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.

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.

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.

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.

What is the one mind~body~spirit change in your daily life that will make the biggest impact on your fertility?

When most people stumble across mind~body concepts for fertility for the first time, it’s because they are looking for some way to reduce the “stress” in their lives. They’ve heard that stress is hard on fertility.

In terms of fertility, reducing stress is important because when the stress response in the body gets triggered, you end up with a whole host of physical consequences, all of them hard on your fertility.

It’s easy to see the external stressors that create that sensation of stress: too many hours at work, difficult relationships, too many things to do for the time you have to do them in, and more.

The harder stress to spot is the internal stress. I spend the most time with my clients on these stressors. That internal critic we all have has been such a part of us for so long, it’s hard to see it for yourself.

This internal critic often has a lot to say, like:

“You need to be doing something.”
“You shouldn’t be wasting time.”
“What about that work project, when are you going to get THAT done.”
“You’re never really going to be able to do what you want to do.”
“This should be easier.”
“You’re never going to get this right.”

These thoughts become so insidious, so second nature that you no longer even really question their presence, they simply feel like truth.

And the stress inside your body soars.

Your mind doesn’t know the difference between a life-threatening situation being played out in your real life or in your mind. When you create all these harsh statements within your mind, your body reacts as if there is real life danger. The stress response gets triggered over and over and over again during the course of your day.

The biggest mind~body~spirit change you can make in your daily life that will impact your fertility is this: be kind within your mind. The rhyming nature of this is simply a bonus.

Make a commitment today to notice these thoughts as they come up. Then soften them, ease yourself away from them. Each time you do, you are stopping one more occurrence of the stress response. Your body and reproductive organs will begin to respond in some amazing ways.

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.

If you were to name five characteristics that support balance and fertility, would conflict be in your list? Probably not. From an intuitive view, you can just feel that fertility and conflict are not great partners.

From a scientific viewpoint, the feeling of conflict triggers the fight-or-flight response within your body, which over the long term disrupts your reproductive system. The same response happens within your body whether the conflict is overt (such as an argument with another person), or whether it is more internal (having conflicting feelings about something).

And yet, when you are dealing with fertility challenges, conflict arises over time. Conflict over how you feel about your body, conflict over the next steps, conflict with friends and family, even conflict because you want to feel positive but you can’t and you end up mentally beating yourself up over it.

One of the most important roles of mind~body~spirit work, in my opinion, is to find a way to shift our thoughts and emotions, so we can release conflict within the body. A body without overwhelming conflict comes back into balance more easily and is better equipped to create your wishes and dreams.

So, what does a conflict look like and how do you resolve it?

Let’s take the example from this week’s success story. Heather really wanted to be a mother—and although she didn’t tell me this in her e-mail—I’m making an educated guess she wanted the experience of being pregnant, of having her own biological child.

Is there anything wrong or any sign of conflict by having those desires? Of course not. The conflict begins to show up when you start getting into the following thoughts: “If I don’t get pregnant, I’m failing.” “I have to get pregnant THIS cycle, or I am simply going to fall apart.” “I have to be pregnant or it proves I never get what I want.” “I have to be pregnant or…,” you fill in the blank.

What Heather was able to do was to remove the conflict from this desire by stepping into the belief, “There are many ways to be a mother, and I will eventually find my way to that dream.”

Take a moment simply to feel how your body feels when you read these next two sentences:

“I have to be pregnant this month.”

“I am going to be a mother and will find my way to this desire.”

Can you feel your body relax?

Does making this kind of a shift mean you are giving up on your dream?
Does making this kind of a shift mean you don’t believe you can have what you want?
Does making this kind of shift mean you are telling God / Universe/ Source you don’t care how you become a Mother?

Again, no. Not at all.

All you are doing is finding a way to remove conflict from within your body. You are allowing your body to come back into balance, which is the best possible position to be in, whether you are trying naturally, on your own, or with ART.

I invite you to sit down with a journal—or at the very least a piece of paper—and begin to identify where you feel conflict in yourself. How can you shift your thoughts and beliefs to support a new way of thinking that releases the conflict?

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.

Affirmations, used correctly, are powerful tools that allow you to stay aligned with the goal you have: a healthy pregnancy and baby. Affirmations keep your mind~body~spirit system open to your goals.

Let me give you an example of a fertility affirmation. Granted, this is an “extreme” example, but it will be easier to illustrate my point:

“I’m pregnant with a healthy, happy baby”

How does this feel? Does your mind and body react joyfully? Does your mind and body accept it easily? Probably not if you’ve been dealing with infertility or loss.

What are the thoughts and feelings that come up when you say this statement?

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.”“I can’t say that or I’ll get my hopes up.”“It feels too scary to say that if it isn’t really true.”“I used to think things like this, it didn’t work—it’s just wishful thinking.”

If you continue to use this affirmation—or even if you stop and do nothing with the thoughts that came up—you’ve put yourself in a worse place than if you hadn’t done the affirmation to begin with. You’ve now raised the stress response in your body, which is not helpful to your reproductive system.

However, if you take these thoughts to the next level, they are pure gold in terms of helping your body AND your fertility.

These thoughts didn’t just arise because of the affirmations. They came up in response to the beliefs you carry in your mind~body~spirit system. These beliefs create the emotions that keep the stress response running behind the scenes. The affirmations simply brought them to the surface.

These beliefs could be:

• I have no impact on my body’s fertility.
• My body must be broken; there must be something wrong with me.
• It’s dangerous to hope.
• I’m not strong enough to keep getting my hopes dashed.

Identifying and shifting the beliefs helps your mind~body~spirit system to be more in alignment with your goal: a healthy pregnancy and baby.

Please don’t get me wrong; affirmations are a phenomenal way to put your mind~body~spirit in tune with your goals. Just be cognizant of the thoughts that come up as you do the affirmations. When you pay attention to them, you’ll enhance the power of affirmations 10-fold.

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.