Today we’d like to introduce you to Zhaleh Phillips.
Zhaleh, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
You know how grown-ups like to ask kids what superpower they’d choose to have? When I was little, I’d always say healing powers because then I could heal the villains and there would be no more problems. I actually had incredible healing powers even then, but I didn’t have guidance on how to recognize them much less how to intentionally use them. I was aware that I knew instinctively how other people felt and that I could see, hear, smell and feel their senses in my own body but I was completely unaware that most other people could not.
I had my first period when I was nine years old. A year earlier, I’d begun having petit mal seizures that graduated to grand mal seizures. I didn’t understand that the two were connected but I understood very clearly that both periods and seizures were unnecessarily painful and disruptive. I stopped having seizures at 16 but I continued dealing with awful menstruation for the next 30 years. They were characterized by 8-10 days of weakness, vertigo, nausea, and vomiting, cramping from my ribs to the soles of my feet, hot flashes, night sweats, hallucinations, disorientation, and intense fear. I went through this ordeal every three weeks. I was encouraged, like most of my peers, to plug it & drug it or go on birth control. I tried both. Neither worked.
I moved to Seoul in my late 20s to teach English. I frequented the sauna and jjimjjilbang, known in the US as the Korean spa. I’d regularly get a ‘hip bath’, a 40-minute service that involved donning a vinyl gown and sitting on a chair with a pot of fragrant herbs steaming inside of it. Although I was usually a bit sore in my lower back after I finished my hip bath, I noticed that my periods were shorter and less painful, though still disruptive. After three years I moved to LA to do my masters and was able to keep up the steaming at Korean spas there. In 2012 I moved to the UK to pursue my Ph.D. and found that Korean culture — including Korean spas — was nearly impossible to find.
Around the same time, my cousin Keli Garza was learning all things reproductive health that exist outside of the ‘western’ Simsian gynecological tradition following a particularly horrific hospital experience. She had gotten into yoni steaming via the Mayan tradition of bajos and talked with me to compare cultural differences and similarities in the practice. She was in the early days of developing her now-global business, Steamy Chick. With her help, we figured out how to rig up a home steam for me. At the time, she had begun collecting data on hundreds of women that she provided steaming services to and found my persistent and severe symptoms to be a bit of an anomaly. When I returned to Atlanta after completing my Ph.D., she built me a steam chair, packaged some herb formulas, and shipped them to me with clear instructions on a steaming protocol.
I stuck to Keli’s protocol and over the next six months, I experienced what can only be described as a purge. Several of my symptoms disappeared entirely; some others decreased but a few stubborn ones stuck around. My periods went from 8-10 days to 4-5 days. Rather than needing prescription-level pain meds, I was fine taking two Advil in the morning and two more in the evening. I could walk. I could eat. I could even hold conversations and make decisions. I still had cramps, but they were limited to my pelvis and thighs. I still had abdominal bloating, fatigue and hallucinations and I still couldn’t get to 28 days between. I had plateaued.
Once I understood how the protocols worked, I began offering my friends and family steams. When Keli found out, she sent me a second chair so I’d have one to keep and one to lend out. She encouraged me to get certified in her newly minted Peristeam Hydrotherapy Institute and start charging a fee to provide steams, so I did. I thought it would be a cute side hustle — and every Atlanta girl needs a cute side hustle.
After completing my Ph.D. in Contemporary Slavery and returning to the US, I was working as a consultant on human trafficking prevention with various governments, corporations, and NGOs but my capacities as an empath were making this work extremely difficult. In June of 2018, it was clear I needed to retire from anti-trafficking work altogether if I ever wanted to regain my health. I’d been offering yoni steams to trafficking survivors as a means for purging physical and energetic blockages and healing body dissociation so it was a fairly simple transition. I re-decorated a spare room in our home to serve as a yoni steam room, had my best friend build me a website, and I was in business.
The business sort of bloomed on its own from there. Friends and family spread the word so I had a fairly busy steam schedule. The intake process involves some very intimate questions, as you might imagine. I decided that if I’d be sitting at the table and discussing such subjects, then tea must be present. I developed a simple recipe that was delicious and perfect for supporting the reproductive system: roses, cinnamon and hawthorn berries. Everyone loved it and I discovered very quickly that it was a powerful brew: clients who drank it had noticeably shorter healing times than those who didn’t. I also discovered that it was too powerful for a certain cross-section of my clientele — including me. This group of women all had the same issue so I developed a second tea: kumquat, schisandra berry, astragalus, and mugwort. That tea began working wonders on clients with runaway periods (lasting longer than four days), excessive bleeding, and short cycles (fewer than 28 days between periods). Clients began requesting tea by the bottle and gallon. I now have five brews for sale and I am very close to completing a sixth.
I have always traveled a lot for work; trafficking prevention work took me throughout the Americas, the Eurasian continent, Africa and Australia. Yoni steaming didn’t take me to such far-flung places, but I still found myself needing to travel to do speaking engagements, workshops, bachelorette parties and to assist special clients. The steam chairs I had used up to this point were extremely expensive and fragile to travel with and to ship; within a few trips, it had become cost-prohibitive. So, I designed a steam chair for globetrotting ladies like myself. It is lightweight and breaks down to fit in a tote bag or carry on luggage. I pushed my work in academia further up on the shelf and spent all my time carefully monitoring my crock pot and perfecting my woodworking skills.
During a weekend bachelorette party for which I was providing yoni steams, I discovered that if I went into a particular meditative state, I could deliberately open myself empathically to the client and communicate directly with her uterus, ovaries, liver, spleen, kidneys and adrenal glands. I began understanding how important these organs are to healthy periods and how interconnected our organ systems are. I now not only understood symptoms, I could pinpoint the underlying imbalances that cause the symptoms. I did this work on myself and finally had an epiphany: people with heightened sensitivities to various types of energy need extra levels of cleansing. For women and girls who are empaths, intuitive and highly sensitive people (EIHSPs), this need for more profound cleansing manifests as super intense periods. In addition to yoni steams, teas and portable steam chairs, I now offer chakra cleansing, organ communication, energy readings & healings and ancestral connection.
February 2019 marked my third year of working in health and wellness. It is extraordinarily fulfilling work! This year I have launched new products for men’s reproductive health, including a steam chair specially designed for men and herb formulas for prostate health and for erectile dysfunction. I will soon be launching an online course for Certified Steam Practitioners on treating EIHSPs. Because EIHSPs spend a lot of their time caring for others and carrying others’ burdens in their bodies, I am developing a line of products for EIHSPs to protect and restore themselves before and after helping others. I am amazed and humbled by the work and am grateful to keep learning and growing.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road has been incredibly smooth. There have certainly been struggles but it was obvious that the struggles existed to make my business better.
For example, I started out offering mobile services. I’d pack up my steam chair, pot, herbs, and cleaning supplies and go to the client’s home. I’d set up, provide the steam, clean up, and leave. Then I’d go home and spend the rest of the day vomiting water or lying on the floor with vertigo. It was clear that I was too sensitive to the energetic cleansing process of yoni steaming and needed to be in better control of the environment. With help from Keli and my husband Mike, I developed processes and policies that would allow me to provide steams without endangering myself or others.
Another conflict involved the development of my portable steam chairs. I have a very dear friend named Jonathan who is a talented carpenter. He helped me to turn the design into a prototype and built all of the steam chairs that I sold for about the first six weeks. As the orders started pouring in, Jonathan wasn’t in a position to take on so much outside work — he’s got his own businesses to run and a family to care for. Customers were emailing and calling about not having received their chairs and I ended up refunding one or two. Once Jonathan and I sat down and had a frank and loving conversation about our needs and limits, we came up with a brilliant solution. Mike and I put together a woodworking shop in the corner of our garage and Jonathan taught us how to build the chairs ourselves. Jonathan got his time back, I got some new skills, and my customers got their chairs in a timely manner.
I’m still learning a lot about entrepreneurship. As a consultant, I didn’t really need to purchase supplies outside of a computer, paper, ink, and a desk. This business has so many moving parts that I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch up. I love the challenge of it and I’m looking forward to getting much more streamlined and efficient.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Yoyoni story. Tell us more about the business.
I provide customized health and wellness services via the healing modalities of yoni steaming, medicinal teas and intuitive readings. I specialize in reproductive health and wellness for empaths, intuitive and highly sensitive persons. I am known for customized care tailored to each individual client. I’m also known for my magical teas and my Happy Moon Traveling Steam Chair. As with my former career, I’m most proud of my ability to see the gaps in service and develop products and services that bridge those gaps.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Hmm, great question. There is no denying that my life is an extremely lucky one. I attract wealth of all kinds — good people, great resources, beauty, peace — and I always try to share what I attract with others. I definitely don’t always get what I ask for, but I usually get something way better instead.
Pricing:
- Yoni Steam $60
- Yoyoni Tea $14 liter, $40 gallon
- Chakra Reading $100
- Organ Conversation $100
- Ancestral Connection $100
- Intuitive Healing $250
- Intuitive Reading (includes chakra reading, organ conversation, ancestral connection and healing) $500
Contact Info:
- Website: www.yoyonispa.com (steaming and teas)
- Phone: 4045931375
- Email: info@yoyonispa.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoyonispa
- Other: https://communic8.as.me (intuitive readings and healings)
Image Credit:
Lourdes Sukari, SarahGeorge Durham, Lucretia Stinnette, Ingrid Sibley
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