Perhaps you are planning on natural conception and want to optimise your success,
or maybe you are having fertility treatment such as IVF.
I have worked with many people experiencing fertility issues, and know that it can be a stressful time.
It may be dificult to talk to friends and family, and even sometimes your partner about your feelings.
It can be upsetting when those around you don't seem to understand what you are experiencing.
In a supported and safe environment hypnotherapy can help you to reduce the levels of stress and anxiety by
increasing relaxation, and removing emotional blocks.
You will learn how to keep stress and anxiety to an absolute minimum even during medical treatment.
Using a range of techniques you will be encouraged to nurture yourself, maintain balance and wellbeing
and remain in a positive frame of mind.
Read an article on 'unexplained infertility'
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Our thoughts and emotions play a part in what happens in our body.
When we feel anxious and stressed it can make it more difficult to conceive by:
Suppressing luteinizing hormone
Increasing serum cortisol levels
Inhibiting hypothalamic Gnrh function
Preventing implantation of a fertilised egg
Reducing egg quality
Delaying release of eggs
Elevating prolactin levels
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In an article by Suzy Greaves entitled Can Hypnosis Help to Make You Pregnant? Dr. Elizabeth Muir, a clinical psychologist working with hypnotherapy for infertility explains that hypnosis affects the hypothalamusthe neural centre at the base of the brain linked to the pituitary glandand controls the flow of hormones in the body. The hypothalamus is sensitive to stress and acts as a bridge between the emotional and physical, turning emotional messages into physical responses that affect hormone levels. Muir believes that the psychological issues surrounding pregnancy are not sufficiently well addressed for many women with fertility problems.
Studies conducted by Alice Domar, PhD, director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Behavioural Medicine Program for Infertility in Boston support Muir's theory that unresolved issues about having a baby can be removed with counselling and mind/body techniques such as hypnotherapy. In the first study published in 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association 42% of 132 infertile women in the program conceived within six months of completing it. In the second study, published in 2000 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, 55% of the previously infertile women who met regularly in a mind/body program conceived, compared with 20% of the control group who used no mind/body techniques and who did not attend meetings.
Dr. Christiane Northrup in her book Womens Bodies, Womens Wisdom says: "The mind/body approach to fertility is based on the premise that knowledge is power and that a change in perception based on new information is powerful enough to effect subtle changes in your endocrine, immune, and nervous systems. Regardless of what youve been told about your fertility, you need to know that your ability to conceive is profoundly influenced by the complex interaction among psychosocial, psychological, and emotional factors, and that you can consciously work with this to enhance your ability to have a baby."
Niravi Payne, a psychotherapist and pioneer of mind-body fertility therapy in America, believes that stress is only one of the factors that can prevent conception. "Our endocrine, immune and nervous systems are all intimately connected and influenced by every thought we think and every emotion we feel," she says. "When something significant happens in our lives, the emotionally charged experience gets stored in our brain. Memories and experiences are also simultaneously stored biochemically and electromagnetically in various organ systems. Negative emotional experiences can throw off the finely tuned hormonal balance necessary for ovulation and sperm production"
Dr Christiane Northrup MD - website
BBC news article on hypnosis and fertility
Article in Daily Mail - 'Hypnotism gave me the baby I longed for'
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