Case Studies
An in-depth glimpse into client victories
I’d like to share with you the case studies of seven of my clients who did some amazing work and were able to get pregnant. All of these women were dealing with elements of all four parts discussed so far in this book: (1) external factors, (2) beliefs, (3) physical conditions, and (4) Law of Attraction issues. All of these women have felt everything you’ve felt. And while something different “clicked” for each of them, it’s important to read their stories and see that they had all but given up hope—but they made it happen. They were able to feel empowered with their new tools and step out and choose this. Their names have been changed for privacy’s sake, but here are their journeys.
Before we begin, let me take a minute to say that I am not bashing IVF (in vitro fertilization). For some women, that’s the right route. This book, though, is for women who want a less invasive approach. I have clients who want to do IVF but also work with me to increase their chances of conceiving. So whatever you want to do is great. These are stories of women who were told that IVF was their only option, and they conceived naturally anyway.
Gemma
Gemma’s story is one we discussed in previous chapters. I had been working primarily with people with chronic pain and cancer at the time, and was actually supposed to do a session on her husband’s faulty knees. He decided he wasn’t really open to the idea, so I asked Gemma if she’d be interested in doing a session. In my work with clients with chronic pain, I work from the main principle that there’s always an emotional cause to the physical problem, and that when that emotional issue is addressed, the physical condition no longer needs to be there. And I thought, “Well, the same principle should apply for infertility. Even if there’s no obvious physical condition, she physically can’t get pregnant, so there has to be something emotional going on.”
Now, while I love Gemma, I didn’t necessarily expect her to say yes to a session. I’ve been met with a lot of skepticism in my day, and I thought I’d be met with more of the same. But she happily agreed, so away we went.
She had been trying for two years to get pregnant; and she had in fact gotten pregnant twice, but those pregnancies had ended in miscarriage at seven and eleven weeks. She was scared she’d never get pregnant again, but she was also scared to be pregnant after the trauma of the other two losses.
As we began the energy work portion, I could feel her relax, but I honestly wasn’t sure what she’d get from it—if she could let herself go in the process. But I kept working and noted the intuitive hits that I was getting. Then it came time for the notes portion of the session where I go over the information I got, where it resonates for the client, and how we move forward. I didn’t know if she was going to be able to hear what came up or if she’d get defensive or shut down, etc. But before I could speak she said, “I saw purple-blue light at my forehead and orange light at my lower abdomen.” She knew nothing about chakras, yet those happen to be the colors for those exact energy centers. She also felt warmth and some involuntary twitching (twitching is the energy that was stuck kicking through—always a good sign!). I felt encouraged that she had gotten so many feelings and visuals out of the first session, so I felt more empowered giving her the notes, trusting that she would hear whatever she was supposed to hear.
I won’t go into what came up at each chakra, but it’s important to note that four of the areas fit into the four categories discussed in this book: external factors, beliefs, physical conditions, and Law of Attraction issues.
External Factors
At the solar plexus chakra, which is the power center (in my experience, this usually has to do with work), I was seeing Gemma at her school teaching. But the important thing about the visual was that she had eight arms. Yeah, eight. One was writing on the chalkboard, one was passing out papers, one extended into her office for a department head meeting, one was holding the summer school schedule, etc. So it was pretty clear to me that she was over-extended at work. She had her fingers in too many pies. I asked her where this made sense for her, and she confirmed that she had the following things going on: teacher at an inner-city high school, department head, teaching two extra AP classes, teaching summer school, taking two graduate classes, and teaching a continuing education class at a local college.
Whew! That’s a lot. So I asked her, where was the room for the baby in all of this? She said, “Well obviously I’d change it if I were pregnant.” I lovingly pointed out that it was a major factor why she wasn’t getting pregnant. When your brain/ego already feels like there isn’t enough time and you’re stretched too thin, your survival mechanism kicks in and it thinks it’s doing you a favor by not allowing in yet another thing to take care of. I told Gemma, “Fix it now. Make an energetic change now. Even if you can’t quit everything right now, there are adjustments you can make.”
So Gemma made some changes. She weaned herself off some of her obligations and showed the Universe that she was making room for this baby.
Beliefs
Gemma had a bunch of beliefs come up, as many of us do, but her two main beliefs were “I’m going to be an old mom/I’m running out of time” and “I’m going to have another miscarriage because the last two were.”
Beliefs are tricky little buggers because while they are just thoughts, the brain accepts them as true. Society has told us that thirty-five years old is too late to have a baby and that our pregnancy will be fraught with danger. While there are cases of things going wrong, that’s the exception, not the rule. And frankly there are other factors involved besides age when special circumstances arise. Despite it being plausible for a woman in Europe to have a healthy birth at age fifty, in the US it’s somewhat taboo. And we’ve been plugging into that belief for a long time. It’s very likely that our parents, friends, and family all buy into this belief.
So for Gemma, she was worried about complications and didn’t want to be judged for being an old, not hip, can’t-keep-up type of mom. In reality, she’s a fashion-forward, energetic go-getter. So once we did some belief work, she was able to let go of these ideas.
Physical Conditions
Gemma had also dealt with a number of physical issues, including two miscarriages, thyroid issues, dangerously thin uterine lining, residual scar tissue from miscarriages, and an inability to get more than three follicles when attempting IUI. Let’s look at them one at a time.
Miscarriage, as I’ve mentioned, has to do with not being ready or the timing not being right. Gemma was so ready to be a mom that how could she not be ready, right? Well, here’s an example of where plugging into beliefs can cause physical issues. Gemma is a teacher, and one of the women she worked with was talking about having kids and said, “Oh I had two miscarriages before I could have a child.” Gemma later said that she subconsciously knew at that moment that that’s what would happen to her. The fear kicked in and she called that exact scenario into her experience.
It was after this that the thyroid issue popped up. Thyroid issues have to do with humiliation and feeling like “When’s it going to be my turn?” Gemma has two master’s degrees and is by all accounts an overachiever. She’s used to being good at pretty much everything she does. But she wasn’t “good” at being pregnant, so then the thyroid condition developed.
After trying several rounds of IUI, she was told she had residual scar tissue from her previous D&Cs. They told her she’d have to have another procedure to remove that before they could proceed with another IUI. We worked on some visualizations and mantras, and she was able to pass the scar tissue in her next cycle. This is when I really knew she was going to get pregnant, because if she could will herself to do that, she could do the same for a baby.
Then the doctors told her that her uterine lining was dangerously thin. They recommended she take soy, which she did; but as I mentioned before, too much soy isn’t good. So again, she did some visualizations and positive thinking and her uterine lining doubled.
At the next IUI, she had three follicles and was all excited. That is until the tech came in and said, “Whew, the woman before you had eighteen, but you have … three! That’s great.” Gemma immediately felt like a failure, and because she couldn’t help plugging into the thoughtless words of the tech, that IUI cycle was never going to work. So we did some more deep-diving sessions and found that her brain was really scared to be pregnant. She had “failed” twice, something had been very wrong with the second pregnancy, and she’d had two scary surgeries. Her brain was in self-preservation mode. It wanted to keep her alive, and the safest way to do that (according to the brain) was to not be pregnant. It became very clear in my reading, however, that miscarriage wouldn’t happen again. When she got pregnant this time, it would work. I then got a beautiful visual of her two miscarried ones as toddlers in a garden. They were a boy and a girl, and they were happy and smiling. In between them was a little baby, and they were swinging her back and forth, saying, “Whenever you’re ready, Mom.” This really landed emotionally for Gemma. It really struck a chord and something shifted. At her next IUI, guess how many follicles she had? Eighteen. The exact number the other woman had the last time.
Law of Attraction Issues
But there was something still blocking Gemma. She began to get frustrated and was looking into IVF. Her husband’s insurance didn’t cover IVF, so there was a wait period while she switched over to her insurance. During this time we had some more sessions and dug into where she was putting her energy. As humans it’s so easy to focus on what’s going wrong versus what’s going right, and Gemma was no different. She was focusing on how awful work was, that it was hard to get pregnant, that she should have been pregnant by now, and that it was never going to happen. And listen, it’s understandable when something you really want seems like it will never be in reach. So we began talking about the Law of Attraction and how the Universe responds with situations and experiences that are a direct match to what you’re putting out. If you’re not getting the results you want, it’s time to look at where you’re putting your energy.
One of the visuals that came up for her in our energy work was that she was outside on a beautiful day and she had a parka, snowshoes, an umbrella, galoshes, and pretty much everything you can imagine you’d need in inclement weather. But it was a gorgeous day, with no bad weather in sight, and yet she was preparing for the worst, saying over and over “Please don’t rain, please don’t snow.” As we discussed earlier, the Universe doesn’t hear the “don’t” in “don’t want.” It hears what you’re focusing on, in this case the rain and snow. So it started raining and snowing in this visual. It was matching her focus. Once she began to understand that and start redirecting her thoughts to things like “I’ve beaten all these other physical conditions, so I can do this as well,” “I have a normal cycle,” “I’m capable,” and “I deserve to have the things I want in life,” she was able to pull out of the wheel-spinning energy that was driving her crazy.
Then one gorgeous spring night we were at an outdoor wedding and Gemma asked me to come sit by the bonfire with her. As she gazed into the fire, she very matter-of-factly asked me if there are some people/instances where it’s just not biologically possible to get pregnant. I just as matter-of-factly answered, “No.” She looked at me with a mix of surprise and hope. As discussed throughout the book, every physical issue is the result of an emotional block, and once that block is removed, the physical condition doesn’t need to be there anymore. Can everyone do this? Technically, yes. If you have at least one ovary and a uterus, you can do this. Will everyone? No. A lot of people are not aware enough to get out of their own way—to step back from the fearsome thought, look at “what is,” and decide to lean toward what they want. It’s a foreign concept to most people, but if you shift your thought process, you can shift your physical condition. She looked at me and then into the fire and said, “Huh.” That night is the night she got pregnant. Clearly something in that talk registered for her, and she let go of some fear/blocks and allowed the baby in. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as she was about to go in for IVF the following month. She managed to figure it out in that little window of time and conceived naturally.
After Gemma told the people closest her the news and was done bouncing around excitedly, the old fears start to creep in: “The last two didn’t work. What if this one doesn’t?” Every little pang, twinge, and cramp was scary to her, and how could it not be considering what she’d been through? That’s when the spotting began. During her previous pregnancies, spotting had begun at six and eleven weeks. At the start of week seven, I got a panicked phone call from her at work saying, “It’s happening again!”
Here’s where the belief work and the Law of Attraction were absolutely key. She was focusing on not wanting spotting—but she was looking for spotting, so the Universe heard “I’m looking for spotting” and had to answer with what was being requested. So we focused on her victories: that she had released scar tissue, doubled her uterine lining, tripled the number of follicles, and healed her thyroid condition—which reminded her that she was in control of her body. If she thought scary things and something “bad” started to happen, then she could think good thoughts and “good” things would happen. We talked about how she was in a different place this time and why the other pregnancies hadn’t worked out but this one would.
Then we did a form of the belief work. I asked her who would she be/what would she think if she couldn’t think the thought “It’s happening again.” It took her a minute to calm her breath and step outside of her current fear. Then she said, “Well, spotting is a normal part of the first trimester. It’s not weird or unusual to have spotting at the beginning.” When I asked her how she’d feel if that were the case, I felt her energy melt as she said, “Relieved. Like I’m gonna be okay. Excited. Still riding off the high of what I just achieved by getting pregnant!” Abso-freakin-lutely! I asked her which way would get her what she wanted, thinking that it’s happening again or not thinking that? She replied, “Not thinking it. If I’m thinking it, I’m reaping what I sow. Law of Attraction–wise, I’m attracting that no matter what. If I decide it’s normal, there’s at least a chance it’ll be fine.” Exactly right. It’s not delusional or wishful thinking if you feel into what’s going right, the relief, and then knowing that everything is fine. You have zero chance the other way, so why not lean toward what feels good?
Then we moved on to the turnaround work. If the belief is It’s (miscarrying) happening again, then the turnaround is It’s NOT happening again. I had her give me three reasons why it could hypothetically be true that it wasn’t happening again. Here’s what she came up with:
Suddenly Gemma was empowered in what up until a few minutes earlier was the worst situation she could have imagined, and by the end of the school day, the spotting had stopped. Let me be clear that if Gemma hadn’t pulled herself out of this spiral by calling me and being willing to do the work to shift her energy, she would have stayed in “It’s happening again,” and she would very likely have had her third miscarriage. This is especially important for those of you who have had multiple miscarriages. It’s admittedly scary to realize you have control over the situation, but I hope you can see how empowering it can be. When you realize that it’s not some “thing in the sky” or punishment or karma keeping this baby from you, but that by shifting your thoughts you can shift your physical condition via the Law of Psychophysical Response, you can decide that this thing you want is happening. That is so freaking exciting to me, and it’s the most amazing thing when my clients have that aha moment. Gemma is the poster child for this work as far as I’m concerned. She went on to apply these techniques to all areas of her life and is now a chill mom with an amazing baby, and she loves life right now. She made that choice. And you can do it too.
Jenny
After Jenny saw an article I wrote for MindBodyGreen, she sent me an email that started with “I was about to give up until I read your article this morning.” There was something about Jenny from the start where I knew I had to work with her. Like Gemma, she was dealing with a combination of all four parts mentioned in this book: external factors, beliefs, physical conditions, and Law of Attraction issues.
External Factors
Jenny worked for her father’s business and so did her husband. There was a lot of stress for her being a mediator between her father and husband. She felt caught in the middle, like she couldn’t speak up. She didn’t like how she and her husband were being treated but didn’t know how to get out of it. After all, it was the family business. She loved her dad, but was really feeling like this wasn’t the right place for her anymore.
When I asked her “If money didn’t matter right now and you could be whatever you wanted, what would you do?” Jenny answered with such passion that she wanted to be a holistic health coach and had just completed her training. Her husband was supportive, but she didn’t have enough confidence in herself that she could make it a viable business, enough to leave her dad’s business. So we did some belief work around that for her to be able to at least entertain the idea that this was possible, and then began building her business little by little.
Jenny was also completely overscheduling herself. She’d wake up super-early to work out, train clients, write programs for them, go to work for eight hours, come home, make dinner, do laundry, clean up, and then go to bed. To her brain, there was no breathing room there. She was just trying to stay afloat, so how on earth could she add a child to the mix? Where would the baby fit in? How would they take care of her? So her brain said, “Since you’re overscheduled as it is, let’s not add anything else to the mix.”
So we had to look at her schedule and see where we could make space. Laundry and cleaning were both relegated to one day per week. With some difficulty she resisted the urge to clean and straighten up in the evenings so she could spend time with the hubby watching a movie, etc. We had to carve out some respite time so her body wasn’t constantly in a state of stress or “go mode.” It was energetically important to make space for the baby.
Beliefs
Oh boy, Jenny had a lot of them—as we all do, really. Perhaps you can relate to some of these:
Here is some work she did with the belief that she should have been pregnant by now (using a belief sheet).
Belief: I should be pregnant by now.
Is it true? Yes.
Can you be 1,000 percent sure that you’re probably going to get your period this month (feel into it)? No.
How do you feel when you think that thought? (Close your eyes and notice your muscles, breathing, and where that feeling shows up in your body.): Heavy pressure and tightness in my chest, hollow in my lower abdomen. Nervous, panicky, running out of time. Not fair. Like a failure, incomplete.
How do you show up/who are you being in your life when you think that thought? How does it affect your life when you think that thought? Stuck. Can’t move forward because I’m so stuck in the past with what I think should have happened. Resigned because I feel like I’ve missed my window. Pissed because why is everyone else good enough to get pregnant and I can’t? Shut down. What’s the point?
Who/How would you be if you COULDN’T think that thought? How would you FEEL in your body and show up in life? If I couldn’t think that I was probably going to get it? I’d feel lighter in my chest—like a flutter of excitement that it must be coming soon. I’d feel ready to offload the baggage that’s holding me back because I know it’s gonna move me forward that much faster. I’d just be feeling into all those good, squishy feelings that she’s coming and I can’t wait.
Which way is going to get you what you want: thinking the thought that you should have been pregnant by now or not thinking the thought? Why? Not thinking the thought. Because then I’m focused on the thing I don’t want. I’m focusing on the negative. And if I’m feeling negative about the situation, I’m attracting negative to the situation.
The turnaround. Can you find three examples of where the opposite of your belief is true? (Ex. If the belief is “My boyfriend makes me mad,” the turnarounds are “I make my boyfriend mad. My boyfriend makes me happy. I make me mad.”) I shouldn’t be pregnant by now. I’ll be pregnant soon when the timing is right. My thinking should be pregnant by now.
Can you find three examples where each turnaround is/could be true?
I shouldn’t be pregnant by now.
I’ll be pregnant soon when the timing is right.
My thinking should be pregnant by now.
Whenever the belief you’re working with starts with “I,” most of the time you can replace “I” with “My thinking.” This is a good way to make it less about you failing and more about separating your ego/brain from your intuition. It helps delineate that it’s not your being that’s misaligned, it’s just your thoughts—your thinking. Having this type of turnaround makes it easier to step back and address the belief from a less personal, less “blamey,” more exploratory way. This type of turnaround was really useful for Jenny, and she focused on the phrase “I am not my thoughts.” It’s so true. We have plugged into programming from society, our parents, and our past experiences. So to have a tool like this to separate herself from the “yuck” was really helpful for Jenny.
Physical Conditions
As already mentioned, Jenny had dealt with disordered eating for many years and was a bodybuilder. So her body had been pushed to the limit for years on end, and this had caused various physical things to happen in her body that were not conducive to conception.
She had amenorrhea, which, as discussed in chapter 3, is the absence of blood. So she was not getting a cycle on her own, even after conquering the eating disorder and toning down her workouts. In Jenny’s case, the emotional cause of her amenorrhea was denying her femininity in a masculine field, both with bodybuilding and work. The eating disorder contributed heavily to this, and often occurs when we feel like we don’t have control in one or more areas of our life, so what can we control? Every single thing that goes in our body. While Jenny had utter control over her body when she felt out of control elsewhere, through breakups and other life changes, her body had been pushed to the limit in terms of survival. Having a child was the last thing her brain thought she could handle, so why have a period?
Related to this was a low-functioning hypothalamus gland. The hypothalamus, as I mentioned, is the control center and links the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. If these are not functioning at proper levels, the areas that they govern—like the adrenals (fight-or-flight), the thyroid, and the ovaries—will not perform normally. This is what was happening with Jenny. So we did some work on her need to control things and how that was physically affecting her. I also had her apply Clary Sage oil by Young Living every day to the place where her head meets her neck and on her lower abdomen. Within one month she was having a cycle on her own—unmedicated. That hadn’t happened in over seven years. It was then, I think, that she really thought there was a chance of conceiving naturally.
Jenny also led the charge on backing off on the frequency and intensity of her workouts to let her body rest and gain some fat that she would need to have a healthy baby. She started doing that on her own because she was ready. She wanted the baby now more than she wanted the perfect body, and she put her fears aside and went into feminine/nurture mode.
Another physical condition that was an issue involved Jenny’s husband. He was dealing with low sperm count and motility. You already learned about the various causes of this condition in chapter 3. In his case, it was being unhappy in his job. As I mentioned, it’s hard to work with family sometimes and he was feeling caught between a rock and a hard place. Plus his real dream was to be a firefighter, but the county they lived in wasn’t hiring. So I suggested he look into volunteer brigades and to start feeling into how awesome it was going to be when he was doing what he loves to do for a career. Sometimes when we’re so mired down in what we don’t like, we forget to put energy toward our dreams. Frustration inhibits creation, and his ability to create a human was diminished because of his frustration around providing. He was also a trooper and used the Idaho Blue Spruce oil by Young Living at night so as not to “smell like a hippie” (wink). Sometimes husbands are not so open to alternative methods, but he was willing to do whatever was necessary.
Both Jenny and her husband had encountered their share of insensitive doctors who had diminished their chances and ruined their mood at every turn, exacerbating the situation. So they finally changed doctors and she started seeing a midwife. All of a sudden her hormones had regulated, and his morphology wasn’t so concerning. It seems they were both plugging into the doom and gloom presented by the previous care providers.
Law of Attraction Issues
Each time Jenny would go in for clomid or an IUI, she would go in with the energy of “This has to work.” Now, that may sound like a positive pep talk, but it’s actually the opposite. According to the Law of Attraction, whatever energy you’re putting out there, the Universe has to respond to with like energy. “This has to be it” means “I’m really worried that it’s not going to be it, and I’m desperate for it to be it.” And that’s what the Universe hears—the desperation, fear, and longing—not what you say. So each IUI would fail because she was calling in that wonky energy. It’s a subtlety that’s tricky to catch but super-important to understand.
Once we did some work on those subtleties and she felt more in control of her process when she accepted that her results were directly related to her energy (and not in a blaming way), she began to get stronger and more positive and not go in with the attachment to it working but rather the feeling that wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?
Then one of her doctors said that with her husband’s sperm motility, IVF was really going to be her only option. We were all disappointed, but she decided to do it. However, we kept working on her energy, as IVF is not a guarantee, and we wanted to help make the procedure as viable as possible. So for the month before her first IVF blood work appointment, we focused on putting out the energy that she was nourishing her body, was healthy, was going to make an amazing mom, etc.
Then the day came for Jenny to go in for her blood work. The nurse came back to her and said, “Um, you’re pregnant. About four weeks, I’d say.” Whoa! How amazing is that! Just like with Gemma, during that little window of time before the procedure, something clicked for Jenny and she made it happen. I was over the moon when she called me and I screamed at the top of my lungs in the middle of the Cheesecake Factory. It was so exciting and so amazing to see that by changing your thoughts and the way you’re putting your energy out there, you can overcome years of physical damage and anxiety, even when your partner is part of the “infertility” factor.
Jenny continued to have some scary thoughts and anxiety throughout the first trimester, but all it took was a session or a quick text or email to get her back on track. What really got her through was reminding her to listen to her body, that she was not her scary thoughts, and to put out the energy that she wanted back. She embraced her pregnant body and had a beautiful pregnancy. Jenny gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, and a year and a half later gave birth to baby number two! She chose the pregnancy over the fear. And you can too, mama.
Chloe
Chloe was actually in one of my music classes in high school. After not seeing each other for seventeen years and living on opposite ends of the country, she saw one of my Facebook posts about my work and sent me an email.
She had been “trying” (we need to come up with a better word) for over a year and was starting to get really disheartened. She had done one IUI that didn’t work, and doctors told her IVF was her only option. She refused to believe that, and reached out to me.
It may not be a surprise at this point, but Chloe was also dealing with a combination of the four parts discussed in this book: external factors, beliefs, physical conditions, and Law of Attraction issues.
External Factors
Chloe taught music, English, and theater at a high school. She had a lot going on besides the standard workweek; there were concerts, play rehearsals, etc. She had zero time for anything else and was feeling burned-out. As often happens with teachers who are super-involved, the brain thinks, “We have no time for anything else, so how are we going to manage a baby? Plus you already have fifty kids! Why are we adding another thing to your plate?” It’s no wonder she wasn’t getting pregnant, with tons of stress and no time to herself.
So she decided to quit that job and teach music lessons from home. While that was less stressful in multiple respects, if you’ve ever owned your own business, you know that a lot of work goes into getting it off the ground and you need to take care of it like a baby. So her brain thought, “You already have a baby, so why do we need to make another one?”
To help Chloe stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off, we worked on techniques to drop her back into her body and begin to listen to her intuition more. She considers herself an intuitive person, but sometimes when issues like fertility are a little too close to you, that can go out the window. I had her get some specific stones and write her baby a song to really connect to the baby’s energy and plug into knowing she could do this versus worrying about what if she couldn’t.
Beliefs
It was hard for Chloe not to plug into the percentages—of fertility, of interventions, of risk. It’s especially hard when doctors, society, and family (though well-meaning) remind us continually that it’s unlikely we’ll be successful. When she heard that IUI had an 18 percent success rate, she realized that she never really thought it would work because her brain decided the chances were so slim, what was the point of getting excited about it?
She was also dealing with the common belief that she “should be pregnant by now.” A lot of her energy was going toward something that she thought should have already happened, but the fact was, it hadn’t happened, so it shouldn’t have. Once we looked at why that might be true (having a stressful job, quitting that and starting her own business, moving, etc.), she was able to let go of that energy and move forward. Anything that stresses us out isn’t true, so when we can step back and look at why it was perfect and purposeful the way it happened, we are able to move forward much faster.
Physical Conditions
Though Chloe had no physical issues, her husband was dealing with low sperm count and motility. Unlike Jenny’s husband, he was not comfortable trying alternative methods, so we had to use a less direct approach with him (so not to worry if your partner is similar to Chloe’s!). Honestly most of this work is energetically about you anyway, but here’s what we did for Chloe’s husband.
She started giving her husband massages with Mister essential oil by Young Living, which can help regulate his hormones. Unbeknownst to him, he was receiving the benefits. She put two stones specifically for his issues (ruby-in-zoisite and black coral) under his mattress. Luckily he wasn’t like the princess in The Princess and the Pea, and he didn’t feel them! And while cuddling him at night, she’d put a hand on his heart and energetically encourage him to release whatever wasn’t serving him anymore. In a subsequent reading, it came up that he was drinking too much beer. He wasn’t an alcoholic by any means, but too much beer can decimate the sperm count. So Chloe broached the subject with him about quitting alcohol for a couple of months, and poof! She went in for her next IUI and she was pregnant! Once she was no longer hung up about the percentages, she allowed herself to be open to the procedure actually working.
Law of Attraction Issues
Chloe got caught up in the energy of “I’m probably never going to be a mother.” Between what her doctors had told her and what her experience had been, she was quickly losing hope, and that energy was gaining momentum fast. So part of our work was clearing her energy with reiki and then using mindset coaching to move her through the beliefs that were attracting more and more of this resigned, give-up kind of energy. She realized that there were a lot of reasons why she would get pregnant and began to align her energy with the excitement of finding out that she was pregnant by starting a private wish list on Babies R Us and Baby Earth to get into the energy that this baby was coming. We’re taught not to count our chickens before they hatch, but that’s exactly what you want to do, as long as you stay in the energy of knowing that they’ll hatch versus hoping they will. Hoping is scared and not in control. Your energy needs to be in a place of “I’ve decided this is happening. I deserve it, and I invite the next step in.”
Her energy also took a bit of a dip when she found out that her husband had male factor infertility. She understandably felt helpless and at a loss because she knew he wasn’t open to alternative methods and she really didn’t want to put herself through IVF. Chloe’s energy began to spiral until we discussed the subtle methods to help her help her husband that we just mentioned. And the more positive and open her energy was, the more her husband’s energy followed suit. She could have just been upset and wallowed in how unfair the situation was, but she aligned herself with what she wanted versus what she didn’t want. It was no longer a matter of if she got pregnant but when.
Chloe didn’t expect an easy fix. She did the work and committed to strengthening her intuition and aligning herself with the solution instead of the problem. It takes a long time for this to become second nature, but it’s the only way to pull out of the helpless, wheel-spinning energy.
Chloe gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and, looking back, is so glad she quit a stressful job and took the time to build a business that she loves, and that everything was in place when the baby got here. It helped her feel stable, solid, and capable, and when you ask her about it now, she says she wouldn’t have wanted the journey to be any other way.
Amy
Amy was in what doctors would call the unexplained fertility group. My clients who fall into this group often say they almost wish they had something physical because then at least they’d know what they were dealing with. It’s frustrating for nothing medical or physical to show up as wrong but still have difficulty getting pregnant.
Part of my job is to get in there and find out what emotional blocks are inhibiting the process. What are the external factors, beliefs, and Law of Attraction issues in play that we are just not able to consciously see in ourselves? When our issues are so deep-rooted, it’s not always obvious what they are, where they come from, and what we should do about them.
Here’s what came up when working with Amy and how she moved through her blocks.
External Factors
In the three years since Amy and her husband got married, they had been working on starting a family. She couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening. In one of my initial sessions with her, it came up that her solar plexus chakra was closed.
The solar plexus is the power center and is connected to drive and ambition. When I’m reading people, it usually represents work/career, so to me, finding this area closed means there’s something going on at work. It turns out that Amy and her husband had both changed jobs and moved to a new house around the same time, and she found herself working as a dental hygienist in a very toxic work environment, which was kicking up her anxiety big time. As I’ve mentioned, when your fight-or-flight response is constantly turned on, the last thing your brain wants to do is add a baby to the mix. Again, it’s trying to do you a favor by not creating more stress, so it sends messages to the endocrine and nervous systems to slow down, and that’s what was happening for her.
We also took a look at whether she was in the career she wanted to be in or in one she felt obligated to be in. Amy answered pretty quickly that it was her dream to be a yoga instructor. That’s quite a shift from a dental office, and she wasn’t sure how to go about it or if she should go for it. Well, she found a certification class, but she got pregnant after our very first session, so the certification had to wait. But just knowing that she would eventually pursue her purpose versus remaining in a job she felt obligated to do was very freeing energetically, and clearly helped move things forward.
Beliefs
It took me a few sessions to really tune in and dig deep to figure out that most of the beliefs Amy was carrying around were not actually hers, but her mother’s. Again, when it comes to parents, we want to keep in mind that they did the best they could with the skills and limitations they had. But from as far back as Amy can remember, her mother was very strict, fearful, and controlling. Everything Amy did was controlled by her mother, so Amy grew up very fearful and distrusting of life, convinced that something was constantly out to get her or that something bad would happen if she strayed too far from home. This developed into almost debilitating anxiety. When anxiety is kicked up, the fight-or-flight reflex is active, so the body slows or shuts down all unnecessary processes in the body. Remember, the brain’s main concern is keeping you alive. And when you’re in a state of constant panic, the last thing your brain thinks you need is to be adding another responsibility to your life. So on top of Amy’s already present anxiety, she was having anxiety about not being able to get pregnant.
The great thing about this belief/mindset work is that it really helps you step back and look at what is, versus the doomsday, apocalyptic fears our brain manufactures. The fears our brain creates to “keep us safe” are often way scarier than what actually is. And once we realize that we are okay and that the things that are freaking us out aren’t actually true, our body is able to come out of flight-or-flight mode and feel safe enough to make a baby.
So with this work we were able to deconstruct these beliefs enough for Amy to get pregnant. It was super-exciting! Not only was she pregnant, but she had much less anxiety about going out and experiencing life.
And then … she found out she was having twins. That kicked up her anxiety big time. So we did some more work and it turned out that her mother had told Amy that she’d probably have to be on bed rest, and her doctor had said it was very likely that one twin would take nutrients from the other, so she should plan to deliver early and would probably have to have a C-section because it’s hard to deliver twins naturally. Well, jeez! Even though there was no ill intent on the part of the doctor, this is yet another example of how medical personnel can exacerbate the situation by not being aware of how they phrase things. Amy’s head was spinning and she immediately defaulted to the idea that her body wasn’t capable.
And this is where a lot of women get stuck: they default to the beliefs of family or doctors and don’t listen to their own body. It’s not their fault; we’re trained that way. But believing those things to be true was causing stress in Amy’s body and was going to cause those exact things to manifest.
So we looked at the fact that Amy was in great physical shape and there was no physical reason she would have to deliver early. Twins can easily go to thirty-seven weeks, which is considered full term, and she was not going to make babies that she couldn’t deliver. While tuning in to her body, I picked up pretty early on that the babies were boys and that one of them was kind of a show-off and a smart-ass and the other was a little more straight-laced and calm. This made it easier for her to do visualizations to talk to them, which kept her calm and already in mom mode. It became about sending them love and getting them here safe, and she couldn’t be in that place and a place of fear at the same time, so she was able to let go of the fear. I told her, “Way to manifest! You were shooting for one and you got two. That’s pretty badass!” Soon after, she became excited about having twins (and they were both boys, by the way!).
It’s hard not to plug into what family members and doctors say. A lot of times we don’t even realize we’ve done it. And that is why this work is so important. It’s a way to unearth, identify, and move through these beliefs (which aren’t true) so you can conceive and have a peaceful pregnancy and birth.
The thing to keep in mind is that the things that family and doctors get freaked out about are the exceptions, not the rule. We can end up in that exception category if we believe these things will go wrong. Getting quiet with yourself and dropping into your body will help you know what’s true and not a belief. This is an essential tool for moving forward. And I’m so proud of Amy for doing the work and having the natural birth they said wouldn’t happen to twins who were the same size and healthy.
Physical Conditions
For many years Amy had dealt with an eating disorder. This isn’t a surprise. Her mother had tried to control everything in her life, so the only thing Amy could control was what went into her body. Then the problem came back when her anxiety picked up. In a world that seemed out of control and where something bad could happen at any second, at least she could control what was going on with her body.
Identifying that correlation was very important for Amy. Even though she had healed quite a bit, the tendency would still be there if things got stressful. Luckily there were only a couple of relapses, and she was getting to the point where she was sick of having to be afraid, sick of monitoring it, and she wanted to get to what the actual root of the problem was.
On top of the fear of relapsing into the eating disorder, Amy was having strong physical reactions to her anxiety, to the point of having to go to the emergency room. But the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. These physical symptoms only amplified her anxiety that something was wrong, so we did some more work, and I tuned in to her body to see where there might be some physical issues. Nothing showed up. It was very clear to me that she was experiencing the Law of Psychophysical Response—where every thought has a corresponding physical reaction.
We talked about herbs, Bach Flower remedies, exercises, and visualizations that she could do on her own, in addition to the energy work and belief work we were doing in our sessions.
When you’re that afraid, it’s hard to step back and trust that things are going to be okay and that you are in control of your life. When it’s an ingrained pattern, you might not be able to crack it right away or win every time at the beginning. But the more you practice leaning toward relief, toward what feels good, toward what you want versus what you don’t, you’ll go for longer and longer periods where you feel good and the anxiety isn’t winning. It’s taken Amy a few tries, but she gets better and better each time and is reclaiming control of her life.
Law of Attraction Issues
As I’ve mentioned, Amy was dealing with some pretty deep-rooted anxiety. The emotional cause of anxiety is not trusting the process of life and assuming things will go horribly wrong. This is more than being a glass-is-half-empty kind of person; this can seriously affect multiple areas of your life, including fertility.
Amy’s anxiety was almost debilitating, and she had no idea why. Yes, she had changed jobs and moved and wasn’t getting pregnant, but none of that was the cause of this paralyzing fear. Her friendships had been affected because she was afraid to go out, because “What if something happens? What if I have a panic attack and I’m too far from home? What if I have to go to the hospital?” The only way she would go out was if her husband gently forced her to socialize. He was very supportive but didn’t know where this unjustified fear was coming from.
Amy told me that she knew they were unfounded fears, but they were so debilitating, and she couldn’t help but think the worst would happen at every turn. What you’ve hopefully learned by now in this book is that whatever energy we are putting out into the Universe, we are getting back. So she was continually putting out that there was something to be afraid of, and the Universe answered with more fear and more things to be afraid of. In addition to her fear of an emergency happening, Amy was afraid her body would fail and something serious or life-threatening would happen to her. The energy Amy was putting out that “my body could fail me” returned to her with an example of her body “failing her” by not being able to get pregnant.
So we really had to work on retraining her brain and her energy to focus not on the problem but on the solution. And that’s hard when it’s an ingrained pattern that you’ve had for years. But that’s why you might need someone like me to help you identify and move through it, because oftentimes we just can’t see when we’re falling into that negative spiral.
A simple shift from “What if something goes wrong?” to “What if something goes right?” makes all the difference in the world. Feel into what it would feel like if everything was, in fact, right and okay. That feeling of relief stops the spinning and makes it easier for us to move forward.
Once Amy realized that she was creating all of the experiences in her life, good, “bad,” or otherwise, she felt more confident that she could step up to the plate and actually change her life. And she did.
Anna
Anna called me for the first time in tears. She had just been to a fertility specialist and was overwhelmed. They had told her she needed to get in for IVF immediately and that even that probably wouldn’t work because of her age. Let’s look at what was going on with Anna.
External Factors
Anna is from another country and is in the US on a visa. She is not in a profession she likes anymore. In fact, she never liked it—it was what her parents wanted her to do. This job wasn’t filling her soul, but she didn’t know what else to do, as she needed to stay in the country a certain amount of time to get her citizenship. So we began to look at things she could do to fulfill herself and also to set her energy toward something that would really light her up. She also wasn’t living in a place that was conducive to having children, and her fiancé lived in their home country, so she was feeling unsafe and her fight-or-flight response was triggered.
Beliefs
Having a narcissistic mother was difficult for Anna, especially being an empath who feels everything. There were some beliefs about her worth and capability that came up, as well as processing what the doctors had just smacked her in the face with. As long as she believed these things, her situation would stay the same, so we had to shift them through the belief work. Thoughts like “I’m running out of time,” “I have to stay in my current job, which I don’t like,” and “I won’t be able to do this without IVF” would have consumed her and kept her stuck. But by examining, dismantling, and turning around these thoughts, she was able to move forward.
Physical Conditions
Anna was very healthy. She ate well, exercised, and took care of herself. However, she was forty years old, and the doctors were extremely concerned and wanted to hurry because they assumed her egg count would be diminished (without even looking, by the way).
Law of Attraction Issues
When we met, Anna was very much in a place of fear. She wanted to give her fiancé a child and had basically been told it was impossible, and certainly not without IVF. Naturally, Anna started to believe this might be true, and she was devastated. Remember that it’s only the thoughts about the situation that are scary, not what actually is. When she was caught up in the thought that it was over for her, it was unbearable. When she stepped back and looked at what was going right, she was able to say, “I have a normal cycle. I’m healthy. My fiancé loves me and I can’t wait to see him next month. Deep down I know my body was made for this, and I can do this.” It can be hard to go to that positive place when you’re stressed-out, but you must in order to shift the energy. Even if you can hold the positive thought for only thirty seconds one day, that’s something! Maybe the next day it will be two minutes, then twenty minutes, and then an hour. From a Law of Attraction perspective, if like energy attracts like energy, then focusing on what’s going right brings more things going right. Focusing on what’s going wrong brings more things going wrong.
So Anna worked on this for a month and then took a trip home to see her fiancé. She pretty much got pregnant the second she could! She was so excited when she came back to the US—and then it happened. She was back at her job, which she hated, and in a living situation that wasn’t good, not to mention she was without her fiancé. She began to miscarry. It was, of course, heartbreaking, but those conditions we mentioned needed to be addressed, and she knew it.
Despite her pain and disappointment, Anna knew that on a deeper level this was happening for a reason. We discussed making some big moves at work that seemed risky to everyone else but felt true for her. She went back home and was with her now-husband for one month when she emailed me that she was pregnant! At the time of this writing, she has a healthy one-year-old. She is happier than ever and is starting a new business with her husband. Everything lined up for her because she was willing to take a leap and do what was right for her despite it looking a little crazy to the outside world. I’m so proud of her for being able to realize that as painful as it was initially, the miscarriage did have a purpose, and what she learned from it changed her entire life for the better.
Leah
Leah came across one of my articles on the Chopra Center website. She had been to fertility specialists but wasn’t feeling in her heart that that was the way she wanted to go. Being open to energy work and manifesting, she decided to give this work a try.
External Factors
Leah was in a pretty stressful job at a magazine while working on her doctorate. Deadlines on huge projects left little time for her to get her research and papers done. She had zero time to just breathe. In addition, her husband lived on the other side of the world, so coordinating ovulation involved a lot of planning—which created a lot of expectations and pressure on themselves and each other. Plus they were looking for a house and were not finding any ideal options. There was just too much going on.
Beliefs
Many times the beliefs we are plugging into aren’t even ours. They are society’s, our doctors’, or our family members’ beliefs that we have made our own unbeknownst to us. For Leah, the culture her husband’s family is from thinks you are an old maid if you don’t have a kid by age twenty-seven. They constantly berated her to her face and showed no sensitivity for her situation, so she began to feel more incapable with each encounter.
Leah was also worried deep down that she’d pass on some “bad” family traits to her child. There has been a lot of emotional wounding throughout her family line and there are some recessive physical traits in her family that have “caused” damage to subsequent generations, and she wasn’t sure if she should pass that along.
She further worried that her body wasn’t strong enough to carry a baby, so her brain—in an attempt to keep her alive—put the kibosh on even getting pregnant so she wouldn’t have to endure the pain and humiliation of not being able to do so. Was it true that her body wasn’t strong enough? No. But the fear was so strong that her brain assumed it was, so she stayed in a holding pattern.
Leah was also dealing with a common belief among my clients, which is that she was too old or was running out of time. At thirty-nine, she knew deep down that it was possible for her to have a baby, but it was hard not to plug into society’s idea of when it’s too late and her doctors’ belief that IVF was her only option. (Again, IVF is a fine option; it’s just not the route she wanted to take.)
It was vital for Leah to work on releasing hurt and anger toward family members, a feeling of obligation toward work, and fears about her body, age, and what family is/can be. It was draining so much of her energy. She felt noticeably lighter after we worked through each issue, not fully realizing how heavy it had been until it wasn’t there anymore.
Physical Conditions
In her twenties, Leah had dealt with a lot of health issues stemming from an autoimmune disorder. She did a lot of work on herself, including using Chinese herbs, changing her diet, doing yoga, etc. On an energetic level, autoimmune disorders have to do with an attacking of the inner self. Your immune system is there to protect you, but sometimes it attacks itself. Sometimes when we are trying to protect ourselves, we hurt ourselves. And that made sense from what Leah had said about her place in her family growing up. As an intellectual and nonconformist, she found it pretty hard growing up in an environment where she really couldn’t be herself and was not meeting family expectations and they weren’t meeting hers.
So her body just attacked itself from the frustration. But she healed from that and then was faced with the fertility issue. Leah has only one functioning ovary and a blocked fallopian tube, so as you can imagine, the doctors’ prognosis was bleak. She also had pretty severe endometriosis, which not only is very painful but can mess with your cycles and make conception harder (from a medical perspective). After a botched IUI, she got a severe pelvic infection, which was so painful, and it seemed like there was no end in sight. It was hard not to give up and to feel that maybe this just wasn’t going to happen.
Law of Attraction Issues
Due to her strained family life, Leah was not used to being in touch with her emotions and dreaming big. As an intellectual person, it can be a little difficult to leave your brain and get into your body. Even though she did yoga, it was still hard for her to move past the feeling that things were stacked against her and it would just keep being delay after delay. While this attitude was totally understandable given her circumstances, it wasn’t so helpful from a Law of Attraction perspective. If like energy attracts like energy and we keep putting out “another thing has gone wrong, another delay,” of course there will be another problem and another delay—that’s the energy we are being met with. The Universe hears that we aren’t capable and we are expecting there to be a problem. When you’re in the midst of painful things, it’s so hard to just hope or trust that they’re going to get better. So sometimes we need to not worry about “fixing” ourselves. From a Law of Attraction perspective, if I believe that I need to “fix” myself, I am repeatedly putting out to the Universe, “I’m broken, I’m broken, I’m not capable, I’m broken.” Whereas, if you focus on what is going right, on what you’d love to see (versus what you’re scared will happen), then you are energetically aligned with things going right. The Law of Attraction doesn’t take a day off. It’s always a match to where your energy is and what you’re putting out there. So by shifting into what’s going right, even if it’s small things to start, you can incrementally move your energy over to being able to receive what you actually want.
Sometimes changing our patterns and our environment can go a long way toward shaking up stagnant energy. In one of our sessions, it came up that Leah’s husband was going to be on location for a project in a country that she really liked, but she wasn’t sure if she should go because of obligations at home. It was a big leap, but she’d be with her husband for a more concentrated period of time and she could do her doctoral research and feel she was making some headway in her life. In our energy session it came up that within three months of her moving there, she would be pregnant. And bam! Three months later, she was pregnant. Taking time and space for yourself to expand, heal, and reprioritize is so important. I’m so proud of Leah and her little family.
Kim
External Factors
Kim was in the US on a work visa. Her job was really draining and she had a three-hour round-trip commute every day! She wasn’t in a job she loved, but with her visa status she couldn’t have a lapse in employment. The stress was getting to her. It was tripping her fight-or-flight response and shutting down her uterus.
Beliefs
Kim had many beliefs operating in the background, some of which were hers. After years of trying, her sense of capability was all but gone. Beliefs like “I’ll never be pregnant,” “It should have happened already,” and “I need this to work” were prevalent. She was also dealing with her family’s cultural beliefs and judgments as well as financial concerns. So she couldn’t help but plug into and be stressed about what family members were saying and their expectations of her. Things just seemed hopeless after such a long journey, but after working through these damaging thoughts, she was able to release her fear and become empowered.
Physical Conditions
Kim was fairly healthy overall, but after trying for seven years, she and her husband had decided to try three rounds of IUI and then IVF. Two failed rounds left her devastated, with no faith in herself or her body. She’d already begun another round when we started working together, and she was full of fear about it not working. After working through these beliefs and fears, she had the same procedure done that she’d had for the other two rounds, but this time it worked! If she hadn’t cleaned up her fears and patterns, she would have experienced the same result as the last two. When your body is in so much fear and is stressed-out from work and family dynamics, your fight-or-flight response is triggered. Your brain is worried about self-preservation, and when it feels you can’t take care of yourself, it blocks any chance of you creating something that’s going to cause you to sacrifice yourself even more. Kim had to learn to claim her space, nourish herself, thank her body for what it was doing, and decide that she could do this. Once she did, her body relaxed enough for her to be pregnant.
All seemed to be great until her husband’s mother died. She had been the source of a bit of Kim’s stress, but Kim was of course sad for her husband. He had to travel out of the country for the funeral, but she was newly pregnant and couldn’t accompany him. She was so stressed about her husband leaving the country and feeling she wasn’t a priority on top of grieving the death of her mother-in-law that it was just all too much and her body had to release the baby. Her brain felt she was in emotional overload, and what’s one thing that could be taken off her plate? Of course she wanted the baby, but this was one of her life lessons, and though difficult, she needed to explore the reason why something like this would happen. There’s always a reason. For her, it was about laying out what she would and would not accept from her partner and family, claiming space, not wasting energy on people who stressed her out, changing jobs (long commute and stressful workload), and allowing herself to heal. She knew she could get pregnant now, and three months later she was pregnant with her little munchkin. At the time of this writing, she has given birth to a beautiful baby boy! The body takes direct orders from the brain. So once she cleared up her thoughts, her body responded with a viable pregnancy.
Law of Attraction Issues
When we first began working together, Kim was emotionally drained and distressed. There was a pervasive cloud of negativity and sadness that she couldn’t see her way out of. As many of you can understand, it’s not enough to know that it’s not helpful to think these negative thoughts. If that’s all it took, we’d all be thinking positive all the time. The bottom line, though, is that Kim’s energy was continually emitting “This will never work, it hasn’t worked yet so it never will, my body is failing me, my mother is driving me nuts, my in-laws are stressing me out, this is hopeless, I can’t take anymore.” Since like energy attracts like energy, this was a problem. But when you’re feeling hopeless, you can’t authentically jump to “Everything is just peachy keen.”
We did a bunch of emotional work and then started doing some exercises to incrementally move Kim in a more positive direction, including keeping a gratitude journal (being grateful for things you already have opens you up to receiving more things to be grateful for), writing a thank-you letter to her body for what it does do, compiling a list of things that were going right in her life, feeling into what she was excited about, and making a victory list to remind her brain that she’d manifested things in the past and could do so again.
Remember that the Universe doesn’t hear “I don’t want ____.” It hears what you’re focusing on. It’s human nature to focus on what’s going wrong versus what’s going right, but if we expect things to change, we need to start rewiring our brain to expect that positive things are possible. Little by little, Kim migrated over to a more empowered, positive state, and that’s when she was able to conceive. The important thing to remember is that this is a work in progress. You have to be patient with yourself. It’s like learning a new language, and it takes time to become adept at moving yourself through it.