Latest / The Brilliant Fertility Podcast / Episode 053: Can Yoga Boost Your Fertility with Jennifer Edmonds?

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Episode 053: Can Yoga Boost Your Fertility with Jennifer Edmonds? · The Brilliant Fertility Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dr Katie Rose, and this podcast exists to help illuminate the path ahead of you.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: With expert interviews, clinical pearls and real client success stories, my intention is to bring you hope for what's possible on this journey and to give you tools and resources to navigate the ups and downs on the road before you.
• 0:27
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• 0:33
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• 0:40
  Speaker 1: What did you come away with?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Did you leave with that spark of hope?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: This helps more people like you find the podcast.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: My mission is to support as many humans as possible on their path to become parents, and by you sharing and subscribing, you're part of that mission too, and I'm so grateful for you for being here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited for our guest today.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I've had the pleasure of meeting Jen in person.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: We have Jennifer Edmonds.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: She's a yoga, pilates, meditation and breathwork teacher with over 15 years experience.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: She specializes in fertility and women's health and during her own fertility journey she found the practice of fertility yoga, which enabled her to ease anxiety while trying to conceive and relieve chronic insomnia, rebalance thyroid conditions and eventually fall pregnant.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Naturally, jen, I'm so excited to have you here and to share you and all of your goodness with the world.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much, katie.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: It's an honor to be here.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: You are one of those like bright, shining stars in this space where you just have this beautiful energy, and when I met you in person last year, I thought I just have to work with this person more.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: So it's wonderful to be here, thank you.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Well, ditto right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I felt so similarly Like why do you have to be on the other?
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: side of the world.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: No, I'm sorry about that.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for being here.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I usually like to start off with is just getting curious around, like how did you come to this place of incorporating this into your life and your work and the world now?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Look, it is a long story, let's do the abridged version.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: So when I got married, when I was 33, my husband and I were so excited to start for a family we were both relatively young in the scheme of fertility and we had no health issues we thought it's going to happen.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: It's going to happen so easily.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: But sadly that wasn't to be and I went off birth control.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: My cycle never returned and fast forward a year and a half where my cycle still hadn't come back, I was diagnosed with having gone through early menopause at the age of 34.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: And we were told if we wanted to have a family, we needed to do IVF and we needed to do it immediately.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So this was a long journey in itself just to get to that point where we hadn't even been able to try for a family.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: But we thought IVF is like the light at the end of the tunnel, isn't it?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: When you're struggling through a fertility journey, you think, well, nothing else has worked, but at least I've got that.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: And when you open that door and it doesn't work, you get left in a very dark place.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: So our first round of IVF didn't work and that left me pretty desolate and I thought that perhaps this wasn't going to happen for us, this wasn't our life's path and, yes, we'd talked about the idea of adoption and donor and all of those things, but it didn't really seem like the route I wanted to go down at that stage.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: So we thought, look, we'll take a little step back.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I worked with a naturopath for a few months.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: We changed clinics and the second round of IVF we did.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: We ended up with one untested embryo and we transferred it and it turned into my little girl, who is nearly seven.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So that was my first fertility journey and we thought, look, we're so grateful and so lucky to have her, but we are both only children.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: What we would love more than anything in the world is to have a second child.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I would have another 10 if I could, to be honest, katie.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But we thought we'll have two kids and then we'll move on from this part of our lives.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And then something amazing happened when she was about one.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I had stopped breastfeeding and my period returned.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I just went to the bathroom one day and there it was and I was a bit suspicious.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, this is too good to be true.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: But nope, the next month it came back in the month after that and we were so excited we thought, wow, now we can finally try to have a baby.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: This is the one thing we had missing the first time.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: So we jumped into our second fertility journey, thinking it was going to be much, much easier.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Sadly, it was much longer and more difficult than the first journey.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: My cycle was regular, but a little bit short.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: We went back to a new gynecologist who said look, there's no reason why you couldn't fall pregnant on your own.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Just keep trying at home, let's see what happens.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: So I think we tried for about six months and nothing came up.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: We went back to the doctor.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: She did a few letrozole cycles.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: She gave me some progesterone to help extend my cycle still nothing.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: She then ran a few more tests and that's where things took a bit of a turn.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: We ended up with a whole bunch of new fertility issues which we hadn't had previously.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So I had developed a thyroid condition.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: We found out my fallopian tubes were partially blocked.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: What else did I have going on?
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: My AMH levels were close to zero.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So I said it looks like you're ovulating, but we don't know how strong this is or what your egg quality is like.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It's not looking good, and we ended up with a bit of male factor fertility issues as well, none of which had been an issue previously.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So we thought, coupled with my age I think I was 37 by this stage she recommended that we just go straight back to IVF, and we were so disappointed.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: It had been just over a year at this stage since we'd started trying for our second and we thought, oh you know, it was the one thing we didn't have the first time.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Finally, we got there.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: It still isn't happening, but at the same time we knew IVF had worked.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: We'll just do it again isn't happening.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: But at the same time we knew IVF had worked.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: We'll just do it again.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: We'll move on with our breeding years and just be done with all of this.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So we did another round of IVF and I did the three months of preparation, I did the thousand supplements, I did the perfect diet, I did all the acupuncture, I did everything literally perfectly, and it didn't work again.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: We ended up with two little embryos from that cycle.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It was one of those cycles that looked perfect on paper, everything went really really well, but sadly neither of those little embryos stuck.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: And then the day after I found out that second embryo hadn't been successful, we went into lockdown over COVID.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: This was in early 2020.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And, as anyone who went through IVF that year would know, every clinic in the world closed down.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: So we had to do our follow-up appointment with our doctor over Zoom and he said I'm sorry, but I just don't know when I'm going to be able to get you back into the clinic.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So we thought that was kind of it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: That feeling of we don't know when or if we're able to ever pursue treatments again really left me in a very dark place.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: This was probably my lowest time.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: I'd also developed chronic insomnia throughout this journey, so I was taking progesterone to support my cycle.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: I was on thyroid medication.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I've been prescribed three different types of sleeping tablets to help me get some sleep at night.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I'd just been through another round of IVF where I was on hugely high doses of stimulation medication.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: I was a mess, to put it lightly.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I remember this is my moments of just crying on the bathroom floor at three o'clock in the morning, unable to sleep, and, coupled with that, all of the guilt and the shame that comes along with secondary infertility.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: When you've got this beautiful little two-year-old girl and all you want is to complete your family.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: And you know all of the feelings of all isn't she enough, isn't she enough for my life?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: And oh, it's a horrible battle of feelings.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So this was a pretty bad time.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I don't think I was great to live with.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sleeping, I was a mess.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: And this is where the universe kind of stepped in and my journey took a bit of a strange turn.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: So I was a Pilates instructor.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I'd been working in clinical Pilates settings for about 12 years.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: At that stage I loved working out.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I looked at exercise as let's make this as hard and as fast as possible, so I feel exhausted, my body sore the next day.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: That was my attitude to exercise.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: But I couldn't go to the gym during COVID.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I couldn't go to work.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: My studio was closed, so I was really at home with nothing else to do.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: And I remember having a chat with a girl I used to work with who was a yoga teacher, and I explained my journey and she said, look, I don't want to overstep here, but I work with this teacher who teaches fertility yoga.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Would you like me to put her in touch with you?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: And I thought, no, no, I've just been through another round of IVF which hasn't worked.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: What is a bit of yoga going to do for me?
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: But at this stage I had done literally everything, katie, everything.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And now I was in lockdown and couldn't do anything.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So I thought, look, what is one more thing, let's give it a go.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: So she put me in touch with this wonderful teacher.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: She was actually from Australia as well and she gave me these practices to do, and it was the one thing that I hadn't done on this entire journey, which was stop and slow down and ask my body how she felt.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: So ask myself what I wanted.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Did this feel right?
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Did this next decision feel good for me?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: I hadn't even considered whether any of these things were good for me.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to be pregnant, and so I love these practices.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Surprisingly, I found them really calming, really peaceful.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: I practiced them every day.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: They were super gentle, which was weird for me because I used to hate yoga.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I thought, why are we lying down?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: This is so boring.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Can we do some push-ups?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: This is such a waste of time.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: But it was this really lovely reframe and it was this part of my day where I looked forward to it and I felt better afterwards, a few weeks after I started this regular practice, little things in my life started to change.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: The first thing I noticed was I'd wake up in the morning and that sense of dread would just have lifted so that horrible dark cloud that just followed me around all day.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't feel so miserable and I probably was a lot nicer to my husband.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: At the same time, I felt more present with my daughter.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: I felt like I could just sit with her and be with her and not be stressing about the future and will I get a sibling?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Will I ever not be an only child?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: All these things.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I just could be with her.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: That was really big for me.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And then bigger things started to happen.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: My insomnia disappeared, which was life-changing.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I remember I woke up the first morning after I'd had like solid eight hours sleep.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I felt like a new human.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It was bizarre and that was it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: I stopped taking sleeping tablets after that.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: It was incredible.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And then my thyroid started to rebalance.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: I would go into the doctor and get my labs done and the reports would come back like my thyroid had started to get better and I hadn't changed my medication or anything else.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And then in July of that year, I felt pregnant at home naturally, and this was the most unexpected thing in the world.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: We were so excited and so shocked we thought, oh my goodness, our journey is over.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: We have done it.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: I went to the doctor, got my bloods done.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Everything was looking great.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Went back a couple of days later, everything was rising.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: We were so, so, so excited.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: But sadly we lost that baby at eight weeks.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong, this was a really really dark time.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: It was really hard for me, but it wasn't my lowest point because I had in the back of my mind I did something that no doctor had told me was possible.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I think they said to me oh, you've got about a 5% chance that your next round of IVF will ever work.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: They didn't even tell me that trying at home naturally would be an option.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: But I did it and I thought I can do it again.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: But as someone who has a very exercise science focused background and has always worked in sort of more of a clinical setting with in terms of exercise and post rehab work, I thought I want to know why, I want to know the science behind, how this had such a big impact on my body and my overall health.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: So I went back and I retrained as a yoga teacher and I absolutely loved being a student again.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It blew my mind.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: It was so different every other bit of training I'd ever done.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: And then I found a school that specialized in yoga for women pre and postnatal work, hormonal balance work and fertility so I dove into all of that.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: I started applying all of the principles of this practice into my own life.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I started applying all of the principles of this practice into my own life and then, at the very end of 2020, in December, I felt pregnant again, naturally, and that little boy is now three.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So that is my journey.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: That is what led me to do the work that I currently do.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And that's what brings us here today.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Seven years and 12 minutes, that's not too shabby, but what a journey and I can relate to so much of it, and I know that so many of our listeners can.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And I hope that those little pieces of inspiration of knowing, like you know what, even though something like IVF that's given as like the Hail Mary pass, even when that doesn't work, it doesn't have to mean that things are over.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: We can reframe, we can look at things, and I had to laugh when you said the one thing I hadn't done is slow down, because, yeah, that's how many of our clients?
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and what's a bit of yoga going to do for me?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, my goodness, I remember the first time doing yoga.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Laying there and being like this is so unproductive, like I am angry.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I was angry at how unproductive it was.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: It feels exactly, and so I just have to crack up because I, if you're out there and you're wondering what's a bit of yoga going to do, it's like well, it might make you angry at first, and then it will start unlocking things that you didn't even know were possible, and that's been my experience with yoga as well.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: The slowing down through the resistance, through that part of our ego.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: That's like believing this is the most unproductive thing you could do.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: We now have access to our body's wisdom, and through the breath and through these poses and through this connection with the body and being present, there's so much possibility.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's remarkable, it really is, and it taught me so much about my body and my cycle.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And it was a gift.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It really was.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So, now that you are trained and you have taught in the science of yoga and how it helps fertility, Talk more about how yoga specifically supports our fertility and our hormones.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: So there are two things I think that yoga does for your body.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Physically, there is that little extra woo-woo spiritual element of yoga which I think a lot of people really get into.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: But for me, learning and seeing on paper why it had such an impact really helped to give me that feedback as to why it had such a big impact.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: So the two things that it does really well is it's able to increase circulation and blood flow through your body.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So we know that blood is the body's delivery system for nutrients and for hormones.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: So without good blood flow and in Chinese medicine they call it like that stagnation, that blockage of energy all of the nutrients and hormones through the body are not going to get to the areas that they need to get to.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: And any exercise will increase circulation within the body.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: But the thing that yoga can do is we can target where we need that blood flow to go.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: So if you are holding a lot of tension and tightness in your hips or your pelvis, which is very common if you have gone through a really stressful time, because one of the first areas that tenses up when you go into fight or flight is the hips.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: They get ready to run.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: So if we are holding all of that tension in the hips over a long period of time, it can start to restrict the flow of blood to that area.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: So we can do all these beautiful poses to open out the hips, relieve tension in the pelvis, the lower back I see often that menstrual cramps will start to relieve when we do a lot of these poses as well.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And we can also do these poses that we call inversions.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: So you see things like a downward facing dog or a bridge, where you lift your hips higher than your heart and that sends the blood flow towards the brain and that sends all of that blood flow towards both the throat, the thyroid gland, the pituitary, the hypothalamus, and it nourishes all of those glands.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And when you come out of that inverted pose it then sends the blood back down through the body to where it needs to go.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: So it it is so fascinating to think that yoga was designed like thousands of years ago in northern india, and they didn't have any of the kind of research or technology to back up what they were doing.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: They just sort of intuitively knew that these things had an impact on the body.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: But now we know that we can actually see through studies that it actually has an impact.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: But I just find it fascinating that they intuitively put all of this together without knowing that.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: So that's the first thing that we're able to do.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: The second thing, and this is the piece that I think really made the difference for me, is yoga's ability to regulate your nervous system, and we can talk about why that is so, so important on a fertility journey, but it gets you out of this state of hypervigilance of go, go, go, what's the next thing on my to-do list.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: I'm terrified.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: This next pregnancy test isn't going to be positive.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: I you know all of the needles, the scans, the procedures like.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: It is such a buildup of dysregulation when we are struggling to conceive, and yoga gets your brain out of that state, out of that fight or flight mode, and back into that parasympathetic state of rest and digest where your brain can go everything is well.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: There is no need to be on that kind of oh what's the next thing that's going to go wrong kind of feeling, and it just allows your body to come back into that place of ah, like that sigh, that relief and those things combined, I think are what makes this practice together so so valuable.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Agreed, agreed, and I know that even when people hear the science behind it and know that this can change the physiology and the blood flow and how the hormones are working, they may still also be hesitant to actually get started with a yoga practice.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: So how would you encourage someone who's maybe never had a yoga practice or the yoga they're doing is like this high, intense flow yoga?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: That may not necessarily be the same as how your fertility yoga practice goes.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: What does that look like for a newbie?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I like to remind people that it is not a fancy upside down pretzel twisting pose kind of form of yoga.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: It also isn't something new that I've invented or that anyone else has invented.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: The thing that makes fertility yoga different and special is that we change the practices and the poses depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: So for me, the menstrual phase, like the bleed phase of my cycle, was the hardest part for me to switch into this idea of I need to rest, because, growing up as women, we're told oh, you've got your period, take some pain relief, pop in a tampon, carry on as normal.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: No, we are not the same at every day of the month, like men are.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: We have this beautiful fluctuation, this lovely dance that our hormones do throughout the month.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: They rise, they fall in this beautiful, beautiful balance and when we are bleeding out, bodies need to come into rest.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: This is not a time to be getting up at 5 am, going to the gym on an empty stomach, pushing yourself as hard as you can.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So at that time of the month, a lot of the work that we do is restorative, where we're literally lying around on pillows.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: It's just, it is heavenly.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: As we get into the follicular and ovulatory phases.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: That is where we start to increase a little bit of the energy and the intensity.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: So you see a lot more of that vinyasa style flow where we come up to standing back down to the mat.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: It really gets that blood pumping, getting everything circulating around ovulation.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: We want to start to incorporate some poses to really draw that energy down, to encourage that really strong ovulation and again create that heat in the body that we need for that peak part of the month.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And then, as we get into that two-week wait or to that luteal phase, we know that two things are going to happen if you're trying to conceive Either you're pregnant and your body is gearing up to do the biggest job it has ever done in its life, or you're not pregnant and your body is getting ready to bleed again, and in both of those cases we need to again support the body and come back to a little more of a state of let's find calm, let's come into regulation and let's remind the body that now is a safe time to conceive.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Or if your period's about to start, the energy and the hormone levels are dropping and we need to support that as well.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And it's a really.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: It's such a gentle practice and I I didn't learn about cycle syncing until I was in my late 30s when I started fertility yoga and I felt so ripped off that this was something that had been there my whole life.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I had been a woman for 38 years by this stage.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Not once had someone mentioned that I needed to change perhaps the way I exercise at different times of the month, and when I did, my cycle naturally lengthened out, it became more regular, I would ovulate more consistently and that was the only thing I had changed in my life.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: It's remarkable and I see it over and over again with a lot of the students that I work with and it doesn't have to be.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Let's do an hour a day when you carve out 10 minutes.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: The practices I give my students start from 10 minutes, because I know that looking down your day and thinking, oh god, I've got to fit in an hour to do my yoga practice, like no, that's not possible for everyone every day, but maybe sometimes you have that time.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: But sometimes I think the consistency is more valuable than the length of time that you dedicate to a practice.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: So that's what I say to people it's a way to reconnect with your body and what your body needs energetically and physically and emotionally, and we can do it in a really short amount of time.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I love that, because one of the biggest objections I get about incorporating new practices is I don't have time for that.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: But everyone has most likely 10 minutes.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I believe that equates to about 0.001% of your entire day, and you know, for anyone who might be like me and get a little caught up in a scroll, who might be like me and get a little caught up in a scroll, you could very likely set some kind of application on your phone to stop you from scrolling and remind you to do your yoga instead, and how much better will that feel for your nervous system to have done something really nourishing for yourself.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So I would wholeheartedly agree that the consistency of 10 minutes every day, or five days a week even, is going to override having one hour carved out one day a week.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Are there any specific fertility issues that this is well suited for?
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think everyone who has a reproductive system will benefit from this.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: We also do a lot of work with male fertility as well, as some interesting research is coming up with that.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: So the most of the women that I work with they have a very broad variety of fertility issues, so everything from PCOS to endometriosis, to those women who are more like me where they've got low AMH, high FSH and cycles are looking a bit patchy.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I also work with a lot of women who have hypothalamic amenorrhea, so their periods are stopped for whatever reason, and we work to really help support the body and bringing back a regular cycle.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I think that, yes, all of these hormonal issues can be addressed and, in terms of endometriosis, one of the best things that I think yoga can give you is help to relieve your symptoms.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not ever going to claim that yoga would help heal endometriosis.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: One of the best things that I think yoga can give you is help to relieve your symptoms.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not ever going to claim that yoga would help heal endometriosis.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I think anyone telling you that might need to um need to run a mile from, but it is, whilst, yes, we do see so often a lot of fertility issues that can be supported through these practices.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: The main thing I think it gives you is being able to bring back like a sense of control on your own journey.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: That isn't just I'm handing my body away to doctors and tests and procedures and all these surgeries that we go through, but it's what can I do naturally to support my body, but it's what can I do naturally to support my body.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: And it's because it's such a gentle practice and it's something that you give back to yourself.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: So it's not a I've got to take another supplement, I've got to restrict myself further with what I eat, I've got to make these appointments to go to all of my acupuncture, my hypnosis, my fertility massage, all of which I did, by the way.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: It is a way of giving back to yourself and, whilst, yes, it can help to synchronize a lot of the hormonal imbalances that we have, what I think it does best is gives you that sense of calm and peace that you can take through your pregnancy and into new parenthood, because you can override your hormonal problems.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: You can take the drugs, you can do all the things the doctor says and I did that and I got there.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I did, I got the baby.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: But look at what happened when I tried to conceive again.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Did that set me up for an easy journey the next time around?
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I think that pushing and pushing and just give me the medication, give me the drugs, I'll do whatever you say.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: We can do all of that, but at the same time, if it is coming from this place of I've got to push my body as hard as I possibly can.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And what's the next thing?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to take everything off the to-do list and you can can hear in my voice this sense of dysregulation and anxiety.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: We need to find a way to counterbalance that, and that's why these practices become so incredibly valuable, because do you want to live this way?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: You're going to eventually have the family and are you going to heal all of the things that you've been through?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Are you still going to be waiting for the other shoe to drop?
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Are you still going to be struggling with sleep?
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Are your hormonal problems going to be gone after you have your baby?
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: How long was I going to have insomnia?
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: For how many more sleeping tablets was I going to be prescribed?
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, you can push and push and get the baby that way, but is that going to make your life better in the long run?
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Push and get the baby that way, but is that going to make your life better in the long run?
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: So that's why I think that, yes, we can look at it as we're going to help balance out whatever hormonal issue you might be having, but it's going to make your life easier in the long run as well, and I think that's a really valuable part of all of this.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Well, we live in a society where there's so much dysregulation all around us.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Everywhere and you can't avoid it.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: You can't avoid it and especially, you know we have this availability of information 24-7 and we have the news in our palms 24-7.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: And to have another tool to help us stay regulated.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I find that for me, it's it is very helpful for my hormones and premenstrual symptoms and period cramps, but it shows up in my parenting and it shows up in, you know, the engagement that you have with others in the world, and so not only is this going to support your hormones and your blood circulation, but every interaction that you have with someone is impacted.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: So the ripple effects from something as simple as doing yoga for 10 minutes a day can be quite profound.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: That is so true and I noticed that all the time in my own life now and I'm no longer trying to conceive but if I've had a few days where I'm in that pattern of rushing and there's a thousand things to do and I've, you know, family and work and all the things, I am short with my kids and my husband and I do find it harder to get into that place of responding to things rather than just being reactive all the time and you just think that is that the way you want to live and I don't want to live that way.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: So that's what is always my constant reminder to keep coming back and it's kind of leads to a good question of like well, how often would someone need to be practicing and, for those who are still on a fertility journey, how long of this practice would they expect before they start seeing a result in their hormone symptoms or time to pregnancy?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Even if we have data on that.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: That is a really good question.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So I say to my students come to your mat three times a week.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: So if you can carve out three times a week when you get out your yoga mat or just leave it out, it's probably better.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: So it's there as a constant reminder and carve out some time.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: And sure, if you only have 10 minutes that's okay, but if you have half an hour, if you have 60 minutes, let's put that aside.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Put it in your calendar.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: All the practices I give my students range from 10 to 60 minutes.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: You've got those options.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: But on those other days where maybe you can't carve out that time, you also need to be doing something, because you can't just sail through the journey of trying to conceive and not be doing something to constantly be calming and regulating your nervous system.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: It's like going to the gym.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't go to the gym once and expect to have a six pack the next day.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: You would come up with a training plan, you would be consistent and you would expect to see results after a certain amount of time.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: So it's very similar in that kind of, in that the way that we would see results.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: So for my, a lot of my students, it's really interesting around sort of that three or four weeks when they are consistent students.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting around sort of that three or four weeks when they are consistent.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: They noticed, like I did, those little changes that I feel a little bit lighter.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: I feel like that cloud has started to lift.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I'm feeling less anxious in the lead up to appointments and things like that, but it's around that kind of three month mark that I really start to see changes.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So, for example, all the time, over and over again, I have students that come to me and they'll say something like I used to have a really regular, perfect cycle.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: It was 28 days, I'd ovulate really regularly, I didn't get any PMS and that was my cycle.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: But now, two years into my fertility journey, it has gone completely out the window journey.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It has gone completely out the window.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: It's unpredictable.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: It's 28 days here, 35 days here, 23 days the next.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I'm not ovulating regularly.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I'm now having horrible PMS.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: My sleep is suffering, I can't concentrate at work.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: All of these things are a sign that the disruption of those beautiful reproductive hormones that we have have been impacted by cortisol, which is our main stress hormone, and cortisol is incredibly powerful because the precursor to making cortisol within the body is a hormone called pregnenolone, and pregnenolone is also responsible for making progesterone.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: So if your body is spending all of its efforts making cortisol, there isn't much left over to produce progesterone and, as we know, we need that hormone for regular and healthy ovulation and our luteal phase and to help support our cycle.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: So we see that over and over again.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: So that three-month mark, I find, is where you've really created a new habit, these new neural pathways in the brain, and that's where I see people's cycles starting to re-regulate and things like I fall asleep more easily.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: I'm no longer waking up at two or three o'clock in the morning.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I wake up and I feel rested.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: That's a big one as well.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: So that is where I like to try and guide my students, and it really depends in terms of seeing a pregnancy.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of data that we have that shows that, yes, it increases your chances of a successful pregnancy and will shorten the time to pregnancy.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: There was a wonderful study that was done around 2015 by Harvard where they took a whole bunch of women who were going through IVF and they split them into two groups.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: One of the groups they just went through IVF as normal and the other group.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: They gave a whole lot of mind-body tools too, so breathwork, meditation, a lot of the things that we do in yoga.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: The group that did the mind-body practices had pregnancy rates three times greater than those who didn't, and that was in an IVF setting.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: But there are other studies that show so much of of you know the build-up of of stress hormones and cortisol can be lessened by these practices, and yoga is one of those very few complementary therapies that we see has been studied extensively in Western medicine.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: So we have huge amounts of data and research to show us what benefits they have for things like trauma recovery and PTSD.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: And I believe that fertility struggles are incredibly traumatic, especially when you've been through loss and recurrent loss.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Struggles are incredibly traumatic, especially when you've been through loss and recurrent loss.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: So we have a lot of things on paper to show us that these practices make a huge difference.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I hope that answered your question.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: That was a very long-winded answer.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I think the main takeaway is being like plan to get on your mat three times a week, plan to get on your mat three times a week and the time to pregnancy.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do always advise my clients that these practices will make your life better and we don't have control over the when or the how you get pregnant.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: And goodness, now that you know I've been diving into the spirit baby realm for about five years now it's like I've learned so much more, even about what these souls paths are, that we don't have control over, but when we can learn how to stay present and when we can just prepare the soil to like you know what.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know when this is going to happen, but I'm going to prepare my body, my heart, my mind, my home in a way that, like someone's going to really want to come into this vibe here and it's going to feel really good when it happens.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I heard someone describe this.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I wish I knew the source of this metaphor, but it was like describing like there's two women.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: They're both trying to get pregnant.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: One is sitting outside the restaurant looking in the window, going where is my food?
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: She hasn't even gone in and sat down and ordered yet but she's sitting out there demanding to know when her food is going to arrive.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: The other is already sitting at the table enjoying her drink, because she knows that her food is on its way.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And I thought, like goodness, similar to how you were going into, like the feeling of like pushing and wanting to know when it's going to happen and what else can I do it's like you can feel that energy.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's so demanding.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: It takes so much from you to stay in that state constantly.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It's so demanding.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It takes so much from you to stay in that state constantly.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: So when you can learn some tools and practices to really rebuild the trust and the connection in your body and the trust in this soul's timeline, and maybe even connect to that soul which I believe that yoga really helped me to do for my second pregnancy, it's a very different feel.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: A very, very different feel so, since you had such two very different pregnancy experiences well, three very different experiences, but with the pregnancies that resulted in your children, who are now earthside, is there anything that you would, knowing what you know now, that you would tell yourself seven, eight years ago as you were trying to conceive your daughter?
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: I would learn to tap into that energy of my baby.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I had a moment where I was starting my yoga practice and my teacher said I want you to put your hands on your belly, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to ask your body if she has any messages for you.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: And I thought that's weird.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Why would I do that?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Now, I do it every day.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I get my students to do it every day, and this is where yoga takes it a little bit of a woo-woo turn and where people really get addicted to it.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And I'm not religious, so being able to do something like this felt super weird for me.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: So I did, and clear as day, this message came into my head like someone was just screaming in my ear.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: My body said you never gave me a chance and I got chills.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: I started crying and it was so true.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: It was the one thing I hadn't done.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: How did my body feel throughout all of this?
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: I didn't care how my body felt.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: It wasn't pregnant.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: That wasn't good enough.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: That was a fail.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I was so ashamed of myself.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: My poor body was just crying out desperately to be heard and listened to.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: So that was a huge turning point for me and that led me into connecting with the spirit of my baby, which you mentioned, and being able to tap into that energy of well, this isn't actually just about me.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: This is about creating a life for somebody else.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: That is huge and when you start to zoom out and look at it from that perspective, I think, wow, like that's a huge responsibility that we have and it's something that we shouldn't take so lightly or or ignore.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: So I wish I could go back and tell myself that when I could connect more deeply to my own body and what she needed, that opened up that beautiful realm of possibility to what my baby then needed, and I felt like that open communication channel just went through.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And I'll just give you a quick story.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: I did a spirit baby session with a beautiful woman who was a medium throughout my journey.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: If you want to get super woo, I recommend throughout my journey.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: If you want to get super woo, I recommend it to everyone.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: I do?
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I do want to get super woo with you, let's do it.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: And I was.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: You know, I was well into my yoga practice by this stage.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: It was after I had had my pregnancy loss and she said I see a little boy, and she described his hair color and his eye color.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: He's got red hair neither my husband or I have red hair and she described his personality down to a T and I took that away and I was like, oh, that's very cute, whatever.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: And he is a thousand percent everything she described.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And how could she have known that, like you know, red hair is quite rare?
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: And how could she have known that, like you know, red hair is quite rare?
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: And so I thought that gave me that real sense of just being able to sit in that relief of my baby was on the way.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: And, just as you said, katie, I can't control the when or the how, but I can control the why, the why do I want this?
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Why do I want this baby?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: And I used to look at it as I just want to be pregnant.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: But no, you don't just want to be pregnant and you don't just want the baby, you want the life, you want the journey, you want the family, you want the experiences of having this little being in your life and that's what I was missing, and that's what I would go back and tell myself is the getting pregnant is going to be a short, short time of your life in the scheme of things.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Sure, it might feel incredibly long, and it is for so many of us, but when I look back at my life when I'm 70, 80, 90 years old, I won't even focus on that anymore.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: So I wish I could tell myself that and anyone listening.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: I hope that that resonates with you too.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you for getting woo with me and sharing that story about your son.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: We should get more woo.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: We'll do another episode where we just get fully woo into it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I would love to put that on the calendar because I love getting into the spiritual realm of this is apparently where my human design is meant to point me, which I'm still learning to lean into.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: But thank you so much for sharing your journey and the power of yoga.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I am wondering where can people find you if they want to work with you and learn more from you?
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Sure, you can find me on any social platform, or not any.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: I'm on mostly on Instagram, also TikTok and YouTube.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: If you search Jen Element Pilates Yoga, you'll find me, and at the end of this month I actually have a really wonderful training series available that is free for everyone who would like to come and join If you want to meet me, learn a little bit more about these practices and feel how they can have an impact on your own body.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: I love writing this series.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: It's something I only do once or twice a year and you can come and meet me for three days in a row.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: We do different breathwork practices, guided meditations and visualizations.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: We do some yoga flows, and it's a way to start using these practices within your own life and to see how they might support you on your own journey.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: So if you are interested in joining me for that and coming and learning any more about me, I will send you the link and you can put that down in the show notes.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: But in the meantime, you can reach out to me anytime if you have questions.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: You've heard this conversation and you just want to say hey, I heard you on Katie's podcast and I sound really interested.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I would love to connect with you, so send me a message and email anytime.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: It's always me responding um, not to, not a chat bot, so I would love to connect with anyone.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I can attest to that, having stalked you to realize that we were at the same conference because I followed you on Instagram and I was like hold up, we are going to the same place.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: So cool.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: The universe just has some timing sometimes, doesn't it?
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: It does so.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: The link to the three-day series will be in our show notes, as well as Jen's website and social media, so you can find her and learn more about incorporating yoga into your fertility and your life, because it truly is such a powerful practice for life.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Jen, thank you for being here.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: I look forward to our very woo-woo conversation for the future.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Me too.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me today, Katie.