HypnoBirthing Fertility Therapy Infertility is a heartbreaking experience. The stress of trying so hard to achieve something that to others all around you comes so naturally takes its toll on your mind, your body, and your life. Relationships can suffer as sex becomes scheduled and micromanaged in order to exactly pinpoint the timing of ovulation. You may feel guilty for avoiding spending time with friends with children, or feel overcome by intense emotions like jealousy and anger when you see a pregnant woman at the grocery store or receive an invitation to a baby shower. Frustration sets in as your life becomes a neverending cycle of charts, temperature-taking, cervical mucus checks, and joyless sex. The relentless hope that builds up as you near the end of yet another menstrual cycle is dashed when you period arrives again. Add to that the expense and physical discomfort of fertility treatments, and the result can be a long, frustrating, and lonely road.     The implications of this are important to the practice of hypnosis for fertility. The first step is to learn to relieve yourself of the stressful thoughts that create physical changes in your body due to the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline and catecholamines. A body that is constantly in a state of stress and anxiety is feeling threatened and acting as if there is an imminent emergency, and systems respond accordingly (with what is called the "fight or flight" response) by diverting blood flow to vital areas and shunting it away from organs that are not necessary to survival. That means that your heart and lungs receive more blood. (Ever notice how your heart beats faster and your breathing quickens when you are under stress? This is due to the fight or flight response--controlled by the sympathetic nervous system--and the body's attempts to ensure your immediate safety by enabling you to fight off an attacker or to run for your life.) It also means that the uterus and ovaries are depleted of oxygen-rich blood, since reproduction is an unnecessary luxury to a body that perceives itself to be in mortal danger. Working with your breath and with guided imagery, relaxation, and suggestions, then, hypnosis for fertility aims to reset your internal environment by encouraging your parasympathetic nervous system to take over and calm your mind and body. Blood flow returns to all of your organs, your breath and heart rate slow to a calmer pace, and you leave a session feeling refreshed and relaxed. Far from just being relaxation sessions, however, fertility hypnosis uses specific suggestions to create in your body an optimal environment for conception to take place. These techniques are useful in conjunction with natural methods or medically assisted reproduction. (In fact, one study performed in Israel found that women who used hypnosis during in vitro fertilization conceived at double the rate of their peers who did not utilize hypnotherapy.) My typical hypnosis for fertility package comprises four sessions, usually one per week, at a cost of $500 for the package. This price includes a copy of "It's Conceivable!", a book on fertility hypnosis written by my trainer and the creator of the HypnoBirthing Fertility Therapy program, Lynsi Eastburn. I also include a relaxation CD to listen to at home to reinforce the techniques we discuss together. For more information or to schedule a session, please call Robin at 972-679-2297 or send me an email.

Hypnotherapy can help. Far from being a simple "relax and stop trying" approach, hypnosis for fertility connects you with the power of your mind to influence your body and create the outcome you desire. Worry is itself a form of hypnosis, albeit a negative one. The more you worry about trying to get pregnant, the more negative suggestions you are giving yourself. Thoughts in your mind have corresponding influences on your body. Think about standing at the top of a very tall building and looking down; what happens in your body when you have that thought in your mind? Does your stomach clench? Next think back to a time when you were deliriously happy, perhaps with a partner or a friend. Do you find a smile crossing your lips at the memory? Does your breathing change? These are all physical reactions to thoughts you chose to think.

 

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Last modified July 2, 2010.