Perhaps the most common question we get at the Moon is “where should I start?”  Women and couples are interested in doing everything they can to increase their odds of conceiving.  But among all the services available – nutrition counseling, acupuncture, yoga for fertility and massage – where to begin?  For the answer to this question, stay tuned to our blog this week as we discuss the different treatments we offer at Pulling Down the Moon and who will best benefit from these treatments.

The most important thing to recognize, though, is that using holistic treatment for fertility requires your participation.  Unlike a medical regimen, where you simply follow the directions your doctor provides, holistic treatment asks you to become involved in identifying and correcting physical, mental and emotional imbalances in your life.  In a sense, these treatments require you to be part of the treatment team.  This is true even if you are also using medical fertility treatments in addition to holistics.

The other point to make about holistic therapy is that it can take some time to work.  Treatments like acupuncture have shown short-term benefit (as few as two acupuncture treatments have been shown to increase IVF success rates), but studies using a longer treatment time frame actually have much more impressive results.  Nutrition changes can also be effective immediately, especially in terms of improving gut function, but other more long-term effects (potential improvement in egg or sperm quality, reduced inflammation, ovulation induction in PCOS) can take several months to achieve.   We feel great for a few hours after yoga or a massage – but longer term practice of these modalities actually leads to a lasting calm in which our body and mind can begin to heal themselves. 

So what’s right for you?  Stay tuned to our blog this week for a deeper exploration of what holistic fertility techniqes are right for you.   Also, feel free to post your questions.  We’ve got experts standing by. 

Be present, be positive!  Paige

If you build it, they will come. Co-Founders Beth Heller and Tami Quinn share their story on why they decided to create Pulling Down the Moon.

The most recent issue of Body Sense Magazine features Pulling Down the Moon’s Massage Director Meredith Nathan on the topic of how massage can help you lose weight.  When we asked Meredith about this topic, she came up with three ways massage helps us meet our weight loss goals right off the bat: 

1.  Massage lowers stress hormone levels.  Stress hormones like cortisol can increase our appetite, especially for sweet foods, and make our body more prone to gain weight around the middle.  Reducing stress reduces “stress eating” and mindless munching.

2.  Massage helps to release the aches, pains and to heal chronic injuries so we are more apt to get up and move our bodies.

3.  For those of us who like to treat ourselves for good work and good behavior, massage is calorie free and ultimately makes us feel better about a job well done than a hot fudge sundae. 

So, if you’re struggling to attain/maintain a your fertile weight, massage may be the missing link!   Click here to read more about what the experts have to say…

My brother Ted Bilich, a D.C.-area attorney and Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown, writes and teaches about the importance of goals, how to set them and how to achieve them.  He has a ton of great info on his blog (www.tedbilich.com), but being the P.I.T.A. little sister, I thought I’d try and stump him with a question:  what advice would he give to goal-oriented people who are up against something that is out of their control (ie. getting pregnant)?  It’s a relevent question since many of the women in the Pulling Down the Moon community (including Tami and myself) are very goal-oriented.  In fact, for many of us, getting pregnant is the first goal we haven’t been able to achieve despite all efforts. 

Within a few hours Ted came up with a response that I found thoughtful and inspiring (read the whole piece here).  What interested me the most was his inclusion of the concept of flow, which resonates deeply with yoga and holistic medicine.  Ted writes:

“…Seek the benefits of flow by finding ways to appreciate the value of the process itself.  As Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers points out, outsized success ordinarily requires substantial practice.  Mastery tends to require thousands of hours of study, and someone will not devote hours and hours if they don’t find some way to love the process.  The concept of flow captures that notion.  Our favorite experiences tend to be those that challenge us sufficiently that we lose ourselves in the moment.”

So from a Pulling Down the Moon perspective, flow is what happens when we begin to embrace the journey of trying to conceive.  Not because it’s fun or because we want to struggle with infertility, but because that is what life is putting on our plate in this moment.   Flow is what our fertility acupuncturists try to achieve when they place needles on the body to direct the movement of life energy in our bodies.  When we begin to eat right, excercise right, address areas of dis-ease our life (stress, anger, emotionality) we enter a flow that is greater than trying to get pregnant.   The benefit of these practices is that they do, as Ted writes, “bring one’s vital statistics into target zones,” that may improve our odds of getting pregnant.  

But if we’re lucky, we find these practices challenge us in a way that allows us to lose ourselves in the present moment, amazed and enchanted by the process of living life at a deeper, more mindful level.  In PDtM, our six week yoga class we study breathing, meditation and even philosophy to help us experience the concept of flow.   On a very basic level, our bodies can also help to unlock the door to the present.  Check out the video below, a sequence of postures that we call our Moon Salute.  This practice stretches the hips and groin, makes the low back more supple, opens the heart and calms the body and mind with rythmic breathing.  One one level it fits the criteria of “bringing our vital stats into the fertility zone,” yet it’s also beautiful experience in and of itself.   When we focus on the breath and the movement, letting the outside world fall away, we find entry into flow.  Asana (yoga posture) practice isn’t the only way to get there…there’s journaling, painting, gardening, cooking, singing…the list goes on.  

We challenge you now to practice this Moon Salute video every day for a week and come back with your comments and questions.   The flow is a wonderful place to be, and that’s what our community at Pulling Down the Moon is all about.   The babies are just a really big bonus!  Be present, be positive…be part of the flow.  Beth