Entries tagged with “fertility”.
Did you find what you wanted?
Wed 3 Apr 2013
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?
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.
Tags: belief that, bloome, fertility, fertility expert, guided meditation, infertility, mind body and spirit, mind body spirit, mind~body~spirit, sadness, visualization
Wed 9 Jan 2013
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?
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.
Tags: bloome, emotional health, eternal wisdom, fertility, fertility expert, immune system, infertility, mind body spirit, neurological system, personal mantra, pregnancy, pregnant, reproductive organs, reproductive system, spirit god, stress response, universal energy, western medicine
Wed 19 Dec 2012
Posted by Jennifer Bloome under Fertility
No Comments
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?
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.
Tags: basic life processes, chinese medicine, emotion, emotional chemistry, emotional health, emotions, fertility, fertility challenges, fertility expert, guided meditations, healthy pregnancy, kidney, life essence, meditations, mind body medicine, mind~body~spirit, natural fertility, obs, pregnancy, relaxation, stress anxiety
Wed 17 Oct 2012
Posted by Jennifer Bloome under Fertility
No Comments
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.
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.
Wed 22 Aug 2012
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.
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.
Tags: bloome, cells, cellular environment, dna, emotion, emotions, fear, feelings, fertility, fertility treatment, health, heart, truth
Wed 25 Jul 2012
When you aren’t receiving something that you’ve been working so hard to achieve, one of the aspects that can be “off” in your psyche is the concept of what it means to “want.”
Is it okay to “want”?
Do we all really deserve what we want?
Is it fair to say that everyone who “wants” a baby should receive one?
Many spiritual traditions and let’s face it, many parents and society in general, instill in us the message: it’s not okay to want. It’s selfish to want. You don’t always get what you want. Don’t get your hopes up.
But is it really true?
In my Spiritual journey, I’ve learned something completely to the opposite: wanting is what helps your soul evolve. As you develop new wants and allow yourself to align with them, you are developing and growing not just yourself, but the world as a whole.
These types of wants range from material to the esoteric.
Wants are driving your growth and what you are receiving. You’re literally wired to want.
“But, Jennifer,” you say, “I’ve wanted a baby for a long time now, why aren’t I receiving what I want?”
Sometimes it takes a while for wants to manifest in physical form. As humans, we like to give meaning, so we create beliefs about the fact that the baby isn’t present yet: “I must not deserve this.” Or, “I’m not good enough to deserve this.” Or, any other combination or permutation of those messages.
Here’s what I want you to realize: when you make a decision like that, you are literally working against your self and your soul. When you carry these beliefs deep within your system, the Universe is going to bring more experiences that match this belief.
You are setting up beliefs that make it even harder to get what you want. This, of course, tends to seem to prove the belief.
The place to start is knowing: “I deserve what I want. I choose to receive what I want.”
What other beliefs about wanting are you now ready to release?
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.
Tags: baby, belief that, bloome, conscious desires, emotion, emotional intensity, emotions, fertility, fertility expert, journey of the heart, mind body and spirit, mind~body~spirit, pregnancy, pregnant, reproductive system, stress, visualization
Wed 27 Jun 2012
Posted by Jennifer Bloome under Fertility
No Comments
As humans, we crave meaning. We need to know WHY something is happening. Perhaps it’s the thought that if we know the “why,” we’ll know the “how” to solve the issue that fuels the search.
Sometimes, though, the unresolved search for meaning leads to considerable stress and leads us to ask questions that are even more difficult to answer. Because they are difficult to answer, we often “make up” our own meanings that come more from our wounded self than from Truth.
A question that often comes up when I speak to clients is: “Is it possible that I’m just not supposed to have children? Maybe God doesn’t want me to have children?” Sometimes clients have already decided they are being punished by God. Or simply, children aren’t part of their life purpose.
If this is something you have been thinking about, here’s my suggestion.
When you are dealing with an issue as charged as infertility or loss, it is easy for the hurt part of your mind to give you an answer that isn’t true.
To get a true answer, schedule a time when you can go somewhere very quiet and a place that you feel most connected with your higher power. Spend several minutes just breathing. Allow yourself to come into this present moment. Then, in whatever way feels most comfortable and authentic, connect with your higher power.
When you feel the connection, ask the question: are children part of my life path?
Notice the impulses and intuition that you receive.
Connecting and asking the question from a quiet and centered space is the only way to get a clear answer. This allows you to get an answer that is not from your conscious mind or the part of you that has been hurt over and over.
No matter what your question, this process will help you receive answers; and you will stay out of the negative downward stress spiral that comes when the hurt part of you is trying desperately to answer the question.
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.
Tags: baby, bloome, conscious desires, emotion, emotional health, emotions, fearful thoughts, fertility, fertility expert, guided meditation, infertility, meditation, mind body and spirit, mind~body~spirit, pregnancy, pregnant, visualization
Wed 30 May 2012
Question: “I have listened to relaxation/mindfulness CDs. I find the effects are not long lasting. Stress is alleviated for a short while, but returns rather quickly. What am I missing?”
Answer: Great question! It takes time to use the relaxation CDs, if they aren’t helpful long term, what’s the point of scheduling in the time? There are several points that I would like to share:
First: when you include relaxation or mindfulness CDs into your regular routine, you are making changes in how your body handles stress at the cellular level. It is as if you are putting a layer of Saran Wrap over the tops of the cells that listen for stress signals in your body.
This means when situations arise in your life that would typically cause you to feel stress in your body, the cells won’t react and therefore you won’t feel as anxious, tense, sore, headache-y, or with your specific stress signal.
Here’s the catch though. In order to get these lasting physiological effects, you need to be using the relaxation technique on a regular basis for about two weeks.
You will feel that short-term relief immediately upon listening — the deeper effects take longer.
Second: Stress is a catchall phrase for many different emotions: anger, frustration, sadness, fear, grief, hopelessness. These emotions are present in daily life for many reasons. Simply doing a relaxation exercise everyday isn’t going to change those reasons.
A relaxation exercise doesn’t change that you have been trying for a baby for two years, or that you are worried about your finances, or that you are still grieving over your last miscarriage.
It will change the intensity of the emotions, but the thoughts and beliefs that create the emotions will still be firmly entrenched.
In my opinion, the relaxation CD is simply the first step of feeling better. This is a very important step because it helps to quiet the body, which makes it a lot easier to hear what is really causing the emotion.
The second step is identifying and releasing the thoughts and beliefs, which are creating the stressful thoughts in the first place. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is an invaluable tool for creating changes in your thoughts and beliefs.
So, when you combine the regularity of a relaxation CD with releasing the thoughts and beliefs that cause stressful feelings, you end with a powerful combination that can change your day to day life experience as well as enhance your natural fertility.
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.
Tags: bloome, EFT, emotion, emotional chemistry, emotional health, emotional intensity, emotional place, emotions, fertility, guided meditation, guided meditations, meditation, mind body and spirit, mind~body~spirit, peaceful joy, pregnancy, sadness, stress
Wed 2 May 2012
Posted by Jennifer Bloome under Fertility, Infertility
No Comments
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”
— Victor Frankel
It is simply human nature to try our “known” solutions before doing something else. It’s not that we only want an easy solution; it’s more about: how can you try something you don’t know about?
And yet, when a big problem persists, it’s time to find out what you didn’t know you didn’t know.
Mind~Body~Spirit solutions for fertility issues typically fall into the “didn’t know you didn’t know” category. Taking on a M~B~S view of fertility requires moving from believing that doctors and medical science have ALL the answers to uncovering your own role in your health.
You have probably made steps to taking care of your own health in the areas of diet and exercise before. However, what about listening to the deeper messages from your body?
Here’s something to think about: In addition to being painful, excruciatingly frustrating, depressing, sad and (add your current emotion here), infertility is also a message to you from your body.
A message that energy is blocked somewhere in your body. A message that your body is trying to get your attention in the only way it knows how. A message that when you really hear it; will tell you what to do to heal.
Christiane Northrup, M.D. in Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom puts this very eloquently: “Every thought we think has a biochemical equivalent. Every emotion we feel has a biochemical equivalent. One of my colleagues says, ‘The mind is the space between the cells.’ So when the part of your mind that is your uterus talks to you, through pain or excessive bleeding, are you prepared to listen to it?”
This can be quite a challenge to get your mind wrapped around. We typically aren’t taught to listen to our bodies. We’re taught to cover up symptoms with Tylenol or Tums. We’re taught to push through our body’s pain. Not with malicious intent — but from a disconnected understanding of how the body works.
I invite you to begin to step up to this new challenge to change yourself. Begin to start thinking of all of the physical symptoms in your body — painful periods, short luteal phases, muscle pain, headaches, and digestive issues — as messages from your body.
You’ll be amazed at what you hear once you start listening.
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.
Tags: belief that, bloome, conscious desires, emotion, emotional chemistry, emotional health, emotional intensity, emotional place, emotions, fertility, fertility expert, guided meditation, mind body and spirit, mind~body~spirit, peaceful joy, pregnancy, reproductive system, stress
Wed 4 Apr 2012
How many times have you heard women are born with all the eggs they will ever produce? How many times have you heard there is nothing you can do to change the health of your ovaries, follicles, and resulting eggs?
Neither of these is true and it breaks my heart each time I hear a new client talk with me about these fears.
Dr. Randine Lewis addressed both of these issues very eloquently in a recent blog post. If you are not aware of Randine’s work with fertility, please visit her site at TheFertileSoul.com, or pick up a copy of her book, The Infertility Cure.
I am sharing her full article with you today.
Can Women Make New Eggs?
By Dr. Randine Lewis
TheFertileSoul.com
A new study confirmed the underlying belief, unproven, that the ovary contains deep, hidden stem cells, capable of becoming new eggs. It was previously believed that a woman’s ovarian potential was determined before birth, and was incapable of being improved upon. While science hasn’t been able to study ovarian potential from healthy, living ovarian tissue, rodent studies have supported the idea that mammalian ovarian cells have a potential to produce new cells. Yet, the only tissue science has previously had to study was pathological or diseased tissue, removed from the body. It was previously proven that menopausal ovaries, when placed in a younger, healthier body, were capable of ovulating again. Science does not know how, why, or under what circumstances those stem cells can produce eggs.
The ovaries respond to cues from the internal environment (the blood circulation, hormones, nutritional status, oxygenation, stress hormones in the blood., toxin and antioxidant levels…) and create a follicular environment to mimic the body’s internal response to its external environment. It is within that follicular environment that the eggs (which have been in a dormant state since before birth) undergo meiosis, and wait to see if they will be selected for maturation and ovulation.
Knowing that ovarian tissue is capable of producing new eggs, and knowing that primordial follicles remain dormant until called into circulation by communicating with the body’s internal environment (which is based on her emotional interpretation of the external environment), let me provide a couple of stories from women I have treated.
- A woman underwent high dose radiation and chemotherapy, which “killed” her ovaries. She conceived naturally.
- A woman in ovarian failure, with an FSH value over 100, conceived naturally.
- A woman conceived during her 7th IVF at age 47.
- A woman conceived naturally with ¼ of one ovary.
- A woman conceived naturally with only one ovary on the left, and only one fallopian tube, on the right.
- A woman gave birth to her first child, conceived naturally, at age 48.
The body is capable of miraculous feats, when provided the right cues. I am less concerned with how to manipulate stem cells in the lab ten years from now, than I am with providing the right environment where the body can call upon its deepest, dormant potential now.
While the examples might be clinical anecdotes and not research worthy, the beauty of these stories is that each of the women above had to call upon a higher potential within.
According to Chinese medicine, the energy that stirs this primordial potential comes not from the Kidneys (which govern the ovaries), but from the Heart (Spirit’s) interaction with the primordial potential within the ovaries. Energetically, ones highest potential must reach into one’s most basic potential.
When an internal pressure cooker is provided (like the fertility journey,) an internal state of tension is produced, requiring one to call upon this higher level of interaction. If it isn’t accessed, the HPO axis continues on its previous (horizontal) pathway of decline. When a woman can access her heart’s highest potential, we can consider it an evolutionary jump, calling upon that hidden (vertical) potential to now manifest at a higher level.
Dr. Randine Lewis is the author of The Way of The Fertile Soul (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2007) and The Infertility Cure (Little, Brown & Company, 2004), and her work is regularly featured in the international media including on CBS’ The Early Show and in the Washington Post, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal Europe, the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Therapies, Elle magazine, Organic Style magazine, Pregnancy magazine and other publications. Dr Lewis is also the creator of The Fertile Soul ® body, mind, spirit program of deep internal healing based upon Taoist and Chinese medical practices. For more information, including retreats, please visit www.TheFertileSoul.com.
Tags: belief that, bloome, emotional chemistry, emotional health, fertility, fertility expert, fertility treatment, infertility, mind~body~spirit, natural fertility, pregnancy, pregnant, reproductive system