Anji Blog

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.

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.

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.

“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.

When there is something you want — but don’t have yet — you can end up focusing so hard on what you don’t have that there isn’t any space left to allow in what you do want.

"If I just hold on a little harder, work a little harder, I’ll receive what I want."

This is what we’re all taught, right? If I am just "good enough" or if I "sacrifice enough" I’ll prove to whomever makes the rules that I should really have what I want.

In truth, you just get more and more, and more closed, and hurt and tired as you make your grip tighter and tighter onto the thought that you don’t have what you want. Your heart and your body close down and you retreat from the world around you.

NOT the path to getting what you want — particularly fertility. Fertility is about openness, nurturing, nourishment.

As difficult as it sounds, begin to release your grip on those "don’t have" thoughts. Allow yourself to become more open and you will find yourself opening up to receive what you want.

But, being closed helps to keep the pain away and keep you safe, right? On the surface, it feels like this is true, and yet, being closed cuts everything off.

Think of having a deep cut on your arm. Initially, putting a tourniquet above the cut keeps the blood from spilling out. But, if you left that tourniquet in place for too long, there would be no nutrients or oxygen coming to that part of your arm and eventually, it would die.

Taking the first step to opening is often the hardest. Here is an energy technique to help ease the fear:

Place your right hand on your right temple, and your left hand on your left temple. Begin to gently tap on the bone. Staying on the bone, tap up and over your ears. While you are tapping, say out loud, "It is safe to open back up. I am ready to open back up." Repeat 5 times.

Now consider this: how can I open up to my FERTILITY instead of closing down because of my INFERTTILITY?

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.

Question:

How do you maintain a positive attitude while in the waiting period after embryo transfer (for IVF cycle) and preparing yourself emotionally for a possible failure? After several failed cycles, it is too painful to not try to prepare oneself for a negative outcome. It’s too painful to believe with all your heart that you are pregnant and then receive a call that you are not. I do use your IVF Meditation CD and love it, but it gets harder the last few days to get into that zone of peace your meditation CD usually brings.

Answer:

Here’s the question I ask my individual clients who have been through the ringer over and over again:

Where can you put your best focus?

Chances are, if you are someone who has been through believing and then getting negative results, focusing on “I’m pregnant” is going to be really hard.

How about a focus of:

I’ve done the best I know how to do.
I’m allowing my body to do the best it/she can do in this moment.
I do what I can do and leave the rest to Spirit/God/Universe.
No matter what happens, I’ll find a way to be a Mother.
I’m open to receiving the best outcome for this cycle.

See if there’s one of these that speaks to you — or if it inspires a thought of your own.

Your body knows your desire is to get pregnant and have a healthy baby at the end of nine months. Your job — from a Mind~Body perspective — is to find a way to have thoughts that match this desire.

Focusing on “I’m Pregnant” when you’ve had a lot of experience to prove it isn’t a certainty you are, now puts your thoughts in direct conflict with your desire. You find yourself resisting the thoughts you are thinking and not being able to get into the flow that was easier to find during the first part of your cycle.

You want to pick a thought that leaves you feeling open and connected with your body — not fighting it.

No matter where you are in your cycle right now, begin to think about what your best focus can be.

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.

How you feel matters to your fertility. How you feel shifts the internal environment of all the cells of your body. The better you feel, the better your body is able to be in balance and allow all the systems of your body to work in the best way they can.

And yet, with all of the disappointments and frustrations of dealing with fertility issues, feeling good is often difficult.

Guided imagery is an amazing tool to help shift how you feel. Here is a short guided meditation for you to try:

Coming Alive

Begin by taking three (3) deep breaths. In your mind’s eye, imagine you have a small spark in the center of your belly—just like a pilot light on a furnace—that controls how you feel. You have the ability to turn this flame up or down, depending on what you need. With each hurt, disappointment, and loss, the flame is turned down more and more as protection, so you end up feeling less and less.

Imagine now that you are ready to feel better, ready to have more energy and zest. As you decide you are ready, picture yourself turning up the dial on your flame. Some of you may even need to relight the pilot light! Slowly turn it up more and more. As the flame grows brighter, you can feel it is bringing energy to all parts of you body. The energy grows and grows and grows. As the light grows, you find this light gives you support when you need it or comfort or a new spark. Let the light grow as bright as you can!

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.

Imagery is a powerful resource when you are dealing with fertility issues for four important reasons:

1. Engages the relaxation responseOur day to day lives are filled with multiple stressors; add issues with fertility and those stressors multiply. Yet, the very hormones involved in the body’s response to stress wreck havoc on all the systems of your body that affect your fertility.

   Guided imagery is one of the wonderful tools to create what’s termed the Relaxation Response.

   When you actively engage the Relaxation Response 20 minutes a day for 2 weeks, you literally create physiologic changes to the cells that are listening for the stress messages in your body. If your cells don’t “hear” the messages, you don’t physically feel as stressed, and the stress response is shut off in your body.

2. Creates an altered stateMaybe this sounds like a good thing, and maybe it doesn’t!

   Have you ever had one of those days when you are “in the zone”? Answers to long term problems simply appear, projects just flow along, and more. You find yourself in a relaxed, comfortable frame of mind.

   Belleruth Naparstek has this to say about altered states, “In the altered state, we are capable of more rapid and intense healing, growth, and learning and change.”

   When you regularly create these altered states, you have access to the deepest, wisest part of yourself. When you are dealing with infertility, you have so many decisions to make, so many types of losses to handle. Practicing this altered state gives you so many more resources to handle these difficult situations.

3. Puts YOU back in controlControl is actually a very tricky word when it comes to fertility. Our natural fertility doesn’t respond well to being controlled. In fact, trying to over-control our bodies and our lives has a negative impact on our fertility systems.

   However, when you reach a place of despair, a feeling of helplessness, this also has a negative impact on your body.

   Guided imagery helps you navigate these difficult waters. Imagery helps you see where you can release control and where you do have control.

4. Re-engages the spirit part of mind~body~spiritThe longer I work with women dealing with fertility issues—and in my own life—the more importance I place on finding a way to connect with Spirit. I am not talking about religion, but rather that very deep connection to the sense there is something beyond ourselves.

   As humans, we so often want to know why: why is this happening to me? Why is this happening for her, but not for me? Why am I having so many difficulties? Why can’t I have what I want?

   Our minds cannot give us these answers. No matter how many degrees you have, no matter how many books you read, no matter how much Internet research you’ve done, these resources can’t give a complete, satisfying answer. Spirit is the only resource I have found to give that complete, soul satisfying, life giving answer.

   Guided imagery is a way to begin to connect or re-connect with Spirit in a very gentle way.

Whether you choose to use guided imagery to connect with your body in a very scientific way or to meet your wise, inner self, you will find that guided imagery will give you a powerful ally in creating the family you desire.

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.

I received this personal story a couple of weeks ago. What I really appreciate about what Catalina shared is that it explained how she took mind~body tools and used them to make deep changes within her mind, body, and spirit. She was in an incredibly painful place, and yet, she found a way to “feeling better” and received the outcome she desired.

Here is her first-person account:

“I’m Catalina, 37. I want to share my story in case you find it useful.

My husband and I tried for a couple years, and then decided to go the IVF route. After two failed attempts, the world was crushing on me. Having done yoga for eight years and breathing, I decided to ask the following questions:

How to let go?
Apart from the medical support, what do I need?

I found an acupuncturist who helped me from round two onwards. She introduced me to you; her name is Njemile Carol Jones. I started listening to the general meditation CD.

I started a yoga teacher training program to help me connect with my body and soul (and stop obsessing about kids). I also started meditating and faced the truth that I had to live in the present, value my life (which is by all accounts rich and happy), and don’t postpone happiness or tie happiness to being pregnant.

I took a trip far away, relaxed a lot with my husband. Upon arrival from the trip, we started round three of IVF. I was doing acupuncture, meditating, and listening to your IVF CDs. I would arrive from work, lie on the couch, and listen.

It was the worse cycle (medically speaking) very few eggs. I cried my eyes out but increased my mantras, my prayers, and I felt very connected to the divine. I remember at implantation chanting to Ganesh ( a Hindu god that removes obstacles).

On July 23, we heard we were pregnant and I was washed with a joy I’ve never felt before. Joy, caution, fear, and more joy. Tomorrow, I will be 29 weeks pregnant, I still wear a smile on my face, and I’m humbled that this process (IVF, not getting pregnant easily) taught me SO MUCH.

I thank you for the support your voice provides to me as I still listen to your pregnancy CDs. I try not to understand who or how one gets pregnant, and that some people don’t.

I’m infinitely and beyond words grateful.

Sincerely,

Catalina

I would invite each of you to ask the same questions that Catalina asked herself. How can I let go and in addition to medical support, what else do I need? Asking these questions can bring peace and resolution.

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.

  “I have gotten several of your meditations and I have a question. I am not sure if this is okay or not. When I listen to your meditations I am not able to ‘visualize.’ I am listening and thinking about what is being said but it is not a vision I see. It is more audio than visual. Is that okay. I get ‘images’ but nothing clear and they are just fleeting. Does just listening and relaxing get the same benefit? Do you really have to ‘see’ the image like in a dream or is it just the thought. Please advise.”

Thanks, E.

Hi E:

This is a really good question. I get so many questions from customers and clients asking if they are doing the visualization “correctly.”

My first answer is there is no “perfect” or “correct” when it comes to guided visualizations. The most important aspect of using the visualizations is how you feel as you are listening to them. You may or may not get detailed images.

If you are more of an auditory person, you may “hear” the visualization as a story.

Allow the message of the meditation to settle gently within your body. Pay attention to how the messages make your body feel. Pay attention to your breathing as you let the words wash over you. The more you listen to the meditations, the more you may find yourself seeing images—or you may not.

Bottom line: Do not worry about not seeing the images. The worry counteracts the affect of the relaxation response the tracks are designed to induce.

As long as you focus on the words of the meditation, release your attention from anything else in your surroundings, and pull your attention back to the meditation anytime it happens to drift, you are receiving the benefit.

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.