Anji Blog

A Common “Mistake” When Using Mind~Body for Fertility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 29 May 2013 08:00:15 +0000

One of the advantages of using a Mind~Body approach to healing your fertility is that this approach is very personal to you. You are connecting and listening to what your body is telling you, you are paying attention to the emotions and feelings that are present for you, you are “feeding” your body with images of what you want.

However, this can lead to a sneaky new belief: I am the one who has to create this baby. I have to make sure I’m doing all the right things for my body. I have to make sure to visualize at the right time. I have to pay attention to everything. I have to… (fill in the blank).

I say this belief is sneaky because discovering the power you have in relationship to your body is SO important. However, when you want something as much as a child, you want to do everything you can, and it becomes easy to cross the line. Meaning, you end up trying to control your body and its processes instead of listening and working with them.

All this does is create more stress in your Mind~Body~Spirit system.

Your job is to listen to your body. To allow your emotions to flow. To shift your thoughts and feelings. To follow the inspired actions that arise as you listen. To be open and allow your body to do her work.

When you are in this place of allowing, you open to your deep wisdom, your connection with Spirit, the mystery portion of conceiving. This is where conception happens.

Your job is to “till the soil.” Spirit’s job is to “plant the seed.”

So tune into the powerful Mind~Body connection with whatever tools resonate with you. Feel your body coming into alignment with your deep connection to Spirit. Whenever you sense yourself tiptoeing over the line into wanting to control Spirit’s job, come back to your tools. Come back into allowing.

Now you have truly found the power of a Mind~Body approach.

Jennifer Bloome is a Fertility Expert helping women energetically balance and heal their mind, body, and spirit to boost natural fertility. Jennifer is the creator of the internationally recognized Journey of the Heart series of guided meditations to support women in all stages of fertility treatment and pregnancy. For 3 no-charge guided meditations as well as information on teleclasses or individual sessions, please visit www.AnjiOnline.com.

A Tool to Change How You’re Feeling

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:00:01 +0000

Emotions. Dealing with fertility issues creates so many emotions.

These emotions can wreck havoc with your desire to stay focused on what you want. Sometimes you know exactly why you’re feeling how you’re feeling; other times, emotions can just feel like a knot or a block, and you don’t know why you’re feeling that way.

At times like these, I like to use a breathing technique.

You can use your breath to help clear away your thoughts, or interrupt a downward spiral of emotion. Breathing techniques are wonderful because you can use them anytime, anywhere.

Try these breathing patterns to help you let go of whatever you are feeling and create the space you need to start on a different feeling path.

Breathe in for a count of (4), hold your breath for a count of (8), and then blow out for a count of (7).
Breathe in for a count of (4), hold your breath for a count of (16), and blow out for a count of (8).

Choose one of the patterns and do each cycle (3) times. As you are holding your breath, imagine your breath is reaching in and grabbing onto whatever you don’t want in your mind or your body, then you can blow it all away on your out breath.

How do you feel when you are finished?

Fault vs. Responsibility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:00:36 +0000

A very common reaction when you begin learning how your thoughts and emotions affect your fertility is to say, “You mean you’re telling me it’s all my fault? It’s all my fault that my health or my life isn’t the way I want?”

From there it is so easy to slip into feeling guilty and shameful (“How could I have let myself think like this?” or “Why didn’t I know this sooner?”), or to begin to slip into anger at being blamed. “Why in the world would I ever choose to have fertility issues?” “What series of thoughts or beliefs would I ever choose to have that would lead to miscarriage or loss?”

Here’s the thing: it’s not a conscious choice. Of course, you would never consciously choose these outcomes, these challenges. Your web of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs (dating back to your experiences as a very young child) affects your fertility at a subconscious level.

Mind~Body connection does NOT mean you are consciously choosing to have difficulty conceiving. There’s absolutely no blame; simply an opportunity to learn how to positively affect your fertility now you are aware of factors that used to be outside of your control.

Mind~Body connection does NOT mean you are causing fertility issues because of not being able to handle life’s everyday ups and downs. It’s not as simple as just relaxing more.

That doesn’t change the fact, though, that feeling blamed is the number one reason why people leave Mind~Body information behind.

Mind~Body work is about realizing the power of your thoughts and beliefs, and choosing to take responsibility for your own thoughts and emotions from this point forward.

It is about looking at your underlying thoughts and beliefs to see what is creating the dis-ease in your day-to-day life. Then once you have that knowledge, learning how to use that same connection to create the emotional and physical health you want.

But responsibility is NOT about judging your thoughts and emotions by assigning fault, blame, shame. Or, allowing someone else to judge you and invalidate your feelings and experiences because it’s “your fault. “In fact, all of these work against the very goal you are working to achieve.

Though, so many of us were raised to believe creating shameful thoughts about ourselves would motivate us to do more, to achieve more. However, motivation through shame leaves behind scars that create even more physical or emotional dis-ease.

Mind~Body work is about learning to look at this unconscious web of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, and take responsibility for your emotions now that you know how they can affect your fertility. This means you don’t have to feel like a victim anymore. There are concrete steps you can take to creating the physical and emotional health you desire. How empowering is that?

I want to leave you with this idea: The fertility you have today is in part a product of your thoughts and emotions from yesterday. What you think about and experience today creates your fertility of tomorrow. Are you ready?

More About Age and Fertility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:00:40 +0000

Last week I had an e-mail from a client who had stumbled across an article online in which several reproductive endocrinologists were detailing the dwindling chances of conceiving in your 30’s and 40’s.

Then, just today, I was doing some research for an upcoming Abundant Fertility Healing and Support call, and came across an article detailing how infertility was reaching women even in their 20’s. It described how women in their 20’s are seeking treatment for infertility after only five months of trying on their own because they know their fertility is only going to get worse.

This just makes me want to scream. This constant mantra of “age, age, age, age, age” only serves to create fear and worry.

From a big picture vision, someone who is 27 has a different fertility rate than someone who is 47. However, the problem is with this constant screaming about age, it’s created a huge sense of daily pressure. This daily fear and pressure has a much more significant affect on your reproduction today than the turning of a new month on the calendar. Your fertility isn’t leaking away on a daily basis.

You literally can’t do anything about your biologic age. However, the main problem doctors relate to age is egg quality.

You can do something about egg quality. Increasing the blood flow to your uterus and your ovaries will positively impact your overall egg quality. Introducing regular mind~body work, including the relaxation response will do both. Releasing your underlying fears and negative beliefs will reduce the stress response in your body, positively impacting your reproductive system.

You are going to continue to hear about age. Here are three keys to shifting your thoughts/beliefs to balance the messages you hear about age:

Step more into trust of your body and of the power of the mind~body connection.
Remember, when doctors are speaking about age, they are speaking in general terms, not specific to you.
Focus more on what you want than the obstacles in obtaining it.

Create the Space that Will Nurture Your Fertility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:00:35 +0000

“Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.” —Rumi

The long term benefits to your fertility of a mind~body relaxation practice are numerous but not only your fertility benefits.

When you begin a relaxation or meditative practice, it guides you to create a completely separate space in your life. It is about stepping out of the day-to-day life and into a space that is serene, quiet and full of love: love for yourself, love for your body, and love for others in your life.

This place creates separation from whatever else is going on in your day-to-day world. In this place, you don’t have to say, “But everything is so hard in my life, how can I relax?” You get a chance to create, if you will, a completely new space with different rules and guidelines.

As you find it easier to create this place on your own, you will find the feelings spilling out and over into your daily life. Eventually the two pieces will merge — but they don’t have to at the beginning. So, there is no need to worry when at first you feel like you are able to create a 10-15 minute haven and then feel as if you are right back in the thick of things once you leave that haven. Keep practicing and it will get easier! Keep practicing and your fertility will be enhanced.

The 2013 Commitment that Will Change Your Fertility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:00:27 +0000

From a Western Medicine prospective, or even from what we value here in the United States, getting to a “better feeling place” doesn’t really rank very high in importance. In fact, Americans tend to take on the personal mantra: No pain, No gain.

When it comes to your body and your fertility, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve spent time in this newsletter and in all my classes sharing with you what happens when you push yourself relentlessly and ignore the pain that infertility typically brings.

What I would like to share with you today are the benefits that come from trying something new and making feeling better one of your highest priorities.

You will find a wealth of benefits throughout your Mind~Body~Spirit system. I’ll take them one by one. Here’s what you can expect in each aspect of your system when you step into the better feeling place:

Mind

Immediately, any fog or cloudiness in your mind will begin to clear.
You’ll be able to make decisions again.
The wear and tear of obsessive thoughts will disappear.
Emotions like hope, believe, and expectation will begin to become possibilities again.

Body

The ever present low level stress in your body that engages the stress response will stop.
Your cells will move from “protect mode” to “growth mode,” allowing them to function at their peak potential.
The pressure will come off your reproductive organs as well as multiple systems in your body like your immune system, endocrine system, and neurological system. Now they can communicate with each other and work at their fullest potential.

Spirit

As you release the pressure at both the level of the mind and the body, you become even more connected to Spirit, God, Your Higher Self, Universal Energy — whatever word you use to describe the higher power that is part of all of us.
As you open back up to your connection, you allow the full power to flow through you again, allowing you access to eternal wisdom and insights.
When you open up to a higher power, you immediately take the burden off of you — such relief.
You open up to the wisdom of this higher power. No longer do you have to live, wondering about the “how’s” or “when’s.” You follow the insights that come up, but you no longer have to push hard and choose everything.

Stepping into a better feeling place isn’t a one time action and you don’t have to do it all at once. Each time you make a small step or make a small decision to step into a better feeling place, you bring yourself that much closer to all the benefits I listed.

And, since what you really want is to have a family — you can think of everything else as a “side effect.” How many other fertility enhancers can provide a list like this?

A New Perspective for Changing Your Fertility

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 08:00:02 +0000

I recently received a beautiful e-mail from a client who used the Anji meditations to help with conceiving and a healthy pregnancy. During our e-mail conversation, she shared this comment with me:

“It’s amazing what happened when I started to believe in myself again and trust my body, and relax. I used to get upset when my OB told me to ‘relax, it will happen,’ relaxing really was what I needed. ”

If only the OBs were able to explain this in a deep and complete enough way, so many more people could be helped with that information! However, without an understanding of why it’s so important to incorporate relaxation, the comment “just relax” comes off sounding like a dismissal of your experience, or how you are feeling inside is unimportant or easy to change.

Mind~Body medicine is able to both explain the impact of how you feel on your fertility and give you the tools to shift. In other words, how you are feeling is directly related to your fertility, and therefore, vitally important to consider. (It isn’t just how you are feeling BECAUSE of your fertility challenges, but how your emotions and beliefs impacted your fertility BEFORE you wanted to conceive).

Let me give you a more in depth explanation from the point of view of one form of mind~body medicine, Chinese Medicine.

From a Chinese Medicine perspective, we are all born with a life essence, which is stored and expressed as Kidney energy. The activity we do during our daily lives either adds to that bank of energy, or removes it.

The goal is to have many more activities that add to the bank. When we constantly remove — through stress, anxiety, fear, busyness, etc. — we end up dipping into our basic life essence, which is hard on the body and the basic life processes we need to work — including reproduction.

How you feel is a perfect indicator of whether you are adding or subtracting from this life essence.

When your life is full of emotion that doesn’t feel good like perfectionism, fear, worry, shame, guilt, stress, hopelessness, and anger, you are not adding to the bank of life essence, you are withdrawing from it. People come into this life with all different amounts in their banks. However, with enough ongoing drains, no matter what you came in with, you will start draining that basic amount.

When your life and feelings tend more towards neutrality, hope, calm, peace, happiness, you are adding to your life essence.

What is even more interesting about all of this is that in Chinese Medicine, Kidney is responsible for reproduction. This gives you a direct correlation between how you feel and your ability to conceive.

For the next week, I ask you to slip into the role of observer: are you adding or subtracting from your life essence?

Letting Go: Layers

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 08:00:44 +0000

I think that letting go is something that happens in waves, or in maybe layers is a better word. We have so many hopes, dreams, and emotions wrapped up in each part of us that we want to release, it almost has to happen in stages. Give yourself permission to let go of whatever piece you can today and know that tomorrow a little bit more will go and the next day a bit more…

Imagery for letting go in stages:

Imagine your mind and body is wrapped around whatever you wish to release as tightly as a new bud on a rose bush. This bud is completely wrapped with the green outer petals still tightly furled. It is so tightly furled that the true shape of the bud is still distorted. What would happen if those first leaves never released? What if the flower yet to be just stayed tightly curled around its core? How much energy is it taking just to be trying to hold so tightly to this position? Imagine your mind and body is slowly deciding to loosen, just a bit. Perhaps, even loosening seems scary, so they decide just not to hold on so hard, so the first decision is to release the muscles that are working so hard to hang on. Then, when you are ready, imagine that your mind and body are slowing unfurling from this issue, gently opening and releasing, and opening and releasing, slowly showing more and more of what’s inside, exposing the color, shape, and beauty of the flower within. Gently, and at your own pace, opening to new possibilities.

Releasing The Stress So That Your Fertility Shifts

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 08:00:08 +0000

I’ve heard a similar “complaint” from many people recently: “I’m stressed about being stressed!”

Apparently, I and all the others who talk about the effects of stress on fertility have been doing our jobs well. We’ve really provided good education about how the body works and how long term stress can wreck havoc on the body.

On the one hand, this is really good news to me.

For so long, we’ve taken ourselves out of the equation when it comes to health and wellness. We’re taught to see a doctor for medicine that will make us well. While there are certainly times and places for doctors, you can end up feeling like your personal health and wellness is up to someone else. I celebrate the fact we are relearning our roles in healing our bodies.

But on the other hand (and this is a HUGE but), without the right mind set, personal opportunity turns quickly to full responsibility and then the need to be perfect and then to blame and self flagellation. The end result? More stress. Not exactly the goal!

Here are two ways to balance your knowledge of how stress affects the body AND live in the real world because life is full of stressors, of that there is no doubt!

Change the goal: Learning to deal with stress is NOT the same as being stress free. Stress free is NOT the goal.

It is the nature of the world to be met with difficulties and challenges.Stressors will continue to pop up in your life even if you are the most practiced relaxer out there.

Acknowledging this will begin to take some of the pressure off. After all, your body is built to handle short-term stress. It really is okay. The kind of stress you want to avoid is the long term ALWAYS feeling stress about something or another. When there’s no relief from stress, that’s when systems in your body begin to break down.

I think that part of the frustration and worry about stress comes from the fact researchers have demonstrated the effect of stress on fertility — but they haven’t quantified where the line is between an “okay” amount of stress and when fertility begins to be affected.

But, when you start noticing stress is building in your daily life, worrying about the stress will only magnify the stress your body feels.

So the first step is to really know at your core that the goal is to learn how to handle the daily stress, NOT to be stress FREE.
Do the best you can to adopt the following mantra: I am where I am.

If you are in the middle of a difficult time in your work or personal life and find yourself more stressed than usual, now’s the time to repeat the mantra, “I am where I am. I am where I am.”

It is far easier to begin to use stress reduction techniques when you allow yourself to “be.” To feel exactly what you’re feeling. To know that no matter WHAT you are feeling, it is right. Even if it’s stress. When you push against what you are feeling, you end up creating judgment and resistance. When you are in a place of judgment about yourself, it creates one more layer that needs to be healed in order to relive the stress. It also completely cuts you off from your inner guidance.

When you allow yourself to believe, “I am where I am, and that’s okay,” you immediately take the pressure off. You give yourself access to far more resources that will help bring you back to center than if you add more pressure and worry. You connect with inner guidance, with Spirit, with God, and NOW the answers can come.

I recognize this is a BIG shift to make in thinking. So many of us were raised to push ourselves harder when things aren’t going well or that pressure will result in greater rewards. Or, if you take the pressure off, you’ll turn into a goal-less wanderer.

I won’t out and out tell you that this is wrong. I invite you to experiment with “I am where I am” and experience the shift for yourself.

What is THE Answer?

Jennifer Bloome — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:00:46 +0000

We all want it at one time or another. THE answer. THE technique. THE “thing” to DO that will give you what you want. THE “thing” you can just DO—preferably, once —that will ease the pain once and for all that will immediately provide the results.

How many times, as you have tried to conceive your family, have you closed your eyes and wished or prayed for “the answer.” “Just TELL me what to do and I’ll DO it. I just need to know what to DO.”

In reality, though, this is a trap. Actually, it’s two traps.

Trap #1: If it isn’t big, it isn’t enough.

This is a trap because it keeps you from seeing the small changes you could make that together add up to the big result. You keep waiting for the big “thing” to do and ignore the other small messages your body is giving you.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Small seems too easy. Small seems insignificant. Small feels like you aren’t really trying. If there was something small that could really affect your fertility, everyone would be doing it by now.

This leads directly into trap #2.

Trap #2: DOING something external is more important than BEING something internally.

Our culture puts a lot of emphasis on physical action. Emotions and feelings are something that are “nice” to change, but not really important.

In your body, you can’t get further from the truth.

Your cells are always listening to your emotions and your feelings. Your emotions create the cellular environment that determines what aspect of your DNA is switched on or off. This same environment causes your cells to be either in growth mode or in protection/fear mode.

Your emotions and your feelings are a vital part of your fertility. They are a vital part of aging. They are a vital part of every aspect of your health.

“THE” Answer

Pay attention to the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that are swirling in your body. What can you DO today that will help shift those thoughts, emotions, and feelings that help you move from sadness, fear, anxiety, to a more neutral or positive state of mind?

What small shift in thinking will help with this? You don’t need to shift from feeling deep sadness or worry immediately to being a “Pollyanna” about your fertility. However, what is something small that you can change in your thoughts that will bring a sense of relief?

As you experience a small sense of relief here, and then another small sense of relief, and then yet another, you’ll begin to find it gets easier and easier. You’ll find you no longer have to work at it, the shifting will happen on it’s own. How different would day-to-day life be? How different would your cells be acting throughout your body? What impact could you make on your fertility?

You’ll notice I did use the word DO. Physical action is an important part—you won’t get pregnant simply by sitting and feeling good. However, as you make your small shifts in thought, you’ll be more drawn to the types of physical changes that will help you discover the best path to your family.