Publishers Weekly - 04.11.2019

Health Books

NATURAL WOMAN

Herbal Remedies for Radiant Health

at Every Age and Stage of Life

By Dr. Leslie Korn

9781611806717 | $24.95 | 12.17.19

THE FOURTH TRIMESTER CARDS

Daily Support, Inspiration, and

Wisdom for New Mothers

By Kimberly Ann Johnson

9781611807646 | $18.95 | 11.12.19

ACCESSIBLE YOGA

Poses and Practices for Every Body

By Jivana Heyman

9781611807127 | $24.95 | 11.05.19

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publications

Beyond the Pain

PW talks with Taq Kaur Bhandal

says. “That means they’ve moved on from this idea of wellness as merely physical,

to a holistic approach that includes the spiritual.” Magical Self-Care for Everyday

Life by Leah Vanderveldt—who, like Jessica Cording of Little Book of Game Changers,

is a MindBodyGreen contributor—mingles breathing exercises, stretching, and

recipes “to ground each chapter,” Richards says, with tarot, astrology, and moon

rituals.

Vanderveldt calls for women to get in touch with their own sources of power, in

what she refers to as the “goddess” space. Similar themes are found in Self-Care

Down There by Taq Kaur Bhandal (Adams, Feb. 2020; see “Beyond the Pain,” below),

which covers vaginal and pelvic health. Bhandal discusses fairly mainstream tools and

In Self-Care Down There (Adams, Feb.

2020), Bhandal, a menstrual health

coach in British Columbia, considers

vaginal wellness from a variety of

sex-positive perspectives, biological as

well as spiritual. Having encountered

“so much hesitancy around even say-

ing the word vagina,” she notes, she

encourages readers, the way she does

her patients, to see that having conver-

sations around “pelvic, menstrual, and

vaginal health are a way to take care of

ourselves, and are a source of power.”

Your book oscillates between main-

stream advice and what you call

“sacred self-care” sections. How do

these two approaches relate to each

other?

When most people think about their

period, they’re thinking about how

they’re going to just get through it.

A lot of my work is showing them

that, beyond the pain, our vaginas are

sources of learning about how to be

comfortable in our own bodies. Spirit

and mind are part of that.

Multiple perspectives on what

vaginal healthcare is can exist. Main-

stream health-care practices tend to

see things like painkillers as the way

to support vaginal health, and I think

ibuprofen is a miracle drug. I see value

in research, and peer-reviewed studies,

and randomized control studies. But I

also identify as a Punjabi woman with

ancestral roots in India and Pakistan,

so I wanted to look at the Vedic prac-

tice of yoga and what that can mean

to health, as well as Buddhist mind-

fulness meditation. In the 21st century

we have knowledge of many different

practices and can look at them all

rather than privileging one over

another.

You equate vaginal wellness with

empowerment—how so?

Women and nonbinary folks have been

trained to not really know a lot about

what’s going on down there. We don’t

even feel comfortable talking about

our vaginas. If we can’t bring them up

in conversation, how can we have posi-

tive dialogue around them? We’ve

been taught to think about our periods

as dirty things that need to be covered

up and managed; the main word we

use around them is hygiene. So bring-

ing forth the idea of our vaginas as a

source of power is a tool to not only

reclaim our bodies, but to not feel

shame about them.

Whom do you see as your

readership?

The people I want to speak to are

young people just coming into the

world of adulting; they’re graduating

from high school or university, maybe