When it comes to the intersection of sexual health and chronic disease, there is a what came first, the chicken or the egg phenomenon. In allopathic medicine, sexual health challenges are often regarded as symptoms of other chronic health conditions, however, the roots of chronic disease often lie in trauma that is stored in the body and creates chronic activation of stress hormones and energetic and nervous system dysregulation that affect other systems of the body and mind due to incomplete stress responses. At least 1 in 3 women has experienced sexual trauma in her life and statistics for men are likely highly underreported due to the stigma and shame surrounding reporting violations and seeking mental health support for sexual abuse.

The feel good chemicals associated with healthy sexuality are imperative to the health of the entire person, however, we live in a sex-negative culture that does not, by-and-large, consider sex as a key component of overall wellness, much less consider its broader, direct implications in seemingly unrelated systems of the body.

In many Eastern medical traditions, sex is regarded as an integral component of wellness, and sex is even prescribed as medicine. Disregarding the importance of sex and healthy relationships from a health and wellness standpoint misses the opportunity to empower oneself to access the internal pharmacy already available within his or her own body and cultivate healthy movement of energy in the body essential for homeostasis.

In his groundbreaking work, Dr. Peter Levine observed how the stress response cycles of wild animals often complete, say after escaping a predator, have an intuitive tendency to shake, howl, or vocalize in a primitive fashion. This behavior helps to reregulate the autonomic nervous system which has just been through a fight, flight, or freeze response, to allow the discharge of any nervous energy, and returns the animal to a balanced state.

By contrast, most humans and animals in captivity, often live under circumstances by which they are not able to complete the stress response cycle, and, consequently, that dysregulation of energy translates into both physical and mental disease creating imbalance in many other systems in the body and mind, or what we’ve come to think of as disease. Trauma of any kind can cause this upset to the nervous system, and downstream to other systems of the body, however, what we will refer to as “sacred wounding” or sexual trauma has far reaching implications in the psychospiritual aspects of physical as well as mental health. That is, sexual trauma does not just lead to sexual health issues, but by broader dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, can set the stage for many chronic health conditions.

Treating the symptoms of physical disease without addressing the underlying cause of those symptoms, in this case sexual trauma, is like putting gas in a car with a hole in the gas tank. Over time, the hole in the tank will further corrode and may even upset other components necessary for proper functioning of the vehicle while continuing to leak the fuel required for optimal functioning. If we take the approach of repairing the hole in the tank rather than wasting money on more frequent refueling and auto repairs, not to mention the imminent danger the leaking fuel poses, the longevity and performance of the car will drastically improve.

So, too, healing the root causes of disease, not only reverses the disease in question, but thwarts future disease that may occur later in life due to the same nervous system imbalances. Ignoring the source of disease and only treating symptoms may temporarily alleviate or numb the symptoms, but it still does not address the problem that created the symptoms. Pain and discomfort is the body’s way of communicating with us that something is off and needs attending to. Anesthetizing the symptoms as a long term solution is like taking a pain killer to numb the pain of a bullet wound. You may no longer experience the pain of the wound, but the bullet still remains embedded in the body and, and if not removed, will likely lead to further ailments and death. The temporary solution, the pain killer, not only ignores the real problem but may, itself, cause additional imbalances in the body leading to even more disease.

What does sex have to do with rebalancing the nervous system? Particularly in the case of sacred wounding/sexual trauma, unraveling what caused the trauma and subsequent stuck nervous system response requires revisiting the source of the trauma and retraining the nervous system to understand that healthy sexual interactions equal safety rather than a threat to survival.

There is something distinctly different about violating someone sexually than punching them in the arm. The body can still register both as trauma and create a stuck dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, but sexual trauma has more profound psychospiritual aspects that have a propensity for creating a plethora of sometimes seemingly unrelated issues with physical and mental health that extend beyond sexual health. Releasing stored trauma, which is distinctly stored in the body, and creating the mind-body and body-mind neurological connections that allow sex to feel safe, pleasurable, and connected also reregulates the nervous system and, downstream, frees up the body’s resources to create happy, feel good neurotransmitters and hormones via the endocrine system, rather than allocating those same resources to creating stress hormones needed to keep the body in the hyper vigilante fight, flight, or freeze state. Essentially, any sexual or genital violation can train the nervous system to understand any sexual encounter or specific sexual encounters as being dangerous and create even more imbalances of stress chemicals in the body.

By releasing trauma and retraining the autonomic nervous system to understand that sex is safe and nourishing, the entire system is allowed to reset creating not only a balanced autonomic nervous system that defaults to a state of rest, digest, feed, and breed rather than fight, flight, or freeze, but an equally balanced endocrine system, digestive system, immune system, and so forth.

One further distinction I would like to make regarding the body’s experience of sexual trauma is the definition of sexual trauma. Trauma certainly includes sexual abuse, but not all sexual trauma is in the form of deliberate abuse. The body can register threats to it even when the conscious mind consents to a specific experience, particularly in the area of the root chakra, or genitals. Our modern healthcare system has a long history of traumatizing the body and mind through medical procedures with little or no regard for the long-term implications of how trauma is stored in the physical tissues of the body. Gynecological procedures, childbirth interventions, routine elective childhood surgeries, routine diagnostic procedures and even pelvic exams performed on women under anesthesia during non-gynecological surgeries without her prior consent are fixtures in the workings of Western medicine, and all are poised to create systemic dysregulation that extends beyond the directly affected tissues. Thankfully, there is an increasing trend and a growing awareness by healthcare practitioners away from the more violent aspects of the system, but change is still slow. Knowledge is power and understanding how your body works can avert potential issues if you have an awareness of how your autonomic nervous system works with your body.

Sex can be medicine, or sex can be poison. Sexual healing is often the antidote to previously poisonous sexual experiences that set the foundation for disease.