Can Foods Make You Fertile?

I was recently interviewed for an article by The Daily Beast, entitled “Can Foods Make You Infertile?” The author wanted to substantiate some research claims about foods that were good and bad for your fertility. It is an interesting piece. I still take issue with the study on whole milk and ice cream being good for your fertility, but they were not looking for refuting evidence; only substantiating evidence. Milk is not good for your fertility, but fat is. Milk fat, butter fat, Omega-3s, coconut oil, flaxseed oil… I still advise avoiding cow dairy products, and including plenty of non-trans fat. Other than that, here is the list from the Daily Beast: 1. Men who drink at least a quart of cola daily have sperm counts almost 30 percent lower than men who drink no cola.

2. Women who eat lots of low-fat dairy products face an 85 percent higher risk of ovulatory infertility than women who consume little or no low-fat dairy products.

3. Men who eat large quantities of soy-based foods produce 32 percent less sperm per milliliter than men who consume no soy-based foods.

4. Women who consume at least one daily serving of whole milk are more than 50 percent less likely to experience ovulatory infertility than are women who consume less than one serving of whole milk per week.

5. Men who are exposed to large quantities of bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in the manufacture of canned foods, have sperm counts about 23 percent lower than men with no BPA exposure.

6. Vegan women are only one-fifth as likely to have twins as are vegetarian and omnivorous women.

7. Men with high concentrations of trans-fatty acids in their semen have 96 percent fewer sperm than men with low concentrations of trans-fatty acids in their semen.

8. Women who consume at least one alcoholic beverage per day have a nearly 50 percent greater risk of ovulatory infertility than women who drink no alcohol.

9. Women who are exposed to large quantities of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a synthetic chemical used in the linings of microwave-popcorn bags, face an infertility risk ranging from 70 percent to 134 percent higher than that of women with the least amount of PFOA exposure.

10. Men who eat a traditional Dutch diet have sperm counts nearly twice as high as do men who eat a fish-and-produce-based diet.

11. Women who eat large quantities of omega-3 fatty acids are 22 percent less likely to be diagnosed with endometriosis—a common cause of infertility—than women who eat little or no omega-3s.

12. Women who consume large quantities of non-heme iron—the kind found in lentils, spinach, and supplements—have a 40 percent lower risk of ovulatory infertility than women who consume little or no non-heme iron.

13. Women who consume at least 5 percent of their daily calories in the form of vegetable protein rather than meat protein have a 50 percent lower risk of ovulatory infertility than women who consume only meat protein.

14. The sperm of men who consume very low quantities of antioxidants is only two thirds as motile as the sperm of men who consume high quantities of antioxidants.

15. Men whose mothers ate beef at least seven times a week while pregnant with them are three times as likely to have low sperm counts as men whose mothers ate less beef while pregnant.

For the complete article, see:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/09/can-food-make-you-infertile-foods-to-eat-and-avoid.html

Fertility Is Within

From the roaring silence of the unborn, life longs to emerge. Pregnant with pure potential, life springs into being with the friction of opposing vital forces, inviting a new life to begin. Ovulation, intercourse, ejaculation, fertilization, zygote, embryo, fetus, baby, child, adult, longing to bring forth life anew.

Will life emerge from the desire that you carry? Nobody knows. What is certain is this – you cannot force life from external measures.

Sure, procedural medicine can try to force sperm into egg, but that’s where the advances of modern medicine begin and end in the fertility world.

The miracle of life, however, is endless.

Fertility is an inside job.

One of the most ancient texts of medicine in existence tells us that all disease begins with the spirit, and manifests in the body/mind. All healing comes from the spirit, and emerges from your own heart. The meridian that connects the heart to the womb and allows life to be made manifest, has no points of its own. It is too deep for any external force to manipulate. Fertility is an inside job.

One of the best fertility meditations I know is to quiet the body and mind, and feel into the spaciousness of your own body. As you breathe in, imagine the connection from your heart to your womb. Feel yourself carry the life-giving blood from the heart to the uterus with every inhalation, and with every exhalation allow yourself to release any tension between the uterus and the heart. Keep opening up further and further with every breath, and eventually you can merge your awareness with the source of life itself. It is not anywhere else but within.

Falling Pregnant

Trying to make ourselves pregnant is like trying to force sleep. It doesn’t work very well. We fall pregnant just like we fall asleep - effortlessly. Only those who have difficulty sleeping try various methods to get to sleep; most of them fail. Those that are effective are methods which allow their troubled minds to rest, so that the deeper state of restoration takes over. Chinese medicine has a concept of Xin, or heart-mind, which is different than the thought based, conceptual mind, which demands answers, as if it could control life. Xin holds the deeper wisdom of life itself, which is perfectly comfortable not knowing. It moves from the space where miracles occur. It understands that all of life is wondrous in its expression. When an individual resides in her heart-mind, she allows life to move through her effortlessly. She seems to create miracles around her.

What are some ways to move into the space of Xin? Stop letting the thought-based mind lead. Get out of the books, off the internet chat rooms, and touch into the space of your own heart. Literally bring your attention to your heart, as your mind quiets. Let it reveal its own quiet wisdom to you, as you loosen your attention on the demands of the world. Listen to your own intuition instead of giving your power to the medical professionals.

Our attention goes where we direct it. When we direct out attention into the repetitive thought obsessed mind, we are dominated by the brain’s beta-waves. In this state, our blood pressure is highest, our adrenal glands put out more stress hormones, our growth hormone output is minimum, and our blood flows away from the internal organs to feed the brain and eyes. We are not in a receptive state.

When we direct our attention to deeper aspects of our body-mind, especially the heart space, and away from thoughts, worries and concerns, we can access alpha, theta, and delta brain waves, where we drop into deeper states of relaxation. The body directs its inner attention away from the adrenal glands and sympathetic nervous system, and provides more blood flow to the internal organs. Stress hormones decrease. Growth hormones increase. The brain’s feel good chemicals increase.  Our digestive system functions more effectively. And most importantly, the receptivity of our reproductive system improves.

Sleep is a receptive process of allowing. It cannot be forced. So is conception. Feel the beauty in the idea of falling pregnant. Allow yourself to feel whatever resistance you have to the idea, too. It can feel quite threatening to require yourself to “allow” rather than struggle. Many of us are conditioned to feel like the struggle is necessary to achieve the desired outcome. If only this were true – you know you’d already be pregnant. It isn’t true. What’s true is that you already have that which it takes. I invite you to experience your own heart’s wisdom and move into the space where miracles occur.

TCM Diagnosis

The Infertility Cure lays out some of the diagnostic parameters to assess someone’s patterns of imbalance, and thereby discover methods to bring one into harmony with life. The ancient texts of Chinese medicine state that disease states arise from being out of harmony with nature. When we lose our essential harmony with life, tension arises. Stress results. We enter states of “dis-ease”, at the level of the physical body, emotional resistance, mental patterns that do not serve us, and spiritual unrest.

The beauty of the system of Chinese medicine is that it allows us to delve deeply into each area of our life, and uncover areas where the way we have responded to our life situation, and how we interact with our environment, are the cause of all states of imbalance. These patterns of imbalance result in physical symptoms, including the inability to bring forth life, a natural and inherent tendency that we all embody during our reproductive years.

When we utilize this diagnostic system, we can chart our course in life without resistance. Our lives start to flow more freely. Unhealthy patterns fall away. I often hear from retreat participants, “This is the way I always knew life could be.” I remember in my own experience when I first felt a deep sense of well being, which preceded my ability to conceive. What a gift that was!

That sense of well being guides me now, and never lets me down. I no longer am at the mercy of life, anyone else’s opinions about my life, my health, or well being. I, and only I, am responsible for my life. How empowering… but, also, how daunting this was at times. I could no longer blame doctors, my past, life situations, or anyone else for any difficulty that arose. My response to life was up to me. Nobody else.

As I said in The Infertility Cure, this is not a process for the weak at heart. Nor is fertility; nor is motherhood. It is the most courageous journey you can take. It will never let you down.

Enhancing Fertility 1-Day Workshop

Friday, January 20, 201210am-4pm Led by Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac., CEFP & Donna Huber, L.Ac., CEFP $125

Learn fertility enhancing diet, self-massage, acupressure, breathing exercises and more from Traditional Chinese Medicine, whether you seek natural conception or are preparing for assisted reproduction.

This workshop introduces you to The Fertile Soul^™approach to recovering fertility.

This workshop is for anyone struggling with fertility. It may also serve as a Foundations pre-event for The Fertile Soul^™ Retreat at Oriens with Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac., CEFP & Randine Lewis, Ph.D., L.Ac. (author, The Infertility Cure) beginning immediately afterward.

Registration information here: http://www.oriensliving.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=158026

What is Your Role in Creation?

This time of year is a great time to address some of the spiritual questions that are a part of the fertility journey. Obviously, we are not the creators of babies. Assisted reproductive medicine may make you think that human power has this one under its control, but you know better. We would like to believe that someone has the power to make this happen. If it’s not me, and it’s not my doctor, it must be God.

What is God? If God is the creator, then what role do I have in creation? Any? What role does a rabbit have in producing baby rabbits? What role does a tree have in producing seedlings? Any?

When we look through the lens of reproductive medicine, we place the power of creation in our doctor’s hands, and pretty much out of our own. When we place creation in God’s hands, we move out of the picture almost entirely, other than where our beliefs about God are concerned. This opens up a whole can of worms. Now religious and moral values overshadow whether or not we will be worthy of creation. “Will I be a good mother?” “What about the abortion I had when I was 18?” “What am I being punished for – focusing on my career?”  I don’t believe rabbits or trees suffer from these same delusions.

Chinese medicine views all parts of existence as holographic representations of the whole. The whole is in the part. That’s why we can treat the entire body by needling just one ear, or one hand. The human body is seen as a microcosm of the macrocosm; of having all of the elements of creation at its disposal. You might say that the creator is in the creation; and therefore the creation has all the powers of creation at its disposal.

That means you are the very essence of the creator; not separate from it. Everything about your consciousness reflects the power of creation. Your beliefs about unworthiness or punishment become manifest in your body/mind.  That’s why rabbits and trees aren’t affected by their beliefs… they don’t have any. They simply allow creation to move through them, unimpeded.

Internalized messages like, “I am not worthy” contract the kidney energies – the very ones through which the reproductive energies arise. And we keep creation from manifesting. Worry knots the qi, and prevents the spirit energies from interacting with the source energies, from which life itself emerges.

Unfortunately, many people don’t want to take on the full responsibility for creation. It is easier to hand over our power to another deity, be it a doctor or a religious figure. The Fertile Soul process brings you in as a full participant in creation, from your rightful place – prior to it. You don’t manipulate the elements to bring forth life – you occupy the space where miracles arise. From this space, you have full awareness of and participation with the energies that either obstruct or open to life.

*SPACES STILL AVAILABLE - Fertility Retreat with Dr. Randine Lewis

Dr. Randine Lewis and The Fertile Soul will be in Asheville’s newest edition, Biltmore Town Square, for this retreat December 9th – 12th at the Hilton Hotel located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. Check out our Holiday Tuition special going on now - http://thefertilesoul.com/shop/retreats/re11-1209-the-fertile-soul-retreat

*NEW Guided Meditation with Dr. Randine Lewis

Resetting the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Ovarian AxisUtilizing the Microcosmic Orbit & Stress Reduction Meditation

by Randine Lewis Background Music by Pat Clemens

The entire reproductive system operates via a state of relaxed receptivity. Usually, however, during our waking state, we occupy a more clenched internal state, which does not allow our reproductive energies to flow freely. It all begins at the hypothalamus. In this 46 minute meditation set to the soothing music of Pat Clements, Dr. Lewis guides you through an inner body process which allows the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis to reset itself from a state of resistance and stress to open receptivity. This meditation may be utilized throughout the entire menstrual cycle, and during medically assisted reproductive procedures.

Purchase and Download info: http://thefertilesoul.com/shop/media-index/meditation

What are you committed to?

One of my teachers emphasized the universal truth that our life situation is determined by what we are committed to. Before I expand, I’ll ask the question he asked me: Where is your allegiance? Before you answer, look at your life situation, as it is right now. It shows you where your allegiance is, as well as what you are committed to.

It has always amazed me to see what people think they are committed to, and what they are actually committed to.

Obviously, I host retreats because of the intensity of the healing power that happens there. Because of that, I only meet individually with people after they have attended retreats. I demand commitment before I commit myself to anyone else’s healing process. I am presently working with three couples from other countries – one from Russia – now pregnant,; one from Greece – now pregnant; and one from Central America that is getting ready to go through an IVF. They each have adjusted their entire worlds to this program.

At the same time, I talk to people who say, “I’ll go to retreat when you come to my area,” or “I can’t go right now, because I’m getting ready to do another IVF,” when nothing in their lives have changed. We all know that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Are you committed to what’s wrong with you or what’s right with you? Are you giving your allegiance to your labs or the healing potential within you? Are you committed to what you think medical technology has to offer you, or to your very self, where the real changes occur?

Again, look at your life situation, as it is right now. That’s your answer. I believe life meets us where we our, with the intensity of our devotion to what it is we want most. Life does not, however, give us the object of our desires, but creates an opening for its energetic expression. If we are focused on the object, we remain focused externally, and nothing internally can change. If we can learn to move out of our obsession with the object and into the healing potential within, life can meet us there, and create an opening.

You’ve all heard me talk about the miracle births – from FSH values over 100 to AMH values of 0; severe implantation and immunologic difficulties, uterine and ovarian issues… these aren’t any more miraculous than anything you are presently experiencing. The true healing process requires a commitment and devotion to self that will require you to put yourself and your own healing potential ahead of everything else in your life.

If you remain committed to maintaining the status quo in your life, you will continue to receive more of what you have. If you are looking for a miracle, give yourself totally to that place within where miracles occur.

Manifesting Your Highest Desires, Part 2

Objects of desire are often egoic demands. While they may be made manifest, the momentary satisfaction will only become the next unfulfilled desire. When it is fulfilled, you will only temporarily relieve the desire; it will almost assuredly be replaced by another demand for another object, leaving you more unfulfilled than if you never received the first request. Unfulfilled desires (and the resulting anger) cause the liver energies to stagnate, taking us out of the flow of life, externally and internally. This resistance becomes blocked energy, which locks it in place. When our energies no longer flow with life as it is, we have stepped out of harmony with all of life. We cannot resume a successful quest until we let go of our demands and resistance.

Our lowest energies are fear-based. Fear of not getting our desires satisfied begets more of the same, and depletes our kidney energies in the process. When our unfulfilled desires feed worry and panic, we are operating from our lowest level of expression. The laws of the universe ensure that we are not given more than our present state of vibration is capable of receiving. Until we let go of the fear of not having our desires fulfilled, we are limiting how the universe can execute our request.

Instructions for Manifesting:

Step 1) Ask what it is you want most. Ask anew each time; allowing it to change. Imagine the feeling you think you will achieve when you get what it is you want most. Hold this feeling in your heart. Put yourself in harmony with this feeling, and with all of life, as it is.

Step 2) Ask how you are preventing yourself from opening up to receive this desire. Questions such as: - How are you causing struggle for yourself? - What are you putting up with that is in opposition to this desire?

Step 3) Face the fear of releasing all you are in opposition to. Face the fear of not getting your desire fulfilled.

Step 4) Open up to receive.

Step 5) Trust that the universe will give you exactly what you need most, while you let go of how.

Now go about your life. You don’t have to check up on it. You and life are not different. When you are in harmony with this fact, you don’t need to fight or struggle in order to get your needs met. Life will come in and meet your highest vibratory level, that of opening up and trusting. You can’t see the whole picture. The grand view always has the greatest good of all in its heart. You are a part of that, and it always has your highest interest at heart, too. Practice gratitude for that fact. You will be amazed.

Manifesting Your Highest Desires, Part I

Whatever it is you want most, you will get. However, what you want most is not necessarily what the conscious mind thinks you want most. Egoic demands are at odds with the universe’s ability to fulfill them. Imagine if everyone in the world got what they thought they wanted – life would be far more chaotic than it seems now.

I remember when I was eight years old, I wanted a monkey more than anything else I had ever wanted. If anyone was to ask me why I wanted a monkey, I just absolutely knew if I had a monkey as a pet, life would be more fun, I wouldn’t be lonely anymore, I wouldn’t feel the pain I felt inside, and I would be happy. No one could talk me out of it. I thought there was a possibility I would get this monkey on my birthday, but no. I got great presents, but a monkey wasn’t one of them. And I cried; partly because I was so disappointed and heartbroken, but also because I was so ashamed that I couldn’t appreciate my special day and gifts because of my sorrow.

Forty some years later, I can laugh at the silliness of my childish desires, and can compound the example with hundreds of other times when the universe, thankfully, did not give me what I thought I wanted most. I can look back and see, however, that it always gave me what I needed (i.e., what I wanted most.) In fact, every time, life seemed to maneuver itself to give me precisely what it was I most needed.

If I thought I must be with a particular guy in order to be happy, and he wasn’t right for me, circumstances would ensure we would not end up being together. This was not easy to swallow for a master manipulator like me. I would do everything within my power to land what I thought I wanted. Sometimes it seemed to work. Other times it didn’t. I held on to the times that it worked, and felt like it was me that was making my dreams come true. Untrue.

What was true was this – if I was in harmony with what life’s greatest gifts were for me, they would manifest. If I was not, they would not. It is that simple. What I want most I get when I am in harmony with the flow of life.

When desires are based solely on the “I want” mentality, we are like grasping little hands, keeping our palms from being filled by closing our fists to all life has to offer us. If this mind stream were given words, it would sound something like this: “I don’t want what is; I want something else. When I get it, I will be happy.” This mentality will ensure that the universe will not fill your grasping demand, because you have just energetically told it, “I reject my life as it is.” When we resist life, we enter into a psychological and physiological and struggle with it.

Dr. Randine Lewis hosts Fall Retreat in Asheville, NC

Fall Retreats: $250 off with Registration with code: "THANKSGIVING" Join Randine Lewis for The Fertile Soul Retreat experience, this November and December, in the beautiful city of Asheville, NC. The holidays are a wonderful time to reconnect with your deepest energies and replenish. If you want to find out more about payment plans or scholarships please contact our registrations department. We hope you will be able to join us at either of our Asheville NC retreats this fall (November 3-6 or December 9-12) and share in the bounty that is there for the taking. Please use the code "thanksgiving" at checkout to take advantage of the $250 off fall retreats.

Secondary Infertility

Next week, one of our Continuing Excellence in Fertility Professionals (CEFP) members will be co-leading an educational call with me on secondary infertility. There arises a whole host of confusing body-mind issues when there is difficulty after one already has one or more children. Wikepedia defines secondary infertility as difficulty conceiving after already having conceived (and either carried the pregnancy to term or had a miscarriage). Secondary infertility is not present if there has been a change of partners (this follows tautologically from the convention of speaking of couples, rather than individuals, as being infertile; if there is a change of partners, then a new couple is created, with its own chances to be infertile.)

I can’t help but snicker at the last comment, “with its own chances to be infertile.” The conventional medical approach always focuses on what can possibly go wrong. Unfortunately, the more one focuses on what can go wrong, the more likely it will manifest. But I digress.

I suffered from “secondary” issues. I had no trouble conceiving my daughter. Once you have experienced the miracle of giving birth to a child, it brings up an added element of frustration – why can’t I do what came so easily before? Now you compound that with a hefty dose of guilt for wanting more of what you already have, and you become an energetic mess inside.

After you give birth to a child, your entire physiology can change. Energetically you might become deficient in blood or essence. Your spirit energies might be scattered. Your qi may become depleted. Your body may become more reactive, and reject another pregnancy. Your relationship with your partner may have changed. You may feel more strain in your life with less support. The demands of motherhood change you at every level. If you “try” from a deficient energetic starting point, it will be more difficult. When you add the guilt and frustration to the equation, the pattern of imbalance can consist of deficient blood, and stagnated qi, not allowing access to the already deficient reproductive essence.

When we view the individual presentation through the lens of TCM, we address the pattern, deal with the stagnated qi brought about by the conflicted emotions, and open up to life again.

Every pregnancy is different. You are a different person with every pregnancy. In fact, you change with every menstrual cycle. Certain patterns repeat themselves, especially the more you have habituated yourself in these imbalanced patterns of expression.

The good news is, when these patterns are identified and corrected, fertility can open up again. I’d like to make a new definition of secondary infertility that includes a deeper ability to pay attention to how life is affecting an individual, right now, that may be different than in the past. It actually provides us with an opportunity to become more fertile than ever before.

Lack of Inspiration

I haven’t felt very inspired lately. Yet, I looked up the word, and the dictionary said inspiration has its origins in theology: a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul.

Now, that I have been experiencing, but it sure hasn’t shown up in the way I am used to feeling inspired. My inspiration used to come from this unbounded, almost infectious joy, which I felt could be conveyed to another. I have had such a passion for what the human spirit is capable of; the ability to overcome almost any odds one encounters. No matter the dilemma or apparent obstacle life seems to throw ones way, I am amazed how, given the right context, anybody can come through it shining.

Over the past year, I have been challenged to the core. And I haven’t felt very inspired. I’ve felt heavy, sluggish, and at times bogged down by grief. Yet, in practicing what I preach, I haven’t avoided it. I’ve been with it. And at its core, I have found this divine influence exerting itself on my soul. Tempering me. And in the depths of the lack of inspiration, there is inspiration. There is this enormous desire to live from a new perspective, not held down by the structures in my life that I have had to let go. I am amazed that whatever life brings my way – whether it is a welcome gift or an unfathomable sorrow – if I don’t resist it, it opens me up to the miraculous wonder which cannot be contained. My heart has broken. My life has fallen apart. Yet, out of the ashes there rises a new me, with a greater capacity for love. I feel inspired again.

Today I was given the gift of meeting with a Fertile Soul retreat participant who has gone through her own dark night; whose life has taken an unexpected turn. We connected as two souls, sharing this journey, where there are no promises of secure happy endings. When we can accept that fully, we can live in the wonder and delight of the ever-unfolding unknown. She stepped out of the Cinderella story and into a breath taking, adventurous, razor’s edge life. She’s living a lion-hearted courageous existence where life is living her, fully, finally! We shared again in this infectious inspiration. No need for a comfortable, happy ending; there is no ending.

What is a Family?

Wikepedia describes family as such:In human context, a family (from Latin: familiare) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children.

Archaeologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world, describing a place in the family as a classification of relationships: daughter, cousin, grandchild, etc.

Membership in a family gives us our original orientation in life and society. It provides us with a sense of the familiar, that which we are like. It lets us know where we fit. Historically, families were necessary for survival. When procreation was necessary to continue the species, the ideal situation was for a fertile couple to marry, and reproduce enough offspring to ensure the land and the people on it were cared for. The family was a unit of survival, security, and sense of belonging.

In today’s society, the definition of family has changed dramatically. The family idea of the 1800s is becoming an archaic relic. Today, single parent families, couples without children, and non-biological relationships constitute what we define as a family. We still seem to find comfort in orienting ourselves with others through relationship.

Family can also restrict us and bind us to a set of religious and moral ideals that do not allow for a wholehearted expression of our deepest truth in life.

The Tao te Ching tells us when the great Way is forgotten, morality appears. When we lose our innate intelligence, we rely on rules and knowledge. When we throw away knowledge, piety, morality and justice, people will do the right thing and be a hundred times happier.

I do not look at family as a static thing into which I was born and must adhere to in order to keep my place in life. My biologic family gave me my starting point, not the rules and morality by which I must abide. My family has morphed and changed many times. It has become far more dynamic than I ever dreamed possible. Life is not static. As I change, my world changes, and my relationships change. As my consciousness changes, some relationships are let go, and new ones appear that seem to support the highest expression of truth in life. And once again, my family is changing. It is sad to let go of what has given me my comfort, my shared joy, and a sense of stability for my children, my husband, and myself. But this sadness is not without a greater sense of joy for what my heart demands.

Lebanese born poet, Kahlil Gibran, born two years after Morgan’s death, wrote beautiful essays on love, children, and marriage. He said, “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

Some of my past relationships seem so distant I can barely find them in my memory anymore. And I thank Life for the ability to relinquish ties that bind, that my highest expression in life becomes my compass; not the origin of my conditioned ways. I will let myself be wounded that I may live in accordance with my heart. I will let my loved ones mourn, that they have witnessed what it takes to live from a courageous heart. Let love break me open. Let me not direct its course, but let it direct mine.

And I find a new family; the family of an open hearted soul; not those that I was born into or bonded myself to, but those whose purpose it is to deepen the spirit.

Fertility Success and Failure

Fertility Success and Failure Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear. What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure? Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance. What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear? Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. Have faith in the way things are. Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things. - Tao te Ching

What constitutes success in your mind - the ability to become pregnant? Give birth to your own biological child? What if you achieve this success? Will your heart be satisfied? No. When your mind’s satisfaction comes from achieving a goal, it will need to be maintained. A past retreat participant recently confessed, “My children did not cure my infertility.”

Another woman at our last retreat lost a child, had a child, and now is desiring another. She acknowledged how much she was stuck in fear – fear for losing the child she had, fear for not achieving success with this desire, fear that she would never overcome the loss that she experienced when she lost a child. She was living in the ambiguity between success and failure; hope and fear.

What if you don’t achieve your idea of success? Will you consider your path a failure?

I am often asked, “What is your success rate?” asking that my answer be confined to a percentage rate. Western medicine thrives on statistics. And yet, most of the women who I treat have already been told by Western medicine that their likelihood of success is less than 5%. We all look for hope in something solid and tangible, as if we could restrict how the future will present itself.

I consider the success rate of The Fertile Soul process to be over 99%. Although many of these successes are in the form of children, it is not confined to the birth of a child. When success is defined as the ability to open up to life in its highest form for you, you start to see the world as your very self and have faith in the way life comes through you. You begin to occupy the space where the most miraculous potential resides.