older. We hear these, you know,
cultural stereotypes about how, you know, men reach
their sexual peak at 25, women reach their
sexual peak at 40.
I call bollocks on all of that. Right?
I think it is it has a lot
to do with understanding the difference between arousal
and desire. So
desire
is the mental
capacity or need for more, for pleasure.
Right? A desire. I desire
a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Right?
It is it is a mental
need. Right? It's an intense need.
Arousal
is the physical manifestation
of that desire.
So you have desire,
mental,
arousal
is physical.
What are signs of arousal? Some signs of
arousal might be,
* that become erect for both men and
women, right?
A penis that becomes erect, a * that
is lubricated,
these are signs of arousal. A clitoris,
becoming engorged with with blood. Right? These are
signs of arousal.
But there's something that we never talk about
which is arousal non concordance. And for me,
as I work with women who are aging,
as I myself go through the process of
aging, I'm starting to understand that we don't
understand arousal, desire, and something called arousal
nonconcordance,
which can help us to understand cycles of
desire. So we're gonna go back to the
nurture phase for a bit.
Picture this, a mom,
She has 2 children,
13 and and 9,
and she has a toddler who's
2. She is
working outside of the home,
as a teacher at her children's school. Her
husband works.
They have a very loving relationship. He pays
all of the bills.
She uses her money to take care of
things for the kids and saves for family
vacations.
Her 2 year old is in day care.
She cooks, you know, meals from scratch every
night.
She spends time with her kids on the
weekend going through their Islamic school lessons.
She herself wants to go back to school
for a PhD in Islamic studies in an
online program.
From the outside looking and she has a
very good life. Right? She loves her husband.
Her husband still thinks she's sexy and desirable,
and and she really has it together. House
is clean, the kids are clean, the food
is good, everything is good.
But at night, when she lies down and
her husband wants to come to her to
engage in marital relations,
she has she still thinks her husband is
is fantastic.
He's still the most beautiful man that she's
ever met. He's the only man that she's
ever been with, but her body is not
lubricated when he touches her.
They used to be able to have
amazing
marital relations, but now it's very difficult for
her to get lubricated.
It's very difficult for her to experience any
signs of physical arousal in her mind, although
she really desires her husband.
This is an example of something called arousal
non concordance. What arousal non concordance says is
there are 2 types of arousal that affects
arousal non concordance. 1 is subjective arousal. Subjective
arousal is in my mind, I want this
thing.
In my mind, I want my husband. Right?
This is what the woman is saying. In
my mind, I love my husband. I desire
my husband. I really want to be with
my husband.
But the physical arousal, the signs are not
there.
The body is like, you think you want
this and you're saying that you want this,
but we're not complying. That's non concordance, arousal
non concordance.
That happens a lot in women who are
in the nurturer phase, who are in the
active process of,
caretaking, whether that is for children, whether that
is for elderly parents, whether that is a
person who is in in in school or
is going through a Hivs program. You know,
stress doesn't just have to be, you know,
this monumental thing. It's whatever causes your body
an inability
to process
the the external stimulation that you have. That
external stimulation can affect
your desire. Right? The desire that you know
that you have, and it can make your
body unresponsive.
Now is this a bad thing?
No.
It's a misunderstood thing.
And this is what happens a lot with
women who are in that menopausal phase, women
who are mothers,
women who are experiencing menopause,
women who are stressed, women who are grieving.
We are still in the throes of of
an ever evolving pandemic. We've come out of
COVID 19. Now we're going into monkeypox.
Right? Mental health is at a is at
an all time low.
We're grieving loss of of people and community
and opportunities. All of this is having a
weight on us. So as a woman
who is cycling through through various stages of
life, it can feel as if my body
is broken. And I've had sisters say,
auntie, my I, you know,
my husband,
he I just I just it's just not
working for us anymore. I really desire him,
but I don't really wanna have *. And
I the first thing that I ask is,
what did you eat today?
When was the last time you had water?
When was the last time you took a
nap?
When was the last time you just did
absolutely nothing? Because stress has a huge effect
on cycles of desire and cycles that a
woman may go through.
So when your body is going through all
of these changes, it will absolutely affect your
proclivity for sexual activity.
When you add menopause on top of that
and the social and cultural pressures
that aging women have, it can exacerbate
the the the problem.
I hate
that's not a good word. I shouldn't say
hate.
I really strongly dislike
the phrase aging gracefully. What does that mean,
to age gracefully?
Aging is something that is guaranteed to each
and every one of us. We've all aged
29 minutes since I first started talking.
Whether we want it to or not,
time is just gonna keep moving. We are
aging. Aging means that you are what? You
are living.
Because if you're not aging,
you're dead. You you don't exist anymore. Right?
You're not living. So aging gracefully, what does
it mean to age gracefully?
You just age. It's a neutral it's a
neutral
point of fact for any person who is
living. But there's this pressure on women to
age gracefully,
to get Botox. Now I get Botox for
migraines. I only get a little bit of
Botox to manage my migraines. I have wrinkles,
I have
aging skin.
Parts of my body that looked different
10 years ago,
are, you know, slowly morphing into something different
now, and it's okay.
But the messaging that we get, even in
spaces that are intended for women who are
older look at any, advertisement
for gray hair shampoo. So there's a shampoo
called shimmer lights by Clairol. It's purple shampoo
for women who have blonde hair, who have
graying hair, and I was telling my sister
in law's mother about this shampoo.
And when I looked at the ads, every
woman on the ad looked like a 25
year old woman with gray hair.
But these were supposed to be women who
were menopausal,
women who were aging, women who were in
their forties and their fifties, but the cultural
messaging is that, sure, you can have gray
hair, but you're supposed to look like you're
25.
You have women who have absorbed these messages
unconsciously,
even Muslim women. Even Muslim women who do
do not consume media, it is evident even
within our own communities because what you have
is
and this is gonna rub some people the
wrong way, but I've seen it happen so
often in this
work. You have men in their late forties,
in their early fifties, late fifties, abandoning relationships,
abandoning marriages that they've had for 25
years, for 15 years, for 30 years, and
they're swapping out their wife for a younger
model.
Now I don't know what happens in everybody's
relationship.
But when I see that start to crop
up, when I see that start to be
suggested by brothers with podcasts,
by brothers with platforms,
by imams in the community, when couples come
to them, I've had a couple come to
me and say, you know, we've had these
issues in our marriage and the imam suggested
that my husband get a younger wife. What
does that do to the psyche of a
woman?
When you feel as if you are no
longer useful because you're not useful anymore.
Why is it that the older a man
gets, the sexier he gets, but the older
a woman gets, the more matronly a mother
like she gets? This is a part of
the cultural conditioning and programming that happens even
in religious spaces that really pushes against really
the sunnah of our community. The The prophet
Muhammad
his marriage to Khadija, may Allah be well
pleased with her, is an example of
what we should be striving for, an older
woman who is still seen as being a
beautiful woman, a useful woman, a faithful woman,
a woman who is worthy of this,
divine companionship,
yet that doesn't really play out in our
communities because of the ways that we allow
our obsession with youth to taint our focus
on relationships. And and that that's a problem
for a lot of women. So if you're
a woman and you're in your late forties,
you're in your mid forties, you're in your
early fifties,
and you, you know, are at a a
a sister's,
conference,
right, in person,
and people are calling you auntie,
and you've dyed your hair with henna, so
it's bright red when you take your hijab
off, and people start to look at you
a different way, you start to feel a
certain way, that gets into your psyche. When
you go home at night to your husband,
that can affect your desire. And I'm I'm
saying all of this because I think we
don't think deeply enough
about the nuanced ways that we are taught
to hate our bodies,
the ways that women are taught to hate
the aging process when it's really something that
we should be embracing,
because to be alive is an opportunity, another
opportunity to worship Allah, another opportunity to seek
Tawba, another opportunity to experience whatever good there
is in this dunya.
But we don't talk about how that affects
our bodies.
We also don't talk about and I know
this conversation is about women, but we also
don't talk about how aging affects men
because men are seen as being
virile up to a certain point.
It's like up to a certain point, like,
he's good to go. Right? Once he starts
to hit, like, mid fifties,
women start looking at brothers a little bit
differently and that can cause performance anxiety in
men. I have couples that I've worked with.
I have men in my family who've said,
you know,
Angie, I don't I and by the way,
don't call me Angie. Only people in my
family can call me that and say, you
know, Angie.
I really wanna get married again, but you
know, I'm I'm I'm in my my late
fifties. You know, women aren't really checking for
me. That causes performance anxiety in the men.
So what that what happens is,
your husband, you're you're 46, your husband is
52,
you're dealing with all of this messaging, you're
dealing with the hormonal changes in your body,
stuff is just not working the way that
it used to. He's, you know, on the
basketball court playing basketball with the young brothers
and his knees are hurting in ways that
they didn't hurt before. And he's starting to
feel he's starting to feel his age. And
then you all come together at night.
You come together at night and you both
have arousal nonconcordance
because you have this stress. You both desire
each other. You love each other a lot,
but you have all of these competing factors.
You have changing hormonal levels, you have changing
environmental,
antecedents that are affecting you coming together. So
then when he's not able to become erect,
you start to feel, oh, he doesn't really
love me, he doesn't really desire me, he
doesn't really want me. And when you don't
respond to his touch and your body doesn't
feel the way that it used to, when
he used to touch you, he starts to
feel, maybe I really don't have it. So
it just becomes compounding. So how can we
stop this?
One of the ways
that we
deal with this, right, the changes that our
bodies go through,
understanding the changes, welcoming the changes is exactly
what we're doing right now. We're having a
conversation,
about intimacy. Intimacy is so much more than
the physical.
I have something called the intimacy pyramid. So
we talk about spiritual,
intellectual,
experiential,
emotional, and physical intimacy. Right? So intimacy,
authentic
intimacy,
really encompasses all of these things, but we
don't talk about the physical enough, which is
why it's important that we're having,
this conversation.
It's also important for us to not be
afraid to broach the subject of menopause,
to broach the subject of how does your
body change during motherhood,
How
you know, is is it normal for my
urethra to shift positions after I have children?
This is a conversation that we can be
having with our girlfriends,
with our mothers, with our aunties,
with people like me, but we're afraid to
have that conversation. We're afraid to talk about
the changes in our body. We're afraid to
ask, what do you do if do you
have you ever tried a lubricant?
You know, we don't even Muslim, sometimes we
don't even wanna have this conversation about these
things because we think, oh, haram haram haram.
But lubricant might be something that might be
very important woman who is experience experiencing vaginal
dryness during perimenopause
and menopause. And there are lots of good
alternatives out there, but we have women who
are suffering in silence, and we have Muslim
couples that are suffering,
in silence because of the fear and the
shame
around not knowing,
around,
feeling as if they are inadequate somehow. So
I'm really happy, that we're having this conversation.
So I just said a whole
bunch. So I'm gonna stop right now
and see,
where we are. What questions do you might
have?
Sis, you said all the things.
I was just watching this with a friend
of mine, and I was saying, how did
she have this whole conversation
with apparently no notes and
just just, you know, just just going with
it.
So I I think that you've and I
think you've touched on
some, firstly, very thought provoking points, but also
some really important information
that most of us don't have about the
aging process, about, you know, potentially how it
affects us,
and may affect us and what we can
do about that. So we do have some
questions
guys. Please do put your questions in the
chat. Those of you who are watching live
on YouTube, put your questions in. We're gonna
check them out. And those of you in
the VIP room, please put your questions in.
I wanted know a little bit more about
the, arousal nonconcordance,
right,
that you mentioned. It's my first time hearing
that phrase.
What are the causes,
and also what is the solution?
So if
mentally,
you would you you have the desire, but
physically you're not manifesting the symptoms, the the
arousal,
what what's what do you do about that?
A lot of times it can be episodic.
So it's not something that will is perpetual.
I would I would only say seek out
a doctor's input if it's something that happens
all of the time because there could be
some other issue that's going on.
But a lot of times, it's it's
being kind to yourself
and just recognizing that this this just may
not be the time, and this may not
be the the space. You just may not
be in the mood. We talk about being
in the mood a lot,
and we often talk about women not being
in the mood. Men can also not be
in the mood, but it's just being patient
with yourself.
What are the causes? The causes can be
a variety of things. It could be diet.
It could be lack of sleep. It could
be stress.
There could be some other physical concerns, which
is, you know, if this is something that's
ongoing a lot, you might wanna see a
doctor, particularly if you're a man experiencing arousal
nonconcordance
and you're not able to get an erection.
Lots of men with diabetes have problems with,
you know, erectile dysfunction.
But
when
I'll be transparent. When I have experienced arousal
nonconcordance, it's during times when I'm completely overwhelmed
and burned out.
It's like this is I have so many
things to do. * is not
on my to do list today. I I
don't need to do it. That's that's that's
not something I wanna do today. Right? And
and
and I think being honest about it and
and experiencing other parts of intimacy. So arousal
non concordance doesn't mean that no physical intimacy
can happen.
What it means is that there might need
to be different types of stimulation.
Okay. It might need a longer foreplay session.
It might need just cuddling and just hugging.
Maybe there is something that you can do
for your partner to relieve the the sexual
tension that they have and you might not
be engaging in it. But it's understanding that
it's it's perfectly normal. Emily Nagoski talks about
arousal non concordance in her book, Come As
You Are. And I saw, Ustase Ifette. She's
she's one of my favorite people. She's one
of my students.
She's does amazing work, and I know she
has often recommended that book. So I don't
know if she recommended that book, but I
highly recommend Come As You Are.
And Emily Nagoski talks about arousal nonconcordis and
the fact that 90%
90%
of cisgender, that means women who were born
with a * and still identify as a
woman, because you have to be very clear
in 2022 about who you're talking about,
90% of women experience arousal non concordance.
So it's not uncommon at all. And it
and it it it is something that will
happen from time to time, and it does
not have to be perpetual.
Okay. Alright. So that's, I get a relief,
I think, probably for for many people out
there,
especially the scenario that you've painted. You know,
that picture of this busy mom, you know,
we we all know that that that whole,
you know what was it you call it?
The nurturer phase. Yes.
Especially with young children,
pregnancies, breastfeeding, etcetera, it can be it can
be really, really heavy, in terms of, you
know, brain and what's going on up there.
So
for that. I wanna just turn quickly to
this question here, which I think is an
interesting one because the sister says, what advice
do you have for women
who marry late?
Right? In their thirties or forties.
So they're virgins. Right? Up until their thirties
or forties. So they'd be losing their virginity
at that stage. Mhmm. Is there anything they
should be aware of physically?
Or even a man who's marrying a woman
at that stage who is a virgin in
her thirties or forties, is there anything physically
that they should be aware of?
She should be aware of her reproductive health
history.
So, you know, when did she start her,
menses? When did her mother start her menses?
When did her mother start menopause?
Knowing that your late thirties, you're not really
close to menopause. It seems like close to
menopause, but you're not really close to menopause
at all. And even in your forties, I
went to my doctor last year. I'll be
47 in a couple of months,
And she said, Angelica, you're not close to
menopause. Like, why do you think that you're
no. You won't go through it. Yet she
could tell by, you know, by based based
on looking
every at everything. So one is being kind
to yourself
and acknowledging the fact that, menopause is not
something that's like knocking right at the door,
but also understanding that as a woman ages,
as a man ages, our bodies change. So
educating yourself as much as possible about,
fertility
and later life. All of my pregnancies were
considered geriatric pregnancies because I had all of
my children in my thirties, and all of
them were healthy,
completely complication free pregnancies.
If you are a woman who is losing
her virginity in her thirties or forties,
there may be some issues sometimes
with a mental shift that has to happen.
So if you were born and raised Muslim
or if you're a convert to Islam, you're
in you're you're you're 39. Right? You say
you converted to Islam at the age of
21. For 18 years, you have been you've
been hearing the messaging
that * belongs inside of marriage. Do not
sit with a non Muslim man. Do not
look at these images. It can create a
mental block in your head such that when
you do get married, some women, not all,
please understand when I say this, not all
women, but some women
may develop vaginismus
when they are
having * for the first time at any
age. Right? At any age. So this is
not just for women who are in their
thirties, in their forties. So it's important to
understand,
what vaginismus is and and things that might
come up and things that you can do
to help,
to alleviate those symptoms. But there's really nothing
that I think the woman or the the
spouse, the man has to do except for,
stay informed.
I have friends who were married for the
first time at 41, and they have a
perfectly, from what they report, a perfectly healthy,
perfectly happy
* life. So it's not as though,
the * cannot be good. It's the same
thing that will be required for for any
woman. And knowing that,
the only consideration would be if you want
to be a woman who is carrying a
baby
in her forties, there may be certain things
that you wanna consider health wise, even outside
of reproductive health, even just in terms of
emotional capacity. Right? Do you wanna do you
wanna have a child at 43? You know,
do you wanna have a baby at that
age? It may be it might be perfectly
fine, but that will be the only consideration
that I would really strongly think about. Okay.
You know, you mentioned about vaginismus,
and, you know, I've got a great conversation
with Amir Rezaki. You guys have probably seen
it on the channel, really deep dive into
that condition.
And it is a lot more common than
people think. It's not it's not, you know,
that common, but it's more common than people
think. Right? And something that came up in
the comments that I wonder if you can
speak to was
what does a man do or what should
a man know? Because obviously men don't know
anything, especially brothers, like they don't know about
stuff like that. Okay. They may know a
thing or 2, but they don't know stuff
like that. So if a man finds himself,
you know, he's he's going to get married,
Firstly
okay. My questions are, is there anything that
we need to talk about beforehand
to see if this is an eventuality?
And if
you do get into that situation and guys
for those of you who don't know what
that will look like is that penetration is
not possible. Yes, sister? Is that correct?
Mhmm. Yes. So I somebody It's either not
possible
or extremely painful.
Extremely painful. Right? So there is an a
cultural idea that losing your virginity is painful
anyway. Right? So a man may not necessarily
see that as a bad thing if, you
know, his wife is cringing as this is
happening.
And and, you know, there were comments where
a man said, like, you know, you you
you're not gonna refuse your husband on the
first night. Like, what is this? So yeah.
I know. I know. I know. Right? Roll
eyes. But
again again, ignorance. Right?
Not even knowing that this is a thing.
So how what could you say to the
brothers, fathers, mothers as well for how to
prepare their sons
for their wedding night? Because we're always talking
about preparing the girls for their wedding night.
How can we prepare our sons for their
wedding night? The first thing to say
is that * on your wedding night is
not obligatory.
It's not a requirement.
There's no religious stipulation that says you have
to have * on your wedding night or
your wedding is your marriage is null and
void. And I say this to women, I
say this to men because there's an immense
amount of pressure to perform.
You have lived your entire life possibly with
never having any form of sexual stimulation
and you're expected to have knock down, drag
out, swing from the chandelier * on your
wedding night, that is not an obligation. Now
I'm not saying to refuse and say, oh
my gosh, I would never touch you. I
don't wanna be near you. That's a whole
different conversation.
But relieving the pressure for the wedding night
means talking to your son and saying,
this is your first time
being with this woman. You have to take
it easy. You have to take it slow.
You have to be patient
for both of you. This is not a
sprint. This is a marathon. I always tell
couples the best * of your life should
not be on your wedding night because if
it is, everything else is downhill from there.
Instead,
focus on being patient and focus on being
kind.
Men who have wives who have a difficulty
penetrating their wives, their wives, may be experiencing
vaginismus.
One of the things that I highly, highly
recommend is learning the technique konyaza.
Habiba Conde has a book about it, I
teach classes about it, I have a couple's
class on kunyaza coming up very soon, and
kunyaza is a non penetrative
form of stimulation.
Now
konyaza only works if the woman consents
to participating in konyaza. There's no penetration involved,
but there is skin to skin contact of
of the the the penis and the *
and the vulva. So So it is important
to make sure that she's comfortable with it.
But the reason why I like kunyaza is
because, 1, there's no penetration involved.
2,
it requires
a
lot of patience and a lot of willpower
on behalf of the man. So what it
does is it helps men who are newlyweds
learn how to,
keep their erection longer,
and it is an intense act of close
physical intimacy.
Women, one of the one of the the
tools that women use to to help to
cure themselves of vaginismus
and that doctors might, you know, recommend for
them to use are dilators that are inserted
into the the vaginal cavity. But with konyasa,
there's no insertion, but there is relaxation.
There is stimulation of the clitoris. There is
stimulation of the labia, and there is that
skin to skin contact. And if there's lubrication
that's happening, there can be an intense pleasure
for the man as well. But brothers need
to understand first what vaginismus is because I've
I've had a sister say that her husband
felt very proud that it was difficult for
him to penetrate her because he thought that
it was because of his size.
Men have to understand that vaginismus is not
because you're so big you can't fit.
Vaginismus
is not your wife doesn't love you. Vaginismus
is not she's afraid of *. Vaginismus has,
lots of physical and also psychological,
sources. So understanding what vaginismus is, just like
women have to be educated about their bodies,
if men are having * with women, they
also have to be educated as well. So
I I think using,
in addition to konyaza,
other forms of physical intimacy that are not
penetrative
are also extremely important, especially on the wedding
night. Focus on kissing, focus on touching, focus
on being close together.
Stop putting so much pressure because one thing
that we never talk about is we never
talk about how a lot of men have
performance anxiety on their wedding night, and it
is not uncommon for men to not be
able to get an erection because there is
this extreme fear. So these are, you know,
vaginismus and erectile dysfunction, these are, you know,
extreme cases, but this is what we have
to talk about, what we have to learn
about.
We spend a lot of time preparing for
the marriage ceremony, but we don't spend a
lot of time preparing for the * life
within marriage, and that that should change.
Guys, you all heard that word, and that
is a whole word right there. We don't
prepare enough now.
I want us to close out with this
question because I know that you're gonna have
a field day with this.
Uh-oh. Asks in the YouTube,
how do we talk about sexual desires and
marriage
with our mothers or sisters when it's seen
as shameful?
You know, I'm not a good person to
ask this question because Allah
blessed me with a mother who is a
clinical psychologist and who also was very, very
open with all of her daughters, such that
I'd be like, I don't wanna hear this.
I don't wanna talk about this.
But I'll say this. The older that I've
gotten I would have had a different answer
in my twenties. The older that I've gotten,
I will say, let them guide the conversation.
Do not push them into spaces that they
don't want to go.
You almost have to treat our elders like
we treat teenagers. Don't push too hard because
you'll push them away. Understand that these are
women who have lived their entire lives.
They may have birthed you. They may have
birthed your parents. So obviously, they know something
about *, but you have to think about
what protective factors
come with that shame. Do they not talk
about * because it was something to protect
them within their, you know, spaces so that
they would not be abused.
I have a one of my students whose
whose,
mother lived through partition,
and she said one of the things that
that that led to a lot of the
the shaming around * wasn't really shame, it
was protection.
You had to protect the young girls in
the family. So there were certain things that
you just didn't talk about. You didn't talk
about having a period because that might show
that you were someone who was, you know,
sexually ripe or sexually ready.
But I think easing into the conversation by
asking questions
helps to open the door. So if you
go to your mother or your grandmother or
your aunt and you're asking for advice,
and you ask for advice in a way
that might push the boundary a little bit,
that can open the door. So you might
say, you know, I really I'm really having
difficulty after having the baby. It it seems
really hard for me to want to have
relations with my husband.
What advice could you give me? Right? And
and they may not give you the best
answer the first time. But when you start
to to lead into this type of questioning,
it leads to a feeling of safety and
security. They can feel as though, okay, you're
not trying to set me up to, you
know, berate me. You really are asking, and
then that opens the space to have conversations.
We have to
understand that if if this is 2022
and some of us are just getting this
information,
what about people who were, you know, in
their 20 somethings
in in in the the the sixties, the
seventies, the fifties? Right? We have a lot
of, masha'Allah, elders in our community. So we
have to be very kind and understand that,
these conversations can be
had
respectfully, but it's not something that's going to
happen overnight. It has to happen incrementally with
a high level of deference
and
and respect for their sensitivities because we also
don't know what traumas our elders,
may hold.
I love that answer.
That's yeah. That's that's the real food for
thought, I think, for all of us. So
I've got a couple of questions here.
This I love this one. So one of
our VIPs
has been listening intently
and says that it seems that for an
older couple to still enjoy their * life,
the woman should be made to feel as
relaxed as possible. Is that correct?
Both people should feel relaxed. Why are you
going into * angry? Don't be stressed out
and angry. * is supposed to be fun.
It's not just procreation. I think, yes, everyone
should be relaxed. But if it's an older
couple,
I don't know. Should I say it? I'll
I'll say it because whatever. Because people are
already gonna come for me because I said
the * is not mandatory on the wedding
night, so we're just gonna let it roll.
Listen. The older you get, the older couples
that I deal with
in private practice,
those people are doing the wildest stuff. They're
having the most fun.
They love it. Forties,
fifties. There's a level of bodily autonomy and
self confidence that comes with age that you
simply don't have when you're in your twenties.
I'm sorry. It it just it develops over
time. So, yes, the woman should be relaxed,
but the man should be relaxed too, and
and * should be fun. * doesn't have
to just be for procreation. It can absolutely
be for pleasure.
All of it, it works together,
and it's not just, you know, tiptoeing to
your wife and and like you're, you know,
walking on eggshells,
but we have to stop looking at *
as just being something to bring children in
the world or something that is a religious
duty and responsibility
to our spouses. We also
can and should look at * as a
way to release pressure, as a way to
relax you. * can be relaxing. You can
go into * feeling stressed out and with
the right touch, the right move, the right
positioning, the right what have you, you can
absolutely become relaxed. And there's nothing wrong with
that spiritually, ethically, mentally, physically, or socially. It's
actually a good thing.
Oh,
this is so good. This is so good.
And it kinda bounces off what our previous,
sister Ifelet was saying,
because she touched on this aspect as well.
Okay, guys. So you heard the tea. Okay?
It gets better as you get older, so
lots to look forward to.
Finally,
I've got a question here. It's not really
a question. It's a comment that somebody made,
and I think that they were,
sort of laughing in a wry way. But
they said that my wife was on her
period on our wedding night.
And I'd like us to talk a little
bit about intimacy during menstruation. Can we touch
on that? Is that too close to the
phone?
No. It's listen. I'm used to being skewered
by now, but this one is easy, actually.
This is very easy because you can look
at a hadith of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. What did he do with
his wives when they were on their menstrual
cycle? What did he instruct them to do?
What did he tell them to wear? To
wear a cloth around their waist, and he
will put his head in their lap while
they were menstruating. He would kiss them. He
will fondle their *. This is not what
I'm saying. These are in
hadith. I have a student who was doing
an alamiya program,
and she sent me this message. She was
like, auntie,
read this hadith, and she sent it to
me in Arabic. I said, I don't know
what that means, and she translated it. I
said, I still don't know what it means.
And she told me what it meant in
English, and it was talking about the way
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam kissed his
wives
and how he kissed his wives. The the
the the
the sunnah is very descriptive
in terms of the ways in which Rasulullah
was with his wives. It's not graphic, but
it's very specific, and it should be a
model for us in how we can engage
in physical intimacy
even during those times when you cannot have
penetrative *. So if your wife is on
your period on her wedding day, why can
you all not slow dance? Why can't you
all give each other a massage?
There's a type of massage that's done body
to body where you're you're not clothed at
all.
There's lots of different pleasure points in the
soles of the feet. Men's feet actually are
more sensitive than women's feet. There are different
parts of your body that you can explore,
that you can touch, there are lots of
different ways to be intimate without having penetrative
*, and when people say that I can't
have * on my period, it's haram, this
is true. The penis cannot be inserted into
the * when a woman is on her
cycle. That does not mean that you cannot
experience physical intimacy,
and this is where education comes. It's very
important. It's also very important to explore with
your partner. You can have a a whole
game that you play. Say, we are going
to do as many things as we can
to stimulate each other, but we are not
gonna have *.
And that can be a starting off point
to know what are the more sensitive erogenous
zones on your partner's body. Some people's erogenous
zones are more sensitive than than others. You
can look up erogenous zones before your wedding
day. This is something that you also have
to plan for with your son. You have
to let your son know, listen,
Your wife might have her period on your
wedding night, which means she might have it
for 3 or 4 days after the the
the wedding. You also have to be prepared
for that. I think that
talking about physical intimacy has to extend beyond
penetrative *, and that is really where the
fun and the true pleasure lies when you
are,
able to experience pleasure with the fullness of
your entire body, not just your genitalia.
And I think that is a fitting
close to a very informative session. You know,
I'm just, like, grinning under here because I
always am,
whenever we get a chance to speak. And
I love the emphasis, that we've had really
from both of our speakers this evening on
gaining knowledge,
getting
the right frame of understanding
around this topic, and exploration,
pleasure, and play, you know, which we tend
to be a bit afraid of associating
intimacy, but really, you know, this is one
of the one of the fruits of it,
I guess, and one of the the best
parts of it. So, sis, please tell the
viewers where they can find you and how
they can learn more from you inshallah.
Sure. You can follow me on Instagram and
Twitter and Facebook at Village Auntie. That's auntie
with I e at the end.
I also have the Village Auntie Institute.
You can follow TVA
Institute
on Instagram. I do workshops. I do classes.
I'm opening up once again for private clients,
both, single women. I don't do single brothers,
and couples. And I have
a program that is starting on September 17th
called Foundational Womanhood. It's a 12 week rights
of passage program for women. It's an intergenerational,
international, intercultural,
interfaith rights of passage, womanhood training program for
women. But everything,
that you find about any of my class
offerings, you can find
on Instagram,
Twitter, or Facebook. And soon to be, my
website is almost finished, village auntie.com.
We love to see it. Thank you so
much, sis,
for taking the time out of your schedule.
Please tell the babies we said,
and we love them. Tell the mister that
we appreciate him. Tell him to look after
you. You look after him. Look after those
babies.
And may Allah bless you in all your
affairs.
Love you for the sake of Allah. And
you know this is not the last time,
inshallah. No. It's not. No. Inshallah.
Exactly.
Thank you so much. Guys, that is it.
That is it. We are out for tonight.
Make sure that you follow the village auntie
Insha'Allah on her channels,
and and, you know, dive into any of
the resources that you find that are useful
to you.
Those of you who are on YouTube right
now, make sure that you subscribe to the
channel. Make sure you share the link to
the video so that more people can watch.
This is our 1st livestream of the weekend.
It is not our last. We will have
more livestreams tomorrow night
when we've got a host of amazing speakers
coming through. We've got sister Hane Banani, we've
got brother Gabriel Armani, we've got who else
we've got? Nisa Kissoon, and just as a
reminder,
if you got an email from us with
an offer for a VIP ticket
and you're like
why am I gonna get a VIP ticket?
What's the point of a VIP ticket? I
want you to know that
the village auntie did a private workshop for
sisters
on
the pathways to pleasure
where she broke it all down. When I
say all down, I mean all down. So
you think that today was a lot? No.
This was a private workshop where she took
sisters through from a to zed.
It is only available to VIPs. It's only
available in private, it is not published on
YouTube at all it's one of those special
private workshops so if you
want to access that go to the link
in your email upgrade to VIP
and you'll also get free access to Anissa
Kissun's private workshop happening next weekend.
Sister Anissa is going to be talking about
sacred seduction.
You know you don't wanna miss that. So
make sure that you upgrade, get the VIP
ticket and you'll be able to join us
in the zoom More importantly, you'll get access
to bonus
workshops and videos and a live session with
sister Anissa next weekend inshallah. For now, I
wanna bid you all a good night
for joining me.
Tell your friends if you benefited.
Put it on socials. If you benefited, tag
me so that I can repost
and let's get more people benefiting from this.
You know, sister Umtal has she asked me,
you know, what's your intention with this whole
conference, with this conversation?
Why are you doing this? And I said
to her, at the end of the day,
we want more happy couples.
We want more happy Muslim men, more happy
Muslim women, more people enjoying the barakah
of the good things in that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala has blessed us with in this
life. We want more solid homes inshallah. Okay.
We want more relaxed happy couples. So if
this has been beneficial to you, please do
make dua for myself, for the speakers, and
for everybody involved. And let's keep it moving.
We'll see you guys inshallah tomorrow night.
Be there will be square as they say.
I'm out.