Instead of being the intuitive goddesses women have been known to be throughout the ages, we are tiring ourselves out too much to truly listen. I can tell you where Mother Nature is: she’s inside your body, and she’s calling you home.
I’ve often wondered why we have so many yoga teachers today, myself included, and why the vast majority of yoga practitioners and teachers are women (which, oddly, is the complete opposite of how it is in India, where yoga was developed). Women are lost and confused. We are looking for more meaning. Things have gotten so crazy for us that we all need to go lie on the floor a couple of times a week and have some soothing voice tell us that everything is going to be okay, as long as we look within — and yet we don’t truly look within and have to keep going to yoga class every week for a little break from life. This is not true healing. This is only a brief respite from the root causes. The world needs women to do yoga off their mats and go make themselves and the world a better place.
Undoing the Decades of Neglect
Modern culture doesn’t celebrate feminine creative power very well. It celebrates women achieving things — becoming the CEO, starting the company, and doing it all with four kids. However, women are not taught much about the deep wisdom of their bodies and how to read it. I certainly was not.
If you had a woman in your life who thoroughly explained to you when you were a teenager what a treasure your body was, then consider yourself lucky. Many women today are educated about the female reproductive system in school, and only briefly. I still remember the day in fifth grade when the boys were taken outside to play kickball, and an educator proceeded to inform all us girls about the impending changes that would be happening to our bodies over the next few years. No one asked questions. We were all way too embarrassed. Here was an opportunity to teach us about the magical, mystical power we hold inside, and instead we felt traumatized. Like it or not, puberty was happening.
We are taught at this young age that we start to become different from boys, and that our bodies are something to be protected — from boys, from creepy adults, from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. There is very little celebration of this newfound power awaiting us, and as a result, many of us do not learn how to fully tap into it and there’s always an element of fear or disconnection surrounding our relationship with it. This often changes for us once we contemplate having a child. Suddenly we become very interested in this feature of our bodies that we felt was a nuisance for most our lives.
Biologically speaking, a woman develops the drive and capability to procreate at an age that is too young for her mind, family, religion, or culture to deal with. A young woman can have a baby once she goes through menarche (first period), which typically occurs between ages 10 and 15, with 12.6 being the mean age. Mentally and culturally, though, a budding woman at these ages is still developmentally a child. She has not yet matured enough to gain the level of independence or experience with the way of the world that an adult woman has. She is legally still a minor. Therefore, it is not socially acceptable for her to utilize this part of herself at the time it becomes biologically activated and available for use in the world, despite whatever normal, natural urges she has. If she is a responsible girl with urges, then in today’s society, she immediately gets set on a course for blocking pregnancy that can last for decades.
As adult women, we are often confused by, and don’t appreciate, our reproductive systems. We think they are way too inconvenient, and for years we mess with birth-control pills and other drugs to try not to have a period. If you are like me and lots of other modern women, then you spent most of your life using some form of birth control to avoid pregnancy. Perhaps you were so set on having sex whenever you wanted without getting pregnant that you even inserted a scratchy little IUD into your cervix to block sperm from getting in, even if it caused inflammation or hormonal imbalances. Maybe you wore a patch or even had some little implant placed. You let your intellectual and primal selves try to work together to solve the perennial problem of unplanned pregnancy until you felt ready for a planned one. You elicited help from your doctor to make this happen. And, when you finally decided that you might be ready for pregnancy, you began to feel that you had work to undo — to remove toxicity and blockages in both the mind and the body.
Most of my life, I wished I never had a period. It was a nuisance — something that got in the way when I wanted to go on vacation, work out, or have sex. I even went so far as to take the birth-control pill continuously for stretches of time so that I would never get a period. This was actually recommended to me by a gynecologist, so back then, I assumed it must have been a good idea. It was all very convenient for the other areas of my life, but after learning more about how the body works, I realized how narrowly focused our thinking is to cut off such a vital part of being a woman just because we find it inconvenient. A woman’s body is meant to flush itself regularly even if it isn’t getting pregnant — and perhaps especially if it’s not getting pregnant.
Many women remain confused about whether they want to have kids until right before they think their biological clock is about to stop ticking, when confusion turns into panic and fear of missing out, and they wonder if they can still freeze their eggs. And then what ensues is either a hurried hunt for the father of their child or a dramatic letting go of the idea altogether and burying themselves back into work so they can forget about it — until perimenopause hits and everything blows up again.
If you have been physically or mentally blocking your reproductive energy, it’s time to start to get to know this part of yourself again. Your awareness is power. By reacquainting yourself with your reproductive system, you will discover how truly magical it is. You are already, without a doubt, much more extraordinary than you’ve ever given yourself credit for.
Shifting from being a woman who has been blocking pregnancy to one who welcomes fertility is a multilevel process. It involves your mind, body, and spirit, and it’s not just about you. Your partner is greatly affected. Your dynamic with this person and others in your life is in a potential transition state. Since you mean business now, it’s time to look at all of this.
There is so much you can learn by studying your body, mind, cycles, and the environment around you. All your senses and several major systems of your body are involved in the monthly cycle, and if you are not paying attention to these cycles, you are missing out on some serious intuitive power — but when you reconnect with your inner being, even after trying to avoid pregnancy for so long, you are more likely to be reconnected with your reproductive power. When you turn a mirror back on yourself, you begin to see all the parts that may have been neglected or possibly even hurt. When you can see these clearly, then you can rejuvenate and heal and, in the process, develop superpowers.
Designing Your Life
Preparing your body for conception is really not that different from planting a garden. Once you learn what something needs to grow and thrive, you can create the conditions for that to occur: plant your seed during the right season, position it well, and then water accordingly. The first step is looking at what you yourself need in order to grow and thrive, and then you can focus on the elements that are supportive of building a family.
You must design a life moving toward bliss and health. To have these things, you need to cultivate the understanding that allows you to clearly perceive your environment. Then you have to make decisions that encompass your vision for your life, coupled with the reality in front of you. If you use your intellect wisely, you will make good decisions and health will prevail. If there is any flaw in your decision-making or in the use of your sense perception, then cycles of imbalances can begin.
It’s really important that you be as healthy as possible before you conceive, because stuff gets crazy after you get pregnant and have a child. Just trust me on this. I hope you are excited about learning how to take really good care of yourself, because all your life experiences will be so much better if you have your best health, whether you have a kid or not.
Embracing the Unknown
