Tickle Your Fancy

A dose of CBD intimacy oil to your privates is a pleasurable hello and hallelujah to the power of your pussy.

Words: Emma Wright, Temple Collective

I began this piece with a hand down my pants, which is a more intentional endeavor than you may think – activation of the pussy and the subsequent dopamine hit boosts creativity and confidence – and smiled when I read about the Kiskanu tree, namesake for the makers of the CBD intimacy oil with which I was anointing my nethers. 

The Kiskanu was a sacred tree in Ancient Sumeria, believed to be the biblical Tree of Life – the very tree from which Eve plucked the fruit. The mythology of Eve’s original sin and the subsequent shame and disconnection from the feminine, the earth and the life force it engendered, is among the many themes I seek to interrogate and revise in my practice and, along with them, our understanding of pleasure and the pussy. 

So it is a synchronistic joy to learn that this intimacy oil is not only an aid to relaxation, stimulation and lubrication but is connected both in name and medicine to this reclamation of the sacred feminine and along with it, pleasure as a radical resource.

By the sacred feminine, I mean embodying the sacred and by pleasure I mean feeling good. Building our capacity for pleasure allows us to experience or embody what Naomi Wolf, in her seminal book Vagina, describes as ‘a state of consciousness (whereby) the usual inner voices that say the woman is not good enough, not beautiful enough, or not pleasing enough to others, are stilled, and a great sense of the larger set of connections – even a sense of a Universal or Divine Feminine – can be accessed’. 

The delivery system for pleasure of this kind is the pussy. It is not merely a sheath for a sword, which is the origin of the word ‘vagina’ and why I prefer the name pussy in its feline, soft fierceness and encompassing of the whole territory. Nor is it just for baby making and delivery. Part of its profound evolutionary task is to connect us to greater awareness of our belonging and power – how to access it, cultivate it and use it to direct our lives towards realising our full potential.

Despite a few thousand years of negation, there is evidence of pussy worship in both our historical artifacts (have a look at some of the oldest and you’ll find the vulva features pretty prominently) – and our genetic memory. I see this when, as Regena Thomashauer in her book Pussy suggests, I ask the groups of women I work with to say ‘pussy’ out loud as an act of reclamation and healing. The response is recognition, delight and knowing. 

My personal inquiry includes traditional tantra, ancestral work, practices like bajos (vaginal steaming) and de-armouring with a quartz wand (that my daughter keeps nicking, believing it to be a magical unicorn horn). I’ve learned through this personal work and the groups I facilitate that the shame narrative surrounding female anatomy and sexuality is deeply ingrained and internalised and that as far as recognition, transformation and activism around the feminine goes, the pussy is both ground zero and portal.

What I love about therapeutic pleasure aids like this Kiskanu oil is that they are signals of a greater paradigm shift. This is no mere chemically-derived, porn-aligned lube. A dose of CBD down there is doing good work – socially, physically and spiritually. 

CBD, the non-intoxicating cannabinoid of the cannabis plant, stimulates the body’s far-reaching endocannabinoid system to promote homeostasis, decrease inflammation and reduce pain. Easily absorbed by the pussy, CBD allows for greater relaxation, tissue oxygenation and enhanced pleasure too. This Kiskanu oil can be applied all over the body but because there are many oils that can do that, I’d suggest a more targeted application – namely to the inner and outer labia, clitoris and vagina. 

Shop Now: KisKanu Intimacy Oil

I felt the effect almost immediately – a softening and greater access to delight in my body with the help of the oils’ silky glide. I was reminded of my first Taoist massage – which includes the genitals – and how mad it seemed then that this part of the body is not included in our self-care practices. While this oil is great for lovers, I’d recommend also using it solo for self-cultivation (as the Taoists so rightly call it) to enhance your capacity to hold the charge of pleasure, to increase your desire and to connect to your life force and where it wishes to lead you.

There is now ample evidence of the pussy-brain connection. Signals sent from the intricate neural wiring in this region to the brain mediate our experience. These signals produce either the sex hormones that promote confidence, connection and creativity or the stress hormones that will keep you stuck in a negativity bias, believing that pleasure is self-indulgent and something you’re only allowed when you’ve completed your to do list. We have a limited capacity for production of these hormones – they work against each other – so you can consciously choose to up production of one and not the other. In other words, cultivating sex hormones through self-pleasure decreases the stress hormones in your body and shifts your perception and, with it, your experience of safety, power and possibility in the world.

I kept applying Kiskanu’s intimacy oil throughout the day and noticed an easing in the musculature at the entrance to my vagina and up and along the walls to my cervix (the unicorn horn reaches up there). I used tampons for many years, have had sex when I didn’t really want to, had a baby and was, as most of us are, conditioned by a culture that suppresses women.

All of these things affect our musculature – we physically contract, freeze and numb – so CBD’s ability to relax these muscles is restorative and also deeply healing as it can help release some of the trauma held in your muscle memory. I went through the usual activities of the day with greater ease and enjoyment, evidence of how pleasure helps us metabolise and transform our experience, and went to bed in a deeply relaxed state. 

My pussy woke me up in the early hours. I was very turned on, as if I’d been attended to by a skillful set of hands in my sleep, and I sleep alone. I touched, I tended, I loved how I felt to my hands and what they were unleashing – a cascade of good feels and an orgasmic yes to the skillful hands restoring our connection to the Goddess with this lush elixir.