Have You Heard of HypnoFertility?
By Hugh Sadlier, M.Ed., BCCH
without a period, the 24-year-old nurse at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, consulted an OB/GYN who was a fertility specialist. He couldn’t find the slightest thing wrong with her or her husband. Okay, she concluded, I guess my mind has stopped my period. She called the hospital’s psychiatry department. “I want someone good,” she said. Da-shih Hu, MD, a psychiatrist and an assistant professor at Dartmouth Medical School, invited Wendy into his office. They talked about her life, marriage, and work but found no obvious reasons why her reproductive system had shut down. When Hu suggested that hypnosis might help, Wendy bristled. “I thought he was literally nuts,” she said. “I knew nothing about hypnosis, except that it’s a bad Vegas act. And I hate magicians.” But two sessions later, with nothing to lose, she decided to
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give it a try. Hu asked her to close her eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine a wave of relaxation spreading slowly from her toes to the top of her head. “It was the feeling you get right before you go to sleep,” she recalls. At the doctor’s instruction, she took several more deep breaths, until she felt herself drifting off. Soon, her head slumped toward her chest, and the straight-back chair seemed to morph into a comfortable recliner. Hu asked Wendy to imagine a safe, restful place to visit, and at her suggestion, they “walked” to a waterfall. “Do you hear the sounds of water?” Hu asked. “Do you feel a breeze?” A quiet fluidity entered her soul, instilling a sense of peace she’d never known. “I was in the room, but I wasn’t there,” she says. “I was above
myself, looking down, like a mom looking down at a child. And I had this amazingly powerful feeling: I felt like I could fix myself.” Hu later asked Wendy to think of a day when she should start men- struating. On that very day, her period started. Soon afterward, she became pregnant, and 9 months later, her son was born.
Hypnosis and Healing
The above situation exemplifies the ease with which hypnosis can help people heal themselves. Researchers and practitioners are discovering how important the mind is in helping the body achieve optimal health. Hypnosis can identify and resolve emotional issues
14 Essential Living Maine ~ February 2015 Digital Edition
endy W. couldn’t believe it: Her cycles had always been very regular, but the minute she decided to try to get pregnant, she stopped menstruating. After 4 months
that are not available in the conscious mind and cause imbalances in the body. It can release the fear, lack of confidence, depression, confusion, anger, resentment, and stress that might contribute to infertility. “Karen McAuley spent years trying for a second child, although there was no medical reason to stop her conceiving. Then her doctor recommended an unusual remedy - hypnosis - and she became pregnant within months. Hypnotherapy would once have been put in the same class as black magic as an infertility cure, but the number of women using it to help them conceive has trebled in the past few years,” reportss the British Society of Hypnotherapy. Simply living in a fast-paced society creates stresses that
weren’t apparent a generation ago. “Over the last twenty years there has been a significant rise in the number of people who expe- rience problems conceiving. With approximately 25% of couples planning to have a baby experiencing problems, it is common for them to take two/three years to conceive their first child. And for those who seek medical help, 30% are told they have unexplained infertility for which science can offer no explanation.” www.hyp-
noticimpact.com.au Dr. Christine Northrup, Obstetrics & Gynecology specialist, talks about the importance of a healthy mind as well as a healthy body, and how it can impact fertility, in her book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. Northrup wrote: “Regardless of what you’ve 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.”
Educated experts from around the globe are proving the ef-
fectiveness of hypnosis to stimulate fertility. A recent Israeli study by Professor Eliahu Levitas conducted with 185 women, showed that the success rate of IVF doubled from 14% to 28%, when the subjects underwent hypnosis during implantation. Dr. Alice Domar has studies published in several important
journals, such as Fertility & Sterility (1990 and 2000) and the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association (1999). She continues to emphasize the importance of “mind/body” techniques, including self-hypnotic suggestions, to reduce stressors interfering with conception and healthy pregnancy. Dr Domar is the author of Conquering Infertility, and other books on the topic. The results of her new study, made public at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
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