Jennifer Bloome @ AnjiOnline.com
To say that dealing with infertility is a challenge would be an understatement. Emotions are rampant: sadness, disappointment, anger, fear, worry, jealousy, and grief, just to name a few. The usual tools of researching solutions, working harder, doing everything you can, often don’t feel like they are bringing you closer to resolution.
Guided Imagery is a powerful resource that can help heal the emotional impact of infertility as well as lay the foundation to augment your innate fertility for four important reasons:
1. Engages the relaxation response
Our day to day lives are filled with multiple stressors; add issues with fertility and those stressors multiply. Yet, the very hormones involved in the body’s response to stress wreck havoc on all the systems of your body that affect your fertility.
Guided imagery is one of the wonderful tools to create what’s termed the Relaxation Response.
When you actively engage the Relaxation Response 20 minutes a day for 2 weeks, you literally create physiologic changes to the cells that are listening for the stress messages in your body. If your cells don’t “hear” the messages, you don’t physically feel as stressed, and the stress response is shut off in your body. You will find that the intensity of your emotions decrease or the usual emotions simply don’t come up at all.
2. Creates an altered state
Maybe this sounds like a good thing, and maybe it doesn’t! Have you ever had one of those days when you are “in the zone”? Answers to long term problems simply appear, projects just flow along, and more. You find yourself in a relaxed, comfortable frame of mind.
Belleruth Naparstek has this to say about altered states, “In the altered state, we are capable of more rapid and intense healing, growth, and learning and change.”
When you regularly create these altered states, you have access to the deepest, wisest part of yourself. When you are dealing with infertility, you have so many decisions to make, so many types of losses to handle. Practicing this altered state gives you so many more resources to handle these difficult situations.
3. Puts YOU back in control of your emotions
Control is actually a very tricky word when it comes to fertility and something you may not feel you have during fertility treatments. You may follow every recommendation by your physician, yet you still are not pregnant. Or maybe you have miscarried. So much about this journey can create a feeling of despair or helplessness. Guided imagery can help you navigate these difficult waters and complement your fertility treatments by giving you another way to focus, thus calming your mind. When your mind is calm, your body will follow. This is an excellent addition to other complementary therapies like acupuncture or massage.
4. Re-engages the spirit part of mind~body~spirit
The longer I work with women dealing with fertility issues–and in my own life–the more importance I place on finding a way to connect with Spirit. I am not talking about religion, but rather that very deep connection to the sense there is something beyond ourselves. As humans, we so often want to know why: Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening for her, but not for me? Why am I having so many difficulties? Why can’t I have what I want?
Our minds cannot give us these answers. No matter how many degrees you have, no matter how many books you read, no matter how much Internet research you’ve done, these resources can’t give a complete, satisfying answer. Spirit is the only resource I have found to give that complete, soul satisfying, life giving answer.
Guided imagery is a way to begin to connect or re-connect with Spirit in a very gentle way.
Whether you choose to use guided imagery to connect with your body in a very scientific way, or to meet your wise, inner self, you will find that guided imagery will give you a powerful ally in creating the family you desire. I invite you to explore a wide range of guided imagery meditations at AnjiOnline.com.
We carry cycle specific guided imagery meditations (Natural, Medicated, IVF) as well as imagery designed to support shifting emotions, heal from loss, and augment your innate fertility.
If you have any questions, please reach out to me at jennifer@anjionline.com.