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.

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.

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.

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.

Dealing with infertility means becoming exposed to many difficult topics. You are inundated with facts and figures about age and chromosomes. You experience first hand the heartbreak of loss, whether that is the loss of trust in your body, the loss of the naïveté other women get to have regarding pregnancy, or the loss of a baby.

Of course you don’t want to spend any more time than you have to dealing with the difficult topics.

However, from a body/mind perspective, it makes a difference HOW you handle the difficult topics. Sometimes, instinct makes you want to turn away from the difficult topics, to protect your heart, to keep from being completely overwhelmed. Oftentimes, the easiest way to do this is to bury the emotions, the memories, and the thoughts.

The problem with this, to borrow the title from a wonderful book on this topic, “feelings buried alive NEVER die.” Not only do they not die, they go on living in your subconscious and the cells of your body. They are very much alive and influencing how the cells of your body are acting and behaving.

Stay with me here, because I know this can be an overwhelming concept at first. It is NOT my goal to have you scared of your thoughts and emotions. In fact, you have more power than you know when it comes to these thoughts and emotions.

Here’s the key to handling thoughts and emotions: Instead of feeling like the choice is to either bury the emotion down deep or to push it away and try to pretend your way into having it not bother you, take your feelings or your thoughts one step at a time.

Take the “scary” or emotional thought and see what the next best thought is you can have about it. The new thought doesn’t have to be all bright and shiny and positive, that’s not going to be believable. It just has to be a little bit better than the thought before.

So for example, let’s take the thought:

“My body is never going to do what I want it to do.”

Shift that to:

“My body hasn’t been doing what I want it to do.”

Feel the difference in those two statements. Read them each out loud and really feel the difference.

Shift that to:

“I’m learning new ways to work with my body that I didn’t know about before.”

Now, read the first statement and this statement out loud. Feel the difference.

If you never take this thought any farther, can you feel the difference of where you have “left” your thoughts and emotions on this topic? Even a shift like this will make a profound difference in the cells of your body and your reproductive system.

As you get more skilled with shifting your thoughts, you will discover the power that your thoughts and emotions truly hold.

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.

The bonus fifth step in dealing with disappointment is stepping into a neutral emotional place. Different types of disappointment will have varying degrees of emotional intensity. Do not feel like you have to move from sadness and disappointment directly into positivity or hope. Yes, those emotions feel better and are a goal, but the first step is neutral.

If you were feeling really angry or sad, and disappointed, wouldn’t neutral feel better? Then, from neutral, you can move upwards towards hope.

Take the pressure off; don’t require yourself to go all the way to hope and belief from a place of disappointment. So many of my clients are so hard on themselves; they worry if they aren’t in a place of hope and belief that their stress will hamper their efforts of conceiving.

Each forward step you can make, the easier it is on your body. However, take just a moment and feel the relief that would come to your body and all her organs if you just allowed yourself to come to the place of neutral.

Each step of the process to release disappointment takes effort and can be challenging. Because of that, I’m going to give you EFT statements and affirmations to support the work you are doing. You either can use the statements proactively, or as you are actively working on releasing disappointment.

Even though I want to feel better, I simply can’t get there yet, and I choose to deeply and completely love and accept myself anyway.

Even though I have to feel hopeful, or I’ll be hurting my chances, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Tapping Affirmations

I honor all my emotions
I choose to step into feeling neutral
I celebrate that I am able to shift my emotions this much
I know I will continue to feel better and better

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.

The fourth step in dealing with disappointment: Forgive the others who were involved.

Bet you could see this one coming!

Here’s the deal with forgiving others: it’s NOT about saying that what they did or didn’t do was right or even okay.

It’s about being ready to release your energetic connections to the situation. When you hold onto anger or frustration, or any type of emotions, it simply keeps that situation alive in your body. And, those emotions use up a lot of energetic resources within your body as well as show up manifested in physical form as illness.

Play with this step and see how it works for you.

Who do you blame for the disappointment? For each person that you name, imagine a part of your energy field is tied up holding onto this emotion.

When you are able to release these energy holds, your body has many more resources to be directing towards all the aspects that are involved in your innate fertility. And, it is important to remember that even releasing just a small portion of these emotions will positively affect your body.

Release what you can today, then a little bit more tomorrow, and a little bit more the day after that. What aspects are you ready to release, right now, in this moment because you are ready to move forward?

Each step of the process to release disappointment takes effort and can be challenging. Because of that, I’m going to give you EFT statements and affirmations to support the work you are doing. You either can use the statement proactively or as you are actively working on releasing disappointment.

Even though I am still not ready to forgive, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though I’m still too angry and hurt to forgive, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Tapping Affirmations

Won’t it be nice when I’m ready to release this blame
Won’t it be nice when I can step into forgiveness
I am ready to release the energy tied up in anger
I am ready to release the energy tied up in feeling wronged
I am ready to forgive so I can move forward

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.

The third step in dealing with disappointment is: Forgive yourself

I know this sounds very “self-help-y,” and yet, it’s an extremely powerful step.

When you stay in the mental place of judging yourself for your role in the disappointment, you simply continue to keep the disappointment front and center. This keeps the disappointment in the present moment and very real. It also tends to make the decisions about the meaning of the disappointment much harder to release (Step 2).

Forgiveness is a tricky act. To some, forgiveness means you have to let go and believe everything is okay.

That’s not actually forgiveness.

Forgiveness is more about releasing all the energy you have tied up and invested in the situation. It’s about letting go of the never ending merry-go-round of, “this was wrong / this was right / I am right / you are wrong, etc.” and instead saying, “I’m done assessing blame. It happened. I’m ready to move forward.”

When you stay tied up in blaming yourself, you are constantly signaling your body that you are at war with yourself. Your body’s fight-or-flight response is continuously being triggered, which severely impacts your entire reproductive system.

Play with this step and see how it works for you.

Each step of the process to release disappointment takes effort and can be challenging. Because of that, I’m going to give you EFT statements and affirmations to support the work you are doing. You either can use the statement proactively or as you are actively working on releasing disappointment.

Even though I have to judge myself or I’ll keep making mistakes, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though I should have been able to do something differently to create a different response, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Tapping in Affirmations

Won’t it be nice when I can forgive myself
I love knowing that I can choose to forgive myself
I choose to forgive myself

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.

First step: Acknowledge what hasn’t come and allow yourself to grieve.

Too many times, especially when you are trying to “stay positive,” you end up pushing away a disappointment. Perhaps you feel like it “shouldn’t” be that big of a deal…or it seems easier to push away the emotion than to have to feel the sadness of disappointment.

The only problem with this is you push the disappointment out of your consciousness, but your body remembers and stores the emotions. Then, the next time you experience disappointment, you find yourself reacting to the current disappointment AND the older memory. So, it is best to acknowledge the emotions as they are happening and do your grieving in the moment.

Allow yourself to feel the feelings.

Remember, this is just step one of the process. I’ll be sharing each successive step in the weeks to come.

For each step of the process to release disappointment, I’m going to give you an EFT statement and affirmation to support the work you are doing. You either can use the statement proactively, or as you are actively working on releasing disappointment. You can find these statements in the EFT section at the end of the newsletter.

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.