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.

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.

1. Breathe in for a count of (4), hold your breath for a count of (8), and then blow out for a count of (7).
2. 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?

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.

“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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Let’s say your car has a leak in the gas tank. You’ve now got a couple of options. You can either keep filling up that tank, okay with the fact that you are now getting something like five miles to the gallon, or you can get it repaired.

If the leak is small, perhaps you can continue to get by without the repair until you’re ready for a new car, worried and anxious the whole time because you’re not sure when the leak is going to be so big you’ll end up stranded by the side of the road.

Your car needs fuel flowing through its system to run properly. Your body is no different: your body needs its energy flowing freely to run properly.

In her groundbreaking book, “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” Christiane Northrup M.D. has this to say about the body issues that create infertility: “Fibroids, endometriosis, diseases of the ovaries, and other pelvic disorders are manifestations of blocked energy in the pelvis.”

She goes on to say, “Mental and emotional energy goes in and out of physical form regularly, bouncing on the continuum between energy and matter, particle and wave. Quite simply, emotional and mental energy can become physical in our bodies. When we have unresolved chronic emotional stress in a particular area of our life, this stress registers in our energy field as a disturbance that can manifest in physical illness.”

If you have been dealing with fertility issues without resolution, I highly encourage you to add a new approach: learn to heal your reproductive system from the inside out. Start the process of repairing the energy flows in your body. No matter what your diagnosis is, this healing process will help bring your body back to a state of flow and 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.

“True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”
—William Penn

Many of us fear silence. If we just keep pushing ahead, doing and constantly thinking, we can keep pushing away all the thoughts that scare and frighten us. What if this never changes? What if I never achieve what I am pursuing so hard? Why is life so unfair?

But constantly pushing and driving and ignoring those very thoughts isn’t sustainable. There is a breaking point — whether that breaking point shows up as depression, anxiety, or extreme fatigue.

When you add in a short time of relaxation and silence to your regular routine, you take the “edge” off those fearful thoughts. They no longer hold the power they used to. You improve your general physical and emotional health as well as your reproductive system.

Today, take five minutes to stop pushing forward and just be. Focus on your breath coming in and out of your body. Let any thoughts going through your mind gently float away like watching leaves going down a stream. If you have trouble completely emptying your mind, pick a word or phrase to focus on, “I am feeling peaceful,” “joy,” “quiet.” As you get more adept at finding the silence, lengthen out the time you spend in quiet. Notice how you feel as you allow yourself this gift everyday.

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.