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“We have natural antidepressants wanting to go out and we don’t activate them”
Marta Torrón, physiologist
In the book ‘Your body is cool’, the physiosexologist Marta Torrón and the illustrator Cristina Torrón seek to show the female body explained in a clear, didactic and fun way
When mentioning that ‘information is power’, it is easy to think of great secrets that almost everyone is caught very far away. But the maxim can be applied to many areas, and one of them is health. And if the optics is closed more, to the plane of the health of the women. And it is that what is intrinsic to the female anatomy is often surrounded by a lack of information and a modesty that prevent it from being known well and, therefore, not taking proper care of itself. On ‘Your body is cool’ (Montera), the specialized physiotherapist is physiosexology Marta Torrón and the illustrator Cristina Torrón seek to disseminate this information in a didactic and fun way, with the aim that girls and adolescents do not grow away from a fundamental part of their body.
We spoke at ABC Bienestar with Marta Torrón about this disconnection from one’s own body, the importance of receiving adequate sexual education and how these problems derived from misinformation can be alleviated.
Do you consider that there is still modesty when talking about female genitalia?
Yes, it exists and it is an inherited issue. This part of the body has been talked about with fear and without information for so long that obviously in the end we believe it. It is a social construct. It has been said so many times that genitalia are dirty that we come to believe it. The real problem, or the current cause, is that there is still a lack of information that causes us to treat the vulva in the same way as a hand. They are just as normal.
Why is it important to talk about it naturally from a young age?
It is very important that we normalize this part of the body, first for a prevention issue: skin cancers continue to appear, or women with lichen on the vulva, and these are diseases that take a long time to develop and are discovered in very advanced stages. This is because we do not have the habit of looking: we do not know what is the normality of our skin, color, lubrication …
On the other hand, it is important for the prevention of bad experiences. For example with the issue of virginity, which is something that does not exist: the vulva and vagina of a woman who has had intercourse and one that are not exactly the same. For example, when a woman is going to have intercourse for the first time, she has many preconceptions: that her hymen is broken, that it will hurt, that it will bleed, and that is because she does not know how her body works.
Yes a tGoes her vagina and looks in the mirror on a regular basisAs you brush your teeth or go to the gym, the control, power and feeling in a positive sense that you have in the body makes us know it better and avoid all this.
What does the concept of the erased body mentioned in the book mean?
What I am trying to explain under this concept is that the body exists twice, on a physical level, where we can touch it, and on a brain level. Each part of the physical body exists in a specific area of our brain. Then, when I speak of the erased body, I am referring above all to these cerebral representations. If we do not look, we do not touch, we do not move and we do not think, which are those four actions that develop the book, it causes that in this brain scheme the part that we do not use does not develop, in this case the vulva and the vagina. This causes distorted sensations in the physical body (there are women who have hyper or hypo sensitivity in the clitoris), movement difficulties (there are women who experience a contracted vagina without realizing it), sensation and ignorance … There are a series of problems that develop in a cascade (pain during intercourse, little lubrication, normal pains) due to having the body erased.
And why does a person reach this state?
For the same reason as before. We have no information: if nobody has ever told you about a part of the body normally, with all their names and repeatedly, that this is also missing, one lives with the body erased. It is a cultural issue, it is a historical heritage that I hope will change right now, because it is urgent: we are all here suffering when it would not be necessary.
Understand the sensations, be attentive and pay attention to our reproductive system… Does it help us to have better health, not only in this area, but globally?
Obviously, because nothing lives disconnected. It is impossible for you to improve one part of yourself, whatever it is, and not change the rest. For example, if you go to the psychologist, this will have an impact not only on your mind: also on your physique, or on your relationship with others. Well, the same from this point of view. If a woman, when she integrates this part of the body, knows how it works and keeps it healthy (knows how to move it, knows its anatomy, recognizes sensations, etc.), it will influence her life, because this area of the body, unlike others , she is very involved in sexuality.
Having a healthy sexuality is also a milestone to achieve in this society. It is still a subject that lives in the dark and it seems that it is for intimacy. All this makes that we lose the great tool that gives us sexual pleasurel. Pleasure in general, sexual in particular, activates a series of hormones that really make life have meaning, make it beautiful … we have natural antidepressants wanting to go into the bloodstream and we are not activating it.
Do you think there is a stigma about menstruation?
Yes, I believe that there has been a very important advance in the last decade, but it continues to happen. Every important process takes time. There are many people who feel embarrassed or embarrassed during menstruation. And there are other topics that are downplayed, or it’s hard for us to talk, like menstrual pain. So, yes, there is still a stigma about menstruation; lack of information, of standardization and of these strange words that we use. What you need to do is talk about this more often in a natural way.
For example, not much is said about it, but it is important to know the menstrual cycle …
Of course! In general it is not known and it does not matter, for example, that you have been a mother. We are going through very important life experiences without being able to marvel at how perfect the body is. ‘Information is power’, ‘Knowing is loving’… all these phrases could be applied here. There are women who live without knowing what is happening to them, with doubts, with fear, and sometimes they are quite normal and natural processes. In fact, it gives you a lot of information, the menstrual cycle, of our general health. And we are missing this information.