Hypnosis to Enhance Fertility
By Lynsi Eastburn, MA, BCH
Anxiety has become one of the top presenting issues in hypnotherapy practices today. Our fast-paced society with its rapidly evolving technology, demanding workdays, incessant traffic, endless obligations, political crises—and just an overall busy-ness—bombards us with noise, erodes our peace, poisons our flow. Overwhelming at best, incapacitating at times, anxiety results from what could be called an evolutional imbalance. In other words, the natural design of the autonomic nervous system, the seamless exchange of its complementary branches, has become seriously impaired by modern day living.
Anxiety is pervasive in the world of infertility. Humans are genetically programmed to procreate. It is one of the strongest evolutionary drives we have. The other one is survival. It is universally accepted that women have babies. Men know it, women know it, children know it. We all know it on some level. It’s a simple fact. Human beings come into this world knowing that they can have babies. It’s inherent, though not necessarily conscious. By that I mean that as little kids we’re not sitting around thinking I can have a baby—no problem. But it is a biological given, and typically a non-issue. Until it’s an issue.
Some women don’t want babies; they just don’t have that need and are quite content with their lives. But for women who do, being unable to get pregnant is mentally and emotionally excruciating. And this is not something that someone can just get over. In fact, in can become an existential crisis. The desire to have a baby is ingrained, it is genetic programming that ensures the survival of the species. Any species. For humans, however, there is another component—that which I call destiny. Destiny is the knowing that “there is a baby there.” And time after time there is. Despite devastating diagnoses and dire prognoses—including being given a zero percent chance of ever conceiving—I’ve seen this knowing triumph again and again.
Animals breed during what is called a mating season.
Males and females respond to a drive from within their brains and bodies. Animals may also be bred by humans—they are placed together at a certain time and a male impregnates the female. In either case, if an animal does not conceive it does not think anything of it. If an animal does not conceive after multiple mating attempts, we may presume there is a physical impediment. Unlike humans, however, animals are not attached to outcome; animals don’t get upset. They don’t start worrying, they don’t berate themselves, they don’t start downing dozens of supplements, or scour the internet in search of a cure. For animals, it simply is what it is.
Humans are different. Our brains have the capacity for complex thinking, which we believe makes us “better” than other animals whose brains are more instinctual. Except, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it can really be a problem. Whereas animals basically “copulate to procreate,” human encoding is much more involved. For the most part we are not out there copulating indiscriminately. For humans, “copulation” is not exclusively for procreation; it expresses so much more. We pursue romance, we make love, we connect, we get married… we plan to have children, we consciously start a family.
To be a mother is a universal concept, it is embedded in the psyche. To become pregnant is a biological function that should not need outside assistance. When the two seem to be in conflict the analytical mind takes charge and begins to assess. It jumps on the internet to research the problem. It gets on Facebook and finds groups to join. It makes an appointment with a fertility clinic. It reads about how it might be too old or high-risk or about all the things that could go wrong. The thinking mind creates enough fear to trigger and retrigger the response known as fight or flight. This is what I mean by evolutional imbalance.
Fight or flight is not intended to be ongoing.
Our bodies were designed to respond to stressors in short, powerful bursts of energy. To fight, to flee, to hide from some immediate threat. Once safe, the fight or flight response should subside, and its counter system feed and breed aka rest and digest should resume. There should be a natural ebb and flow, as there is with other animals, but with modern day stressors prolonged and compounded we no longer have the capacity to recover quite the way nature intended.
Years ago, a Belgian doctor conducting in vitro fertilization experiments with rabbits told one of my clients that his process had never failed. He retrieved eggs, fertilized them in a petri dish, and then transferred the resulting embryos back into the rabbit. In his opinion, these results occurred because the rabbit wasn’t worrying about the procedure, wasn’t analyzing the possibilities, wasn’t invested in the outcome. This is a rudimentary example, of course, but the implication is clear.
Infertility patients frequently struggle with debilitating anxiety, and, regardless of the initial cause, the inevitable perpetuation causes great imbalance in the mind, body, and spirit. This is why hypnosis designed to restore fertility is so important. Anxiety is the bane of infertility; hypnosis is the antithesis of anxiety. In my work with my clients, it’s my job to help reset balance. Whether there is a physical reason for infertility, or it’s unexplained, my clients not only greatly increase their chances for conception, but attain some inner peace, as well.
If you have any question at all, or would like to talk to someone about Hypnosis For Fertility, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.