Transcription
It's Hello YouTube. Let's have the conversation nobody wants to have, but I am bent on having.
The female nervous system is regulated and nourished by pleasure. There is such a thing as a female nervous system. You are not just a body that menstruates. You are an incredibly cyclical being, and you need pleasure. Beyond schmex with males, beyond reproduction, you need slow, endogenous pleasure, meaning created by your body, every day.
Some people would say oxytocin is the master regulator of the female nervous system. After spending some time with the research, my own practice, and really thinking about how to communicate science and how to really share it, I don't really think it's the master. I think it's the harmonizer. I think it teaches us to think across systems and to think about the network that our body uses to communicate. And when you can see it in that way, there's no need to create this hierarchy necessarily. There is a need to think across systems and to see how pleasure, oxytocin, is needed by our bodies' multiple systems that we have separated. Intellectually, we talk about the metabolic system, the endocrine hormone system, our respiratory system, and that is how we compartmentalize them intellectually, but that is not how our body operates.
And so, when I talk about pleasure on my TikTok, a lot of people are like, "What? I've never heard of this. I thought we needed dopamine." And it's not to say that you don't. It is to say that mainstream pop science on nervous system regulation is centering the male body. And there's historical reason for this, and I'll get into that. But what I'm here to press is the conversation that nobody wants to have because it's touchy, it's taboo, it is uncomfortable, so many different reasons, but we need to have it because women are suffering. We have higher rates of autoimmune conditions, we are dealing with PCOS, PMDD, endometriosis, higher rates of depression and anxiety, and we are just told that it's in our heads and that painful periods and traumatic childbirth is just a part of being a woman, and it's not. It is the response of our body not being adequately cared for and really understood and nourished.
So, let's get into why oxytocin is the harmonizer, why you need an intentional relationship to pleasure, and why it is actually working at the deeper structural level, not the superficial level that most people are trying to sell you a supplement or some kind of gadget for. And by the way, my name is Veronica. I am a practitioner. I am a daughter of my family's pueblo in Guanajuato, Mexico. I am a PhD candidate, meaning I should wrap up my dissertation within this year. And my research is informed by my family's ancestral indigenous home birth practice, in which birth is undisturbed physiologically. And typically, birth does not occur with a lot of pain. There's pressure, but there's a lot of pleasure. And my research follows that, and I'm trying to unravel it, this really complex topic of female pleasure, the female orgasm, and the female nervous system, but that's not the topic of this video.
In this video, we're going to get to the fact that a female nervous system does exist, and that oxytocin is the harmonizer across systems, and it is needed, and you need an intentional relationship to pleasure for everything and anything that you're dealing with today. Let's get into it.
You've probably been told that your anxiety, um, your depression, your mood, your quality of sleep, um, PMS, PMDD, PCOS, autoimmune conditions, that they are all need to be treated independently. So, you need a different supplement for this. You need a medication for that. You need, um, to follow the protocols for this diagnosis. And while that can bring relief, I'm here to encourage you to work to pull out of the surface level and reactionary mode, and come into working at the deeper structural level, which is your female nervous system, and this is why.
Your nervous system is always looking for how safe you are, because survival is the primary goal. Now, this is an oversimplification, for sure, but I'm trying to just make a basic point that without safety, you cannot produce healthy sex hormones, because it is not in your body's best interest to reproduce. Does that mean that you can't reproduce in a really crazy, unsafe environment? Of course not. Many people do, but what it means is that healthy ovulation is really tied to the state of your nervous system. Now, stay with me. Ovulation and fertility is not just about reproduction. Fertility is actually a vital sign because your hormones, your female hormones, are so intimately connected to the state of your nervous system, which both rely on oxytocin production. And this is the ideal scenario: you are producing endogenous, nourishing oxytocin consistently. That allows your body to produce GnRH, FSH, follicle-stimulating hormone, and to then be able to have a healthy ovulation and a healthy menstruation.
All of this is actually not just the path of your hormones. This is the path of your female nervous system. As you move through the different phases of your cycle, your nervous system is shifting. This is not my opinion. This is research that is tracking HRV, which is your heart rate variability, which is the gold standard in knowing and studying the state of your nervous system. Every phase of your menstrual cycle is shifting the state of your nervous system. Your hormones, your fertility, is intimately connected to the state of your nervous system. So, if you don't know that your nervous system is shifting because your ovaries are communicating to your brain through a sympathetic nerve network, and you think that your nervous system is just like the male body and that you should be the same every day and that what works for them is going to work for you, you are not actually working with your body. You are completely overlooking your cyclical design, and I think that most women are here. So, there's no reason to feel guilt or shame about this. It's actually pretty exciting because what we get to do is intentionally focus on pleasure, on oxytocin.
And this is why. Estrogen literally tunes your serotonin system. Estrogen is the feel-good hormone. You want a healthy production of it. Progesterone is bidirectional. It's not just calming. Through one pathway, it's sedating. Through another pathway, it's excitatory. This is why luteal can feel deeply emotional, even depressing, and absolutely enraging. It's metabolic state plus receptor balance. But this is why it matters. Because we want a healthy production, a healthy receptor sensitivity to estrogen and progesterone, but they rely on our production of oxytocin.
Here's the move that I build in my methodology. Here is why practice eliciting slow oxytocin on the regular is critical. And this is why we need to take this clinical science out of an article database and into our lives by really recognizing that our nervous system was never the problem. The problem has been that we have been encouraged to treat our bodies like a smaller male body. When in actuality, our hormone cycle deeply upregulates or downregulates our nervous system state. And unless we see how they're both working together and the ways that oxytocin works at every node, then we are bound to experience physiological symptoms, chronic pain in menstruation, and all of the emotional, psychological symptoms of that. Low self-worth, low self-confidence, an inability to be consistent, an inability to do anything unless we're riddled with perfectionism. These are all tied to the state of our nervous system. Estrogen does X, progesterone does Y, but what is coordinating the two? Oxytocin.
This is how your female nervous system stays integrated across stress, reproduction, metabolism, sleep quality, mental cognition. You don't see it until you look way upstream at oxytocin. It is a cross-system integrator. It's not the top of the hierarchy boss molecule, and I think that's where this can get a little misleading. People think, "All I need is like an oxytocin spray or a pill." And that's never going to cut it. What we need is to be in relationship to our pleasure. It's going to buffer cortisol. It's going to facilitate GnRH pulsating. Healthy estrogen and healthy progesterone is the outcome of that. It also improves insulin sensitivity. So, if you're dealing with PMOS, formerly PCOS, you want your eyes on oxytocin as well.
Regulation isn't something that you wake up and choose. It is a reflection of the state of your nervous system, and for the female nervous system, it is our relationship to oxytocin and pleasure because without pleasure, which communicates safety, pleasure, which communicates the relationships that we need to survive, pleasure, which communicates that we can slow down enough to be present, your body will always be living in some form of a blended survival state. And in that survival state, systems in your body, physiological symptoms, are bound to go haywire. You are bound to expect chronic pain, missed periods, painful periods, traumatic and painful childbirth. And I'm not here to blame women. I am not here to do that. I am here to draw us towards the fact that we need to cut the [ __ ]. We are being sold at every, you know, every angle, a new product, a new gadget, a new bio hack, and no one is cutting through all of that noise to just point to the bigger picture. It's time to start working at the deeper structural level. And luckily for us, that is about our intentional relationship to pleasure. And I know that that is deeply uncomfortable.
At the same time, high anxiety and dysregulation, the same nervous system that runs your cycle, runs your stress response. When it's stuck in that sympathetic overdrive, go, go, go, can't wind down, can't come down, can't be still, can't slow it down. Or that kind of shut down state, can't get out of bed, I don't feel motivated, I don't know why, I just feel groggy, I have brain fog. That is the state of your nervous system. And so, your anxiety, your low self-confidence, low self-worth, your inability to pursue your dreams and your goals, to believe that you're worth it, that is connected to the state of your nervous system, which is this incredibly intelligent nerve network that is seeking connection first with your own body and with others. And all that is natural sunlight, fresh air, nourishing food, touching grass.
PCOS, PMDD, endometriosis, PMS, and autoimmune conditions, nobody is talking about the nervous system at the root. Nobody is talking about how our ovaries are a part of that nervous system, and that our fertility is—it's just about reproduction, it is a vital sign. We cannot separate our female hormones, our endocrine system from our nervous system. To create harmony across all systems, we need pleasure in our lives, the kind that is deeply nourishing, the kind that for most of us at the outset needs to be consistent, intentional, and strategically dosed.
In the next video, I will be talking about this, actually how to work with oxytocin. What it means, what does a proper dosage even look like, and how can we bring this practice into our lives, as well as the other conversation no one wants to be having: the female pelvis. Your vulva, your [ __ ], your kitty, your flower, whatever you want to call it, we're going there because these tissues have also been overlooked, and we need a fuller picture of the female form, not just to have a baby, or to have a, you know, enjoyable, pleasurable period, but throughout the lifespan. We deserve to really feel nourished at every transition, every initiation, whether we choose to have children or not, whether we, you know, are prepared for menopause or not, or, you know, a miscarriage or an abortion, we deserve to move through these transitions really nourished and really connected to the intelligence of our body.
Okay, I hope you stay tuned, and I hope I see you in the next video.