Beth Heller, M.S.

I vividly remember what my brain was like “on infertility.”  A desire so strong that it wiped out every other goal I’d ever had.  The education I strived so long for was useless, my dream job was unfulfilling and everywhere I looked I saw pregnant women that made my empty belly ache.

That was my brain on infertility; clenched around the idea of having a baby and at war with each moment that didn’t bring me a positive pregnancy test.  Studies have shown that women dealing with infertility have anxiety and depression levels equals to women with cancer and HIV and I believe them.

Living with that sort of suffering for a day is difficult.  But my journey lasted a year, and then another year and yet another.  In fact it took seven years and five pregnancies to end up with two children.  At some point the universe took pity on me and sent me a message.  ”Wake up, Beth” a voice said.  ”You are missing your life and forgetting to live.  You need to make some space around this infertility thing.”

What?

Well, I didn’t know it then but the call was an invitation to wake up from being the victim of my thoughts and attitudes.  I was being called to the concepts of “big mind” and the practice of meditation.

One of the most revered teachers in the tradition of Mindfulness Meditation, Gil Fronsdal, recently put it this way in a dharma talk.  Our brains have been conditioned to grasp and cling.  This conditioning, which we believe protects and helps us, actually limits our ability to live life fully.  Think about a hand clenched in a fist.  A fist is useful for some things, like smashing and punching.  It’s good for holding on to a rope, grasping at straws and gripping very tightly.  Now think of an open hand.  An open hand can paint, write, caress and clap with joy.  It can grip when it wants, and let go when it needs.  The soft and tender parts of the hand are hidden when the hand is clenched and exposed when the hand opens.

Now apply that metaphor to “our brain on infertility.” It’s the idea of a baby that we are grasping.  And it’s understandable – having a baby is a primal urge.  We clench with all our might around the idea that we want a baby and that we cannot be happy until we have one.  We clench on the pain of every baby shower, the sorrow of every miscarriage and the fear that maybe we will need to use donor eggs or adopt.  Our goal is to get pregnant and our happiness depends upon the fulfillment of that goal.

Let’s be clear.  This is not a personal flaw.  As humans we are culturally conditioned to grasp.  We have been trained to hold on tightly to our dreams.  We have internalized the belief that worrying about something means that we really care about it.  We learned that we must be goal-oriented and never let down our guard or lessen our effort to get the things we want. Yet there are inconvenient truths about clinging that we choose not to recognize.  First, clinging creates a tremendous amount of suffering.  When we begin to look deeply, we find that the energy of clinging is supplied by emotions of fear, jealousy and aggression.  We see that our mind functions like  a monkey swinging through the trees, reaching from one thought to the next in our desire to control, manage and satisfy our desires.  We can never find a place of  ”enough.”  It is exhausting.

Meditation is a powerful technique for learning how to “unclench” the mind and find happiness that is not dependent on anything outside ourself.   It’s simple, really.  We just sit and observe the sensations, thoughts and emotions that are present in our body and mind.  We watch our monkey mind.  We breathe.  Meditation is actually quite misunderstood.  Many people try meditation and quit because they “can’t” or “it’s not working.”   The expectation is that meditation will make them feel calmer, relaxed and blissful – I used to think I should find myself bathed in white light whenever I sat on my meditation cushion.  It is actually the reverse.  When we sit, the contents of our mind often seem turbulent and chaotic.  But the simple act of continuing to sit and observe this chaos begins to change our life outside of meditation.  At first there’s a subtle awareness of space, or “big mind.”  We are less reactive to stress, pain and suffering.  Behind the desire and aversion we find an awareness that is sensitive, flexible and joyful - independent of the outer conditions of our life.

Many women fear that becoming mindful and starting to meditate will make them passive in their quest for a child.  This simply isn’t so.  The wish for a child remains vibrant and active – it’s simply that happiness doesn’t depend on the fulfillment of this wish.  We have relaxed the grip a bit so our mind is free to explore, enjoy and create again.    Solutions and resolutions come for difficult questions because we have relaxed enough to allow them to surface.  The journey toward parenthood is still challenging, but it no longer defines us.  We find some joy again in spite of the pain.

If you can relate to my brain “on infertility,” I encourage you to learn more about meditation.  There are many opportunities to experience meditation at the Moon.  Our Meditation Support Group for Women meets on Wednesdays from 5:45 to 6:45 at our Chicago location.  We also teach meditation in our Yoga for Fertility program.  If you’re looking to get serious about a meditation practice, stay tuned to our website to learn more about our upcoming program “Surviving the Flood:  Mindfulness Meditation for Fertility.”  This collaborative program with the psychological support staff from Fertility Centers of Illinois will introduce you to the practice of mindfulness meditation with a specific focus on fertility.  More information coming soon!

The orientation session of our Fully Fertile book group met last Sunday.  As part of the overview, I discussed the framework of the book – the Kriya Yoga tenets of tapas (purification), svadyaya (self-study) and ishvara pranidhana (surrender to a greater fabric).  One of the women present asked an important question.  ”How do I separate self-study from the blame, second-guessing and self-doubt I feel is central to my experience?”

The answer is both simple and challenging.  At the Moon we ask women to consider a different way of thinking.  It is one that embraces the present moment, that does not place blame on any actions that may have brought us to this point and that views the journey toward parenthood as just that.  A journey.

Now, as to the question of how to make that happen?  There are really three important steps.  First, forgive yourself for your choices.  You did the best you could with the information you had every step of the way.  Second, embrace this new philosophy of welcoming the moment as it arises and exploring the gifts of the present.  In each new moment there is the potential for joy, growth and even miracles.  Finally, practice.   It’s not easy to embrace an entirely new way of thinking – especially one that flies in the face of the world in which we live where blame and the desire to control are everywhere.  Practice your yoga, your meditation and surround yourself with like-minded people who will help you welcome and experience your life as it arises – fresh and filled with potential in every moment.

A couple years ago, Tami and I spent a wonderful week studying yoga nidra with an amazing teacher and yogi, Richard Miller.  At the retreat we spent a lot of time exploring the nature of our mind.  Richard shared this hilarious piece by Zen writer Kim Boykin, Meditation Hints from the Colorado Division of Wildlife.  Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or mind/body beginner, this is worth a read.

Have you ever had a week where a single idea pops up at you from a million directions at once?   In my life this week the theme that started to emerge was transition.  It cropped up in yoga classes, in conversation with friends, even at Pulling Down the Moon as we adapt to our cool new website and e-commerce system.  Transition is also all around outside.  In Chicago the mountains of winter snow outside my door are melting – revealing the shoots of tulips already breaking through the earth.  Of course, as a yogi, I believe that the themes emerging in my outer life contain clues to  my inner life.  So when I went to my yoga mat this week, I meditated on transition. 

At Pulling Down the Moon our fertility yoga practice is a style of yoga called vinyasa,  a flowing series of postures.  As I practiced this week I turned my attention to the transition between the postures rather than the postures themselves.  What I found was fascinating.  Moving from one pose to another with awareness was much harder than moving without awareness.  Between each pose I discovered an infinite number of experiences of breath, balance, strength and mastery.

Finishing that week of practice, I had what we call a “yoga insight” (or satori, in Sanskrit).  Transition is the place where life is actually happening!  Each ”finished” pose is gone – belongs to the past – and each “future pose” is fantasy – belonging to an idealized future.  Yet in the middle, where the pose is emerging and awareness is shaping each moment, life and joy are always present.

Infertility is a transition, too.  We are moving from our previous childless existance toward parenthood.  It’s easy to reject what has come before and race toward the future.  Yet in doing so we deny our own life and existance as valid.  This week we challenge you to exist in the transition, the now, of your life.  It’s in this moment that you can feel your own strength and beauty, your own courage and the exquisite creation of life.

As part of our free patient education series sponsored by Fertility Centers of Illinois, we offer a fun class called The Relaxation Response designed for women (and partners) who are stressed, struggling with the ups and downs of fertility challenges and willing to explore meditation as a way to calm body and mind.

To understand why meditation helps, it’s useful to understand a bit more about stress. One of our favorite holistic teachers, Deepak Chopra, defines stress as what happens when our needs are not met.  For instance, if we perceive that we need to get to work by 9 and we’re stuck in traffic at 8:55 we get stressed.  If our monthly bills are greater than the money we have to pay them with we get stressed.  If we need a baby and we’re not getting pregnant that, too, generates a tremendous amount of stress.

To deal with stress skillfully, it’s important to recognize its rightful place in our biology.  What we call “stress” – that stomach-churning, heart pounding reaction to an irritating boss or a negative beta-HCG result- is actually a valuable evolutionary mechanism that has allowed for the survival of our species.  The biological stress response is called the “fight or flight” mechanism.  Long ago, human survival depended on the ability to fight or run from bigger, meaner predators.   The secretion of “stress hormones” like cortisol and adrenaline facilitate physiological conditions that would allow escape from a hungry saber tooth.  During the stress response, blood is shunted from internal organs to the skeletal muscles, the heart and respiratory rate increase, glucose is released from muscles and liver to fuel our muscles, platelets in the blood become “stickier” to reduce blood loss in the case of injury and non-essential activities such as digestion, physical repair and reproduction are dialed back. All fine and good when we’re talking about a tussle with a tiger but in that scenario there’s resolution –either we kill the beast, escape or get eaten.   But in this age of 24/7 communication, we can see that a sustained, unrelenting stress response can severely impact our physical wellbeing.

Any fertility patient who hears the words “just relax and you’ll get pregnant,” is apt to eye-roll or worse.  However,  increasing clinical evidence suggests that stress may impair a woman’s ability to conceive both “naturally” and with Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Cortisol down-regulates our reproductive system.    Women who do not ovulate have been shown to have higher levels of cortisol in their blood, and a similar correlation has been noted in IVF patients, with higher levels of cortisol associated with poor outcomes. It also seems that cortisol effects fertility directly, as recent studies show that stress actually damages uterine receptivity (how prepared the uterus is to hold and nourish an embryo) in mice.

So what’s the solution?  If we’re serious about improving our overall health and fertility, we must address our immediate response to stressful situations.  Here are several tips for identifying and eliminating excess stress in our lives.

• Make stress reduction a part of your fitness regimen.  Taking 20 minutes a day to practice stress reduction techniques will make a serious dent in your stress levels.
• Learn to breathe mindfully.  The breath is a key way to “stop the bleeding” in the midst of a stressful situation.   Deep, slow breathing in a stressful situation reduces the severity of the stress response.
• Practice hatha yoga.  This ancient system teaches gentle stretches, breath awareness and mindfulness techniques that release tension and dis-ease in the body.  Rather than “fight or flight,” yoga promotes the “rest, digest and nest” hormonal response.
• Learn to meditate.  Meditation is a chance to cultivate a non-reactive mind.  Often, stressful events will “re-play” during meditation, evoking their panic messages.  As we learn to observe these repeat performances in stillness we short circuit their power.
• Live more simply.  If stress arises when our perceived needs are not being met, have an honest conversation about yourself about what it is you really need to be happy.  Try to let go of the things that aren’t so important.  Recognize that all of our modern gadgets make our needs seem more immediate than ever before and try to lessen the pressure you put on yourself to respond to work and life situations in light-speed.
• Take time for deep relaxation.  Practices like yoga nidra (deep guided relaxation), listening to beautiful music and spending time in nature can restore our body and mind to balance.

There’s a great saying in the yoga world, “don’t just do something, sit there!”   While this advice may fly in the face of our go-go worldview, it contains deep wisdom.   Stress is a reality in our lives that we cannot run away from.   It’s hard-wired into our biology.  Thankfully, instead of razor-sharp teeth human kind was gifted with big brains and the ability to study our own behavior.   When we become aware to the negative impact of stress on our body and mind and begin to set aside time to address it, we may finally have the tiger by the tail.

Now, the thing about relaxing is that you actually have to do it.  We suggest you join a yoga class or get into a community that shares the intention of reducing stress and increasing relaxation.  The next Relaxation Response class will be offered at our Chicago center in March (click here to sign up) and we are also offering a yoga nidra workshop at our Rockville center this Sunday, February 28 (click here for info).   We hope to see you there!

Be present, be positive…be peaceful!  Paige