Welcome to this talk on the ICV,
The ileocecal valve,
And what I would define as a game-changing part of your body once you understand what it is and its function.
I wish somebody had told me what the ileocecal valve is all those years ago before I went on a journey to discover it.
My name is Naomi Gow and I support women holistically with their pelvic health.
One of the journeys that I went on was with a womb massage specific training.
And this is where I learned about the ICV and had my own experience with it.
So we're gonna talk about the mixture of my experience of working with my own ICV,
What it does,
And how you can tend to yours.
Then later on,
If you want to explore it even further,
You can explore Insight Timer and find I've got my own meditation to explore your ICV.
So the ICV,
What is it?
Well,
It's something that sits between the small intestine and the large intestine.
It's a sphincter muscle.
And of course,
There's this shift that happens from the intestines and the ICV sits in the middle of this shift,
Almost like a gate,
I suppose.
Now,
You can find your ICV yourself.
It's very easy to do.
It sits essentially between the belly button and the hip bone and it sits almost in the middle of those places on the right hand side of your body.
I would only recommend touching it in a space of intention if you've never touched it before because I'm going to share a story and a few stories in fact of how this can bring up some kind of emotion sometimes and why.
So the ICV valve holds a lot of tension.
It's a sphincter muscle that can hold tension.
And when it holds on to that tension,
It means that,
In fact,
The function of it isn't working to the best of its ability,
And it's compromised in some way.
Now,
The tension can be physical,
Because when you feel it for yourself,
You might feel physical tension there,
And discomfort,
And sometimes a searing pain.
But also,
It's holding emotional challenges,
So it's holding emotion as well,
And spiritually it will be holding on to some kind of narrative,
Something that has existed for you.
Now,
I want to speak to this in a way that feels natural to me and the way I've spoken about it many times.
The reason why I'm so passionate about it is because my ICV is the one place that I tend to when I have discomfort.
In the belly so often I have bloating or discomfort if I've eaten something that can trigger my gut in some way.
What I've learnt over the years is that because of years and years of ignoring the body and ignoring the pain that existed for me within that space,
I've created a chronic pain within my gut when I eat certain foods that sometimes I find irreversible unless I am landing in that beautiful parasympathetic nervous system.
For a longer period of time,
Then obviously the tension is less within my belly,
Within my gut,
And overall then there's less pain and discomfort.
Discomfort and my ICV valve remains just functioning as it needs to.
However,
If I eat something like onion,
For example,
Then there tends to be some kind of discomfort and I'm certainly never going to be somebody who can eat raw onion.
And so I've started to,
Over the years,
Understand my body in this way.
But the ICV is central to my understanding of where the tension lies.
If,
For example,
I eat something that normally I can eat,
But there's just general tension the gut and this is where I can tend to with ease.
So when I first learnt about it we were sitting together at lunch on this womb training and there they were explaining it and the piece of paper was in front of me showing exactly where the ICV valve is and I remember looking at this piece of paper and thinking well that's strange I'm getting a sensation in my body that feels like tingling and heat in my face.
My face became flushed and my body was tingling And my whole body was kind of alive with not a comfortable aliveness.
And this was very early on with my journey of this work.
I hadn't really explored much of the body's holding pattern or even understood it as much as I wanted to.
This was one of the most life-changing experiences for me,
This womb training.
And I remember thinking,
I don't feel comfortable about somebody touching this area of my body,
Even from the piece of paper.
When we moved into the practice part of the journey of that day,
I had a partner who said that she would start and I would lie down on the table.
She began to touch my ICV valve and I straight away went into what would be defined as a trauma response.
Within that trauma response,
I don't really remember exactly what happened,
But I remember when I came into the room again and was aware of my presence,
Again hold on to for the rest of my life,
Where I,
For the first time,
Saw what it means for the body to hold something.
And I have seen it repeatedly since.
It was a gift to have had that experience for myself,
Because when I've worked with women at The Root,
And we've tended to the fascia there,
And I've seen a trauma response from a woman,
I'm aware of what that means for that woman,
And what that means for the space.
Essentially she was right that I did feel myself the presence of my father in that moment and essentially what I was feeling was the times that I had sat at the table eating food and being shouted at I was emotionally abused and so then it reminds you then and there of that experience of I would be eating and I would be abused while eating which would make sense as to why my ICV valve was holding on to that tension,
Bracing for that tension even though I hadn't actually had contact with my father for a decade at that point.
It doesn't matter,
The body will still remember those experiences until we tend to those experiences and until we acknowledge it.
What then happened was that my body softened into food and for the first time ever I was enabled to eat food that I hadn't eaten in years.
I wasn't triggered and I for the first time didn't feel bloated after every single meal and suddenly I realized how much pain I had been in and had just simply live with it because that's what we do,
We condition ourselves to ignore the pain in order to function at the bare minimum.
Moving forward,
Obviously I have then massaged many ICV valves.
I actually even massaged,
I had a cleaner in my house because I used to have a cleaner to clean my house before a guest would come,
A woman would come and be tended to.
And it would be part of the process,
The ritual.
And she was describing her IBS,
Her discomfort and her bloating.
And I said,
Oh wow,
If you work with your ICV valve,
I can show you a really beautiful release.
And so we sat together and she said,
Well,
Could you do this with me?
And I said,
I can,
But it might bring up sensations,
It might bring up feelings,
And you're in the middle of a clean,
So I just want you to be aware of that.
And she was asking me,
No,
I really want you to tend to it,
And we know when we need something from somebody else,
This mothering,
This acknowledgement.
I said,
Okay,
Well,
Why don't we go upstairs,
And you can lie on my bed,
And we can explore your ICP valve,
And I'll just show you where it is.
And all it took was for me to show her and just slightly place my fingers,
First two fingers,
In the area of the ICV valve and she went bright red and flushed and I paused and I said I can feel that there is a sensation rising here so I'm going to pause with you and she was unable to speak unable to move for a moment this feeling this sensation had to come and I this was out of ceremony,
This was out of acknowledgement of really every other piece that I'm speaking to.
This was a woman who wasn't open necessarily to the emotional and spiritual holding pattern of the body and that again,
That moment will have changed her.
So this is why I speak to it and why I believe it's such a game changer because If we tend to this part of the body,
It might just be the area where the tension rises,
And it might just be the area that releases that tension.
It is allowed to soften from its embrace,
Its brace,
Its bracing,
And enable you to maybe eat foods that you hadn't eaten before,
Or at least know that if the ICV valve becomes challenged,
Becomes tight,
Comes up with tension,
Especially after food,
You can lie down and tend to it.
I also use this with my children.
I tend to their ICV valve,
Particularly my daughter who has some challenges with gluten,
And I've worked with my son's ICV valve.
My son lay there and I tended to it and he doesn't let me do it much because when we did it,
Maybe like the third or fourth time in his life,
He started crying.
And he asked me why am I crying I can't stop crying why am I crying and he felt that in itself quite traumatic and I just said it's okay like I'm right here with you to feel it with you and it brought up something that he wasn't able to speak to we tried to dissect it as we do as adults but there was nothing specific he's somebody who gives a lot to his sisters he has twin sisters and he constantly wants to make sure that they're okay first sometimes at the detriment of his own health and his own needs so it's clear that he's holding there he also has a challenge with gluten as I do and as my daughter does so you know there is something there within the body to be tended to for him and so on and so forth I could obviously give multiple examples so to tend to that space might be just what you need and all you needed to hear was that space exists and I hope that that allows you to explore it,
Get curious about it.
You don't need to do anything but just acknowledge it and notice what comes up when I speak to it and you hear those stories from Sending Love.
