Much of our modern society and culture is based on rational thought and empirical evidence, which can sometimes limit our capacity to understand factors outside of our mental comprehension. I have witnessed the powerful connection between people’s belief systems and their health—and how their beliefs can either empower them and transform their lives, or do just the opposite. In many ways, this is the principle that drew me to practice holistic medicine instead of allopathic medicine.
Many times in my childhood, I was puzzled by the way people who held strong religious beliefs and exercised a faith-based life interacted with illness and disease. Frequently, it felt like there was a split between the spirit and the body, especially with respect to sexuality. I was curious as to how faith and spirituality interacted with science and rationalism. I was especially intrigued by what philosophy has termed the mind/body problem. Most of what we have been raised on in Western culture is the result of Cartesian dualism, which states that the mind and the body are two separate structures—a nice concept in theory but one that, in practice, seems unrealistic, especially in medicine.
The terrible asthma I experienced in my childhood and adolescence put me on my path as an energy healer and intuitive doctor. I often tell patients my story as an example of how our symptoms, or any illness, can help us along our spiritual and life journey. I graduated from high school early and went on to study philosophy and ethics in college at 16. I was thrilled to sit in classes that explored the history of ideas, knowledge, and spirituality. I was in the library researching the recent news of the completion of the Human Genome Project when I intuited that I needed to study medicine to understand how mind, body, and spirit all come together. Hence, I began taking all the premed requirements. During this time, I was still suffering from weak respiratory function and asthma, and a dear friend suggested I go to his traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctor. I was intrigued. This was a few decades ago, and acupuncture and Chinese medicine were nowhere near as well known then as they are today. I booked an appointment with Dr. Tina Baumgartner and showed up ten minutes late for a meeting that would change my life. I explained to her my history and everything I had done to treat my illness from a Western medicine standpoint, such as allergy shots, home nebulizers, and preventative steroid treatments. She listened and kindly nodded as I spoke.
“I’m not sure how you can help,” I said at the end of my skeptical spiel.
She paused, took a deep breath, reached out, and warmly touched my hand before saying, “Julie, do you believe that you can heal your asthma?”
I have always been oddly tough, an attribute that many who are descendants of frontier people, settlers, and immigrants also share, but I found myself broken open by this question and the energy of this healer.
“No, I don’t,” I replied with tears streaming down my face. “But I want to.”
“Then I can help you,” she said.
Week after week, the “truth” that I had been told and that I believed about my body and health began to shift. I no longer felt that someone outside of me could take away my long-term illness. Ultimately, it was something that I had to tackle and heal myself. I discovered that there is a connection between emotions and our health, and that the more sensitive you are, the more sensitive the medicine you need. My limiting belief that I would always have asthma, which was supported by the opinions of Western allopathic doctors and my family, was a significant hurdle to jump. Leaving behind science and popular belief was terrifying. I mostly did it, like so many others who have explored alternative medicine, out of necessity. I just could not go on living an entire lifetime not being able to breathe.
I still look back in awe at the bravery of my younger self who when told “There is no cure for your asthma” stood up, left the doctor’s office, and went out into the world to find one herself.
Every person I have treated shares this sovereignty in common. Each soul has followed the internal voice that says, “There must be something else I can do.” There is beauty in looking deeply into the structure of what we have been taught to believe is true; we must question whether it really needs to be that way. Often, the answers we find are the very essence of what we need to heal. I needed to find a way to be given permission and to follow an unconventional path this lifetime, and the asthma I healed was my catalyst and my greatest teacher.
In fertility, the same internal voice arises in many of my patients. Patients share with me that they don’t believe they cannot conceive just because they are past what is considered the peak age of fertility. They often come to the conclusion that the diagnosis they have been given doesn’t have to impact their fertility, and the stories of infertility that their friends and family have told them are not going to be their own stories.
No one out there knows more about life than you. “Experts” are passionate about what they do and teach—but none of their study, practice, or hard work can compete with your intuitive knowing. I’m sharing this with you, dear reader, because I want this book to provide you with permission for connecting and trusting in the intuition of your mind, body, and spirit as it pertains to connecting to the spirit of your child. What so many others call “miracles,” I do not. While there is magic in the connection you have with your future child, the spiritual science that I have helped people navigate is rooted in real practices that all begin with one common seed: questioning a belief system that you or society holds as true.
The obviousness of our limiting beliefs tends to be available to us with just a little bit of self-exploration. The deeper ones—the thoughts and feelings that are covered over by shame, blame, and guilt—are not as easy to uncover. I can psychically pinpoint and put a voice to these for many of my clients, but I feel that when I instead offer the correct prompts for them to speak it for themselves, it can be far more transformational. As a side note, this tends to be my perspective on using my intuitive channels in general. I prefer to empower people to connect with their own unique intuition, and I act as an advocate to remind them of that intuition when they are questioned by others or by their limiting belief systems. While there are profoundly compassionate and highly spiritual doctors in the realm of reproductive medicine, the default attitude, unfortunately, is the mind and body split that I talked about at the beginning of the chapter.
In addition, women’s health concerns and perspectives in general still go unlistened to, and worse, judged by many doctors in both Western and alternative medicine as hysterical or fabricated. The best of the psychics I have learned from do not simply replicate the broken systems of Earth. They do not pride themselves on having access to a truth that you don’t; rather, they inspire you to recall that you are a powerful channel yourself and help you to remember how to live in that empowered state.
It is just as important when looking at limiting unconscious beliefs to evaluate belief systems that we participate in with choice and consciousness. I work with people from all religious and spiritual backgrounds. Many who practice conventional religion are at first hesitant to work with energy medicine and intuitive forces. They often inquire in our initial contact about to what or whom I attribute my intuition and power. Belief systems that are rooted in monotheism are usually tentative when it comes to participating with people with practices outside of their belief systems.
Given my background as a Baptist preacher’s daughter, I understand. It might be surprising for you to learn that, as supportive and loving as my parents are, there are still times when, no matter how successful I am at helping women connect with the spirits of their children, they are critical and fearful of my work. But the unconscious pattern that made me hesitant to share the gifts that I believe God gave me was broken the moment I helped a couple who had long experienced infertility to conceive and birth a healthy child through only the power of energy medicine. My journey is not about limiting who, how, and why a person can have a child; my job is to remind people that regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof, the only voice they truly need to hear and fight to protect is that of their unborn child. As far as I can tell, all the angels in the sky agree—and as it is above, so it is below. If you come from a traditional religious background, you do not need to fear or avoid your intuition. Rather, reframe your relationship to intuition and consider it a channel to help you hear God within, instead of a force that is separate from and outside of your belief system.
The impact of our limiting beliefs on our fertility often begins with grave injury to our spirit. We usually set up parameters of what we believe can and cannot occur before we even start. Sometimes this information is available to us, and sometimes it is not. Remember Brigitte, who worked so hard to uncover the unconscious information that was blocking her from getting pregnant? The deep-seated belief, perpetuated by her mother, left Brigitte believing that if she were to have a daughter, the child would be poorly behaved and extremely hard to raise. This belief literally blocked Brigitte from conceiving.
Much of our modern society and culture is based on rational thought, which can sometimes limit our capacity to understand factors outside of our mental comprehension. I hesitate to list common limiting beliefs; anything that resides on the level of the unconscious fails to be well described in words. But I have observed specific themes within my practice.
Before we advance too far in helping you identify your own limiting beliefs about having children, I’d like to ask you the set of questions that I often begin with when helping my clients transform blockages. I’ve found that the answers to these questions are very telling as to where and why each client might be operating in a negative and limiting belief pattern. Take your time with each, and journal the answers as they come to you:
The answers to each of these questions are your first step in identifying the very thing you are looking for from the external world. Once you know that, you can begin to attract it into your life by finding a way to give it to yourself now, not later. As you recall from Chapter 4, the essential relationship you have is to your spirit. If we begin to look for emotional fulfillment or support from our children before they are ever born, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. And, we are being unfair and demanding to the person whom we have yet to meet.
Baby spirits are brilliant. They have a sort of cosmic wisdom that reads energy and timing far better than we do here on Earth. I have noticed that certain souls, especially the ones who need extra support during this lifetime, wait for unconditional love. This requires each of us to be brutally honest with our real motives for having children.
Tibetan Buddhism, with its rich history of decoding the process of death and rebirth, describes several factors that must be present in order for conception to occur. One of these is that the unembodied spirit must sense purpose in being born to a couple. This purpose often is an extension of the work, or karma, of what this soul is seeking to complete in a lifetime. If a lack of this purpose is missing in a couple’s life, I recommend that they return to acts of unconditional love and service to others in what I call the Mission of Kindness exercise. These acts open the heart and serve as a type of antidote to a self-centered and materialistic world. I had a lovely client once tell me that she knew that when she became a mother, she would be able to quit the corporate job she hated and finally do what she wanted to with her life: nurture and care for others. I explained that although it was beautiful that she felt so called to motherhood, unless she found a way now, before pregnancy, to practice this gift of nurturing, she would discover disappointment and depression after childbirth rather than the fulfillment she expected.
Acts of service to others might seem like a strange fertility treatment, but I have found them to be an incredibly powerful healing tool. It is easy for any of us to get caught up in materialism and lose sight of what is essential about being alive. Sometimes returning to simple actions of kindness to help out a neighbor, a friend, or a family in need is powerful medicine for our own healing.
If you find yourself unable to gain perspective on life or if you feel overwhelmed and obsessing over whether the next pregnancy test will be positive or negative, then volunteer work is your remedy. Ask your intuitive guides to lead you to a place where your service is needed, and I promise you will be directed to the exact situation that you were meant to witness and participate in. Acts of kindness are free and do not depend on our economic, educational, or relationship status. Remembering that having a child is not a goal to be accomplished or a box to be checked off. A powerful act of love and service is important to facilitating the conception of your child as this practice will extend into motherhood. I like to refer to motherhood as my favorite volunteer work. It helps keep me honest and grounded in the essentials of what it is to be a human being.
Expectations, especially of motherhood and the idea of motherhood, are the most significant source of limiting beliefs. But it doesn’t need to be that way. We do not need to look to events that have not occurred, and children we have not yet had, to begin to allow ourselves to live in the emotions and environment that our soul needs. The Law of Attraction suggests that you bring into your life what you are putting out. Practice being here and now, as the person you envision being once your child arrives. This will make the cosmic landing strip that much clearer for your child.
Once we get clear about what we want from parenthood, we can begin to analyze the thought patterns and beliefs that get in our way. Kate was a 37-year-old environmentalist and an advocate of sustainable living. She had a successful career as a writer and journalist and was an outspoken celebrity in her field. Her longtime partner was more than ready to have children; Kate had put it off for many years but wanted to do it before “it’s too late.”
As we began working together, I made it a point to start by asking the exact questions I asked you in this chapter. Kate was conscious of the fact that parenthood was hard, and she had some doubts about her ability to parent well. “It seems like even the best of parents still have problems with their kids. I’m afraid that I am just going to mess up my kids and pass on the trauma that I came from.”
I see this pattern frequently, and while I understand it, the truth is that when we participate wholeheartedly in our own healing and model this behavior for our kids, it isn’t necessary (or even possible) to be perfect. Our mere effort is enough to mitigate the biggest parenting issues. Kate had already done a lot of self-work. She had thought long and hard about the health of the Earth and human beings’ role as its stewards and caretakers. As we continued to talk, I felt that Kate was avoiding voicing a more profound fear of pregnancy. And while all of her answers to my questions were relatively normal (in that she expected to find family and happiness from being a mom), her tone was flat and her expression of her excitement was unconvincing.
“Kate,” I said, “remove your brain’s interpretation of what I am asking you. Try and respond from the deepest, most internal space within, the space that you are afraid to put a voice to because it feels like if you voice it, it might become true.”
She hesitated and sat for a few minutes. I could tell she was fighting her mind. Then she let out a huge, audible sigh and said, “I am afraid that the world is ending. I am afraid to bring a child to an Earth that is already overpopulated and running out of resources. I am afraid that I will not get pregnant because of this.”
“Kate,” I responded, “do you want to be a mother?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Kate,” I continued, “do you feel connected to a child out there who wants you to be his or her mother?”
“Yes!” she said, more emphatically.
“Good. I understand that your work must be so heart-wrenching, discouraging, and sad. I, too, see how the Earth has been underappreciated and cared for. I also see the problems that are facing us here, but what if, above your allegiance to help save the Earth, you had another, more significant, allegiance to your child?”
Her brain kicked in again. “But so many of my colleagues and scientists I know say the only way to save the Earth is to stop overpopulation. How can I go against what they say?”
I see this type of judgment far too often, and many limiting belief systems arise from the space in which we allow society’s narrative to override our desire and knowing. So I asked Kate again to shift her allegiance to the spirit of her child. As she struggled with what that might mean for her work and belief system, many subsequent questions and insights arose. Many dealt with feeling overwhelmingly depressed and disheartened by the politics and state of fairness in the world.
I suggested that Kate take some time and write out what I call my Reasons Why exercise. This asks you to list on the left side of a page reasons you believe you are not able or should not have a child, such as the planet’s overpopulation, difficulty in your relationship, or lack of financial stability. After that list is made, use the right side to list the reasons you should become a parent, including lots of love to give, a stable relationship, a loving family, etc. The only catch is that for every negative belief in the left column, you have to list two positive beliefs in the right column. So if you have ten reasons that you shouldn’t, you must counter it with 20 reasons that you should. The reasons you should have a child then become part of a new belief pattern that is especially helpful to refer to when you are in a negative space.
Several weeks passed before Kate and I spoke again. I had thought about Kate often during that time. In so many ways, she represented the problematic conversation that many conscious and intelligent human beings are having at this moment in human history. We have access to so much data and knowledge, and we carry with us the capacity to feel empathy and compassion for other living beings, and yet so much suffering, despair, and inequality continue to thrive. Kate, having devoted her life to educating and bringing these issues to the forefront of people’s awareness, occupied a challenging space—a space in which she was trying to positively impact the future, based on a dismal past. But in our follow-up conversation, I was surprised by the joy and lightness in her voice.
“I’ve switched my allegiance,” she said proudly. “I’m ready to have my child.”
“Amazing! What shifted for you over the last few weeks?” I asked.
“I remembered the happiest and most at peace that I ever felt was when I was an anthropology student studying tribes in South America. It’s what inspired me to be an environmentalist. They had such joy and love in their community, and the children were so bright-eyed and happy. I think I have forgotten that I am a human being too, just like them—and that it’s part of being human to want to have children and love them. And that is okay too, no matter what happens to the Earth.”
Kate had eloquently stated something so beautiful and true. Her process to decide to have children was not at all haphazard. The limiting belief that she could not, and should not, have children because of the health of the planet had almost succeeded in blocking her pregnancy. She thought long and hard and finally chose allegiance with her son, who was born about a year later. From time to time, she drops me a line to tell me what a fantastic soul he is and how smart and compassionate he turned out to be. To which I always respond, “That is because he is here to help continue your work and save the Earth.”
A little fact that I knew about him from the first conversation Kate and I shared.
As we work to identify where limiting beliefs are sourced, we often find the people and places that help prop up these views. No doubt you have experienced firsthand people who have extreme opinions about your fertility and reproductive health . . . and who often have no hesitation sharing their views with you.
Have you ever experienced being in a fabulous mood that quickly turned terrible after a conversation or interaction with someone else? Have you walked into a hotel room, restaurant, or friend’s house, only to feel that something was off, so you turned around and left? Innate within all of us is a protective honing mechanism, a type of energetic security system that alerts us to people, places, and moments that can be dangerous and injurious to our being.
Your endocrine system is just one of the biological systems within your body that translates external threat into action. When you are experiencing hormonal shifts like those that occur around ovulation, PMS, or pregnancy, or as you are undergoing hormonal therapy in reproductive medicine, this energetic security system is on high alert. The human menstrual cycle is a dynamic process. The sex hormones—estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone—dramatically affect a woman’s emotional state and her sexual desire. During ovulation, women’s dreams often change, and their overall emotional state becomes more heightened.
From an evolutionary stance, your sensitivity with hormonal shifts can be seen as a physical response to identify and protect you from persons and environments that might endanger an implantation and pregnancy. My patients often describe experiences of heightened paranoia and sensitivity when it can be confusing and difficult to separate what is true from what is not. This is indeed something that many highly sensitive people have difficulty navigating once they begin to be more in touch with their intuition. Being tapped into your intuitive wisdom is freeing, but not always easy. Many people hide behind their rationalism, because living and expressing the world of feeling and sensing can be painful. A centuries-old legacy makes women innately understand the danger of being identified as intuitive. There remains an active force in the world working mainly through judgment, bullying, and ridicule to suppress that which it does not understand, or that which does not fit into popular opinion.
Most of the negative feedback I experience on social media is from people, unfortunately mostly women, who criticize the fact that I support my clients via unconventional and non–science-based methods. I had to move through my initial hurt, sadness, and defensiveness at these comments, and into a space where I no longer allowed myself to be impacted by their negativity. Ultimately, when I only allow in the energy and people who help my path to unfold in accord with universal law, I am unaffected by criticism. In many cases, I can be compassionate toward my critics and detractors, and understand that their judgments typically come from their trauma as human beings. Why else would someone be so adamant about what another human being does with his or her own body and reproduction?
Although there is a learning curve as you start to leave behind limiting beliefs and the fear that often caused them, doing so opens you up to a different and more honest way of life. In the long run, the more forthcoming we are with emotions and thoughts, the less likely we are to rely on gossip and judgmental rhetoric to protect our limited beliefs. When someone expresses a strong opinion that may or may not be at odds with your current psychological and emotional state, take a step back, bracket that opinion, and try to understand its context. Do not take it personally. Do not take it as law or fact, no matter how much social authority the person may have. Observe the reaction it elicits within you and bracket that too. Keep what resonates as applicable and perhaps “save the other for another day.” Spiritual liberation often begins with liberation from language. This is a valuable skill to take into the terrain of spiritual fertility.
I often recommend that this exercise be done with one’s partner. It is a powerful tool for communication but requires the practice of compassionate listening. As your partner expresses his or her fears, remember that these are not directly about you; try not to take them personally.
Take out your journal or a piece of paper. On the left side of a page, list the reasons you believe you are not able or should not have a child (the planet’s overpopulation, difficulty in your relationship, lack of financial stability, and so on). Then, on the right side of the page, detail the reasons you should become a parent (lots of love to give, a stable relationship, a loving family, etc.). The only catch is that for every negative belief in the left column, you have to list two positive beliefs in the right column. So if you have 10 reasons that you shouldn’t have a child, you must counter it with 20 reasons that you should. The reasons you should have a child then become part of a new belief pattern that is especially helpful to refer to when you are feeling negative. Place your list around your home in a prominent place, so you can be reminded of it throughout the day.
For many, it is difficult to speak about something we want but haven’t yet experienced, such as pregnancy, that can only be conceptualized through what we have learned socially and culturally. The narrative that circulates in society influences the experiences that people have within it. The words and belief systems of those around us tend to affect us, especially when those words resonate with our deepest fears.
Through mindfulness, we can cultivate an awareness of the people and energy in our lives that feel negative and make us doubt the intuitive knowledge of our body. I stress that even the freedom to enter into conversation with your reproductive choice to have a baby is in and of itself revolutionary. For many, this revolution has not yet occurred. If you have been fortunate to be born now in the right place with the freedom to choose if and when you would like to have a child, then remember to hold this as a sacred privilege. You are a frontier person, and frontier people are always the bravest. Act with courage. Avoid fear. Construct new paradigms for the planet and examine the limiting beliefs that keep you from growing. Show our repressive history and the oppressive holdouts on the Earth what free sexuality and a free uterus look like. Help us to evolve out of—not devolve into—replacing fallen structures with new masters like modern medicine and cultural materialism.
Stories of early-onset infertility, recurrent miscarriage, and traumatic births might seem like full disclosure by doctors and medical systems that feel obliged to present all possible outcomes. However, even hypothesizing about an individual’s potential fertility or infertility can have a hypnotizing impact. It can be a destabilizing force, and at times, can even manifest infertility. The stories we hear from childhood into adulthood influence what we understand and how we connect to our sexuality and our reproductive capacity. The subtle energetics that influence the endocrine system respond to negative, stress-induced emotional beliefs.
Look more deeply into the unconscious ways in which your connection to reproduction is influenced by the social, medical, and familial narratives that we sometimes blindly share and perpetuate. There is no one individual cause of infertility, and no individual is the cause of the infertility she might experience. The way each of us represents and extends our unique freedom, alongside the beliefs that we choose to hold, helps support all people on the planet. It helps liberate us and creates a better future for all children, not just the ones we choose to create.
Our beliefs, whether we are conscious of them or not, greatly influence our actions. Deep beliefs that might be hidden under layers of shame and guilt are often difficult to unearth and express, and those held by society can also impact an individual’s growth. In this chapter, we explored how, by developing intuition, you become better equipped to question the convictions from which you and society are operating. Just as positive beliefs can balance and calm the nervous system, limiting ones can engage and disturb the balance of your system. These limiting beliefs sabotage all other work you might be doing, even practices that are rooted in psychology and spirituality.
You can unearth your own doubts about becoming a parent and apply the tools offered here for alchemizing these beliefs into insight and clarity. By posing difficult questions—especially about possible regrets and changes in your relationship—instead of granting those fears power, you instead gain the ability to transform them. When you examine what it is that you are looking to feel when you become a parent and start to practice embodying these energetics, you change your frequency and your reality.