photo: pawel szvmanski

The Communicating Brain: Clapping “the Wave”

I travel to New York often, and I love going to see Broadway musicals. When The Book of Mormon opened, I was one of the first to buy tickets. Members of the audience were laughing all the way through. At the end, the cast got a standing ovation.

Suddenly, the applause changed. Rather than a thousand people clapping separately, everyone began to clap in rhythm. Clap, clap, clap, clap. The rhythmic clapping become so insistent that the actors came back onstage for an encore. The clapping communicated approval to the actors, and they responded with another song.

The neurons in your brain do something similar. They fire together in rhythmic patterns, communicating with each other across the brain. These patterns are measured in cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz). Imagine an audience clapping together slowly. That’s a slow brain wave, with millions of neurons firing together slowly. Imagine an audience clapping quickly. That’s a fast brain wave, with millions of neurons firing together quickly.

Today’s EEGs calculate brain wave patterns from each of the brain’s many different parts. They typically use 19 electrodes attached to the surface of the scalp.

One research team observed, “Scientists are now so accustomed to these EEG correlations with brain state that they may forget just how remarkable they are…. A single electrode provides estimates of synaptic action averaged over tissue masses containing between roughly 100 million and 1 billion neurons” (Nunez & Srinivasan, 2006). When we see brain wave changes on an EEG, it indicates that the firing patterns of billions of neurons in our brains are also changing.

What Brain Waves Are and What They Do

There are five basic brain waves that are picked up by a modern EEG.

1. Gamma Brain Waves

Gamma is the highest brain wave frequency (40 to 100 Hz). It’s most prevalent at times when the brain is learning, making associations between phenomena and integrating information from many different parts of the brain.

A brain producing lots of gamma waves reflects complex neural organization and heightened awareness. When monks were asked to meditate on compassion, large flares of gamma were found in their brains (Davidson & Lutz, 2008).

They were compared to novice meditators who had meditated for an hour a day the week before. The novices had brain activity similar to that of the monks. But when the monks were instructed to evoke a feeling of compassion, their brains began to fire in rhythmic coherence, like the audience clapping at The Book of Mormon musical.

The flares of gamma waves measured in the brains of the monks were the largest ever recorded. The monks reported entering a state of bliss. Gamma is associated with very high levels of intellectual function, creativity, integration, peak states, and of feeling “in the zone.” Gamma waves flow from the front to the back of the brain about 40 times per second (Llinás, 2014). Researchers look to this oscillating wave as a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), a state linking the brain’s activity with the subjective experience of consciousness (Tononi & Koch, 2015).

Brain researchers talk about the amplitude of a brain wave and that simply means how big it is. A high amplitude of gamma means a big gamma wave, while a low amplitude means a small one. Measurements of brain waves show peaks and valleys. The distance from the peak to the trough is the amplitude. Amplitude is measured in microvolts, and brain waves typically measure between 10 and 100 microvolts, with the faster waves like gamma having the lowest amplitude.

Gamma brain wave states are associated with many beneficial changes in our bodies. A frequency of 75 Hz is epigenetic, triggering the genes that produce anti-inflammatory proteins in the body (De Girolamo et al., 2013). On the lower end of the gamma spectrum, a frequency of 50 Hz results in the body increasing its production of stem cells, the “blank” cells that differentiate into muscle, bone, skin, or whatever other specialized cells are required (Ardeshirylajimi & Soleimani, 2015). The frequency of 60 Hz regulates the expression of stress genes, those that code for stress hormones like cortisol. The same brain wave frequency also activates a key gene called Myc that in turn regulates around 15 percent of all the other genes in the body (Lin, Goodman, & Shirley‐Henderson, 1994).

EEG brain waves from slowest to fastest.

2. Beta Brain Waves

The next fastest wave is beta (12 to 40 Hz). Beta is typically divided into two parts: high beta and low beta. High beta is your monkey mind. High beta (15 to 40 Hz) is the signature brain wave of people with anxiety, people experiencing frustration, and people under stress.

The more stressed people become, the higher the amplitude of the beta their brains produce. Negative emotions such as anger, fear, blame, guilt, and shame produce large flares of beta waves in the EEG readout.

This shuts down the brain regions that handle rational thinking, decision making, memory, and objective evaluation (LeDoux, 2002). Blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, the “thinking brain,” is reduced by up to 80 percent. Starved of oxygen and nutrients, our brains’ ability to think clearly plummets.

Low beta is the band that synchronizes our bodies’ automatic functions, so it’s also called the sensorimotor rhythm frequency, or SMR (12 to 15 Hz).

Beta is required for processing information and for linear thinking, so normal levels of beta brain wave states are fine.

When you focus on solving a problem, composing a poem, calculating the best route to your destination, or balancing your checkbook, beta waves are your friend. SMR represents a calm, focused mental state. It’s stress that produces high beta, especially above 25 Hz.

3. Alpha Brain Waves

Alpha (8 to 12 Hz) is an optimal state of relaxed alertness. Alpha connects the higher frequencies—the thinking mind of beta and the associative mind of gamma—with the two lowest frequency brain waves, which are theta (4 to 8 Hz) and delta (0 to 4 Hz).

It turns out that alpha also does good things for our bodies. It improves our levels of mood-enhancing neurotransmitters such as serotonin. When the alpha brain wave level increased in a group of exercisers, they gained a boost in serotonin, and their emotional state was elevated (Fumoto et al., 2010). In another study, Zen meditators received the same benefits from cultivating an alpha state (Yu et al., 2011).

A pioneering study exposed DNA to various brain wave frequencies. It found that the alpha frequency of 10 Hz resulted in significantly increased synthesis of the DNA molecule (Takahashi, Kaneko, Date, & Fukada, 1986).

4. Theta Brain Waves

Theta is characteristic of deep relaxation and light sleep. When we dream vividly, our eyes move rapidly and our brains are primarily in theta. These brain waves are the frequency of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Theta is also the dominant frequency of people under hypnosis, healers, people in trances, and people in highly creative states of consciousness (Kershaw & Wade, 2012). The recollection of emotional experiences, both good and bad, can trigger theta.

It’s the frequency most commonly observed in healers. Becker (1990) found that when healers were in the midst of an energy healing session, theta was the most common wave in their brains.

Theta is associated with many beneficial changes in the body. A group of researchers studied the effect of various frequencies on DNA repair. They found that electromagnetic fields between 7.5 Hz and 30 Hz were able to enhance molecular bonding (Tekutskaya, Barishev, & Ilchenko, 2015). Within that range, 9 Hz proved most effective.

5. Delta Brain Waves

The slowest frequency is delta. Delta is characteristic of deep sleep. Very high amplitudes of delta are also found in people who are in touch with the nonlocal mind, even when they’re wide awake. The brains of meditators, intuitives, and healers have much more delta than normal.

The eyes of people who are in deep dreamless sleep don’t move. Delta waves also predominate in such non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.

Delta is the wave that we see in EEG readouts when people are having a sense of connection with the infinite. They typically report mystical experiences in which the local self merges with the nonlocal self. Meditators with large amplitudes of delta feel connected to all of nature, to other human beings, and to the infinite. They lose the sense of being an isolated individual, or what Albert Einstein called the delusion of separateness. Instead, they experience oneness with all that is.

When our brains are producing delta, we are bathing our cells in a frequency that has the potential to produce a whole gamut of beneficial physiological changes at the level of our cells, from growing our telomeres and boosting our growth hormone levels to regenerating our neurons and sweeping our brains clear of beta-amyloid plaques. We are not just having a nice subjective experience; in the delta state, we are creating an objective energy environment in which our bodies thrive.

Awakening from Everyday Reality

EEG pioneer Maxwell Cade noticed that alpha, in the middle of the range of frequencies, forms a bridge between the two high frequencies of beta and gamma and the two low frequencies of theta and delta (Cade & Coxhead, 1979). Biofeedback and neurofeedback skills focus on teaching people how to get into an alpha state. The ideal state is enough alpha to link all of the other brain rhythms together. High beta is minimized, so that there is very little monkey mind and anxiety. There is a balanced amount of gamma and theta, and a wide base of delta.

A biophysicist, Cade had worked on radar for the British government before turning his attention to measuring states of consciousness. He developed his own machine, the “mind mirror,” in 1976. It is unique among EEG devices in that it provides a clear visual snapshot of brain waves.

His student Anna Wise described the machine as follows: “What sets the Mind Mirror apart from other forms of electroencephalography was the interest, on the part of its developer, not in pathological states (as in the case of medical devices), but in an optimum state called the Awakened Mind. Instead of measuring subjects with problems, the inventor of the Mind Mirror sought the most highly developed and spiritually conscious people he could find. In the flicker of their brainwaves, he and his colleagues found a common pattern, whether the subject was a yogi, a Zen master or a healer.”

The Awakened Mind

Using the mind mirror, over 20 years, Cade recorded the brain wave patterns of more than 4,000 people with strong spiritual practices. He found the Awakened Mind state was common in this group. Cade also noticed another similarity: they all had high amounts of alpha brain waves. As noted, alpha waves are right in the middle of the spectrum, with beta and gamma above, and theta and delta below. When someone in the Awakened Mind state has lots of alpha, it creates a link between the high brain wave frequencies above and the low frequencies below. Cade called this the alpha bridge, because it bridges the conscious mind frequencies of beta with the subconscious and unconscious mind frequencies of theta and delta. This allows a flow of consciousness, integrating all the levels of mind.

Cade wrote: “The awakening of awareness is like gradually awakening from sleep and becoming more and more vividly aware of everyday reality—only it’s everyday reality from which we are awakening!” (Cade & Coxhead, 1979).

I developed a meditation method called EcoMeditation that’s very simple, yet it’s consistently and automatically able to bring people into the Awakened Mind EEG pattern. EcoMeditation uses EFT tapping to clear obstacles to relaxation. It then takes you through a series of simple physical relaxation exercises that send signals of safety to the brain and body. It does not rely on belief or philosophy; instead, it’s based on sending the body physiological cues that produce deeply relaxed states of consciousness automatically. The instructions are free at EcoMeditation.com.

During EcoMeditation, we see lots of delta brain waves as well. Delta is where we connect with many resources above and beyond the local self. As noted, people in trance states, as well as healers, artists, musicians, and intuitives, tend to have plenty of delta.

Those in a creative trance, such as a composer making music or a child at play, usually have lots of delta waves. They lose all awareness of the outer world as they become absorbed in their creativity. They’re mostly in delta, with some theta and alpha, and just enough beta to function (Gruzelier, 2009).

It’s been fascinating to me to speak to people whose brain wave states show a high amplitude of delta waves during meditation. They report transcendent experiences. They describe feeling one with the universe, an exquisite sense of harmony and well-being (Johnson, 2011). Albert Einstein referred to this as an expansive state of consciousness in which we “embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature.” Scientists can be mystics too!

When Consciousness Changes, Brain Waves Change

The energy fields of brain waves and the matter of neural pathways are in a constantly evolving dance. When states of consciousness change, brain waves change and different neural pathways are engaged.

The extremes are love and fear. When we’re in a state of fear, our alpha bridge disappears. We may still have theta and delta, but we’re cut off from the resources of our subconscious mind and its connection with the universal whole. Beta waves flood the fearful brain. It’s in survival mode.

When we’re in a state of bliss, our brains show the Awakened Mind pattern. A step beyond, they can also move to a symmetrical pattern Cade called the Evolved Mind. As our consciousness is filled with love, our brains function very differently, with large amounts of theta and delta, plus an alpha bridge to connect our conscious with our subconscious mind.

Emotions create brain states. Brain waves measure the fields generated by consciousness. Passing signals through the neural bundles engaged by love, joy, and harmony creates a characteristic energy field (Wright, 2017). When monitoring the brains of people doing EcoMeditation, EEG expert Judith Pennington observed that “theta and delta progressed their patterns from the Awakened Mind to the Evolved Mind state.”

Emotions also create neurotransmitters. Among these are serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, and anandamide (Kotler & Wheal, 2017). Serotonin is associated with satisfaction, and dopamine with a sensation of reward. Endorphins block pain and increase pleasure. Oxytocin is the “bonding hormone,” and it stimulates feelings of closeness and intimacy with others. Anandamide is called the “bliss molecule,” and it’s named after the Sanskrit word for happiness. It binds to the same receptors in the brain as THC, the primary psychoactive molecule in marijuana. When the mind changes, it creates molecular facts in the form of these neurotransmitters. As they flood our brains, we feel satisfied, secure, bonded, blissful, and serene. When our minds enter elevated emotional states, we’re literally getting high—on drugs produced by our bodies.

Consciousness Shifts the Way the Brain Processes Information

When we meditate, tap (EFT), use another form of energy psychology, or otherwise shift our consciousness, the brain changes quickly. The brain can be intentionally changed by the mind, especially by what is known as attention training (Schwartz & Begley, 2002). True transformation repatterns neural pathways. Eventually, the entire state of the brain shifts and establishes a new and healthy level of homeostasis.

One research team notes that “an accelerating number of studies in the neuroimaging literature significantly support the thesis that… with appropriate training and effort, people can systematically alter neural circuitry associated with a variety of mental and physical states that are frankly pathological” (Schwartz, Stapp, & Beauregard, 2005). We can take our dysfunctional brain networks and alter them with our minds.

It’s not just mystics and healers who produce large alpha bridges and theta brain wave flares when they’re in ecstatic states. Groups for whom high performance is critical are finding that tuning the brain in this way produces big leaps in achievement. U.S. Navy SEALs need to operate effectively in rapidly changing combat conditions. Using millions of dollars of advanced EEG equipment in a “Mind Gym” specially constructed in Norfolk, Virginia, they learn to enter a state they call ecstasis (Cohen, 2017). Once they “flip the switch” into ecstasis, their brains are in a state of flow, an altered reality in which super-performance becomes possible. Other peak performers, such as elite courtroom lawyers, Olympic athletes, and Google executives, also train themselves to enter ecstasis.

The characteristics of these flow states are described in the book Stealing Fire (Kotler & Wheal, 2017). Among them are selflessness and timelessness. People in ecstasis transcend the boundaries of local mind. EEG readings show that the prefrontal cortex of their brains, the seat of a sense of self, shuts down. Beta-wave mental chatter ceases. They gain distance from the anxious obsessions of local mind. Their internal chemistry changes as “feel-good” neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, anandamide, and oxytocin flood their brains.

In this state, they gain a nonlocal perspective. They are open to an infinite range of possible options and outcomes. The self, rather than being trapped in a limited fixed local reality, is able to try on different possibilities. This “knocks out filters we normally apply to incoming information,” leading to associative leaps that facilitate problem solving and super-creativity. Kotler and Wheal (2017) review the research on the performance gains produced by these brain wave states. These include a 490 percent improvement in mental focus, a doubling of creativity, and a 500 percent increase in productivity.

Commonalities in Mystical Experience

The neuroscientists I’ve worked with have instructed experienced meditators to provide prearranged signals during meditation, such as tapping their forefinger three times when they feel the experience of oneness. We can time-stamp this spot on the EEG readout. This has allowed us to correlate their internal experience with brain states.

During ecstasis, whether found in the ancient accounts of Tukaram or the modern experiences of the Navy SEALs, people have common experiences. These are linked to neurotransmitters: entering a state of bliss (anandamide), a sense of detachment from the body that encapsulates the local self (endorphins), the local self bonding with the nonlocal universe (oxytocin), serenity (serotonin), and the reward of being changed by the experience (dopamine).

These are the characteristics of upgraded minds, and we now have EEGs and neurotransmitter assays to measure the changes they produce in matter. In the past, ecstatic states were attainable only by mystics, and it took decades of study, rigorous practice, ascetic discipline, and spiritual initiation. Today, “we now know the precise adjustments to body and brain that let us recreate them for ourselves” at will; technology is providing us with “a Cliff Notes version of… how to encounter the divine” (Kotler & Wheal, 2017). Today, the highest-performing humans in the fields of sports, business, combat, science, meditation, and art are inducing them routinely. Tomorrow, as we map the physiology of these states and turn ecstasis into a learnable skill, they will be available to everyone.

Excerpted with permission from Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality by Dawson Church, Ph.D. Available online at hayhouse.com and Amazon.com.

About The Authors

Dawson Church, Ph.D., is an award-winning author whose best-selling book, The Genie in Your Genes has been hailed by reviewers as a breakthrough in our understanding of the link between emotion and genetics. He founded the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare to study and implement evidence-based psychological and medical techniques. His groundbreaking research has been published in prestigious scientific journals. He shares how to apply the breakthroughs of energy psychology to health and athletic performance through EFT Universe, one of the largest alternative medicine sites on the web. Learn more at eftuniverse.com and dawsonchurch.com.

photo: analise benevides

Many of my clients reach out to me for help with physical complaints. No, I am not a doctor, nor do I diagnose symptoms. But I do believe that on some level, the women and men who seek me out understand that their symptoms—aches and pains, trouble sleeping, depression, infertility, anxiety, weight issues, stomach upset, blood pressure, and addiction or substance abuse—can find some relief through hypnosis. And they are right. These are women and men of all ages, backgrounds, and awareness levels, and many come to me as a kind of last resort—they’ve been to doctors, psychologists, acupuncturists, ministers, or shamans who have offered protocols of all persuasions. But their problems are stubborn, deeply rooted, and often leave them feeling hopeless. Through our focused work on the subconscious and the power of the mind over the body, my clients discover a new way to think about wellness, their bodies, and their physical ailments. I listen, observe, and then guide them to connect with their inner selves to get to the root of their problem and how they unwittingly may have helped create it. Yes, created. We like to acknowledge all the good things that we create for ourselves but feel uncomfortable about and resistant to admitting to the problems we create for ourselves. There is something incredibly empowering about recognizing the role you play in your health—once you take ownership of having created the problem, you can then take proactive steps to fix it! You’re probably wondering how a physical issue or ailment can be created and what the connection is to the subconscious. I suppose you already heard the “mind over body” phrase many times over. But, what does that mean? Through my work, I’ve come to understand that physical issues can be caused by past or present heartache. Debilitating anxiety can be the aftereffect of trauma or emotional shock to your overall body-brain system. Frustrated and hopeless, most people don’t know about this mind-body connection. It gives me great satisfaction when clients come to me and through our work together, and oftentimes with their physician’s assistance, they are able to return to excellent health. What sort of results have I seen? Claire came to see me after almost a year of struggling through menopause symptoms that nothing seemed to alleviate. She used hypnosis to tune into her body and determine if her symptoms were something she might be able to calm down on her own. Once she stopped resisting the hot flashes, moodiness, and trouble sleeping, the symptoms began to settle down. For Claire, her resistance was stoking her hormonal imbalances. The concept of mind over body control helped her ease the pain caused by the menopause symptoms. Todd, a client who was being treated for mesothelioma (an aggressive form of lung cancer), came to me after treatment; half the cancerous lung had been cleared by the necessary medical interventions, and his doctors were pleased with the results. Todd wasn’t. He wanted to see if he could find a way to communicate with his damaged lung. This is when he sought me out. Through hypnosis and deeper work with his subconscious, he was able to feel optimistic, connect to his immune system, and lower his stress. After a month of practicing these Hypnotic Hacks, Todd returned to his oncologist, who was amazed at his improvements. The subconscious can seem almost magical at times. These reactions to stress and illness can bring relief. However, you do not have to be ill or have a specific disease to benefit from the Six Principles and Hypnotic Hacks I’ve outlined in my book. Indeed, my work with people teaches them how to use the concept of mind over body healing and their subconscious to improve their health in general, not to address a specific ailment. I think of our bodies as vessels for all that we are—body, mind, and soul—and they need protection and good care. And when we use our subconscious power to tap into our bodies and its signals, truly listening to what our bodies are telling us, then we are better able to be their stewards and reach or maintain optimal health and wellness.

When Your Ailment Is Working for You

I’ve seen many clients develop a dependence on their own illness because it “works” for them on an obscure level. This may sound counterintuitive—how can someone’s illness work for them?—but think about it for a moment. If someone feels alone or misses a cherished parent, having caring women and men in white lab coats dote on them may fill a void. But what kind of life is that? I guide clients through their dependency by helping them envision their own health and imagine a life of well-being where they become truly accountable. I show them how their illness has come to define them so they can move past it. This was the case with Robert, who has suffered from a bad back for years. Before trying the mind body spirit healing, he’d complain constantly about his pain. And yet in his regular diatribe, I picked up on a certain note of pride, as he implied that his enduring the physical suffering was an accomplishment. He described his weekly routine in such a way that it became clear that he was attached to his suffering. For example, he told me that his favorite day of the week was Saturday. When I asked him why, he explained that it was the day he had physical therapy for his back. He described that on his way to PT, he’d fit in time to eat his favorite yogurt, then stop for a latte, and then a quick game of mah-jongg in the park. When he got to the PT office, he said, he loved having a quick flirt with the receptionists, enjoying every moment. He described those details with a big smile on his face.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

Robert’s bad back was working for him. He was holding on to this ailment because he’d made it bring him happiness—in the form of lattes, mah-jongg, and frozen treats. He created a day of socializing around his ailment, and that day had become the cornerstone of his weekend. What intrinsic motivation did he have to get better and give up his bad back? On a subconscious level, his bad back isn’t bad at all. In other words, Robert had grown dependent on a physical ailment because it gave him permission to enjoy himself. Through our work together, he was able to clarify the discrepancy between the actual discomfort he experiences in his back and his need for more pleasure. When he was able to be more truthful about his desire for enjoyment and how he mistakenly believed that his back pain prevented him from these pleasures, he was able to use the mind over the body technique to take some concrete steps to shift his relationship with his bad back. First, he gave himself rewards throughout the week, not reserving them only for Saturdays. Then he took more accountability for the root causes (the tightness in his hips and his weak core muscles, for starters) of the chronic pain he was experiencing. With these two simple actions, Robert was able to give himself permission to really go after pleasure in his life and to take care of his body in a more complete, conscious way. Let me share another story about the power of the mind over the body. This one is about my client Will, the meat-eater. Will loves backyard BBQs, so much so that he even named his grill: he calls her Sue. Will also likes fitness, so it made sense that he would fall in love with Rebecca, his yoga instructor, whom he says looks great in her down dog and who is a vegetarian health fanatic. The two fell madly in love and were soon engaged. Because of his devotion to Rebecca, he follows her lead when she introduces a new health fad—cleanses, boot camps, liquid diets, intermittent fasting—you name it, they tried it. Before the wedding, Rebecca asked Will to go meat-free, and as a sign of his love and good intentions, he agreed. This was not no sex before the wedding day; this was no meat before the wedding day. Veggies ruled for a while—veggie broccoli steak, veggie jerky, veggie chili. You get the idea. But soon, Will started to not feel well. He’d feel fine all day at work, but as soon as he came home, he’d start to feel sick to his stomach and achy, and would need to go to bed. Rebecca assumed it was his body making the transition from a body built on meat to a healthier body fueled by greens. But what was really making Will so sick? There was one thing he did not tell Rebecca: he’d been secretly eating meat all along at lunch during the workday. It wasn’t really the meat that mattered. It was that meat mattered to Will. Unwittingly, Rebecca had asked Will to give up a very basic but important need in his life, and Will could not really give it up without feeling deeply resentful. But the toll of lying to Rebecca was more powerful than the resentment: it was making him physically sick. Until Will came into accountability and confessed to Rebecca that he had continued to eat meat, he would continue to feel sick. He was conflicted because he loved both Rebecca and (his grill) Sue. But secrets don’t bond us; they shred us. Will and Rebecca eventually discovered a happy compromise, which allowed Will to eat meat but also participate in Rebecca’s meals, eating and enjoying lots of veggies! They both benefited from being more honest about their needs and learned how to create a more mutual give-to-get principle in their relationship. A win-win!

Hypnotic Hack: Be Body Aware

What role are you playing in your illness? You must be willing to explore the emotional ties to your pain or ailments. Be honest when you look at yourself and how certain choices and patterns keep you locked in physical discomfort. Tapping into your subconscious enables you to release physical dependencies that may parade as illnesses. This exercise will enable you to bring into clarity what is physical… and what might have unacknowledged or unresolved emotional roots.

1. Close your eyes and go within.

2. Imagine your health.

3. What physical issues or limitations are you experiencing?

4. What secondary benefits are you experiencing by holding on to this condition? (This step requires accountability. We don’t want to believe that we are playing a role in limiting ourselves this way; remember, this information isn’t coming from your conscious mind, but from your subconscious. You may be unwittingly causing yourself to feel discomfort as a means of self-protection or self-limitation. Does this ailment keep you from working at a job you don’t enjoy anyway? Are you afraid of failure? Maybe this distress gives you the attention you crave from an otherwise distant family member or mate. Are you restricted from enjoyable activities? What is at the core of not being able to hike with your family?)

5. Imagine all the things you would do successfully if this condition or situation were not in your life. In what ways would this new freedom allow you to enjoy your life, spend more time with your loved ones, reach new career heights?

There is a very powerful fact: the decision is yours. Physical conditions can arise from continually ignoring what’s really going on. When you tap into your subconscious and really attune yourself to a level of mind-body control, you will know what’s real and what’s not. Yes, you’ll have to be brave. Yes, you may need to remind yourself that you are capable and supported. Have faith that you are indeed ready—it’s time to elevate your health.

On Louise Hay’s Symptom List

In many ways, Louise Hay was the first to identify and define how our minds are connected to our bodies. In her well-recognized Symptom List, which I have adapted here, Hay points to how certain areas of the body and specific symptoms may be related to emotional states or feelings. Consider this list as you begin to tune into your own body and learn the power of the mind over the body.

Acne: Not accepting the self. Dislike of the self. Addictions: Running from the self. Fear. Not knowing how to love the self. Allergies: Denying your own power. Alzheimer’s Disease: Refusal to deal with the world as it is. Hopelessness and helplessness. Anger. Ankle: Inflexibility and guilt. Ankles represent the ability to receive pleasure. Anxiety: Not trusting the flow and the process of life. Arthritis: Feeling unloved. Criticism, resentment. Back Issues: Represents the support of life. Lower Back Pain: Fear of money or lack of financial support. Mid-Back Pain: Guilt. Stuck in all that stuff back there. “Get off my back!” Upper Back Pain: Lack of emotional support. Feeling unloved. Holding back love. Broken Bones: Rebelling against authority. Cancer: Deep hurt. Long-standing resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds. Cholesterol: Clogging the channels of joy. Fear of accepting joy. Constipation: Incomplete releasing. Holding on to garbage of the past. Guilt over the past. Sometimes stinginess. Depression: Anger you feel you do not have a right to have. Hopelessness. Diabetes: Longing for what might have been. A great need to control. Deep sorrow. No sweetness left. Eczema: Breathtaking antagonism. Mental eruption. Fatigue: Resistance, boredom. Lack of love for what one does. Foot Problems: Fear of the future and of not stepping forward in life. Hands: Hold and handle. Clutch and grip. Grasping and letting go. Caressing. Pinching. All ways of dealing with experiences. Headaches: Invalidating the self. Self-criticism. Fear. Heart Attack: Squeezing all the joy out of the heart in favor of money or position. Feeling alone and scared. “I’m not good enough. I don’t do enough. I’ll never make it.” Heart Problems: Long-standing emotional problems. Lack of joy. Hardening of the heart. Belief in strain and stress. Hip: Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to. Impotence: Sexual pressure, tension, guilt. Social beliefs. Spite against a previous mate. Fear of mother. Indigestion: Gut-level fear, dread, anxiety. Griping and grunting. Inflammation: Fear. Seeing red. Inflamed thinking. Anger and frustration about conditions you are looking at in your life. Insomnia: Fear. Not trusting the process of life. Guilt. Kidney Stones: Lumps of undissolved anger. Knee: Represents pride and ego. Stubborn ego and pride. Inability to bend. Fear. Inflexibility. Won’t give in. Legs: Carry us forward in life. Menopause Problems: Fear of no longer being wanted. Fear of aging. Self-rejection. Not feeling good enough. Neck: Represents flexibility. The ability to see what’s back there. Refusing to see other sides of a question. Stubbornness, inflexibility. Unbending stubbornness. Osteoporosis: Feeling there is no support left in life. Mental pressures and tightness. Muscles can’t stretch. Loss of mental mobility. Pain: Guilt. Guilt always seeks punishment and it can cause chronic pain. Sinus Problems: Irritation toward one person, someone close. Sprains: Anger and resistance. Not wanting to move in a certain direction in life. Stiffness: Rigid, stiff thinking. Throat (sore): Holding in angry words. Feeling unable to express the self. Thyroid Gland: Humiliation. “I never get to do what I want to do. When is it going to be my turn?” Hyperthyroid: Rage at being left out. Varicose Veins: Standing in a situation you hate. Discouragement. Feeling overworked and overburdened. Weight Issues: Often represents fear and shows a need for protection. Running away from feelings. Insecurity, self-rejection, and seeking fulfillment. Wrist: Represents movement and ease.

Where Are You Now?

Take a moment to think about your own body and respond to the questions below:

1. Do you often wake up feeling rested after a night’s sleep? 2. Do you have the energy for the activities you enjoy? 3. Can you walk up a flight of stairs with ease? 4. Are you able to touch your knees (or maybe your toes!)? 5. Can you raise your arms overhead? 6. Are you able to balance on one leg for any length of time? 7. Do you often find yourself hungry or craving certain foods? 8. Do you go to sleep around the same time each night and stay asleep? 9. Do you enjoy spending active time outdoors? 10. Do you belong to a gym?

If you responded “yes” to most of these questions, then you are more than likely taking good care of your physical health. If you answered “no” to more than three questions, then pay particular attention to the lessons in this article. The Truth Behind Surprising Diagnoses When you are connected to your subconscious, you are in tune with your body at a cellular level. You are in tune with its ups and downs, its ebbs and flows. You know that the reason you have a headache is that you are dehydrated after a long walk or run. You know that you woke up feeling sluggish because you had one too many glasses of wine, an unhealthy meal, or a too-big dessert the night before. You know that your stress level is a bit higher than usual because you’ve recently moved offices or homes. In other words, you have the ability to listen to your body and read its cues, which in turn positions you to respond immediately to alleviate the symptom or address the cause. You drink plenty of fluids to reverse dehydration. You rest, avoid sugary foods and beverages and do a mini cleanse to cleanse your liver and blood to get rid of that hungover feeling. Whatever the issue, you address it, so it doesn’t have a chance to worsen. The opposite happens when you’re out of sync with your subconscious; it’s as if warnings come out of the blue, but do you pay attention? Here is an example from my own life. During a time of enormous stress, when my elderly father was going through some health issues, he turned to me from his hospital bed and said, “Kimberly, what is that bulging bump on your forehead?” I couldn’t feel anything, and I figured it was his bad eyesight or a shadow from poor lighting. When I eventually looked in the mirror, sure enough, I saw a big, distended, blue-and-purple vein on my temple. I sent a picture of it to my doctor.

“Be very careful,” my doctor told me, “because it’s in a precarious position.”

“What is it?” I asked in frustration.

“It’s probably stress,” responded the doctor blithely. I listened. “You’re under a lot of stress right now, Kimberly, isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“And you’ve been traveling back and forth from Nevada to California to Texas, correct?”

“Yes.”

“These kinds of things can appear during stressful times, so I recommend you take a deep breath, sit and relax, and check on it then.”

I followed my doctor’s advice, and in thirty minutes the bulging vein was gone. I am not worried about it returning because it doesn’t have to—I’m now connected to my subconscious and keeping my stress levels in check. Thanks to the literal heads-up, which served as a reminder of the power of the mind over the body. The surprise is not the actual diagnosis; the surprise is that we are unaware of our bodies and changes to them. When we use our subconscious power to stay tuned in to our bodies, its shifts, and changes, then it’s easier to keep our health in alignment. However, when your subconscious and your conscious mind are out of balance, you will not look or feel your best. Some people will overextend themselves. Others will stop eating right or eat too much of foods that don’t make them feel well. Still, others will begin to sleep poorly, and the signs of fatigue will show—around the eyes, for instance. Interestingly, friends and loved ones who are in tune with their subconscious will notice this about you right away. Hence their well-meaning comments of “You look tired” or “Are you feeling okay? You don’t seem yourself.” Since the subconscious is a primal, instinctual kind of knowing that we all share, connecting us at the pack level, we can sense when others in the pack are not at their most fit. If we are disconnected from our subconscious, it will communicate to us in a different way: our bodies will reflect key messages from the subconscious. When we ignore our bodies and these messages, ailments will crop up and surprise us. This is the subconscious demanding to be heard. When we really suppress our subconscious, we can trigger the disease. In the paragraphs ahead, you will learn a lot more about how your body reflects the yearnings of your subconscious. Heed its warnings. Take good care of it. Your physical body and health are an important barometer of the connection between your subconscious and your conscious mind.

Know Your Body

Living our lives necessitates continual healing at a cellular level. Our bodies are always responding and adapting to outside negative influences—environmental stress, pollution, viruses, and a host of microscopic organisms that can negatively affect our bodies and brains. The key to maintaining your subconscious power and using it to protect your health and build your resistance from outside threats is to tap into your body in a regular way. Use the Body Scan hack below as a way to do so.

Hypnotic Hack: Body Scan

To get a better sense of how your physical ailments may be connected to a non-physical source, try the following exercise and experience the miracles of mind over body healing: Consciously notice and write down different body parts that you feel are malfunctioning now or that you may worry about in the future. Notice the function for each body part and refer to the symptom list on the previous pages. For example, if your hands hurt, what are you having trouble grasping? If your hips hurt, you might be in need of balance. The knees represent your pride and ego. Learn to cue into the emotional roots to physical symptoms. Our body parts correspond and react to our thoughts, and if these thoughts are unattended, the physical problem persists until it awakens our attention. In this exercise, you will be asking your subconscious to reveal to you any physical issues and concerns that need to be brought to your conscious attention. It’s not unusual for this exercise to reveal more than one issue, so have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil handy so that you can make a list. A body scan is a tried-and-true exercise recommended by many practitioners as a way to bring attention to the sensations of your body and train yourself to attend to its needs. I’ve adapted this body scan based on what has worked best for my clients and myself. It’s a great way to connect your subconscious to the areas of your body that might be out of balance and need some attention, care, and mind, body and spirit healing. I love this protocol in conjunction with regular doctor visits because oftentimes your physician will ask you to identify your aches, pains, symptoms, or reason for your visit. When you relay this information to your medical professional, he or she is in a better position to identify the issues, answer your questions, and respond to your concerns. Remember, a surprise diagnosis can be a diminished link between the subconscious, the conscious mind, and the body.

1. Close your eyes and go within.

2. While relaxed, breathe deeply in and out.

3. With each breath, imagine various parts of your body. Begin at the top of your head, moving to your neck, down your spine, into each of your limbs, and ending at your feet.

4. Notice the sensations you encounter and where on your body these sensations occur. (Do you encounter any stiffness? Blockage? Tightness?)

5. If yes, breathe into the affected body part. Feel the rhythm of your breath, massaging any discomfort until that body part feels released.

6. Ask your subconscious to identify the original source of that discomfort. (Oftentimes the name of a person, place, or thing will come into your awareness.) Continue to breathe into the resolution, releasing any residual discomfort.

7. With each new body part, repeat this breathing technique until all symptoms subside.

8. While continuing to breathe deeply, send gratitude to your subconscious for your new awareness and connectivity to your physical body.

Welcome your discoveries, knowing you can check on your body any time you choose. And remember, physical discomfort is meant to get your attention; you can admit nothing gets our attention like discomfort. It’s actually your ally, your guide. Use it for what it is: an alarm. This is where the subconscious comes in. In other words, when emotions on the inside are out of step with ecology on the outside, there can be a physical imbalance.

The Importance of Fitness

Your health emerges from the inside out. Getting fit through eating a clean, balanced diet and exercising regularly is not about vanity. It’s about building a body that is reliable and resourceful. You know that feeling when you are so tired, your lack of energy keeps you from doing what you want? Respecting your body makes it reliable. Treating your body like the vessel also shows your SoulSpirit that you care; this care is a form of respect toward your SoulSpirit and one of the primary keys to healing mind, body and soul. When I think about health and fitness, I like to envision an airplane pilot seeking balance, keeping both wings parallel to the horizon to level the plane. When the plane lists to one side or a malfunction is detected, lights flash, sirens whine, and occasionally a mechanical voice will repeat a warning to get the pilot’s attention. Imagine that the plane is your body and the whirring instrumentation is your subconscious. A 2007 study done by Cornell University professors revealed a surprising statistic: the biggest weight loss or the most weight dropped by women is before their weddings. How do the brides themselves explain the weight loss? Because they want to like how they look in their wedding photos. But the study findings disagree, and instead suggest that the primal directive from the subconscious was suggesting women lose weight so their grooms would believe they had made the best choice in a mate. The research seems to suggest that on a subconscious level we want to be perceived as fit. In fact, with clients who struggle with their fitness, I found a direct relationship between the amount of unhappiness they experience and the amount of slack they have allowed themselves: the more they cared, the more fit they were; the more slack they gave themselves, the less fit they were… and the less happy. The slack they afforded themselves and the level of unhappiness were in direct proportion to each other. In other words, the more they let their health slide and recognized it, the more unhappiness they experienced. Weight fluctuation is not uncommon during the course of a lifetime, and there are many reasons people put on extra pounds here and there—divorce, stress, sickness, hormone changes, job loss, job gain… the list is endless and ever-changing. We are all susceptible to weight and fitness fluctuations during stressful times. The key is to then right our course. Becoming fit should never involve an endless binge-and-purge cycle. It does not require deprivation or scarcity. Now, at the risk of raising a touchy subject, I want to address the real pain of weight issues: they can be an outward sign that something is unbalanced on the inside. Our bodies are designed to always seek homeostasis, a place of equilibrium for all our physiological processes. Homeostasis is the basis for an interesting and sometimes controversial approach to thinking about stubborn weight issues: set point. First identified in 1982 by nutrition scientists William Bennett and Joel Gurin, set point theory states that a person’s body has a predetermined weight range in which it feels most comfortable, which implies that your body will sabotage itself during weight loss by slowing down your metabolism and the rate at which it burns or consumes calories. Regulated by the hypothalamus, this set point also suggests that the internal regulating system of overweight or obese people has become disrupted due to overeating, sedentary lifestyle, and other factors. Of course, set point theory also explains why it’s so difficult for people to lose weight and keep it off for good. All our bodies are looking to return to their set point. People who are either not tapped into their subconscious or whose subconscious and conscious mind are out of sync will tend to not eat enough or to eat past satiety, consuming more food than their bodies can utilize. Due to the mind-body connection, our subconscious is preprogrammed to do everything it can to get the body what it needs; sometimes, the conscious mind resists this information. Some people, of course, go in the other direction toward fitness and push themselves to an extreme. Sometimes to such an extreme that an injury, stress attack, or exhaustion might occur. Fanaticism in either direction is going to hurt your equilibrium. True health is the result of first understanding your real thoughts and real reasons for eating and exercising like you do. Do you move away from what’s best for you? Do you hang out with other family or friends where eating unhealthily has become your routine and your bond, an excuse not to thrive? Are you in a misery-loves-company relationship with Ben & Jerry’s? Once you explore these questions and tune into your subconscious, you may be surprised at what you may find. At the end of the day, your actual, personal set point is irrelevant; what matters is that you find the real you, the healthiest version of you, whatever size or fitness level that’s intended to be. Only a misdirected subconscious is more comfortable in an unhealthy body. The good news for us is that our subconscious power can alter our set point and guide the body into creating a new normal, a new baseline or range of healthy weight. With the power of the mind over body, you can not only envision yourself in a new way but also create life-sustaining habits that support sustenance and satiety. You may not consciously know or believe that you can achieve a healthy, fit body with little effort. More important, you can maintain a healthy, balanced physique, because ease equals balance. Dis-ease equals imbalance. Did you ever try to guide a wobbly grocery cart through the store, continually fighting the off-balance wheels? The cart lists to the side and pulls off course, requiring strenuous effort just to roll to the next aisle? The same holds true for a body out of alignment. The fight, the tug, the pull is exhausting and requires such effort just to roll straight ahead. You know the feeling.

The Pillars of Self-Care

Your body is a vessel for producing and using energy. It works more efficiently and functions more optimally when it is nourished with clean foods, well-hydrated, given exercise, and refueled with adequate rest. These pillars of self-care are not new concepts, but they are essential for physical health; they are necessary for using your subconscious to the best of its abilities. Self-care is a major part of playing big in your life. Why? Because playing big insists that you put yourself first and care for your body. Your body and brain are living biochemical organisms that require upkeep, fuel, and lots of TLC. Taking good care of your health is also vital to being able to live an expansive life. Sleep, clean food, and regular movement refresh the connection between your subconscious and your conscious mind. Remember, the universe will give you more than you can imagine. But to access those oversized goals, you need to be ready to embrace what that means physically—you need to be prepared to perform at a top physical level. This starts with self-care.

Sleep Well

Your day begins with a good night’s sleep. If we don’t sleep well, we don’t think well. Poor sleep leaves us vulnerable to a host of diseases. It means we cannot be as productive during daylight hours. Think of sleep as the time when your body’s mechanics rush in to repair the damage of the day, whatever that is; healing the immune system, cellular repair, neurogenesis, memory consolidation, and more all take place when the body is at rest. Giving your body the necessary care so that it can repair itself is critical for both your short- and long-term health. And your subconscious is also very busy during sleep; this is the late shift for your body’s working mechanisms. What if you’re struggling with disrupted sleep? Remember how the subconscious wakes you up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. if you have unfinished business? If you’re not sleeping well, keep a pen and paper next to your bed. If you find yourself awake, write down whatever comes to mind. Alternatively, if you are having trouble falling asleep, jot down the questions, doubts, and worries that are keeping you up—oftentimes upon waking, you’ll find that your subconscious has figured out solutions.

Eat Well

While I do not subscribe to any one style or approach to eating, I recommend to my clients that they eat as clean as possible as part of the mind over body healing process. Think of your body like a high-performance car. You would give that car optimum fuel for optimum performance, and clean fuel works best. What does it meant to “eat clean”? Clean foods are foods that occur in nature and are not altered, including:

+ Fresh, locally grown or organic vegetables and legumes + Fresh, locally grown or organic low-sugar fruit (berries) + Grass-fed meats + Wild-caught fish and seafood + Ancient grains that have not been processed + Minimal dairy

Eating clean also means consuming as little sugar as possible and staying away from packaged, processed foods. Think whole, baked sweet potatoes rather than potato chips. Or a leafy kale salad over a processed energy bar. Eat lean protein in the form of red meat, poultry, and fish. Enjoy organically grown fruits in season so you don’t overindulge (fruits contain sugar!). Always include green vegetables with your meals. Consciously include fibrous foods, such as legumes, brown or wild rice, and seeds and nuts. And drink lots of water. All this will keep your blood sugar balanced, help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce inflammation, and help you alleviate the symptoms of and ward off illness and disease. A number of clients come to me because they struggle with their weight or feel like they cannot control themselves around food. My secret weapon to help these clients lose weight and get healthy is to ritualize their food intake, which helps build a healthful anchor to your eating habits. Creating a ritual around eating brings awareness and soulfulness to the reverential act of feeding oneself. Here are some simple suggestions for creating a ritual around eating:

+ Set the table before you sit down. + Look at the balance of foods on your plate or in your bowl. + Give thanks that you have food to enjoy. + Eat slowly, savoring the taste and flavor and texture of the food.

When we assign meaning to things, especially the communion of taking in nutrients, we satisfy the subconscious while we feed our body, mind, and soul. Giving reverence to food gives it importance beyond just shoveling food into our mouths and satiating our hunger. When I want to bring a sacred aspect to the ritual of eating, I create a “one-bowl” experience: an ancient practice of putting an entire meal—veggies, some clean protein, and a grain—in one bowl and then enjoying it slowly using only my fingers to eat (if you prefer, you can use chopsticks). There are several beneficial aspects to this way of eating. The simple dexterity of the chopsticks slows you down, which allows your level of satiety to keep up with your intake. Eating with your fingers is very primal and reinforces the basic connection to that which fuels you. Food and eating are tactile, and bringing awareness to the ritual of eating enlivens all our senses and literally feeds the subconscious. Many trendy restaurants are now serving this form of one-bowl meal because it works. It’s healthy, satisfying, and very close to our nature of collecting. There are additional benefits to be had from ritualizing your meals while putting the mind over body concept to heart. Infusing any act or event with meaning helps you stay present and provides a fuller experience. Instead of mindlessly eating at your desk while working or checking your social media over dinner, add reverence to the experience. You will enjoy your meal more, and it will be more satisfying—physically and spiritually. Even a small change like this to your daily routine—going from mindless meal to mindful ritual—will enable your subconscious mind to create healthful shifts in your body.

Move Well

Your body needs to be active in order to remain flexible, stave off illness, restore itself, and offset the inevitable stresses of our daily lives. And did you know that aerobic exercise is the only way of growing new neurons (a process known as neurogenesis)? This perfectly represents the mind-body connection. You get to decide on what type of exercise to do, because the bottom line is, whatever you enjoy, you will do! There is truly something for everyone, so go for what suits you and your lifestyle. And by all means, utilize the principles of the subconscious to ramp up your self-care.

1. Be accountable about where you are physically. What is your starting point? Are you physically unfit? Are you somewhat fit, with room for improvement?

2. Your higher self knows the fitness level perfect for your needs. Don’t push yourself to try an intense spin class if that doesn’t feel right. Maybe what you need is a long walk in nature instead. And vice versa.

3. Do you move toward health and fitness or away from fatness and sickness? What is your internal motivator? Remember—it is easier and more powerful to move toward what’s positive than away from the negative.

4. Do you have the support of friends and family to take on a healthier mind-set and routine? Surround yourself with doers not talkers, movers not sitters.

5. You are going to give it your all (energy and commitment) in order to get your all (fitness and optimal health).

6. Your fit and healthy body will be your vehicle for your time here. It will support your work and play, your desired lifestyle. You cannot play big unless your body is ready to play big.

We cannot be our best selves—body, mind, spirit—unless our vessel is strong, supple, energetic, and well-tended. Taking good care of the bodies we inhabit on this earth is a must. I urge you not to let contrast be your teacher. We all know that we only really notice our good health after sickness. But daily care will keep you in your best performance. Excerpted with permission from SUBCONSCIOUS POWER: Use Your Inner Mind to Create the Life You’ve Always Wanted by Kimberly Friedmutter, published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2019 by KBF Entertainment LLC.

About The Author Kimberly Friedmutter is a world-renowned board-certified hypnotherapist who works with some of Hollywood’s best-known luminaries, titans of industry, and leaders around the globe. Kimberly is a member of the prestigious UCLA Health Systems Board, the American Board of Hypnotherapy, the Association for Integrative Psychology, and the International Hypnosis Federation. She is also a certified neuro-linguistic programming trainer. Learn more at kimberlyfriedmutter.com

Neurogenesis: Growing New Brain Cells

A virtual revolution in neuroscience has been launched by the recent discovery of the process of neurogenesis, the ability of the brain to actually grow new neurons (brain cells). Stem cell therapy, a hot button of political debate and the focus of leading-edge research, holds the promise of offering a powerful tool in neurodegenerative conditions. We now understand that the human brain is constantly undergoing its own “stem cell therapy” through the process of neurogenesis. Every moment of our lives, several critically important areas of our brains are being replenished with stem cells that are destined to become fully functional brain cells. And when it comes to the question of how to increase new brain cells, there’s a lot we can do to enhance this process.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)

A major component in this gift of neurogenesis—and it is a gift to be revered—is a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which plays a key role in creating new neurons. And it also protects existing neurons, helping to ensure their survivability while encouraging synapse formation—that is, the connection of one neuron to another—which is vital for thinking, learning, and higher levels of brain function. Studies have in fact demonstrated that BDNF levels are lower in Alzheimer’s patients, which is no surprise, given our current understanding of how BDNF works. But we gain an even greater appreciation for the health benefits of increased BDNF when we consider its association with other neurological conditions, including epilepsy, anorexia nervosa, depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

How to Increase BDNF Production

We now have a very firm understanding of the factors that influence our DNA to produce BDNF and how to increase BDNF in the brain. Fortunately, these factors are by and large under our direct control. The gene that turns on BDNF is activated by a variety of factors, including voluntary physical exercise—animals forced to exercise do not demonstrate this change—calorie reduction, intellectual stimulation, curcumin, and the omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid. This is a powerful message because all of these factors that increase BDNF are within our grasp; they represent choices we can make to turn on the gene for neurogenesis. So let’s explore them individually.

1. Physical Exercise

One of the most efficient ways to increase BDNF is through physical exercise. Laboratory rats that exercise have been shown to produce far more BDNF than sedentary animals. But, interestingly, animals forced to exercise produce considerably less BDNF than those who voluntarily choose to spend time on the running wheel. Researchers have shown that there is a direct relationship between elevation of BDNF levels in the voluntarily exercising animals and their ability to learn. With the understanding of the relationship of BDNF to exercise, researchers have examined the effect of physical exercise in humans, both apparently healthy individuals as well as persons at risk or already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The findings have been fairly remarkable. In a recent paper, Nicola Lautenschlager of the University of Western Australia found that elderly individuals who engaged in regular physical exercise for a 24-week period demonstrated an astounding improvement of 1,800 percent in memory, language ability, attention, and other important cognitive functions, compared with an age-matched group not involved in the exercise program. The exercise group spent about 142 minutes exercising each week—about 20 minutes a day. In a similar study, Harvard researchers found a strong association between exercise and cognitive function in elderly women and concluded, “In this large, prospective study of older women, higher levels of long-term regular physical activity were strongly associated with higher levels of cognitive function and less cognitive decline. Specifically, the apparent cognitive benefits of greater physical activity were similar in extent to being about three years younger in age and were associated with a 20% lower risk of cognitive impairment.” These and other studies clearly indicate that exercise enhances brain performance and is directly associated with increased production of BDNF. Simply by voluntarily engaging in regular physical exercise, even to a relatively moderate degree, is a great way to take control of your brain health and mental destiny.

2. Calorie Reduction

Another factor that turns on the gene for increased BDNF is calorie reduction. Extensive studies have clearly demonstrated that when animals are fed a diet with reduced calories, typically by around 30 percent, their brain production of BDNF soars, along with a dramatic enhancement in memory and other cognitive functions. In a 2009 study on how to increase brain cells naturally, German researchers imposed a 30 percent calorie reduction on the diets of elderly individuals and compared their memory function with a group of a similar age who ate whatever they wanted. At the conclusion of the three-month study, those who ate without restriction experienced a small but clearly defined decline in memory function, while memory function in the group who consumed the calorie-reduced diet actually increased profoundly. In recognition of the obvious limitations of current pharmaceutical approaches to brain health, the authors concluded, “The present findings may help to develop new prevention and treatment strategies for maintaining cognitive health into old age.” While the prospect of reducing calorie intake by 30 percent may seem daunting, consider that Americans now consume an average of 523 more calories daily than in 1970. Current United Nations estimates show that the average American adult consumes 3,770 calories each day. In contrast, most health care professionals consider normal calorie consumption (i.e., the amount of calories needed to maintain body weight) to be around 2,000 calories daily for women and 2,550 for men, obviously with higher or lower requirements depending on level of exercise. A 30 percent reduction of calories from an average of 3,770 per day provides 2,640 calories, still more than a normal minimum requirement. Much of the calorie increase in Americans comes from our overwhelming increase in sugar consumption. Lowering sugar intake alone might go a long way toward achieving a meaningful reduction in calorie consumption; weight loss would likely be a side benefit. Indeed, obesity, in and of itself, is associated with reduced levels of BDNF, as is elevated blood sugar, a common consequence of obesity. Furthermore, increasing BDNF provides the added benefit of actually reducing the appetite. We hope that this data and the desire to help your brain turn on BDNF production will motivate you to follow a reduced-calorie diet. But, if you want to do more in achieving a healthy brain, you can implement a program of intermittent fasting.

3. Intellectual Stimulation

BDNF is described as a brain-derived neuronal trophic factor, which means that it is a chemical that induces positive growth, health, and functionality in the target tissue—in this case, brain neurons. So it would only make sense to expect BDNF to increase when the brain is challenged. Just as muscles will gain strength and thus functionality when exercised, the brain also rises to the challenges of intellectually stimulating circumstances by becoming faster and more efficient as well as having a greater capacity for information storage. These positive features are all facilitated by the increase in BDNF levels caused by stimulating activities. Inversely, it is likely that BDNF levels are low in individuals who spend several hours each day watching television, playing rote computer games, or otherwise engaged in mindless and passive activities. Being involved in stimulating mental activities—such as problem solving, exploring novel environments, and, perhaps most important, meditating regularly—increases BDNF levels and creates a brain that is not only more resistant to deterioration but one that enables you to push the limits of day-to-day functionality. In this context, it is important to view meditation not as a passive activity but as an active, brain-stimulating exercise that could also help in the production of new brain cells. Even among Alzheimer’s patients, the rate of disease progression is dramatically slowed in those who engage in spiritual practices, which, again, is likely a consequence of increased BDNF levels. Meditation helps us visit the complex environment of the inner mind as well as the universal energy field. And, not surprisingly, this might well be the most powerful stimulant for BDNF levels. Meditation-induced production of BDNF should be looked upon as the fertile ground into which seeds of spirituality-induced enlightenment are planted and flourish.

4. Curcumin

Curcumin, the main active ingredient in the spice turmeric, is currently the subject of intense scientific inquiry, especially as it relates to the brain and how to increase BDNF. But curcumin isn’t new to the medical research. In fact, practitioners of traditional Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine have used it for thousands of years. Curcumin is known to possess a variety of biochemical properties that include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and antibacterial activities. And it is curcumin’s ability to increase BDNF that has attracted the interest of neuroscientists around the world. Interestingly, in evaluating villages in India, where turmeric is used in abundance in curried recipes, epidemiological studies have found that Alzheimer’s disease is only about 25 percent as common as in the United States. There is little doubt that the positive effects of enhanced BDNF levels on brain neurons is at least part of the reason why those consuming curcumin are so resistant to this brain disorder.

5. Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA)

Perhaps no other brain nutrient is receiving as much attention lately as DHA, especially after it was found to be a great way to increase BDNF. Scientists have been aggressively studying this critical brain fat for the past several decades for at least three reasons. First, more than two-thirds of the dry weight of the human brain is fat, and one-quarter of that fat is DHA. From a structural point of view, DHA is an important building block for the membranes that surround healthy brain cells. These membranes include the areas where one brain cell connects to another, the synapses. This means that DHA is involved in the transmission of information from one neuron to the next and thus is fundamental for efficient brain function. Second, DHA is one of nature’s important regulators of inflammation. Inflammation is responsible for a large number of brain maladies, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and multiple sclerosis. DHA naturally reduces the activity of the COX-2 enzyme, which turns on the production of damaging chemical mediators of inflammation. This inhibits the enzyme and helps put out the fire in our brains. The third and perhaps most compelling reason for studying DHA is its role in modulating gene expression to increase BDNF. Thus, DHA helps orchestrate the production, synaptic connection, and viability of brain cells while enhancing functionality. In a recently completed double-blind interventional trial called the Memory Improvement with DHA Study (MIDAS), some members of a group of 485 healthy individuals with an average age 70 and mild memory problems were given a supplement that contained DHA made from marine algae and some were given a placebo. After six months, not only did blood DHA levels double in the group who received the DHA but the effects on brain function, compared with those who received the placebo, were outstanding. The lead project researcher, Karin Yurko-Mauro, commented, “In our study, healthy people with memory complaints who took algal DHA capsules for six months had almost double the reduction in errors on a test that measures learning and memory performance versus those who took a placebo. …The benefit is roughly equivalent to having the learning and memory skills of someone three years younger.” Humans are able to synthesize DHA from a common dietary omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid. But so little DHA is produced by this chemical pathway that many researchers in human nutrition now consider DHA to be an essential fatty acid, meaning that health maintenance requires a dietary source of this key nutrient. Data also show that most Americans typically consume an average of only 60 to 80 milligrams of DHA daily, less than 25 percent of what researchers consider to be an adequate intake of 200 to 300 milligrams each day.

BDNF and Brain Protection

Now that you already have an idea on how to increase BDNF naturally, it is also worth noting that BDNF is important not only in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity but also in protecting delicate neurons from being damaged by a variety of insults, including trauma, transient reduction in blood supply, and, perhaps most important, environmental toxins. Indeed, in laboratory studies, rats and even primates with higher levels of BDNF are far more resistant to brain-damaging toxins than animals with low or normal levels. Thus, turning on BDNF production through natural means and lifestyle decisions provides our brains with powerful protection against the ubiquitous onslaught of mitochondrial toxins, such as commonly used pesticides, to which we are exposed on a daily basis. Excerpted with permission from Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter and Alberto Villoldo. It is available online at hayhouse.com.

About The Authors Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D., FACN, is a Board-Certified Neurologist and four-time New York Times bestselling author. He serves on the Board of Directors and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. His books have been published in 28 languages and include Grain Brain, The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, with over 1 million copies in print, Brain Maker, The Grain Brain Cookbook, and The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated television programs. Learn more at drperlmutter.com. Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., has trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist and has studied the healing practices of the Amazon and Andean shamans. Dr. Villoldo directs The Four Winds Society, where he trains individuals in the practice of shamanic energy medicine. He directs the Center for Energy Medicine in Chile, where he investigates and practices the neuroscience of enlightenment. Dr. Villoldo has written numerous best-selling books, including One Spirit Medicine; Shaman, Healer, Sage; The Four Insights; Courageous Dreaming; and Power Up Your Brain. Learn more at thefourwinds.com theurbanmonk.com.

photo: kaylee garrett

External Factors: The Outside Influences that Mess with Your Fertility

Are you wondering how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? Let’s talk about the fifteen external factors that could be affecting your fertility. These are outside factors that might not immediately seem related to your fertility but can be huge contributing factors. Obviously, not everyone who has these factors deals with infertility, but this is where the mindset and the external factor together can block fertility. Not all fifteen will apply to you, but it’s very likely that, as we elaborate on each factor, one you didn’t think was an issue might resonate. Also, notice if something other than these fifteen possible causes of infertility in women comes up for you. I’m going to bring your awareness to things that can be affecting your fertility and ways to diminish or even eliminate these factors to boost fertility.

1. Stressful Job

While most people think their job is stressful, I’m talking mainly about teachers, nurses, caregivers, and CEOs—those responsible for groups or teams of people. You get to work early, stay late, and give it your all. You’re great at your job. But, here’s the problem: Your brain/ego’s main function is to keep you alive. The amygdalae in your brain are two almond-shaped groups of nuclei located in the temporal lobes. They play a primary role in memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. This is where aggression, addiction, anxiety, PTSD, and, most importantly, fear reside. The amygdalae are responsible for the primal fight-or-flight reflex. This response is awesome when you’re being chased by wolves, but not so much when you’re trying something new. Your brain means well and wants to keep you safe, but sometimes it’s a pain in the ass. While we don’t live in a world where we need to run from saber-toothed tigers anymore, our brain is still triggered by stressors that it perceives as a threat to our survival. When we have too many things going on and are spread too thin, it triggers a silent alarm in our body. That’s when things can start to go haywire and this isn’t ideal if you are trying to increase fertility. The fight-or-flight response is part of the sympathetic nervous system, which means it’s automatic; and it can be triggered on a low-grade level without our even realizing it sometimes. When you’re responsible for a lot of people’s health and wellbeings, such as a teacher, nurse, or caregiver, or you’re responsible for a team in a corporate situation, your time and energy are maxed out. So while you’re thinking “I want to have a baby,” your brain already feels as though it’s taking care of way too many people and says, “Why would we add another responsibility to our plate?” It literally can’t handle taking care of another human, and that can put the kibosh on the lady parts. When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, all unnecessary body systems slow or shut down. All available energy goes to the heart, brain, lungs, and legs (in case of flight). During a crisis, you don’t need your reproductive system to stay alive. This is especially prevalent among women in the “unexplained infertility” group. When the doctor can’t find anything wrong with you, this very thing could be happening. Though it may seem like only low-grade stress to you, it’s not to your body. This continual stress pattern, over a long period of time, is exhausting. Again, not everyone in these careers has fertility issues, but 95 percent of my clients are in these fields. There’s an undeniable correlation. So, what can we do about it? You might say, “Okay, great, but I can’t quit my job right now,” or “I love my job. Am I screwed?” Of course, not. Are you the get-there-early-and-leave-late, give-it-your-all type? While that’s admirable and will garner you perks at work, this push-to-the-limit attitude could actually be getting in the way of conceiving or, in other words, could be one reason for infertility. Your great work ethic is awesome, but unfortunately, it can mean you’re taking care of everyone else’s needs before your own. So your lovely brain, which wants to keep you alive, says, “Um, we’re already stretched way too thin and not taking care of ourselves as it is. And you want to add something to our plate? Are you insane?!” I’m certainly not advocating that you become a sloth and only move for food and sex, but we do want to look at ways you can slowly start conserving more energy. When your brain feels that you have more space in your life, the fight-or-flight response isn’t triggered as often, and it will feel that a baby is a plausible venture. Even though you, as an evolved human, want the baby and see all the positives, you are dealing with a primal, involuntary reaction in the brain that you cannot fool. So, our initial job is to create an environment where your brain feels safe to start this process. Consider it food for thought that, when most of my clients come to me for to ask help on how to deal with infertility and get pregnant fast, they also end up changing their career in some capacity. So, I invite you to inquire in a journal entry if you’re in the career you feel you’re meant to be in, or one you feel you’re obligated to be in. More and more, I’m seeing these two areas tied together, and sometimes, it can be the reason the baby hasn’t shown up yet. You’re supposed to get a handle on that first. When we want to have a baby so badly, we tend to skip over the areas where we need to do some work or make adjustments. But that work, ladies, is what helps you move toward the baby. These roadblocks being presented to you are not to be jumped over or gone around. You must move through them. They are likely to be among the spiritual causes of infertility, a big part of why your pregnancy hasn’t happened yet. In your career, you need confidence, drive, preparedness, and the feeling of being capable. More often than not, my clients tend to be in a job that is just that…a job. It’s a paycheck, or it gives them professional accolades, but it doesn’t feed their soul. I’ll ask them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ve only had one person answer that it was what they were currently doing. On the surface that might not seem important, but I’m finding that we are being called to step into our purpose versus a career. When we are not in that purpose—the reason we are on the planet this time around—other things that we really want can be delayed. That delay is not your body failing you; it’s trying to give you time to find your purpose before you add another aspect to your life. I have my clients explore what they’d love to do for a living if their “stories” about why they couldn’t do it didn’t factor in. I joke that, if they want to be a mime in a park, we’ll find a way to make it happen. But. seriously, if you’re harboring a super-creative person buried under an overworked CPA, it could be a problem. There’s nothing wrong with being a CPA if that’s your purpose, but if your soul longing isn’t being fed, it can manifest in your body. I’ll get more into chakras later in the article, but, for now, know that there are seven main wheels of energy in your body, going from the base of your spine to the top of your head. They all represent something different. When I’m reading people, the sacral chakra, located at your lower abdomen, represents creativity, relationships, and children. Your ovaries and uterus quite literally represent the point of creation. So, if you are in a job that’s not feeding your soul and your creativity, that chakra can be closed and can be considered as one of the spiritual causes of infertility. That means the creating children part shuts down as well. I’m not saying quit your job and draw landscapes on the sidewalk with chalk; but finding a way to feed your soul, whether it’s with something obviously creative (painting, drawing, dancing, photography) or something that just feeds your passion (getting a yoga teacher certification, making organic bath products, flipping houses) is a key component in how fast you move forward. Stepping out of the idea of being obligated to be in a job and into what were you put on the planet to do is so important. Here are some things you can implement now to overcome unexplained infertility and convince your brain there’s room for a baby:

+ If you usually stay late at work, commit to staying late only two days a week this month, then only one day a week the next month. If you can, wean over time to zero. But even if you stay at one, that’s a hell of a lot better than five.

+ Another way to reduce stress levels and increase fertility is to cut down your involvement in committees/organizations at work. Two of my clients who are teachers were involved in several extra things besides their teaching responsibilities, such as teachers union committee, AP classes, tutoring, department head, taking master’s classes, and club advisors. These are all admirable things, but they’re little things that add up to a lot of your energy. Again, if your brain feels overloaded with all that you have to do for so many other people, it believes that it literally can’t take on anything else. Can you find a place to back off on some of these responsibilities? Ask yourself, “If I had to choose between one of these extra things and my baby, would I still choose to be head of my union?” The mistake a lot of women make is thinking, “When I get pregnant I’ll cut back.” But the overload could be the very reason for infertility, so take that action now. Put out to the Universe that you’re making space for this munchkin to show up by looking for natural infertility treatments.

+ If you want to get pregnant fast, simply show the Universe that you’re energetically choosing the baby. Find ten minutes a day (and yes, you have it) to implement some sort of grounding practice. It’s all right if you’re not into yoga or meditation, though that’d be great. Having this daily practice, even if it’s for only a few minutes a day, starts to train the brain that you’re safe, you’re taking care of yourself, and it’s okay to allow this baby in.

You can do something as simple as:

+ taking a bath with essential oils. + sitting in the park or near a patch of grass on your lunch break and connecting to the earth is among the best spiritual things to do to get pregnant. + listening to soothing music with your hand on your belly, inviting in the baby’s energy, could promote natural fertility. + having a solo dance party in your living room to “Eye of the Tiger,” Lady Gaga, or whatever floats your fertility boat.

The idea is to get you into your body and out of your head. If your schedule is maxed out, you must find a way to create space so that your brain can feel like there’s room for this baby to come in.

2. Family Pressure

Many of us, from the moment we’re married, are asked, “When are you having kids?” Parents are eager for a grandchild to spoil. We’re also so steeped in tradition as a society that it’s just what you do. You have a baby after you get married. We’re almost trained to ask that question. Although family and friends mean well, their comments can seem preachy, judgy, or just plain insensitive. When we’re dealing with unexplained fertility issues, we’re already feeling insecure, and the last thing our brain wants is to feel worse about the situation. Not only are we worrying about our own feelings, but we then take on that extra responsibility of being able to tell our friends and family some good news. We plug it into our belief system the idea that “we should be pregnant by now.” The pressure of multiple people counting on us gets painful. And every time we encounter those people, we start to dread the inevitable question. Part of what keeps this pressure going is that we don’t always want our family to know we’re having a hard time conceiving and think that we don’t need any form of help getting pregnant. Though I hope this will change in the near future, infertility has traditionally been a very private struggle. So we think that if we share our issues, our loved ones will judge us or offer unsolicited advice that can be unintentionally painful. On the flip side, if we don’t address their comments, it continues to fester in us and perpetuates the problem. Social situations that were once fun turn into a tedious, defensive chore. First of all, there’s no shame in this journey at all. And honestly, the more it’s talked about, the better. Fertility is one of the few taboo issues left. It used to be like that with cancer and PTSD, but now they’re openly talked about. Unfortunately, there is still shame around unexplained infertility because we feel our body is not doing what women’s bodies have done for millennia. We blame ourselves, and sometimes forget that we can ask for help in trying to get pregnant. Remember that one in six women struggles with infertility. It’s very likely that you know multiple women who’ve dealt with the same thing. Realizing that you are not defective is so important in this journey. Just because the check engine light comes on in the car doesn’t mean the car is a lemon. Addressing the issue removes the stigma. Many of us have that family member or friend who continually asks when we’re having kids. As I said, that can be energetically draining. You put on a brave face and swallow your frustration. Every family party and dinner out with friends where you have to do this gets stored in your body—the annoyance, the frustration, the stress, the shame, the fear. Under the umbrella of the Law of Attraction is the Law of Psychophysical Response, which says that for every stressful thought, there is a stressful reaction in the body. Studies show that when we relive stressful past experiences or even hypothetical future scenarios, our bodies actually react as though it’s happening now. Every time you tell someone about it or think about it, your body is stressing in real time and this is not good for you if want to get pregnant fast. It’s so interesting! Consider the effect that these thoughts have on your body each time someone asks you at work or the next baby shower, “So, when are you having kids?” The problem with this, besides feeling annoying and hurtful, is that it’s actually impacting your body. When your body is in even a low state of fight-or-flight, it’s enough for your reproductive system to slow or shut down. Think about the primal fight-or-flight response: You need your heart, brain, lungs, and feet (in case of flight) to get out of a stressful situation. The last thing you need is for your reproductive system to be fully functional. So if not for your own sanity, do the following exercise for your body and your future baby. We take on a lot of responsibility when we’re worried about letting family down. It’s hard enough to deal with how you feel. To take on someone else’s expectations can be really overwhelming. Perpetuating these stressful thoughts takes a toll on the body and this could contribute to unexplained infertility. The good news is that, according to the same law, for every positive thought you have, there is a corresponding response in your body. It’s important that we choose positive thoughts and surround ourselves with positive people for this reason. My challenge to you is to say something to them, not from defensiveness, anger, or fear but from a loving place. You, hopefully, understand that they just want the best for you. And because they aren’t going through it, they have no idea how it’s affecting you. All they know to say is “Just relax” and “It’s up to God.” Know that, infuriating as that is, it’s coming from a caring place. But, that doesn’t mean you should have to keep swallowing your feelings about their constant inquiries. Speaking to them once about it can save numerous times of them asking. While I totally agree that it’s none of their beeswax, it saves you a perpetual headache. Swallowing your frustration can squash your energy and ability to allow a baby in. So, in this case, giving them the brush off can be an effective infertility cure. A lot of times, that family member or friend has their own neurosis that they’re projecting onto you, and you’re absorbing it without even being aware of it. For example, before she was pregnant, one of my clients (who just gave birth to twins) was dealing with pretty severe anxiety. As we worked together, we saw that her mother was projecting all her fears onto her daughter. My client was subconsciously scared of being pregnant and of life in general. We did a lot of belief work, but, to summarize here, once she realized they were her mom’s fears and not hers, she was able to speak frankly to her mom and stop the IV of anxiety and get pregnant. Some people will casually bring up the subject not knowing that it’s been a struggle that you’re sensitive about. Not having gone through it, they can’t possibly know their nonchalant comments are actually coming across as insensitive. It could also be that friends and family members are just genuinely excited for you. They can’t wait to have a little munchkin to spoil. They know you’re going to be an awesome mom and can’t wait for this next phase of life to start for you. Whatever the case may be—and it may be all three in various areas of your life—there’s a way you can approach it that will bring about understanding versus hurt feelings on one or both sides. It’s likely that they don’t know they are doing anything that’s hurtful, so if you lash out, both sides are hurt. Then there’s no lasting understanding, because to them it will seem like your reaction is coming out of nowhere. Finding ways on how to deal with infertility properly can be hard already, so getting affected by the pressure that your loved ones are injecting in your life can only make things worse. On the flip side, you don’t want to constantly be defending your position to a pushy family member. Everyone’s got an opinion, and if yours doesn’t match Aunt Susie’s, it can be a little daunting. One of my clients wanted to take a more holistic route, while her mother was pushing every intervention known to man. It was mentally and energetically wearing on my client. So, we talked about finding a way to come from a loving but clear place about what her boundaries were. Try something to the effect of this: “________ , I understand that you mean well and are excited for me. I know you love me and want the best for me and/ or are just curious, so I need you to hear this. ________ and I are in the process of starting a family. I so appreciate your love and concern, but it stresses me out when people keep asking about our baby-making status. I’m really focusing on grounding and being peaceful and present right now. I love that you’re excited to be a ________ (grandparent, aunt, etc.). Just know that when there’s good news to report, you will be one of the first to hear. In the meantime, we are exploring all the avenues that feel right for us. Thanks for your support.” While it is understandable that it’s hard to find answers on how to overcome unexplained infertility, you don’t want to admonish them. They’re your loved ones and genuinely want to see you happy. They just don’t realize how their inquiries are affecting you. Thank them for their love and concern while being clear about what you need. Remember that they aren’t doing it to piss you off or make you feel less than. And by addressing them in this way, you can head off a lot of your own frustration. That’s honestly the most important thing. We want to get you into a safe, supported, stress-free environment as much as possible. And heading off well-meaning friends and family at the pass can save a lot of energy.

3. Partner’s Energy Is Holding Back

These are considered some spiritual causes of infertility:

+ It may physically manifest as male infertility.

+ He’s getting cold feet about the amount of responsibility of having a child.

+ He hasn’t achieved what he wants in his career yet.

+ He’s got some subconscious family issues going on—parents never around or father left, etc.—and he hasn’t really dealt with it.

Sometimes, we get so gung-ho about having a baby that we can unintentionally miss our partner’s concerns and sweep them under the rug. But, it doesn’t solve anything and you just have a really big lump under your rug. It’s important to step out of your situation and see if any of these scenarios might apply to your partner. Even if you are willing to work with him, many husbands/partners are hesitant to consider non-medical alternatives—especially ones that have an energy component—so it can be hard to get them on board to move forward. And honestly, sometimes, it takes them seeing you making progress with this before they’ll ease in, but there are spiritual things to do to get pregnant and help your partner’s energy move forward without going all woo-woo on them and freaking them out. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Visualize your partner in front of you, tune in to their energy, and ask:

+ Are they in a career they hate?

+ Is there still something they want to be when they grow up that I could encourage?

+ Is there a class or workshop they could take to move their energy in that direction?

Most times, they aren’t aware of how to move through it, or sometimes they don’t even know they’re stuck. Sometimes, supporting them and pointing them in that direction is enough to shift things. I’ve seen this many times with men with low sperm count and motility. It often comes down to them not being in the career they would love, or the fact that the woman is the breadwinner or the more dominant personality. And this dynamic can be one of the possible causes of unexplained infertility. You might know what his dream career would be, or you might not. If you don’t, casually ask. Even if money and schedule are tight, what might be some ways that he could move toward it? Workshops? Classes? Meetups? If you can’t think of any class or certification he could pursue, you could just do some research about his desired career in your area or encourage a hobby that fulfills him. My client Amy’s husband was in a job he hated and wanted to be a firefighter. Finances wouldn’t allow that at the moment, so he joined the volunteer brigade and felt more fulfilled. As a result, his sperm count and motility improved. In another case, my client Rae was pretty high up in corporate America, and her husband made much less than she did. She also made all of the household decisions. It sounds a little silly, but men still have that primal instinct to provide. They still innately feel the need to kill the food, drag it back, and see their family live because of them. So with Rae taking care of the “hunting” and the home front, her husband was left unsure of his place and certainly not feeling like a provider. In the later part of this article, I will go into how this directly affects the body, but for now know that when a man isn’t feeling important or valid or that he has a primary role in the function of the family, his sperm motility and count can be affected. Did I ask Rae to quit the prestigious position she loved, just so her husband could feel important? Of course, not. There are other ways that men can feel like they’re contributing, even if it’s not financial. It could be something as simple as having him do a DIY project that you’ve been meaning to knock off the list for a while, or getting the car serviced, taking out the trash, or other things that need to be done to keep your lives running smoothly. We want to be careful that it’s not just giving chores to a kid. The important part of this is that you let him know how helpful it was that he did said task. It was such a big help, relief, took something off your plate, etc. Thanking him for making your life easier goes a long way with men. Not only are they more likely to keep doing a task when they are praised for it, but energetically they feel like they have a greater purpose, more worth, etc. That’s when we can start to see changes in the morphology and this could answer the “how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility?” question. Also, look at his family situation:

+ Are both of his parents still in the picture? + Are they divorced? If so, how old was he at the time of the divorce? + Has he not fully grieved or processed the death of a parent? + Are there abandonment issues that he doesn’t want to repeat? + Talk with him as lovingly and supportively as possible.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but often when we want to be pregnant so badly, we want our partner to hurry up and figure it out so we can move forward. Look at him as the person you love the most in the world who might be a little stuck and do what you can to connect to and love him. It will trickle down to the baby, but for right now, you may have to focus on him. So open your heart and see if you can feel into how you might best be able to help him move through this unexplained infertility.

+ If he doesn’t know what the problem is or won’t talk about it, see if he’ll try acupuncture infertility cure—so the energy can be unblocked, regardless of whether he wants to share his feelings or not. Acupuncture is a relatively accepted modality, even for men who aren’t really into alternative methods.

+ If you have good friends who have kids and your husband/ partner is close with the other husband, have the friend talk to him to alleviate his fears.

All of the manifestations of male infertility come from fears and beliefs that he’s likely not even consciously aware of. So, take some time away from the stress of worrying on how to overcome unexplained infertility and plug yourself into lovingly helping your partner forward.

4. Is Your Relationship Solid?

Some of the aforementioned things apply here, but this is more about the two of you. This can be a tough reason for infertility, so if this applies to you, try to breathe into it and see how you can move forward. When we are on Mission Baby, it’s so easy to want to skip over the pesky relationship thing. Here’s the thing: the obstacle is the path. That’s a famous saying and it’s so true. This obstacle was put in front of you to move through—not to leap over or burrow under or find a way around. The Universe is a loyal friend, albeit that tough-love friend that you want to punch but know it’s right. Know that avoiding our blocks doesn’t make them go away. Sure, we can choose not to deal with it now, but the pattern will keep repeating until we move through it, so why not address it and be done with it? Yes, it can be messy and painful, but honestly that’s better than staying in some kind of weird relationship limbo. Don’t hope that getting pregnant will change your relationship. Change your relationship and learn how to overcome unexplained infertility, so you can get pregnant. Ask yourself:

+ Do you fight a lot? More than you get along? + Does the divorce word get thrown around? + Are you out separately with friends more than together? + Is there physical or verbal abuse going on?

I know this seems like an unpleasant topic, but two of my clients, Jasmine and Diane, have gone through some combo of these issues and both chose very different paths. Neither is right or wrong. It’s more about making a decision. Their husbands wouldn’t go to counseling because “nothing was wrong with them.” Their wives were putting so much energy into the relationship and not getting anything back. They were being made to feel small and insignificant—and believe me, the worth piece is among the possible causes of unexplained infertility. If you don’t feel capable in one area of your life, it’s really difficult to feel capable in others. We can’t change our partners or make them do what we want. We can’t change anybody. But we can and must change how we react to this challenge we are being presented with. Do we find a way to move through the obstacle and stay, or do we leave and start over? Sometimes, through the belief work, we are able to shift our energy and viewpoint about what’s happening in the relationship and release negative energy about it and move forward. That being said, abuse is never okay and should not be tolerated. There’s always a lesson to learn on an energetic level, but I am by no means condoning staying in an abusive relationship. So often we feel like if we leave now, it’s gonna take way too long to meet someone else, get married, get pregnant, and have a baby. We already feel like we’re running out of time (which isn’t true, by the way), so we might as well stay. I promise you, if the relationship isn’t fixed one way or the other, you’re going to keep spinning your wheels. We want a baby so badly sometimes that we’re willing to leap over the relationship problem to get to the baby. Remember that energetically, this problem on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility is being put there for you to address, not to leap over. Admittedly, that can seem like a huge pain in the ass. But see if you can look at it by asking yourself, “What do I need to learn from this first? What is the gift I’m supposed to be getting out of this?” This can be a hard question to answer, especially if your partner doesn’t know how to communicate or the relationship has been deteriorating for quite a while. I promise that there is always a reason we are going through what we are going though, and the timing isn’t random. The things that happen to us aren’t because of a vengeful god or because we’re being punished for cheating on that spelling test in fifth grade. There are always lessons to be learned. That phrase can have a not-so-great connotation to it. When we were little and heard the phrase “I hope you learned your lesson,” it usually meant we’d been punished for doing something we shouldn’t have done or that shouldn’t have happened. So we can be a little gun-shy when it comes to us having to learn “life lessons.” I’d like to reframe that a little bit. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, I like to refer to our life this time around on Earth as “Earth Camp.” I believe that each time around we pick things to “work on,” whether it’s family, relationships, health, or money. These are not easy things to move through, but if we do, we acquire skills that up-level us, so to speak; and if we don’t, we repeat it the next time until we do get it. So everything we come across in this incarnation on Earth Camp is a class with something to learn. As long as we don’t assign a stressful meaning to the thing, it can be as simple as taking history, algebra, or a relationship class. Yes, in some cases it’s a doctoral-thesis kind of class, but it’s for us to learn, not something to harm us. I like to say that it’s happening for you, not to you. We will live through it, though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. So the more we can say, “Okay, this sucks and is really stressful right now, but I’m in this situation to learn something, so what might that be?” There is an answer and a possible infertility cure. I will bet lots and lots of money on it. In the case of my client Jasmine, her husband was super high-strung and was always going to put work first, and he verbally abused her to keep her small. He had addictions he wouldn’t deal with, they did not know how to deal with infertility and her lesson was to take back her power and believe that she could do or be anything she wanted. She moved back among her friends and family and blossomed. She found love soon after and was pregnant eight months later at forty-one! So, her not getting pregnant with her former husband was a sign for her to deal with the relationship. My client Diane had a similar experience in terms of being made to feel small—her husband was squashing her personality because she was “too much,” and he was verbally abusive and unsupportive. He threatened divorce on a daily basis and told her that she was the problem and he had nothing to work on. He was also lacking in some social skills and had to deal with an overbearing mother who controlled everything well past the normal timeline. He either chose not to leave his mother’s nest or wasn’t allowed to, but his mother overstepped boundaries by continuing to try to make decisions for him even after he was married, and to make my client feel like a burden and less than. Diane realized her husband hadn’t learned certain things about relationships because of being sheltered by his overbearing mother. Things like how to work through disagreements without threatening divorce. That the way your wife does things isn’t necessarily how your mother does them and that’s okay. That once you’re married, the two of you are a nuclear unit and make all decisions, financial and otherwise, together. That you don’t squash the other person’s personality to make it fit your ideals. My lovely client, who wanted to make this relationship work, was the more evolved of the pair and did a lot of work on herself to clean up her beliefs and blocks so that she could be in a place to help him through his and move forward as a team. She made the decision to stay, found a solution on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility and was able to get pregnant. So whatever you decide, the important thing is that you decide something and take action in that direction. The Universe can’t bring you what you want when you’re in a place of limbo. When there’s another person involved in the decision, it makes it more complicated. We can’t change that person and we can’t make them get on board with our plan. We can’t make them heal themselves or the relationship if they are not willing. So in order to assess where they are, we need to crack open our heart and tell them about our dreams for a family and for the relationship, and our desire to work on things, go to therapy, undergo natural infertility treatments and exhaust all options before throwing in the towel, plus how much we really love and value them, etc., and then see where they are mentally. If they are willing to recognize that they need to work on things as well and are willing to do what they can to preserve the relationship, fantastic! Together you can outline some steps and a timeline for the goals of the relationship, find ways on how to overcome unexplained infertility and begin moving forward. Having a heart-to-heart really helped my client Diane to stay, because she saw a different side of her husband and his commitment to implementing solutions and moving forward. We want to know that we are on the same team and that the other person has our back. So having a heart-to-heart can strip away the stories we have in our head about the other person and allow us to see them in a vulnerable state and reconnect with them. Often, by working on ourselves and bringing our energy up, they will rise up to meet us. If your partner says you’re the problem and he has nothing to work on, first of all, that’s not true. I don’t care if the ratio is 50-50, 70-30, or 99-1, but there is never one person who is completely at fault in an argument or a relationship. We can get ourselves so closed off because of our hurt and frustration about the other person and so plugged into our “stories” about it that it can seem like the other person is the problem. But there is always something to work on. No one’s ever done or finished early. Everyone has crap to work on. Unfortunately, if your partner can’t see that you both have things to work on, it can be hard to move forward. If you are funneling energy into something and not getting anything back, that can mean that it may be better for you to move on, as Jasmine did. If you are staying small, giving up your dreams, and walking on eggshells around your partner, that is not even remotely conducive to conceiving a baby. And leaving could mean that you’re allowing in that next partner, like the one who came for Jasmine just months later. Leaving didn’t stop her from being a mom, and it didn’t take nearly as long to have a baby as her brain thought it would. Here’s one of the most effective spiritual things to do to get pregnant: Close your eyes and put your hand on your heart and ask yourself which scenario feels right for you. We cannot make the decision to stay or go out of fear of what our partner will do, fear of what will happen to our dream of having a baby, or fear that we will make the wrong decision. We will talk more about how to align your energy with what you want versus what you don’t want, but making a decision from a calm, plugged-in place will ensure that you’re doing the right thing.

5. Too Cerebral (Not in Your Body)

Many women dealing with unexplained infertility issues are not connected to their bodies. They’re smart women who are good at their jobs and figuring things out, but there’s a disassociation from the body that can happen that can exacerbate the causes of infertility in women. We are, essentially, driving our meat suit around from our head and are often disconnected from our intuition as a result. Just as the third eye is an accepted center of intuition, so is your gut. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “gut feeling.” But so many of us like to think and analyze things down to a bloody stump, to the point that we are completely unaware of what our intuition is trying to tell us, and we get frustrated when our body doesn’t do what we want or think it should do. We feel that our body is failing us and that if we could just get it on board with our brilliant plan, everything would be fine. We need our body in order to have a baby, but if we are treating it like this unfortunate ball and chain that we have to drag around, it’s very hard to be connected to it and to conceive. It’s also likely that if you’re super-cerebral, it’s not so easy for you to feel into the emotions of things. So we want to look at some ways to get you more aware of your feelings and how to direct them toward what you want, as well as to bridge the gap between your brain and body by learning to listen to your intuition. Now, this may seem easier said than done. As with any habit or pattern, it takes time. But, here are a couple of natural fertility exercises to get you started. Exercise It’s hard sometimes for us cerebral folks to just “get into our bodies.” So, sometimes, having visual cues can help us connect to our body and therefore have more access to our intuition. Close your eyes and visualize a tiny purple elevator sitting at the top of your head. Close the door of the elevator and watch it start to descend to your forehead. Taking deep, slow breaths, see the elevator move down to your throat, down to your heart, and lowering deeper still to your upper abdomen. Your breathing slows down as the elevator descends into your lower abdomen and finally comes to a stop at the base of your spine. Once you’re dropped down into your body, place a hand on your abdomen and just ask a question, like “What do I need to know/do in order to move forward?” Now, here’s the tricky part: we want to not be attached to getting an answer. For now, just ask the question and be open to receiving whatever comes. It may be a visual, a color, or a feeling, or you may hear a sentence. You may hear nothing for the first week of doing this. It’s okay! You wouldn’t expect to be able to learn and speak Aramaic in the span of a week. If you badly want to overcome unexplained infertility, cut yourself some slack and just keep calling in the energy of the next best step for you. Write down whatever you do notice, even if it seems insignificant. If you get the color blue one day and an ostrich the next, write it down. See if you can feel into what they might mean. You can also look up the symbolism of the things that come up, but I find it best to feel into what it means for you. When developing your intuition, the hardest thing is to trust it. When I was developing mine, I remember saying more often than not, “Is that my intuition or my imagination?” While it is difficult to discern at the beginning, you need your imagination to access your intuition. This is why it’s important to write everything down each time you do this. The more you do it, the more you will see patterns or coincidences, and you’ll begin to trust yourself more. We will dig more into intuition, but it’s essential that we learn how to be in our body instead of driving it around from our head. There are things that our body is trying to tell us, and the more connected we are to it, the more we can interpret the information and take action to move the mind and body forward together versus pulling them in opposite directions. Exercise Here is an exercise for getting a little more connected to your emotions and could help you boost fertility. Close your eyes and think of a time when you were really sad or angry (a relationship ended, your boss was mean to you, someone passed away, etc.). Notice where in your body you feel that thought (in the pit of your stomach, wanting to vomit, wanting to give up, blood boiling, etc.). Notice what that thought does to your body. Now wipe that visual slate clean and shake it off. Close your eyes again and imagine a time when you were really excited about something (the day your partner proposed, when you got a promotion, when you got a puppy, etc.). Notice where in your body you feel that thought (butterflies in your stomach, goosebumps/chills, can’t stop smiling/laughing, etc.). Notice what that thought does to your body. We get so caught up in our day-to-day routines that we rarely check in to see how our emotions are affecting our body, especially if we lean toward the cerebral end of the spectrum. So take some time to take stock of your emotions and see how you really feel about something versus what you think about it. When we feel things (versus thinking about them), that’s when things begin to shift on a cellular level in the body. It took me about two months to get my client Leah to be able to assess how she was feeling, not her thoughts about her feelings but how she felt. As an academic with multiple long-standing family issues, she was great at having the drive to get things done, but she had zero idea about what was going on with her emotions. Emotions seemed like a hazard or certainly a huge inconvenience to her, so it was best to be strong and not care—all the time. This started to take a toll on her physical body and was suspected as one of the unexplained infertility possible causes. Her check engine light was saying, “Hey! We need to process some shit! And since you won’t look at it, it’s affecting the vessel that makes the baby you want so desperately.” Using the previous two exercises helped her get to a place where she could check in with how she was feeling and to process things so that she could heal her body and therefore get pregnant fast. Most of us are like Leah in that we don’t like looking at our uncomfortable emotions. After all, who wants to feel anger, sadness, hopelessness? This is, however, part of the process of healing and is also important in terms of getting your body to a place where it feels positive and safe to bake this baby.

6. Super Planner/Micromanager

I say this lovingly to all my Type-A compadres: We get shit done, right? And most of the time that’s a good thing, but when it comes to the arrival of our munchkin, it can be a little frustrating when it doesn’t happen when we want it to. Whenever we think we can control everything, the Universe has a little laugh and says, “Oh yeah?” All of a sudden it’s like, “What the hell happened to my plans?” We want to get pregnant at 7:01 p.m. on April 17 in Paris because that’s when it’s convenient and fantastic for us. It sounds funny, but some of us really can get like that about our timelines. We want everything to fit into this nice box, but the Universe has other ideas. What can cause infertility? Relinquishing our need to control things is, perhaps, the trickiest part of this whole process. Most of us already know if we are a bit of a control freak or not. Chances are, if we are team Type A, we probably have a bit of a control issue. Sometimes this just manifests as needing to be tidy all the time, or else we get nervous; but some women are entrenched in having to deal with a more extreme manifestation, like OCD. These can be things that have developed from a point in childhood or adulthood where we have felt an extreme loss of control and have put the manifestation of that into an action or need. It may not seem directly related to your uterus, but the fear of not having control perpetuates more fear (which keeps your fight-or-flight switch on). Exercise How to overcome unexplained infertility? If you have a need to control, take a deep breath and visualize whatever your specific issue is (the load of laundry that needs to be done, the bed that needs to be made, etc.). Feel what that’s like in your body. How much does it bug you? How compelled are you to finish the task? Where do you feel that in your body? Then say, “If I didn’t need to do the laundry or make the bed, how would I feel? If the dishwasher isn’t unloaded today or I don’t make the bed, what will happen? Will anyone die? Will something bad happen?” It feels like it sometimes. But, we need to give ourselves a break, because maybe it’s more important to take a bath or watch a movie with the hubby. See if you can zoom out of your body and look at the compulsion as just a thought. It’s not a reality that you will die or anything bad will happen, it’s just your brain’s story about the thought. Can you just sit in the discomfort of the thought long enough to realize nothing will happen? Then, don’t make the bed or do the dishes (or whatever you chose). Once the wave of fear goes over us and we realize that we survived, our brain may freak out a little less each time. As you know, having a child is going to turn your schedule on its ear, so can you start getting used to not getting everything done perfectly and being okay with it now? One of my clients did this by not making her bed and not doing the dishes. She sat in the discomfort of it and felt into what she was making it mean: “Does it mean I will become a slob and will end up on a reality show about hoarding if I don’t do these things for one day? That my life will spiral into a pit of despair? Can I prove to myself and to the Universe that I don’t need to control everything?” This process really helps us to be more okay with the timing of things. Think of it as a show of commitment to do these practice runs, despite your uneasiness about them. I am of course not saying to never do dishes or laundry again; it’s more about addressing the anxiety that comes up around the need to do it that we want to ease. If you’re reading this, you’re probably open to the idea of how your energy affects your body/life—even the process to increase fertility. So you may even be aware that trying to control everything is not so conducive to this process and you may want to let go of the control. Most of us try to let go of our control as fast as we can—which means we are controlling how we give up control, which is still controlling. It’s like trying to run away from something that you’ve been Velcroed to. Frustrating as that may be, there are ways around it. Let’s find a mantra around releasing control—one that doesn’t have the word “control” in it. Try some of these on for size, or create one of your own that has a positive, forward feeling, and invite in the next step on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility, versus hunting it down:

+ I invite in the next step on my journey and am excited for the abundance that’s coming.

+ I’m choosing to be a mom and am open to the Universe’s timing of when that’s best for me. + I focus on what I’d love and let the Universe take care of the pesky details. + I’m open to receiving my gifts from the Universe in a way that I could not or did not expect. + I’m excited to allow flow and abundance into my life. The cool thing about a mantra is that even if it doesn’t fully resonate with you, the more you say it, the more it drops down into your body. And that’s when things start to change on a cellular level. So write your chosen mantra on a bunch of sticky notes and put them everywhere—fridge, bathroom mirror, night stand, laptop, etc. Get used to saying the mantra over and over. It will help to start retraining your brain. As Type-A-vengers, we might also want to keep an eye on our brain/ ego’s need to be right and to have some tangible acknowledgment that we are doing well. As Type-A-ers, we are good little students and want to know that we are executing the task at hand correctly and performing well. Our trust for our body goes right out the window, and we rely on outside measures to tell us how well we’re doing. Many of you are taking your temperature every morning, feeling pressured to have sex at the exact moment you find out you’re ovulating, and using ovulation sticks and waiting for the smiley-face peak fertility sign to appear. If that happy face doesn’t come up, we feel that we’ve failed; and if it does come up, we feel like we need to go have sex and that this has to be the month we get pregnant. Suffice it to say that these things can actually exacerbate your infertility and will never help if you are trying to get pregnant. Constant monitoring and not trusting your body pulls in more fear, more needing, and more anxiety, which is not the cushiest place for your munchkin to bake. Your body wants to be trusted. It knows how to do what countless women have done before you for millennia. And I get that it’s hard when you’ve had previous experiences that make it seem otherwise. We tend to turn these past thoughts and experiences into the belief that we need things outside of ourselves to tell us when it’s okay. If you want to increase fertility, here’s my challenge to you: Can you commit for one month to not…

+ take your temperature + use ovulation sticks + go to the fertility specialist + check your CM (cervical mucus) all the time

(On the one hand this is checking in with your own body, but sometimes our Type-A brains get obsessive about it. We start checking the “all-knowing” internet for what it means, and we pull in the attached wonky energy, versus the belief that “of course I can do this.”) For those of you planners who feel you’re already running out of time, that thought of giving up the meticulous monitoring is going to make you gulp a little. But can you show your body energetically that you can trust it? Many of my clients who started in this place are now actually able to feel when they’re ovulating. They feel when the cramping is different from period cramps. Just the sheer idea of trusting that their body will do what it needs to do is a huge leap forward. You don’t need anything outside of your body to get pregnant. Commit this month to your body. See if you can connect with it, and put out to the Universe that you know that together you can do this.

7. You’re Not Where You Want to Be in Your Career

How to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? We covered some of this in the stressful job section, so you can go back and refer to #1 as well. But I have really been surprised by the number of my clients who also end up moving their jobs as they move their fertility. Part of this can have to do with our solar plexus chakra, which is the energetic center of drive and ambition: our power center. It’s the confidence of being able to complete the things we set out to do, which can be related to work and/or fertility. If we are not feeling powerful or capable in our job, it’s easy to not feel capable of anything, and that can translate into your ability to create a human. When you are feeling powerful and capable, things seem to come easy to you and there isn’t a heavy “efforting” feeling, because you’re not feeling powerless or at the mercy of something you can’t control. Many of you are in a job you feel obligated to be in because it’s what your parents thought you should do or it’s all you could find at the time. And more and more I’m finding that sometimes the reason for the baby delay is that we are really supposed to be stepping into our purpose—not just another higher-paying job, but our purpose. Many of us are not being what we wanted to be when we grew up. It may be partially that life got in the way, or that we were influenced by others who made us feel that the thing we wanted to be wouldn’t be viable, and that we would be poor and miserable if we pursued it. Alternatively, it might be that we’ve never allowed ourselves to really sink into what we would love to do for a living. What would light you up if you could do it every day and get paid for it? You have a unique set of talents that you came into this world with, and we want to make sure they’re being used and not squandered. If you’re a CEO who’s supposed to be a chef, or a dental hygienist who’s supposed to be a yoga teacher, there’s discord in that energy. And it can throw our whole alignment off so that we literally can’t receive the things that are important to us this time around. So often we have to adjust the career area first, and then once we are in alignment, the fertility easily follows suit. My client Eliana was a teacher, who faced unexplained fertility issues. She felt obligated to stay in that career, but her dream was her side business. Crafting organic bath and beauty products made her heart sing. She couldn’t imagine how she could let the teaching pension and the 401K go, until she saw the flexibility of working from home to be with her baby and the fact that she could build an empire on this. All of a sudden her sales started picking up, and that brought her closer to being pregnant. Eliana is a living proof that doing what you love can have a positive impact in your life, and in her case, it helped her in getting pregnant. Exercise Write a little brain dump (freeform thought, no structure) around the idea that if money didn’t matter and you could do whatever you wanted for a living, what would it be? There’s no structure to this—just keep writing until you feel like you’re done. It’s important to write it down, as your brain processes it differently than when you just think about it. Try not to judge what comes up, and don’t be the “enlightened” human being that you are. Get down-and-dirty honest and list all of the things that come up, no matter how stupid or frivolous they sound. Even if your brain/ ego goes to things like “that could never happen” or “no one will pay me enough just to do that,” write down everything that sounds delicious for you regarding this dream job. I jokingly say to my clients, “If you want to be a lint salesman, let’s find a way to do it!” The main thing for this exercise on how to deal with infertility is to feel into the excitement of letting yourself dream big and noticing how it feels to entertain that you could design a career that you’d love, versus one that you feel obligated to be in.

+ What would your dream job look like?

+ How would you feel?

+ Who would you serve?

+ How would they feel?

+ What would you be helping them with?

+ How many hours/days per week would you work?

+ Would it be from home or in an office?

+ Would you work for yourself or someone else?

+ What would be exciting about it?

+ How do you feel in your body when you think that this dream job could actually be enough to nourish and support you?

More and more I am seeing this list turn into people’s careers or purposes. Dare to dream a little. It may very well be that you have a hard time identifying what your dream job title would be. That’s why I want you to feel into the qualities that you’d love in a job instead of trying to fit it into the box of what your brain knows or expects. When looking at your list, it’s okay if you then say, “These things aren’t a job.” I can relate. The work I do with my private clients is a hybrid of three different modalities. What I do didn’t exist before I did it either, but now I’m helping women all over the world and am filled to the brim with purpose every day. So try not to judge what comes up, but rather feel in your bones how awesome it would be if the things you wrote down appeared on your doorstep as a job that you got to do every day and that people were paying a decent amount of money for. We must start putting out energetic feelers toward our purpose, even if we aren’t sure how it’s going to work out or how we’re going to get there. It’s important that you just acknowledge that you have a purpose other than the job you’re doing, and that you then take whatever steps you can toward allowing that in.

8. Money Worries

Did you know that one of the unexplained fertility possible causes is money? This can be a tricky one. Money beliefs can be deeply embedded patterns in our psyche and can really trip us up. We learn these patterns from a very early age, without even realizing it. If we had secondhand clothes or were repeatedly told that money doesn’t grow on trees, etc., it can instill in us a survival pattern of there not being enough. It can elicit a really primal fear that we’re going to die at any given moment if the money stream runs out. We are going to get more into the fight-or flight response and how it physically affects fertility later on, but know that fear—especially fear around something that dictates whether or not you have shelter or food—can be a major reason for infertility. I’ve been there and I totally get it, that feeling of “What if I don’t have enough to pay my bills?” or “I don’t see how I’m going to be able to afford that.” It lasted many years for me, because not only was I not aware of the pattern, but I also didn’t think there was a way out of it or that there were steps I could take to shift it. Sometimes we get so ahead of ourselves that we never move forward because we’re scared of what might happen. Now obviously, if you’re living in a cardboard box, it might not be the best idea to bring a child into the world, but most of us are not living in that scenario. So we want to separate our thoughts from what is actually true, so that we are not paralyzed by fear but actually allow in more abundance— which allows our body to feel safer. Exercise Addressing existing money issues is one of the most effective ways on how to deal with infertility. How? Write a list of what you do have enough money for. Include everything you can think of, from the epic to the miniscule. Can you feel into a place of being grateful for each one of those things? A big piece of getting things moving is being grateful for what we do have and feeling into that. Think about what you do have that isn’t necessarily monetary but is helpful in terms of making your life easier, more enjoyable, and less stressful, such as a great support system of family and friends who would help when needed. Explore these areas and then take time to feel into them. It’s important not just to make a list and intellectually acknowledge these things to be grateful for. That doesn’t do much in terms of moving your energy forward. What gets things snap-crackle-popping is when you feel these things in your body. That’s when things begin to change on a cellular level and you attract what you want versus what you don’t. Make a goal sheet for the rest of the year. (This worksheet is included in the Conceivable Tool Kit.) Break it into three-month, six-month, and twelve-month goals. Write three goals for each time period, which may include looking for the best unexplained infertility treatment. When setting goals, we don’t want to think of them in the typical sense—the drive, the competition with the self or others, or the belief that “if I don’t achieve this, I’ve failed.” What would be awesome to shift in your career, or what circumstances would alleviate this concern? Each goal should feel good and should feel attainable. You don’t want your brain to shut off and go, “Yeah right, that’s never going to happen.” So make sure it sounds exciting and a little out of your comfort zone while still plausible. The great thing is that you don’t have to know how the hell it’s gonna happen, but just that it would be phenomenal if it did. Feel into how amazing it will be when three, six, or twelve months down the road you look at these goals and they all happened! After you fill in your sheet, post it on the fridge or your nightstand and feel into each of the goals every day. Each day look at 36 One them and don’t try to force these goals to happen, but just imagine how lit up inside would you feel if they did. What would it feel like in your body if that thing just showed up? Our perception about what money is and what it means is key. When we are stuck in these embedded patterns, it can be hard to think that money isn’t the root of all evil or that you’ll ever have enough. The wise Wayne Dyer said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. From an energetic perspective, if we perceive an issue as heavy, it will feel heavy. If we perceive it as light, it will feel light. The less power we give money, the less we are governed by it. Can we look at money simply as wampum—as a means of exchange—and can we get to a place of not hoping but of trusting that the Universe will provide what we need when we need it? Money is necessary in today’s society. There’s really no getting around that unless you go off the grid. But we can reframe it as something that helps us to have the experiences in life that light us up and make us happy, versus the thing we will never achieve or that holds us back. If you’re living in fear that there will never be enough, there never will be. So many of us are in survival mode when it comes to money, whether it’s because we actually don’t have money or we are afraid of losing it. This triggers our fight-or-flight response in a big way, because money is what we use to buy our two basic needs: food and shelter. Remember that your reproductive system isn’t needed when you’re running from a stressful situation. So if you are stressed about being able to provide for yourself, let alone another mouth to feed, we want to reframe that ASAP. It’s our beliefs that are stressful, not the actual situation, so the sooner we can see what is going right with our money situation, the sooner we can move out of the dire situation. We then go from surviving life to enjoying it—and that makes a huge difference in the quality of your life, whether there’s a baby or not.

9. Do You Have a Hard Time Saying No?

Sometimes, being too generous has a few of its own unique problems, and, believe it or not, it could be one of the many causes of infertility. This factor can be related to your job, if your boss continually asks extra things of you. It can be in terms of family (especially a tight-knit one). Is a family member ill or elderly, and a lot of responsibility falls on you? Do your drama-queen friends need you to be there for them all the time? Again, I’m not saying ditch your friends, your sick brother, or your grandma. I am saying we need to establish some boundaries. When you are that go-to person for people and you readily do what needs to be done, people keep going to you because they know it’ll get done. It’s great to know you’re helping people, but this is where your little brain/ego kicks in and goes, “We are taking care of everyone but ourselves. We literally cannot handle another human,” and hence the endocrine system and the reproductive system get wonky or slow/shut down because your brain is already convinced that you have no time to yourself and therefore can’t possibly add a baby to the mix. So where can we set some boundaries? As mentioned in external factor #1 with the stressful job situation, commit to staying late only one or two days a month if it’s normally five—unless, you don’t want to boost fertility. If you don’t know how well that would go over, have a conversation with your boss or the HR department. Tell them it has been recommended to you that, due to a “condition” you’re going through, they’d like you to limit your overtime. You can say it without going into too many details. If you are caring for an ailing parent or grandparent and have siblings, coordinate so that you’re not the caretaker every day. If you don’t, ask a family friend or spouse to help or, if means allow, hire someone to give you a break for a couple of days per week. This is not selfish. You are not a horrible child or grandchild if you do this. Think about what their soul would want for your soul. I promise that it’s not to be stressed and tired all the time because you felt obligated. They know you love them. Help create this space for you so you can show the Universe that you can slow down your life and make room for what you want. Make space now. Put that energy out there and believe that you will find the best-unexplained infertility treatment there is. The “I’ll do it later” mentality brings more “I’ll do it later” energy, and that leads to you being stuck in an energetic loop of “later.” Additionally, some of us have friends who are living in a Greek tragedy and need our urgent help all the time amid the ninety-seven other things we have going on in our lives. One of my clients and I affectionately call these people the “facehuggers” (from the movie Alien). You are the person who doesn’t say no, so these folks just migrate right to you. They don’t know how much it taxes your energy because they’re so caught up in their own drama. Do you ditch these friends? Of course not. But, you can try setting a boundary of a weekly lunch or dinner date where all the beans are spilled, and then it’s just occasional texting throughout the rest of the week. You can also tell them you’ve got a lot of stuff going on that you’re trying to process, so if you don’t get back to them right away, you still love them and will be there for them as much as you can, but there’s some stuff you’re working through that may inhibit that. One of the best natural infertility treatments is simply having enough time and space for yourself. Let your friend know that, say, between the hours of 6:00 and 8:30 p.m., you’re having dinner and catching up with your husband or partner, so if something super-important comes up, she can text you after that. Brainstorm some things to say that would feel good to you, where you’re communicating to your friend, boss, or family member that you care about them and that there are certain things you need as well, and you appreciate their understanding of that. Part of the fertility puzzle is claiming the worth piece. Your needs are just as important as other people’s needs. You deserve and are allowed to do whatever you need to move yourself forward. There’s enough to go around for everyone. Claim that. Claiming your time and space doesn’t make you insensitive or a bitch or a bad friend, especially if you are trying to increase fertility. If you don’t stand up for yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to. And you can’t expect the people who are sucking up your time and energy to know that they’re being facehuggers if they’re not made aware of it. We often don’t want to stir the pot or upset people, but you can say it in a loving way by letting them know that you care about them but you also have to take care of what’s best for you right now. Voicing what you need is especially important for those of you dealing with thyroid conditions.

10. Are You Eating Crap?

If you’re still wondering how to overcome unexplained infertility, eat healthy. Here’s the thing about the food piece for me: it’s kind of a double-edged sword in terms of this mindset/energy work for fertility. I try to eat clean as much as I can. I eat organic whenever possible and I feel the benefits in my body. The energy I have when I’m eating well is super-noticeable. I’m definitely an advocate of the belief that if you can fight a condition with food instead of medicine or drugs, you absolutely should. There’s a lot of evidence for how you can manage hormonal imbalances with food and supplements, some of which I’m going to cover here. My concern is that, as with many of these fertility “fixes,” our brain becomes obsessed with determining the right amount of beets, kale, and folic acid we should consume. We become rigid about it, like we did with the ovulation sticks, and it actually exacerbates the infertility. When we obsess over making sure we eat the right amount of this or believe we shouldn’t have any of that, it places our body in a stressed-out place, paranoid that the coffee we just drank means we can’t get pregnant this month. It’s just not a helpful place to be. We want to pull the body out of its fight-or-flight mode and help it feel safe, calm, and nourished. The following guidelines are intended to help you increase your chance of getting pregnant, and I encourage you to consider consulting a holistic health coach or naturopath who knows what are the spiritual things to do to get pregnant and has a chill vibe to further your understanding of and connection with the foods that may be beneficial. From my experience with all of my work with clients, whether or not they got pregnant wasn’t dependent on whether or not they drank a cup of coffee or didn’t eat the right amount of kale. It came down to their mindset shifting not a fertility cleanse. Let’s face it: we’ve all known women who don’t take care of their bodies (drinking alcohol, smoking, eating fast food, taking drugs, etc.) who get pregnant, so diet really is not the be-all and end-all. But it can help if you’re approaching it from a nourishing versus militant way. So, we’re going to look at five things to avoid and five foods to amp up. Five Things to Avoid

+ Multiple cups of coffee per day. One cup of coffee will not kill your chances of conceiving, but caffeine in general can alter your blood sugar level and overstimulate the adrenals, which can send your hormones into a tizzy.

+ Soda and bottled juices. These are high in sugar and can have a negative effect on your blood sugar level and hormones.

+ Soy products. Unfortunately, most of the soy available now is genetically modified and has been shown to affect both male and female fertility. Soy has estrogen-mimicking hormones that knock your body’s hormonal balance for a loop. This especially affects men in terms of low sperm count and motility, as it mimics estrogen.

+ Low-fat foods, especially dairy. Not only are these foods highly processed and packed with sugar, but your body actually needs fat to grow a munchkin. A 2007 study from Harvard showed that women who ate full-fat products had a much easier time conceiving and those who consumed fat-free ones (see “Diet and Lifestyle in the Prevention of Ovulatory Disorder Infertility”) faced unexplained infertility issues. If you feel uncomfortable about the idea of giving up low-fat foods, we need to have a look at your body image and beliefs about pregnancy. Sometimes releasing those things can be helpful so that we can physically and mentally allow a baby in.

+ Alcohol. Again, a glass of wine on occasion won’t kill you, but if you have a glass or more every day, you might want to consider reducing or stopping altogether. Alcohol consumption can prevent the production of progesterone in women and decimate sperm count in men. Cutting out beer is what helped Chloe’s husband get his count back up, and subsequently they got pregnant. So if your husband or partner drinks regularly, at least have him cut down when you’re ovulating—but preferably stop for you to get pregnant fast.

Five Foods to Amp Up

+ Leafy greens such as spinach and kale are high in folate for healthy ovaries and vitamin E for healthy menstrual cycles.

+ Eggs (including the yolks) are rich in vitamin D, supporting ovulation.

+ Sunflower seeds are packed with zinc, which helps support egg quality. Oysters are also a good source of zinc.

+ Wild salmon has the least amount of mercury of all fish and is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which help to balance your reproductive system and send more blood to the necessary organs.

+ Nourishing herbal infusions of red clover and linden flower are helpful to both regulate hormones and reduce inflammation. (Inflammation is one of the leading causes of hormonal imbalance.)

Again, please don’t drive yourself crazy with the exact amount of this or the wrong amount of that. If it feels good to you to do some of these things, great, but if you’re spending more time and energy stressing about eating the right foods than hanging out with the hubby or taking a yoga class, then I lovingly say, “Step away.” Getting too rigid about anything isn’t good, as we mentioned before with the ovulation sticks and temperature, etc. It’s really about where your mindset and energy are. These are just supplemental infertility cure suggestions.

11. Do You Not Have Closure on One or More Relationships?

This factor might seem kind of out of left field, but a surprising number of my clients have energy hanging back in past relationships. This awful emotional roadblock, unfortunately, is considered as one of the spiritual causes of infertility. For some, it’s the “one that got away” mentality. They wonder if they would still be together if X circumstances hadn’t torn them apart, so a little stream of energy is hanging back there in “what if.” This can be a tricky one to catch, because even if 95 percent of you gets that he wasn’t the right guy for you, the brain can still be like, “But maybe it could have been. Maybe it would have been easier to get pregnant.” As long as we’ve got even 5 percent of our subconscious energy in that thought, it can be enough to derail us from Operation Baby. For others, it’s not that they still want to be with the person, but that they never got closure and want to know why. What’s wrong with me that you broke up with me? Some of my clients have subconsciously made it mean something about their worth that this person no longer wanted to be with them. Of course it’s not about you or your worth, but it can feel like it, and a strand of energy is held back there. To your brain, it feels like “it shouldn’t have happened this way.” Trust that it actually happened the exact way it was supposed to. As long as we’re sending strands of energy to “it shouldn’t have happened,” we keep ourselves in a sort of bizarre state of limbo. The body and the brain are inextricably linked, so if we’re having these thoughts that aren’t helpful, it’s preventing our body from functioning at an optimal level as well. In other words, negativities would do no good in your goal to attain holistic fertility. Finally, for some others it’s not that they want to be back with the person, but they are mad that they spent what they feel were their prime baby-making years with the ex. They feel that they wasted time, and now they’re getting screwed because they waited too long. This is pretty common among my clients who are in their forties and had a noncommittal boyfriend throughout their thirties and feel like they are being punished now that they want to have a baby with their current partner. There tends to be a lot of subconscious anger around this, which can manifest in the form of cysts, fibroids, or endometriosis. It’s important to address these hurts and beliefs so that your body can resume normal functioning. You are always where you’re supposed to be. We have beliefs about what should have been. But, see if you can entertain letting go of the energy you’re giving to him for having wasted your time. It’s not affecting him. It’s affecting you. You can’t be in the energy of needing closure from him and be ready to make a baby at the same time. Those two energies are too far apart. Exercise To address this possible cause of unexplained fertility, write a letter to this person. Handwrite it and get down and dirty with your emotions. Cry and yell while you’re writing it. Get everything out that you need to say and then burn or shred the letter in a ceremonial “I’m done.” Visualize a gold cord of energy going from your heart to his. Sit in the emotion of this for a minute. Feel the hurt, regret, etc., and then see if you can genuinely wish him well on his path and thank him for lessons learned. (Remember, we are presented with the partners we need at the time.) Chop the cord with your hand. You may need to do this a few times to really feel a release, so rinse and repeat as necessary. Write a brain dump (freeform thought, no structure) on why it was purposeful that things happened exactly the way they did. Why is it great that you didn’t end up with him? Why was the timing not right? Why is your current partner best for you to have a baby with, and why will he be a great father? This is perhaps the most important one to feel into. Make sure you write it all down. There’s something about the act of writing down your thoughts and then seeing them on paper that can help your energy shift. Our brain loves to be in shoulda-coulda-woulda mode, but the fact is that it just keeps us stuck. We can’t change the past or predict the future. The only thing we can change is the present, by choosing positive thoughts. In order to start thinking positively on a more consistent basis, we must be willing to give up our attachment to the past. This can be easier said than done, which is why doing the belief work in chapter 2 of my book can be really helpful in terms of offloading the energy that isn’t helpful to you.

12. Do You Have Space for This Baby?

How to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? Simply make space for your future bundle of joy. A surprising number of my clients haven’t given any thought to where the baby is going to go (in terms of physical space). I get it. It’s one of those things where you think, “Well, we’ll figure it out when we have the baby,” or “I don’t want to get my hopes up and then find out I can’t have one.” We want to get more of your energy moving toward the idea that this baby is in fact coming. We want to be able to create the physical space as well as the energetic space for the baby to come. Many women I’ve spoken with are currently living in small one-bedroom apartments and haven’t gotten excited about how they’re going to decorate because there’s nowhere for the baby to go. I get that you can’t exactly justify selling your tiny apartment at the moment or converting the office right now, but if you found out you were pregnant today, where would that munchkin go? I’m not saying to set up the crib right now. That’s too much of an energetic gap for your brain to be able to get behind. But we want to start thinking in terms of the fact that this baby is coming. Doing visualizations can help you start to feel that in your body. It’s important to be putting out the energy of excitement, and that it’s a matter of when this baby comes, not if. Exercise Close your eyes, stop thinking about the reason for infertility for a while and take a deep breath. In the space you’re currently living in, where is your baby’s crib going? What about her dresser? Changing table? Rocking chair? Really picture it. What does it feel like to see it all set up? What do you notice in your body when you realize that having those things set up in your space means that you did it, that she’s coming? Is there stuff you’re going to have to get rid of in order to make room for her, things that are no longer serving you and that you haven’t used in a year or more (and probably won’t)? Commit to purging at least five things this week to symbolically make room for the baby. See where you can commit to making even a small change. This will go a long way in terms of shifting your energy. My client Vicky had a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and even though she kept it very neat and minimalist, there just wasn’t enough space for a family. Despite this, she made a plan for where she was and then began visualizing the bigger apartment she’d love. She started a Pinterest board and vision board without knowing how she’d convince her husband to move. But she held the intention without attachment, and one day her husband came home and said that he’d been looking at apartments and was thinking they should move. Soon after they did, she was pregnant!

13. Did You Just Start a Business and You Have to Tend to It Like a Baby?

Serving two masters at the same time is not easy. What more if you are dealing with unexplained infertility? There are so many moving parts to tend to when you’re starting your own business. Even if you are generally a laid-back person, it can be pretty overwhelming. Even if the business is something you really love and are passionate about, it takes a ton of energy. If we then overwhelm ourselves with “Why can’t I get pregnant?” we can be in for a serious uphill battle. Have you found that your business is your baby? You provide for it, nurture it, and put its success above all else. Your brain may very well think you already have a baby and it doesn’t see the need for another one. According to your brain, you’re already devoted to something. From the flight-or-fight perspective, if your energy is tapped out, your brain isn’t going to want to add another thing to your plate and make it harder for your survival. So, what can we do about it? Exercise We want to look at streamlining your business, whether it’s how you’re scheduling things or how much you take on. Can you hire an assistant or intern to take some of the menial jobs off your plate? Or can you commit to not answering anything business-related on weekends? Implement some of the grounding techniques, which are also some spiritual ways to get pregnant, we talked about in the stressful job section (external factor #1), such as meditation, yoga, dancing, knitting, taking a bath, connecting to the earth, etc. Give yourself the space to do what you need to do to feel solid in the business, and know that the baby will come when the initial craziness is over. As women, we feel we need to do it all, and all at once. That’s admirable, but not very practical. Give yourself the space and permission to have one baby at a time. You only think you’re running out of time. I promise you’re not. Building your business is great! It’s going to provide a secure situation for you and your munchkin. It’s okay to build it first. We’ll talk about this more later on in the book, but the more in alignment you are in one area, the more the other areas are inclined to follow. Almost all of my private clients have either shifted jobs within their field or shifted fields completely, and that’s when they get pregnant. By working on stepping into their purpose career-wise, it moved their fertility energy along. When you’re feeling capable and fulfilled in one area, other areas naturally begin to fall in line. Building a business, if that’s what you’re doing or want to do, can’t be rushed. It’s going to allow you amazing flexibility when you do have a baby, and you want to have as many of the kinks worked out as possible. The more you can look at it as something that’s going to support you and make your life easier in the long run, the faster things will fall into place. See the act of building your business as actually helping the baby get here, because it is.

14. Do You Have a Doctor or Care Provider That You Aren’t Comfortable With?

Here’s the thing: I am not anti-doctor. I think many elements of Western medicine are awesome and necessary, and in a lot of cases it’s good they exist. Medical science has done some truly amazing things. While we expect our doctors to provide us answers on what can cause infertility, there are times when they are also among the factors that contribute to the problem. My hang-up involves the seriously overlooked mindset component to physical conditions and fertility. There’s a reason that IVF only works 25 to 50 percent of the time. And it’s not because you had that cup of coffee you shouldn’t have. It has so much to do with the mindset of the woman and what she’s believing or committing to. Thanks to the Law of Psychophysical Response, for every thought the brain has, the body has a physical or chemical reaction. So if we’re having a stressful or panicked thought, it registers in the body. Thanks to the fight-or-flight response in the amygdalae of the brain, when we are stressed-out or triggered, our nonessential body systems slow or shut down. The reproductive system is not necessary for us to stay alive, so that’s one of the first to be affected. Many things can trigger this response, but what I’ve found in my practice is that women are often plugged into beliefs that are spewed at them from society, family, and, yes, care providers. I’ll get more into this in the belief and energy work in my book, but the way some doctors, nurses, and technicians speak to women can be abhorrent and can actually perpetuate the infertility. These are things doctors have actually said to my clients that didn’t help them boost fertility:

+ Wow, you’re starting late. Well, there are lots of old moms now.

+ Let’s just start right off with IVF. The other stuff doesn’t really work anyway. (This client was completely healthy, with a regular cycle, by the way.)

+ IVF probably won’t even work for you, but you can try if you want.

+ I doubt you have enough eggs at this point, so maybe you should look into other options. + I mean, we can do an IUI right now, but it probably won’t work.

+ Doctor comes in from other exam room and says: Whew, the girl before you had eighteen follicles! But you have…three. That’s good.

+ You don’t want to get your hopes up. You are over thirty.

While care providers rarely mean to be insensitive, they’re often not aware that what they say and how they say it subconsciously plants itself into our belief systems—and sabotages our belief in ourselves and our body’s ability to be able to do the job women have done for millennia, including how to deal with infertility. The wellness aspect and bedside manner have unfortunately gone out the window in many cases. Whether that’s due to training or hospital constraints, I don’t know. But the focus is often on the pathology, not the person. Many just look at you as a uterus and not a human. Again, I know some warm, caring doctors, but almost all of my infertility clients have had unfortunate experiences with insensitive care providers. And because these care providers are authority figures, these women buy into the belief that they are not capable, that it’s not likely to work, that they are too old. And according to the Law of Attraction, like energy attracts like energy, so if we’re plugged into the belief that we are not capable, the Universe answers with situations that are an energetic match to that thought. The result is several rounds of IVF that don’t work, unexplained infertility, etc., and it just never happens. Of course, these doctors’ concerns have some basis. But, unfortunately, they are trained to focus on the exception, not the rule. In Europe, it’s not so unusual for a woman to conceive up to age fifty. Part of that is due to eating less processed crap, and part of it is not being made to feel incapable at age thirty. Yes, it’s true that your egg count goes down quite a bit after thirty, and so from a scientific perspective, the odds decrease. But that’s just it—they’re odds. And you need one egg. Just one. When the mindset component (the idea that by shifting your thoughts, you can shift your physical condition) is left out of fertility, it can be a bleak prognosis. Your mind is so powerful. I’ve seen amazing things in my practice, including the following:

+ Cysts and fibroids disappearing + Scar tissue being released + Cycle returning after years of amenorrhea + Egg quality increasing + Endometriosis disappearing + Uterine lining doubling in thickness + Thyroid conditions disappearing + Stopping miscarriage

It all happened when the woman was open to the idea that things could be different from the prognosis they were given, by doing the work and by having a care provider who made them feel safe. So, how to overcome unexplained infertility? What’s often overlooked throughout this fertility journey is your own intuition. You know your body better than anyone. You know what’s normal for you, what feels right/wrong, etc. Unfortunately, over the last few generations we’ve lost touch with our confidence in our intuition and have given our power over to the authorities. It’s so important that you get back in touch with your intuition and start to trust it. It will help you exponentially to achieve your goal. So many of my clients have stayed way too long with doctors who have made them feel uncomfortable, too old, less than, incapable, and like a lost cause. It’s so subtle that you often don’t notice it, but it’s a huge factor in your progress. So if you don’t love your doctor and they’re not uber-supportive of your journey and what’s right for you, consider a naturopath or midwife for well-woman care. If having a medical doctor makes you feel better, interview a few more and get someone you feel safe and comfortable with. Feeling comfortable and capable is essential in this journey. Don’t be afraid to change providers. If they’re not on Team You and do not provide any help in your goal to increase fertility, they need to go.

15. Are There Some Body Issues Coming Up?

This can be a big factor related to unexplained infertility and may have many layers to it. After all, body image is something we’re sort of forced to be aware of from a young age. If we have beliefs that are either ours, our parents’, or society’s that are clouding our view of ourselves, we can have a fertility block. I have several clients who are former bodybuilders, or have dealt with eating disorders, or grew up overweight and are scared to death to go back to that place. It’s not something we really want to admit to ourselves because, of course, we want the baby. This can lead to not eating well or eating processed low-fat foods, which adversely affect your hormones, as we mentioned earlier. If the hormones are off kilter or there’s inflammation in the body, the chances of conceiving are significantly diminished. We’re afraid of growing larger, and that can trigger fear and kick up our Type-A desire to control how things will go, rather than basking in the idea that we’re about to be pregnant. These are two conflicting energies that sort of cancel each other out. Exercise Here are natural infertility treatments you can explore to help you move through your fears around weight gain/body image.

+ Consider speaking with a therapist for a couple of sessions to work through the fear.

+ Check in with a holistic health coach for advice on how to eat safely and healthy as you prepare for pregnancy. You may also try out faith-based coaching that provides natural fertility plan just for your individual need.

+ Know that not everyone gains sixty pounds during pregnancy. In fact, twenty-five to thirty-five pounds is the typical weight gain—and if you plan to breastfeed, it comes off even quicker.

+ Look into prenatal yoga classes in your area.

+ Look at some of the really cute maternity wear they have now. Start to get excited about being a chic preggo mama!

+ Talk to your friends who didn’t take long to lose weight after giving birth and ask for their secrets.

+ Come up with an accountability plan postpartum that can quell fears now, such as a walking buddy, a postpartum mommy group, a mommy and me yoga class, etc.

+ Make a list of the negatives of gaining twenty-five pounds and a list of the positives of having a baby. If the negatives outweigh the positives, then there might be some mindset work and healing that needs to happen before the munchkin makes an entrance. It’s okay and necessary to heal this first so that you can have a beautiful, stress-free pregnancy.

One solution on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility is by writing an inquiry as it can really help the brain release anxiety. It allows us to let go of a fear that’s not moving us forward. Body image isn’t necessarily something we think of as being a factor in why we’re not getting pregnant, but it’s a sneaky subconscious block that can keep us in limbo. For example, my client Kelli told me in an early session that she had decided she was going to adopt. Adoption is a great option and the people who do it are heroes, but I also know that Kelli really wanted her own biological child, so I asked why. One of the first things she said was that then she wouldn’t have to worry about losing the babyweight. Her friend at work who had a two-year-old still hadn’t lost the weight, and she was scared that she would have the same fate. So the brain says, “Let’s just adopt because it’ll be easier on our body.” I reminded her that she would never let the same thing happen to her. It’s just not in her personality. This is where she would use her Type-A-ness for good and schedule workouts, go for stroller jogs in the morning, and cook healthy meals. She relaxed after that, which is part of what helped her get pregnant. Kelli now has a two-year-old and is actually below her pre-pregnancy weight! Look over the fifteen external factors affecting fertility again, and circle the top three that you think apply to you. After getting some hints on how to overcome unexplained infertility and help getting pregnant, take some time to write down what actions you will take to move those factors forward. You don’t have to know how to “fix” the whole situation and address all the spiritual causes of infertility. Just put your energy forward toward what would feel really good. This piece is excerpted with permission from How to Get Pregnant, Even When You’ve Tried Everything: A Mind-Body Guide to Fertility by A’ndrea Reiter. 

About The Author A’ndrea Reiter (Brooklyn, NY) is a certified Reiki master and intuitive fertility coach specializing in a mind-body approach to fertility. She uses a combination of reiki, intuition and mindset coaching to move women through the emotional and physical blocks that are impeding them from conceiving naturally. Visit her online at fusionfertility.com

We want to get the most out of our daytime activities and nighttime rest. The goal is twofold: First, we want to adjust our activities to the optimal times of the day that are most in sync with our clocks. We want to eat when we metabolize foods the most efficiently, we want to be active when our brain and body are functioning at their peak levels, and we want to get the right amount of sleep so that we can do it all again tomorrow. Second, we can fix disruptions, retrain and reset our internal body clock to improve our health.  It would be a totally rational guess to assume that the first thing we need to fix is our eating pattern. But in reality, circadian clocks will readjust best when addressing our evening activities, namely limiting our access to light and enhancing sleep. The reason is because sleep is not a passive experience: The human body begins to get ready for the day the night before. Just like we start off the New Year with a celebration on December 31, sleep is the beginning of our biological day, not the end. Every day, our body battles with lots of stressors that create cellular damage. At night, we aren’t just making necessary repairs to the body; the brain is also busy consolidating memories and sending out instructions to prepare us for the next round of activity. The changes that happen at night are absolutely critical to how we feel the next day. That’s why when we are in good health and have the right amount of sleep, we wake up feeling refreshed. Hence, if you want to improve your productivity and health, you need to adjust your circadian cycle based on your day-to-day activities.

The Stages of Sleep

The very first thing to do if you want to know how to reset your circadian rhythm is to get familiarized with the different sleep stages. Great sleep is created when there are cycles of quiet sleep and active sleep. The quiet sleep takes place in three stages that occur in a specific sequence: N1 (drowsiness), N2 (light sleep), and N3 (deep sleep). Unless something disturbs the process, you will proceed smoothly from one stage to the next, and as you do, your body and brain perform different functions depending on your clocks. First, in making the transition from wakefulness into light sleep, you spend only a few minutes in stage N1 sleep, but your body and brain change rapidly: Your body temperature begins to drop, your muscles relax, and your eyes move slowly from side to side. During stage N1 sleep, you begin to lose awareness of your surroundings, but you can be easily jarred awake. The N2 stage, or light sleep, is really the first phase of true sleep. During this sleep stage, your eyes are still and your heart rate and breathing slow down. Brief bursts of brain activity called sleep spindles occur, as brain waves speed up for roughly half a second or longer. Some researchers believe that sleep spindles play a role in consolidating memories. Stage N3, or deep sleep, occurs as the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, making it difficult to wake up. Your breathing becomes more regular. Your blood pressure falls, and your pulse rate slows 20 to 30 percent below the waking rate. Your blood flow is directed less toward your brain, which cools measurably. Right before this stage ends, the muscles that allow you to be upright against gravity become paralyzed, which prevents you from acting out your dreams. However, there are some real sleep disorders—like sleepwalking and sleep eating—in which this change doesn’t occur. A loss of sleep during this stage may play a role in reducing daytime creativity, mood, and fine motor skills. If you always experience this on a regular basis, then you should start finding effective ways on how to reset the body clock. These three stages of quiet sleep alternate with periods of active sleep, which is referred to as REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep. During this time, your body is still but your mind is racing. Your eyes dart back and forth behind closed lids. Your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate and breathing speed up to daytime levels. Dreaming also occurs during REM sleep. We typically have between three to five cycles of REM sleep per night, occurring every 90 to 120 minutes. Each time you move from quiet sleep to REM sleep, you complete a sleep cycle. For optimal health, you need a balance of the different types of sleep throughout the night. Adults need at least 7 consecutive hours of sleep each night. So, if you short yourself by 90 minutes or more, you lose the equivalent of one entire sleep cycle. When you sacrifice a cycle of sleep or more of REM sleep, your circadian rhythm may be disrupted. Within that 7-hour period, there is a critical 4-hour window. You may notice that between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., or in the first 4 hours after falling asleep, you get some of your best sleep. This is because these first few hours go toward paying back your sleep debt. They neutralize the urge to sleep or the tiredness you feel before going to bed. This is why it may be harder to go back to sleep if you wake up after that 4-hour period: You no longer have the sleep debt that was making you tired in the first place. The next 3-plus hours of sleep go toward nurturing your brain and body, giving them the additional time they need for repair and rejuvenation. Shift workers who have to sleep during the daytime also experience circadian rhythm disruption. Most of these individuals look for ways on how to reset the body clock. However, in most cases, they find it hard to adjust their internal body clock due to some environmental and physiological factors. Since this is not the typical time nor the optimal lighting for the circadian clock to send its signal for sleep, shift workers aren’t able to get the maximum number of sleep cycles during the daytime, even if they try to sleep for 7 hours. This is why when you nap in the daytime you can rarely sleep for more than 2 to 3 hours: Your circadian code won’t allow it.

Understanding Sleep Debt

Carefully understanding what sleep debt is could also be helpful on your journey to finding effective ways on how to reset your sleep cycle. As soon as we wake up, our suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) clock begins keeping track of wakeful time. For every hour we stay awake, we later have to sleep 20 to 30 minutes. Every night adults should give themselves 8 consecutive hours of sleep opportunity, and children should have 10 hours of sleep opportunity. That includes getting into bed, settling down, and then falling asleep. Children should be sleeping for at least 9 hours a night; adults should sleep for no fewer than 7 hours. Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. So, if you slept for 6½ hours last night, you’re beginning your day with 30 minutes of sleep debt. When you go to sleep the following night, you first repay this debt from the previous night. That means even if you sleep 7 hours the second night, it only counts as sleeping for 6.5 again. That’s one of the reasons why we often sleep late on weekends: It’s the body’s way of repaying your entire debt.

Napping Counts toward Repaying Your Sleep Debt

A short nap during the day is one way to repay your sleep debt. For example, if you had a sleep debt from the week of 2 hours and you take a Saturday afternoon nap, it’s possible to repay that debt in one nap. But be careful not to sleep too long: Sleep time is a function of your circadian clock and how many hours you are awake that day. A long afternoon nap will dissipate some of the sleep pressure that was building up since morning, but the longer you sleep in the afternoon, the further you may push your nighttime sleep, making it difficult for you to fall asleep when you want to later that night. The only times when napping really works against you are when you are jet-lagged, if you are a true shift worker and you want to sleep at night, or if you are really trying to move your bedtime to earlier in the evening. In these instances, it’s better to build up your propensity to sleep at night, and then reset your internal body clock the next morning.

The U Curve of Sleep and Longevity

There are real benefits to achieving the prescribed number of hours of sleep. From tracking a million individuals, researchers have identified a sleep pattern, known as the U curve of sleep and longevity. People who consistently sleep too little are more likely to die early than those who get the full 7 hours of sleep each night. Similarly, people who sleep as much as 10 to 11 hours are also likely to live shorter lives.

Let’s Get to Sleep!

How to reset your sleep schedule? The basic lesson for improving sleep or is to increase the drive to sleep in the first place and avoid the factors that suppress or disrupt sleep. In the daytime, the drive to sleep is affected by many factors:

+ Length of time one has been awake: Sleep drive increases with every hour we are awake. If you want to go to bed early, you should wake up early as well.

+ Exercise or physical activity: Physical activity, particularly outdoor activity under the sun or under diffuse daylight, increases the drive to sleep.

+ Timing of caffeine intake: Caffeine reduces our sleep drive and keeps us awake. Reducing caffeine after midday is a good general rule of thumb.

Food, Timing, and Sleep

Food is another significant factor to look into if you want to know how to reset your circadian rhythm naturally. Eating late at night is not only bad for metabolism, it also affects sleep. This habit interferes both with falling asleep and maintaining deep sleep. In order to fall asleep, our core body temperature must cool down by almost 1°F. But when we eat, our core body temperature actually goes up as blood rushes to the gut (the core) to help digest and absorb nutrients. So, eating late at night prevents us from getting into a deep sleep. To have a good night’s sleep, we should have our last meal at least 2 to 4 hours before going to bed to ensure that the body is able to cool down.

Sleep Is Inhibited by Light at Night

Another factor that could affect your the circadian cycle is the light that you are exposed to before going to bed. The easiest sleep fix is to maintain a dark sleeping environment. Everyone knows it is hard to fall asleep under bright light. Your circadian clock prevents this. The blue light sensors pick up the bright light to suppress sleep and promote wakefulness. However, other colors in the light spectrum, specifically orange and red, are less effective at suppressing sleep. Pay attention to the type of light that you are exposed to in the evening. We cannot go back to the dark ages or turn off all lights after sunset, but managing our exposure to light can have a huge impact on improving sleep and maintaining health.

Hacking Your Way to a Better Night’s Sleep

A good night’s sleep ensures better performance the next day. It puts you in better alignment with your circadian code by increasing growth hormone production while you rest, rejuvenating your brain and body. It increases your cortisol production in the morning, which helps with alertness, and balances your hunger and satiety hormones for stronger, more efficient metabolism. Best of all, it synchronizes all of your internal clocks so that your whole body is working at peak performance. If you are consistently not getting a good night’s sleep, or if you are waking up at night, try the following techniques on how to reset the body clock.

Turn Down the Temperature

The body has to cool down during nighttime to sleep. It’s a good idea to reduce the temperature in your bedroom to 70°F or lower so that your skin feels cooler. When this happens, blood flows toward your skin to keep your skin warm. Since the blood is flowing away from the core of the body, the core body temperature can fall and you will fall asleep much easier.

Behavioral Techniques for Better Sleep

1. One helpful tip on how to reset your sleep schedule is by simply not looking at your watch/clock/phone when you cannot get to sleep or if you wake up in the middle of the night. Why? Because the light from these devices will trigger your melanopsin. It really doesn’t matter what time it is when you wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s no benefit to starting to worry about not getting enough sleep. If you need an alarm to wake up at a certain time, that’s fine: Set it and cover it so that even those lights don’t disturb your sleep.

2. Don’t create stress around bedtime or worry that you will wake up late the next day. That’s what alarm clocks are for. Relying on alarm clocks is not ideal, but as you are working on improving your circadian code, there is a place for them in your life. Instead of worrying that you won’t wake up on time, try deep belly breathing to relax your body and mind.

3. Don’t create stress about your last night’s sleep and worry that you’ll have the same bad experience again. You are in control of your sleep. By following the “how to reset your circadian rhythm” recommendations we’ve laid out in this article, it’s quite likely that your sleep will improve, bit by bit, every night.

4. Don’t create stress about the number of hours you’re currently sleeping. If you are feeling fine and restored the next day, you may not need as much sleep as others. But if you don’t feel rested and refreshed in the morning, or if you feel sleepy during the late afternoon, try some of the tips in my book The Circadian Code.

5.  Don’t use the bedroom for anything other than sleep. It’s not a study or a living room or a home theater.

The Best Ways to Wake Up

Is there any room for improvement to optimize waking up? + The best way to wake up refreshed is to have enough sleep by going to bed early. + Get some bright light immediately after completing one cycle of sleep. Open your curtains or turn on your overhead light. Get as close to the window as possible. + Take a quick, 5- to 15-minute morning walk. Check your plants, check the bird feeder, play with your dog in the backyard, brush off your car. Do anything that will take you out of the house and into bright daylight. + Another important step on how to reset your circadian rhythm naturally is being consistent. Try to be consistent and wake up at the same time every day. If you are waking up 2 hours later on the weekends, it is a fair sign that you are not getting restorative sleep during the week. Excerpted from the book The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight. Copyright © 2018 by Satchin Panda, Ph.D. Published by Rodale Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

About The Author Satchin Panda, Ph.D., is a leading expert in the field of circadian rhythm research. He is a professor at the Salk Institute and a founding executive member of the Center for Circadian Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Panda is a Pew Scholar and a recipient of the Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research. Learn more at circadiancode.com

photo: lama-photography photocase.com

Diet for Migraine Prevention

This article contains a complete plan for preventing migraine with diet. For twenty-five years, this migraine diet plan has transformed the lives of innumerable migraine sufferers who have followed the Mundo Program. Diet is essential to migraine management, but not in the ways you might expect. Rodolfo Low was a chemist, professor, Ford Foundation advisor, and migraine sufferer. In Victory over Migraine: The Breakthrough Study That Explains What Causes It and How It Can Be Completely Prevented through Diet, he presented the findings of his twenty-two years of clinical research. Drawing a connection between insulin levels and migraine, he concluded that patients can eliminate their migraines altogether by better managing their blood sugar levels, for which he advised a hypoglycemic diet. This so-called migraine diet boils down to a simple formula: Eat more protein more often, and eat fewer simple carbs. Based on these ideas, this article explains what it means when people regularly wake up with headaches, why it’s important to eat protein in the morning, and what’s wrong with carb breakfasts, energy bars, and sweet snacks.

Migraine and Low Blood Sugar

In 1990, I found Low’s little red book in a used bookstore. Since then, the author’s ideas have formed the basis of my approach to a diet that promote natural migraine prevention more than almost anything else—and it’s shockingly simple! Dr. Low, a migraine sufferer since childhood, noticed a pattern about his and others’ migraine episodes and began doing clinical research to investigate his hypothesis: when migraine-prone people consume foods containing simple carbohydrates, such as refined sugars, corn syrup, fructose, and maltose, they get migraine attacks. (He always got them after a day spent at the movies consuming lots of candy.) For over two decades, Dr. Low analyzed how sugar, or glucose, is metabolized in patients who are prone to migraine. It’s complicated (and of course the science is always advancing), but in a laywoman’s vastly simplified terms, here’s the story: All the food we eat is metabolized, or broken down, into a sugar called glucose, which is then processed by the liver before it enters the bloodstream. Some of the glucose is used immediately, and some is stored as fat so it can be accessed later. When the pancreas is overactive (a condition called hyperinsulinemia), it secretes too much insulin, the hormone that controls the amount of sugar in the blood. As a result, too much sugar is eaten up by the excess insulin, resulting in a condition called hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. Hypoglycemia reduces the body’s energy. In order to boost energy, the adrenal glands release the “speedy” hormones, adrenaline and catecholamine. These energy boosters, which are also produced in response to stress, cause blood vessels to constrict, which causes release of lipids called prostaglandins, involved in dilation and inflammation of blood vessels in your head. The dilated blood vessels impinge upon surrounding nerves, sending signals to your brain stem and brain and…now you’ve got migraine. Low found that people with migraine are different than those with normal pancreatic functioning in that their blood sugar levels begin lower, rise higher, and end lower. When Low gave migraineurs a glucose tolerance test, he noticed a rapid rise pattern of their blood sugar levels and extended below-average levels after the blood sugar dropped. Low claimed that this characteristic pattern was missed in typical glucose tolerance tests, which took blood samples at half- to one-hour intervals. However, instead of suggesting that migraineurs take the test following his fifteen-minute sampling protocol to learn if their migraines were due to hypoglycemia, Low suggested that they could simply change their dietary habits and try out a migraine prevention diet.

What Is a Hypoglycemic Diet?

You’d think that in order to increase blood sugar levels, you should eat more sugar, right? Some doctors used to think that was true and suggested it to their patients, but in fact, it’s just the opposite. How to prevent migraines: Patients could eliminate their migraine episodes completely, Low advised, by managing their blood sugar levels with a hypoglycemic diet, consisting of balanced meals of protein, natural carbohydrates, vegetables, and fruits in six small meals, or three meals and three snacks per day. His diet emphasized protein and timing, and suggested smaller meals and snacks to avoid feeling too full to eat every two to three hours. If you are concerned that eating so frequently will cause weight gain, know that I have observed just the opposite in my clients. If anything, they report losing weight on this diet. This outcome could be due to a combination of increased metabolism, without the extreme rises and dips in blood sugar and energy, and increased activity levels due to feeling better. When your blood sugar is low, your body produces stress hormones to boost your energy, wreaking havoc on your neuroendocrine system. This sort of stress causes you to store fat and crave simple sugars and carbohydrates. When you switch to a healthy diet on a regular schedule, your body no longer gets signals that indicate you might be starving, so you store less fat.

Early Protein

“Early protein” is my shorthand reminder to eat protein first thing in the morning, which is crucial if you wake up with migraines. By eating early protein, you will crave fewer sweets and simple carbohydrates throughout your day and have more consistent energy. What do people eat for breakfast in the United States? Our nation has become a country of grab-and-go migraine foods, carb-loaded breakfasts: a bagel and cream cheese; a muffin, Danish, or pastry; a bowlful of sugar-sweetened cereal, granola, or yogurt; juice, coffee, tea, soda, or a sweet espresso drink. Contrast that with Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, where a traditional breakfast is either eggs, corn tortillas with beans, rice and beans, or bread with cheese and ham, and, of course, café con leche. In Europe, breakfast is eggs, a pastry, or bread with cheese, and café au lait, cappuccino, or café latte. In Japan, breakfast starts with miso soup, followed by rice with tofu, maybe some seafood, a serving of vegetables, and tea. Why is a carb-loaded breakfast bad for migraineurs? When you sleep, your pancreas is still working, secreting insulin that is ready and waiting to metabolize your breakfast. A muffin or a bagel, which contains about three hundred fifty calories and fifty to sixty grams of carbohydrates—or the equivalent of almost four slices of bread—makes your blood sugar rise and drop rapidly, followed by adrenal and neurovascular responses that trigger migraine. A lox and bagel story: A student in my class was a busy radiologist who had a long commute, early hospital hours, and a new baby. Of course, he was sleep deprived and usually skipped breakfast or had just a bagel and cream cheese. Migraines plagued him daily and weighed down his morale. When I asked if he liked lox, a smoked salmon rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, he replied that he loved it, so I suggested that he add it to his bagel and cream cheese. To his surprise and delight, eating early protein completely eliminated his episodes—despite his ongoing stressful routine and disrupted sleep. Yes, the bagel was the delivery system, but the lox made all the difference, and he did fine with it. And that was him. Everyone is different, and I encourage you to experiment to find the early protein foods you like to help in migraine prevention.

More Than Diet

Here’s where the Mundo Program diverges from Dr. Low’s advice. Instead of completely eliminating sugars, this program allows for a little bit of sugar, depending on individual tolerances and the right timing. Enjoyment—of food, eating, and dining—is an important part of life. After all, the goal is to eliminate your migraines, not your foods. Why needlessly deprive yourself of something that doesn’t harm you? If you pay careful attention to cause and effect, you will decipher your patterns and figure out what, if anything, to eliminate or change. For example, if you eat a healthy meal with plenty of protein, you can probably enjoy a dessert with no problem, as long as you don’t go overboard (and have eaten protein throughout the day). That is why your Headache Diary is such an important tool, especially if you want to know how to prevent migraines naturally. You will see the effects of potential triggers right before your eyes, laid out day by day, and you’ll come to understand how the timing of what you eat, combined with everything else, affects you. Speaking of “everything else”: this is a somatic program, where you work with your entire self. So although your diet is significant to eliminate migraines, it is only a part of the story. The tension in your head, neck, and shoulders, how you breathe and use your body, how you respond to stress and feel about your life, your emotional history—you are all of that, and it all plays a role.

Healthy Diet Guidelines

The following Healthy Diet Guidelines provide a framework for what to eat and when, and foods to watch out for or migraine foods to avoid. It also prepares you to track your migraine diet.

1. Keep a daily record.

+ Record what and when you eat each day.

+ Keeping a daily record is the best way to discover your triggers and see if you are eating well and often enough to maintain stable blood sugar levels, a key to staving off migraine.

2. Eat every two to three hours.

+ A healthy migraine prevention diet requires you to eat three meals and three snacks per day, or six small meals.

+ Follow this meal schedule: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack.

+ The snacks do not have to be large, just a little something. You can eat smaller meals, if desired, so you won’t be too full for snacks in between.

3. Boost your protein.

+ Include protein in each meal and snack.

+ Find ways to incorporate protein into the dishes you prepare, and into your diet overall.

+ Avoid sugary foods to prevent migraine and consume protein foods like eggs, dairy, soy, fish, chicken, meat, beans, and nuts instead.

4. Reduce the amount of time between waking up and eating.

+ Eat breakfast as soon as possible after you wake up.

+ If you work out first thing in the morning, eat a protein snack or breakfast first.

+ Eat breakfast before leaving for work or doing any activities—even at home. Do not wait until you are at your desk or your destination, or until you take a break and “finally have time to eat.”

+ Adapt this guideline to your schedule if your day starts in the afternoon or you work at night. Your day begins whenever you wake up.

5. Eat “early protein.”

+ Start your day with protein to boost your blood sugar levels.

6. Kick the caffeine.

+ Also considered as one of the migraine foods to avoid, The amount of combined daily caffeine from coffee, tea, soda, medication, and chocolate adds up. It can transform an occasional headache or migraine into a chronic condition.

+ As discussed above, caffeine constricts the blood vessels in your head. When it wears off, they dilate and impinge on the nerves surrounding them, triggering a headache or migraine.

+ Do not quit caffeine cold turkey! Stair-step down. (Read that again, three more times.) To avoid getting an extended withdrawal headache, do not let your excitement about the potential of eliminating this trigger sway you to kick it all at once. (I emphasize this warning after seeing countless clients get so enthused to learn of the migraine-caffeine connection that they quit cold turkey—despite my admonitions—only to suffer horrible withdrawal migraines.)

+ Kick caffeine in stages: Substitute one-quarter of your usual amount with decaf for at least one week. Then substitute one-half of your usual with decaf, for at least one week. Then substitute three-quarters with decaf. Finally, after at least a month, you’ll be drinking all decaf. If you get a withdrawal headache during the process, substitute less than a quarter per stage and stay at each plateau longer.

+ After kicking caffeine, drink only water, decaf beverages, and herbal tea until you have no more headaches from any cause. Then you can have an occasional small caffeinated coffee or tea, or perhaps even one per day, and see how it affects you. (I didn’t include soda or energy drinks due to their high sugar and caffeine content.) Note that a shot of espresso contains less than half the caffeine found in a cup of brewed coffee.

7. Stick to a regular meal schedule.

+ Not skipping meals or getting hungry is a very effective natural migraine prevention technique.

+ Sleeping in on weekends or during a vacation can disrupt your regular meal and caffeine schedule.

+ If you will be having brunch, eat a little something first thing in the morning. The same thing goes if you are going out for lunch or dinner. Don’t “save up” your appetite.

+ If you have a meeting, class, or other activity, bring a healthy snack and your water with you.

8. Be aware of sugars and artificial sweeteners in all foods and drinks.

+ With the significant correlation between blood sugar and migraines, it is important to look for the sugar content, listed on product labels as beet sugar, cane sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, maltose, sucrose, and sugar. Use sparingly and avoid sugars when possible by choosing alternatives.

+ Take note: Four grams of sugar equals one teaspoon. So, for example, if a half-cup of ice cream has twenty grams of sugar, that’s five teaspoons, nearly the daily maximum amount recommended.

+ Sugar is added to canned fruit, applesauce, and juices. Instead, have fresh or dried fruit (unsulfured), canned fruit in juice, and unsweetened applesauce and fruit juice (or sweetened with other juices).

+ Look for sugar content in savory foods as well, such as tomato, cream, and butter sauces; soup and gravy; condiments like salad dressing, sweet relish, and ketchup; canned vegetables; and frozen vegetables in sauce.

+ Low-calorie foods have less fat but often contain more sugar to boost flavor.

+ Do not substitute artificial sweeteners, found in many low-calorie products, for sugars.

+ Satisfy your sweet tooth by consuming natural, healthy foods that are slightly sweet, instead of foods with artificial sweeteners.

+ Control your sugar intake by preparing your own food—whether it’s salad dressing or dessert.

9. Do not consume “stand-alone sweets.”

+ Stand-alone sweets is my term for a high-sugar food, whether that be a piece of candy, cake, or pie, a cookie, cupcake, muffin, pastry, or an energy bar, without a protein partner, such as a meal or a serving of milk.

+ Tack sweets (dessert) to the end of a protein meal instead of having them as a snack.

+ Energy bars are considered as one of the migraine foods to avoid. Check the label: made for quick energy and loaded with carbs, energy bars are like health-food candy bars. Even an energy bar with high protein is not a meal or a good snack for a migraine sufferer because it spikes blood sugar levels.

+ Skip sweet smoothies, especially for breakfast, and even those with added protein.

+ If you want a cookie, choose one that’s less sweet, perhaps without icing or filling, like a plain shortbread, galette, biscotti, breakfast biscuit, or fruit juice–sweetened cookie.

+ Have your sweet with milk (cow, soy, rice, almond, hemp, or goat). Note: Rice and almond milk have one to three grams of protein, and soy and cow milk have seven to eight grams of protein per serving.

+ Ice cream in moderation can be okay without added coatings, sugary goodies, candies, swirls, or preservatives. Keep it simple. Watch out for chocolate if it is one of your triggers.

+ Exercise portion control. One or two cookies might not bother you, but three or more might, even with protein.

10. Opt for natural carbohydrates.

+ Eat foods rich in natural carbohydrates along with protein foods to prevent migraine—the key word here being natural—such as whole grains, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and pasta. Balanced meals will even out your blood sugar levels and help you digest the protein.

+ Unrefined whole grains and flours, such as 100 percent whole wheat, brown rice, steel-cut oats, buckwheat, and corn, contain healthy nutrients and fiber, which are separated out in refined versions.

+ Choose cereals that are free of added sugars or lightly sweetened with honey or fruit juice.

+ Sometimes your stomach wants the comfort of white basmati rice served with butter and nutritional yeast, or a French baguette with butter. It’s okay to mix it up, in moderation, depending on your mood and tummy.

11. Eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

+ Unsaturated fats called omega-3 fatty acids, sourced from animals and plants, are an essential part of the human diet. It is also a very good addition to your migraine diet.

+ Omega-3 is beneficial for people with migraines because it tones and relaxes smooth muscle tissue, the type that makes up the cardiovascular system, including blood vessels in your head related to migraine.

+ The so-called fatty fishes, rich in omega-3, include (from high to low content) herring, sardines, mackerel, salmon, halibut, tuna, swordfish, greenshell/green-lipped mussels, tilefish, canned tuna, pollock, caviar, and oysters.

+ Omega-3 is abundant in eggs, and grass-fed chickens produce eggs with more of it. Similarly, grass-fed beef has higher omega-3 content than grain- and corn-fed beef.

+ Nut and seed sources of omega-3 include flaxseeds and flaxseed oil, canola oil, soybeans, soybean oil, chia seeds, walnuts, and walnut oil are among the foods to eat when you have a migraine.

+ The wild green purslane, considered a pesky weed by many gardeners, is the highest source of omega-3 of any leafy green vegetable and is also high in vitamins E and C.

+ Omega-3, alone or in combination with omega-6 fatty acids, can be bought in supplement form, but it is better to consume it in food, which provides other nutrients.

+ The U.S. Department of Agriculture advises eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids two times per week.

12. Eat magnesium-rich foods.

+ Magnesium is an essential mineral that helps control smooth muscle tissue tone and many important chemical reactions in the body. It also helps in migraine prevention.

+ The following foods are rich in magnesium: dark leafy greens, pumpkin and sesame seeds, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, almonds, pecans, walnuts, pollock, mackerel, tuna, white beans, French beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, lentils, brown rice, quinoa, millet, and bulgur.

+ Avocado, yogurt, goat cheese, bananas, dried figs, prunes, apricots, dates, and raisins are also magnesium rich. Note: Many of these foods also contain amines, which can be triggers for some migraineurs.

+ Dark chocolate also contains magnesium, but put it in the “migraine mixed-bag” category because it is also a trigger for some people.

13. Eat a variety of produce.

+ Eating a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits is essential for good nutrition.

+ In hot summer months, among the anti-migraine foods to eat include fresh salads and uncooked fruits and vegetables, which are cooling.

+ In cold autumn and winter months, lightly steam, sauté, or bake vegetables and make soups to keep your system heated, hearty, and less susceptible to colds, flu, and upper body tightness.

+ In winter, balance fresh produce with dried, canned, baked, or frozen, depending on availability. Purchase canned products packaged in bottles or BPA-free cans. By canning or freezing your own, you can control the ingredients.

+ Beware of dried fruits preserved with sulfites, sulfates, or sulfur dioxide. These preservatives help fruit retain its color (like those bright-orange apricots!) but it should not be a part of your diet to eliminate migraines.

14. Drink lots of water.

+ A good migraine diet plan is not complete without water. Drink at least two quarts or liters of pure water per day. Tea, coffee, juice, milk, and soda do not count in that calculation.

+ Water keeps your body hydrated, aids with digestion, and is just as necessary during winter as summer. Mild dehydration can make you feel tired and have low energy. Don’t ignore your thirst or wait until you feel thirsty.

+ Use a water bottle made of stainless steel, glass, or BPA-free plastic.

+ If you are not used to water or do not like drinking it, get a bottle with a pull-up spout. You can ingest more easily by sucking (the first way we learn to eat) than by sipping.

+ Drinking a sixteen-ounce glass of water first thing in the morning is a very important step in any headache diet. Use large glasses instead of small ones to increase your water intake.

+ Keep a water bottle or tall glass of water next to your desk.

+ Carry water with you wherever you go—in your car, running errands, to work, meetings, classes, recreational activities, workouts. A ten-minute errand can easily turn into an hour or two, and without your water, you will be “going thirsty.”

+ Find water that you like. If you do not like the taste of water, you can develop a palate for it; just as you prefer one brand of juice, soda, coffee, or tea over another, experiment to find the water you like. I prefer distilled or reverse-osmosis and carbon-purified water over mineral water because it tastes sweeter to me. The point is, I like it so I drink more.

+ Aside from consuming food that promotes natural migraine prevention, it is equally important to drink water throughout your day. Try not to guzzle it all at once when you realize you are thirsty, especially at night, when drinking too much might make you wake up to use the bathroom. Pace yourself.

+ “If you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated.” Have you heard that claim? Well, it’s got a point. If you are not always aware of, or you ignore, your body’s cues, then yes, by the time you become aware of your thirst you might be dehydrated.

+ Research your best options for clean, safe drinking water. Technology to detect and combat pollutants is always advancing, and in some areas you can drink the tap water unfiltered. Filtered options include carbon-filtered pitchers, filtered faucet attachments to remove chlorine and other chemicals that appear in the water or from old pipes, and bottle delivery.

15. Become a label (and menu) checker.

+ Besides following a migraine prevention diet, another way to avoid having bad headache is by checking “Nutrition Facts” labels and “Ingredients” lists when food shopping. Ingredients are listed in descending order, with the largest quantity first.

+ Beware of items with sugar listed first, second, or third, which usually means there is a lot.

+ When dining out or ordering takeout, read or ask about ingredients in menu items or prepared foods. Many migraineurs are afraid of going out to eat because they’ve had bad experiences in the past. They prefer cooking at home rather than suffering the consequences of a hidden ingredient. + Order more simply prepared foods to control for unknown, potentially triggering ingredients.

+ Opt for oil-and-vinegar shakers instead of premade dressing, which can contain preservatives.

+ Ask for the gravy, sauce, or dressing on the side so you can control the portion or opt to not eat it.

+ Avoid salad bars, which often use preservatives to keep lettuce and cucumbers crisp. Make sure ingredients are preservative-free, or get a salad made-to-order.

+ Ask nicely about ingredients. Have you seen comedy skits poke fun at picky diners who ask about every single ingredient, making requests for this and that to be left out? Finicky diners can be amusing, or annoying, but when a trigger can make you sick for days, you owe it to yourself, and anyone else your migraine might affect, to inquire. Ask about ingredients. People will understand, especially if you are gracious and kind about it.

16. Avoid trigger foods.

+ Keep a Headache Diary to discover and avoid your food triggers. You can learn a lot by looking for cause and effect.

+ When you discover your triggers, you don’t have to restrict your headache diet unnecessarily or go through the process of an elimination diet.

17. Practice these healthy eating tips.

+ How to get rid of migraine without medication? Eat a balanced diet of about 20 to 30 percent protein, 30 percent fat, including seeds and nuts, and 40 to 50 percent carbohydrates, including most fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans.

+ Eat about forty grams of protein per day. Athletes might need to eat more. In cases of kidney disease, acute infection, or recovery from an injury, eat less. (Consult your physician or a registered dietitian.)

+ Choose in-season, locally grown produce. During the off-season, frozen foods, which have been picked at peak ripeness and are then flash-frozen, are a good alternative.

+ Lightly steam or sauté vegetables to retain their nutrients.

+ Buy organic when possible to avoid hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and fungicides.

+ Consume fish, free-range poultry, and vegetable protein, such as soybeans, tofu, tempeh (a cultured soybean cake), and black beans, as alternatives to red meat.

18. Be prepared.

+ Set aside the time needed to complete your migraine diet plan, shop for, prepare, and eat healthy meals and snacks, even when you’re away from home. Be prepared, so you don’t end up grabbing what might be quick but unhealthy.

19. Enjoy your food.

+ As a migraine sufferer, you might be used to focusing more on what to avoid than on what you can enjoy. If you have curbed your migraine diet over time based on a general triggers list, perhaps you have forgotten the satisfaction of a balanced diet.

+ Here’s an illustration of what I mean: One of my clients had stopped eating bananas, which she loved, because they were on a triggers list. But she felt deprived. Bananas have fiber, potassium, and vitamins B and C, and they are low in calories. While keeping her Headache Diary, she tried a banana and found that bananas were not her trigger after all, so she added them back into her diet. With this simple change, she felt more like a normal person who didn’t have to be so picky about her food choices. Overall, it lightened her mood and eased her stress because she could have something enjoyable and nourishing.

+ Find headache-healthy foods you like, and do not deprive yourself needlessly. Keeping a Headache Diary will help you identify your personal triggers rather than eliminating everything that is on a foods to prevent migraine list. Curb only those foods that are harmful for you. I want you to savor life to the fullest.

Headache-Healthy Diet Suggestions

Now that you know the Healthy Diet Guidelines, the following listing of menu and food ideas will assist you in making good choices throughout your day. Use these suggestions as a jumping-off point to build your own headache diet and migraine diet plan. Have at least one food from each group—protein, carbohydrate (this can be omitted if you wish), fruit/vegetable, and beverage—per meal.

Breakfast

Protein: eggs, unsweetened yogurt, Greek yogurt, scrambled tofu, lox and cream cheese, cottage cheese, farmer’s cheese, beans, tempeh, cheddar (if not sensitive to it) and other cheeses, nuts / nut butter (walnuts, almonds, pecans, cashews, peanuts), breakfast sausage or bacon (preservative-free) or vegetarian sausage/bacon

+ Milk, yogurt, and cheese products can be made from cow, goat, soy, hemp, almond, cashew, and rice milk. Cow, goat, soy, and hemp milk contain five to eight grams of protein, and almond, cashew, and rice milk contain one to three grams, per eight-ounce serving.

+ Note: Greek-style yogurt contains twice as much protein as regular. Full-fat and low-fat yogurt are preferable to nonfat because the fat content digests more slowly, which is better for blood sugar levels. Avoid yogurt sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup and fruit syrup.

Carbohydrate: whole-grain toast, bagel or English muffin, cold cereal or granola, hot cereal with salt and butter or nut butter, biscuits, whole-grain muffin sweetened with fruit juice, pancakes or whole-grain waffles, rice, tortillas (flour or corn) Fruit/vegetable: your migraine diet should also include fresh, frozen, or dried fruit (use banana, berries, peaches, nectarines, or raisins to sweeten cereal), fruit spread, fruit compote, sliced tomato, avocado, vegetables (in omelet or tofu), salsa Beverage: water, decaf or herbal coffee or tea, seltzer / club soda, vegetable or fruit juice without added sugar How to Combine Food Groups for Breakfast The possibilities are endless!

+ Eggs, scrambled or soft-boiled, with toast and butter or cream cheese; sliced tomato

+ Avocado toast

+ Sliced fruit topped with plain yogurt, drizzled with honey, sprinkled with nuts and flaxseed meal. Serve with a slice of whole-grain toast with butter, nut butter, or smashed avocado

+ Waffle topped with strawberries, yogurt, drizzle of maple syrup or honey; breakfast sausage

+ An orange, a tangerine, or a half grapefruit; toasted English muffin or whole-grain bread with butter and a dab of jam or fruit spread; cottage cheese

+ Leftovers for breakfast: for example, a taco or burrito made with beans or chicken, lettuce, tomato, avocado, yogurt, cheese, and salsa

+ Half bagel, mini bagel, or scooped-out whole bagel with lox, cream cheese, sliced tomato, and red onion

Lunch and Dinner

Lunch is so nice, you can have it twice! Not really. But yes, lunch and dinner have the same choices here. Many of us are creatures of habit; we eat the same thing every day for a particular meal. Looking at the choices for lunch and dinner together allows you to think ahead about what you would like for each and balance out what you eat each day. Mix it up. Looking at a variety of choices might spark something new for you but never forget all the migraine foods to avoid. Protein: tuna, egg, tofu, cheese (cottage, cheddar, Swiss, jack, Havarti, provolone, mozzarella), grilled or baked fish/seafood, chicken, turkey, beef, beans (soy, black, chickpeas, pinto, red, black-eyed peas, lentils), veggie burger, tempeh, falafel, hummus, nut butter, protein-based chili, stew, soup Carbohydrate: whole-grain bread or crackers, tortilla, pita, corn bread, pasta, tabbouleh, rice, quinoa, bulgur, couscous, millet, buckwheat, barley, potato, sweet potato Fruit/vegetable: lettuce, arugula, salad greens, avocado, veggies—steamed, stir-fried, or baked (broccoli, kale, Swiss chard, collards, cauliflower, cabbage, bok choy, mustard greens, turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, radish, green beans, peas, carrots, parsnips, winter squash, summer squash, peppers, eggplant, tomato), vegetable-based soup, tomato sauce, fruit (bananas, apples, pears, berries, pineapple, peaches, apricots, nectarines, pluots, melon, grapes, cherries, citrus, mango, papaya) Beverage: water, decaf coffee or tea, herbal tea, fruit or vegetable juice, fruit juice–sweetened soda, juice mixed with soda water or seltzer (make your own to taste with grape, apple, cherry, or orange juice, or cranberry juice sweetened with other juices) How to Combine Food Groups for Lunch/Dinner Yes, you can experiment when preparing a diet to eliminate migraines. My dietitian mom used to make these Eastern European–influenced, protein-packed dishes. What healthy dishes you were raised on?

+ Farmer’s chop suey: cottage cheese and sour cream or plain yogurt, mixed with chopped cucumber, tomato, green pepper, green onion, and radish. This dish is refreshing in summer, served with rye bread and butter or whole-grain crackers.

+ Extra-wide egg noodles, cooked and tossed with butter and salt, topped with a dollop of cottage cheese. Serve with steamed broccoli, butter, and salt—and for extra protein, salmon croquettes.

+ Salmon or tofu loaf or croquettes, meatloaf or turkey meatloaf, meatballs (use turkey, pork, textured vegetable protein, or tofu). Serve one of these as a main dish, adding roasted or steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes.

+ Frittata, quiche, or omelet made with your choice of cheese, vegetables, and other protein, served with a green salad and a piece of crusty sourdough bread with butter

Does this array of possibilities give you some ideas about how to expand your migraine diet menu and choices? Combine foods to make a sandwich, burrito, pita sandwich, stir-fry, pasta and protein dish, soup, salad, or stew. How about sushi—whether fish or vegetarian? It contains protein, vegetables, and rice. Just check for preservatives if you don’t make it yourself. Many clients and students who first come into my practice or join a class aren’t clear on what a healthy migraine diet plan looks like. Their diet is typically something like this: smoothie for breakfast (basically carbs with a little protein), salad for lunch (with little or no protein), and then, finally, protein at dinner (making this the first substantial protein of the day). They think this diet is healthy because it’s low calorie and contains fruit and vegetables, and they are surprised to learn it’s not a great diet for migraineurs. As emphasized in this article, eating protein meals and snacks throughout the day stabilizes blood sugar levels. Switching to the diet detailed in this article makes all the difference.

Snacks and Desserts

The list below offers a variety of healthy choices to keep you from going astray. When planning for your migraine diet, remember to pair your snack with protein unless protein is already a main ingredient. Use these suggestions to spark your imagination, then go online, read cookbooks, and watch cooking shows for more ideas. Snacks can be savory or sweet, and you know how blood sugar and migraines have been associated with each other. For savory items, like chips, popcorn, crackers, and popped chips, check for artificial flavorings, seasonings, food dyes, and preservatives—just as you would for sweets. For sweet baked goods and frozen treats, omit those with icing, sweet filling, chocolate or yogurt chips, candy, candied fruit, sugary swirl add-ins, and sweet toppings. Try fruit juice–sweetened cookies, muffins, and frozen goods. You can best control for sugars by making your own. If you still wonder how to get rid of a migraine without medication, then you should monitor the quantity of the food you eat. Have a small portion of a sweet snack—one or two cookies, a half of a “regular-size” item, or a mini-muffin. Two tablespoons of chocolate ice cream (milk is protein) might be okay for you, but half a cup or a cup might trigger your migraine. If any amount of chocolate triggers you, perhaps vanilla or another flavor won’t. Breads: pretzels, crackers (crunchy multigrain, wheat, rye, or rice crackers, or water crackers), tortilla (corn or flour, heated), whole-grain toast. Serve with dip (such as hummus, cottage cheese, blended tofu dip, salsa, or guacamole), hard cheese or goat cheese, or top with nut butter and a drizzle of honey or sliced banana. A pizza slice combines three food groups! Chips: corn, pita, bagel, corn and bean, potato, vegetable. Try baked or reduced-fat chips. Serve with salsa, guacamole, or bean dip. Cookies, bars, muffins, quick breads: cookie (biscotti, zwieback, animal crackers, graham crackers, digestive biscuit), granola bar, whole-grain fruit bar, nutrition bar, muffin, scone, quick bread (banana, zucchini, pumpkin). Try low-sugar or fruit juice–sweetened items with added fruit and nuts. Frozen treats: frozen fruit (try blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, mangoes, grapes, peaches); ice cream, gelato, or frozen yogurt, with natural toppings like fresh fruit or nuts; frozen fruit bars sweetened with juices (make your own in popsicle or ice-cube trays) Fruit: among the must-eat foods to prevent migraine include dried fruit, unsulfured (raisins, dates, figs, prunes, apricots, apples, peaches—plain or with nuts); fresh fruit with cottage cheese or plain yogurt, drizzle of honey; apple or banana served with nut butter (peanut, almond, cashew, soy); applesauce, unsweetened; fruit compote made from dried prunes, pears, peaches, and/or apricots and served with cottage cheese, yogurt, or milk; canned fruit in fruit juice Juice: vegetable, fruit, or combined (unsweetened fresh, bottled, or canned) Milk: cow, soy, goat, almond, cashew, rice, hemp, cold or warm (can add honey and nutmeg) Milk and cold cereal or granola: naturally sweetened with fresh or dried fruit Nuts: walnuts, almonds, pecans, cashews, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, filberts; pair with raisins, dates Popcorn: pop your own; add salt, butter, nutritional yeast (see vegetarian section below) Smoothie: fresh or frozen berries, banana, peaches, your choice of milk. Try adding kale, carrots, other veggies. Trail mix: Try making your own. If store-bought, avoid candied fruit and candy chips in your migraine diet. Veggies: carrot and celery sticks; green, red, yellow, and orange pepper strips; cherry tomatoes; broccoli and cauliflower florets. Serve with hummus, goat cheese, vegetable or onion dip (check for MSG), cottage cheese, blended tofu dip. Can you have just one? Remember, everything in moderation. That’s why tracking is so important: Each person’s “moderation” is as different as each person’s body. A couple of chocolate chip cookies or an energy bar might have zero effect on someone else but be dangerous for you. If you can’t refrain from eating the whole row or package of cookies, it’s best to not have them around—or to choose an option that’s less sweet. If you find yourself bingeing and then suffering from a migraine the following day, it’s time to let that snack go and find another.

Vegetarians Must Eat Beans

When people switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, they forgo animal products for fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds, which are some of the essential foods to eat when you have a migraine. However, these foods alone do not supply enough daily protein, and limiting yourself to these categories might result in weakness, fatigue, nutritional deficiency, and dissatisfaction with the diet—not to mention migraine. This is why some people who have tried vegetarianism often return to eating meat, reporting disappointedly that their experiment was a failure. Here’s the key: Vegetarians and vegans must eat beans! People need about forty grams of protein per day, and if you don’t eat meat you need to get that protein in the form of beans. Soybeans (whether as whole beans, soy milk, tofu, or tempeh), which are a complete protein, have the highest protein value, followed by black beans and chickpeas. When black beans are combined with rice, and pinto beans are combined with corn, they also make a complete protein. Vegans and vegetarians must supplement with vitamin B12, which is an essential nutrient not contained in vegetables or beans. If they want, vegetarians can also get added protein from dairy and eggs, called lacto-ovo. Some people do not eat red meat, pork, or poultry but occasionally eat fish, so they are not technically vegetarians or vegans; they are pescatarians. If they have fish only occasionally, they still need to eat beans in order to get sufficient protein. Vegetarian and vegan versions of products usually made from meat, poultry, and dairy, such as hot dogs, burgers, luncheon meats, and cheese, are made from a base of tofu, soy, wheat gluten, nuts, legumes, veggies, hemp, grains, or dairy (vegetarian items may include milk, eggs, and cheese). These are commonly carried in grocery and health food stores. You can pick and choose the varieties and brands you like of these quick and easy sources of protein. However, whole beans, tofu, and tempeh generally provide higher-quality protein than these processed foods. Do you know about nutritional yeast? Sometimes called large-flake nutritional yeast (or nut yeast, for short), nutritional yeast is a by-product of the molasses-making process; it is not brewer’s yeast or baking yeast. It has a cheese-like flavor and can be sprinkled on popcorn, cooked vegetables, rice, beans, tofu, and tempeh, and added to salad dressing, sauces, gravies, and soups. It contains all the essential amino acids, making it a tasty, healthy addition to your migraine food to eat list. Health food stores usually carry it prepackaged or in the bulk bin section. You might have to ask a knowledgeable staff person to find or order it for you. Store your nut yeast away from light in a covered, opaque container, so the nutrients do not degrade. One of The Farm community’s favorite meals was hand-rolled flour tortillas filled with pressure-cooked soybeans and topped with finely chopped onions, lettuce, tomato salsa, and nutritional yeast. Yum! (To be digestible, soybeans must be cooked until they are as soft as butter—meaning when you press a bean between your tongue and your upper palate, it melts.)

What’s on Your Plate?

So, what should be included in your migraine diet? Nutritional standards and dietary ideas and trends change with the times, shaped by medical and scientific research. The grain-heavy “food pyramid” of my childhood, depicting U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional guidelines, has been replaced by the more equal distribution of food groups on “My Plate,” and no doubt this will change again. For the past forty years, health-conscious people have followed a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for heart health and to lower cholesterol and curb obesity. But recent studies show that good fats, especially olive oil, don’t make people fat—sugar does — and it could be a good addition to your diet to prevent migraines. Sugar consumption in the United States has increased steadily over the past decades, and so have portion sizes. A “small” soda used to be eight ounces; now it’s a whopping sixteen or even thirty-two ounces. A quart of soda is now a small! Another thing we’ve learned more fully is that carbs are complex sugars: a piece of bread or a tortilla is still a carb—it quickly metabolizes, causing blood sugar swings. The body metabolizes sugar in twenty minutes, carbohydrates in one to two hours. Compare this with protein, which takes five hours, and fats, at seven to eight hours. It can be recalled that blood sugar and migraines have significant correlation that is why it sugar intake should always be in moderation. This is why full-fat dairy products (like whole or “regular” milk) have regained favor after years of low-fat being advised. For migraineurs who aren’t dairy-sensitive, the body can store and use full-fat dairy without the sudden rise and dip in blood sugar produced by the higher lactase (milk sugar) content of reduced-fat products. Whole milk also contains more headache-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. If you are concerned about fat content, eat a smaller portion: have a half-cup instead of a cup of full-fat yogurt, or use 2 percent reduced-fat dairy rather than 1 percent or fat-free. A high-protein, anti-inflammatory diet with vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, some dairy, and whole grains (usually gluten-free), which are also some of the must-eat foods to prevent migraine, has been shown to be beneficial in treating autoimmune diseases and inflammation-related conditions. If you are dealing with comorbid conditions, an anti-inflammatory diet might work well for you. The Mediterranean diet epitomizes the philosophy of “everything in moderation” in terms of food. In successive studies over decades, the Mediterranean diet—made up of vegetables, fruits, fatty fish, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and healthy fats, like olive oil, with some dairy, like yogurt and hard cheeses—has been proven preventative for heart disease, cancer, and other conditions. And it’s tasty. The migraine prevention diet in this article is basically that diet minus the wine. Strive to eat balanced meals and snacks and a variety of foods low in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars, incorporating protein into each. Diet affects not only migraine but every aspect of your health. Each person is different, and the amount and balance of foods you need depends on your age, physical activity, and health-related factors. Thus, not all migraine diet is the same. For personal nutritional guidance or other health concerns or conditions, especially related to kidney health, diabetes, osteoporosis, or digestion, it’s wise to consult with a registered dietitian. This article is excerpted from the book The Headache Healer’s Handbook: A Holistic, Hands-On Somatic Self-Care Program for Headache and Migraine Relief and Prevention by Jan Mundo.

About The Author Jan Mundo is the author of The Headache Healer’s Handbook and has held headache programs at medical centers, universities, and corporations including Kaiser Permanente, Stanford University, and Apple. She is a certified Master Somatic Coach and massage therapist with advanced training in multiple healing modalities. She lives in New York City and offers in-person and video conference sessions and classes. Visit her website: TheHeadacheCoach.com

photo: nicolasberlin photocase.com

Understanding Dreams: Core Techniques

The saying goes that “eyes are the window to the soul.” The same thing can be said of dreams. There are many types of dreams and they reveal to us the state of our soul; they mirror our feelings and preoccupations by painting a cinematic picture of how we are experiencing life at that moment. Dreams don’t lie. They are not concerned with pulling the wool over our eyes and going along with our preferred version of the truth. Dreams are honest mirrors. We just need to work out what they are reflecting. An ancient Jewish proverb says, “An unexamined dream is like an unopened letter.” Although our emotional response to a dream may be immediate and obvious, until we work with a dream and unravel its symbolic imagery, its deeper message may be lost to us. Dreams speak in a fabulous mixture of images, metaphors, and emotions that can be felt in the body. Have you ever woken up in the morning feeling sad, anxious, or insecure? Chances are you had a bad dream. And maybe you sometimes wake up laughing, or feeling unimaginably good? Dreams can powerfully influence our waking moods. There is only one universal language in the world, and that’s the language of dreams. When we understand dream symbolism, we open the door to our inner life. All over the world, dreams express themselves in rich, emotional imagery. This imagery may differ due to cultural context, but the symbolic meaning is conveyed in the same way. This article shows how to decipher the symbolic language of dreams, to give you an idea of how images can reflect specific feelings, events, and attitudes. We’ll look at five different types of dreams and you’ll learn core dreamwork techniques for what different dreams mean.

Cracking the Code: How to Understand the Symbolic Language of Dreams

We use metaphoric, symbolic language all the time in daily life. Every culture has its own collection of wise sayings, or idioms, which paint a picture of a situation: she has too many eggs in one basket; he let the cat out of the bag; every cloud has a silver lining; she got a taste of her own medicine; he’s missed the boat; we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Different dreams may have different meanings but they all love this picture-language and it is one of their preferred ways of communicating with us. But when we first look at a dream and what it means, it can seem completely mystifying. It’s actually good to approach the dream from a standpoint of not-knowing. This keeps us on our toes. It helps us to be flexible and open to the dream’s possible meaning. When we slap an instant interpretation onto a dream and cling stubbornly to this interpretation, we risk suffocating the dream. Dreams need to breathe, just as we do. This is why dreamwork is a process: there are often questions to be asked; associations to be made. The dream can be unwrapped, revealing its heart as we peel back the layers. Getting to know the language of dreams and what they mean is so exciting. It’s exhilarating to crack the code of a dream that’s been troubling you and experience that rush of recognition that dream therapists call the “Aha” moment. If you’re tempted to rush out and buy a dream dictionary, remember that although they can offer interesting perspectives, many give a simplistic, blanket meaning for each image. Yet every dream image will have different associations for different dreamers, and it’s vital to remain open to possible meanings. A cow will have a hugely different personal meaning for a butcher than for a Hindu, for whom cows are sacred animals. To understand our dreams, we need to speak their dense symbolic language. How do you know what certain dreams mean? In dream language, a tidal wave often relates to feelings of being overwhelmed, and a dream of taking an exam with no idea of the answers often connects to feeling unprepared in a waking life situation. A dream of being naked in public may relate to having revealed too much of ourselves. Only the dreamer can know the true meaning of their own dream, as associations are so personal, but familiarity with the language of dreams is key to understanding their possible meaning. The good news is that learning the language of dreams and what they mean is much easier than you may think, and you’ll quickly get the hang of it. Sometimes it gives clarity to a dream to see which category (or categories) it falls into. Let’s take a quick look at five types of dreams.

Five Types of Dream

Dreams can be roughly divided into five categories: physical, emotional, archetypal, lucid, and soul dreams. Many dreams will contain elements of more than one of these categories. 1. Physical Dreams These relate to your body: are you cold, hot, or exhausted? Do you need to pee? (We’ve all had those maddening dreams of hunting for a bathroom.) Are you ill or in pain? Physical sensations, pain, and illness that we are currently experiencing in our body can be woven into our inner movie in the form of unpleasant imagery, but if we manage to change any negative imagery while we’re in the dream, this may help to relieve the pain. A friend of mine went to sleep with a headache that she’d had for two days. She dreamed she was wearing a tight metal band on her head. In the dream, she managed to take it off, and when she woke up, her headache was gone. In a far more serious case, journalist Marc Barasch dreamed he was being tortured with hot coals beneath his chin, and it turned out he had thyroid cancer. 2. Emotional Dreams We are bound to dream about what concerns us, frightens us, or makes us happy. This is among the many important reasons why studying the types of dreams and what they mean can be of great help. Emotional dreams tend to have a psychological and personal focus. They involve clearly identifiable feelings such as sadness, happiness, loss, disbelief, surprise, horror, fear, and so on. For example, a friend of mine dreamed she was furiously smashing plate after plate in the kitchen while her husband watched helplessly. In such dreams, the setting and the action serve to illuminate the emotion that is hidden in our unconscious. The dream shows us how we really feel. When dream emotions are this extreme, they are calling out to be worked with. 3. Archetypal Dreams Dreams can contain archetypal symbols—universal images, characters, and themes that appear in all cultures throughout time in anything from legends and myths to cartoons and comic books. Archetypes are universally present in individual psyches. The “psyche” is the soul, mind, or spirit. Carl Jung believed that archetypes embody basic human experiences and universal meanings. They are the heart and soul of many of our favorite stories, from fairy tales to blockbuster movies: we all recognize the archetype of the Mentor (for example, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) who trains the Hero for a quest, or the archetypal Old Hag (the witch in Hansel and Gretel), or the Trickster (Rumpelstiltskin). Archetypes can be both positive and negative, and they embody energies that are deeply familiar to us. In dreams, they often transcend the mundane level of our waking life to reveal something deeper. 4. Lucid Dreams  This is one of the most popular types of dreams. These dreams may fall into any of the other categories shown here, but the difference is that lucid dreamers know that they are dreaming while they are dreaming. Lucid dreams are often especially vivid and memorable. The lucid dreamer can also guide the dream and choose to respond to the dream scenario in a particular way: to face a fear, for example, or to realize impossible fantasies, like flying to the stars. 5. Soul Dreams  These are dreams of the higher; of spirit and soul. They often involve light, beautiful nature, or luminous beings, and have a spiritual quality. A woman I know dreamed of a glowing, energized female Buddha floating above her bed. I once dreamed of columns of blue light that seemed wise beyond belief. Such dreams connect us with a deep source of light and knowledge that we all have somewhere within.

Examples of Dream Interpretation

The following are simplified examples of dream interpretation, to give you an idea of the way how different dreams can communicate, and the importance of context and analysis in what do dreams really mean. Only the dreamer can truly know what his dream is about, and it’s important to be respectful of this at all times: never impose your interpretation of somebody’s dream onto them. The dream belongs to the dreamer! The radiator cap explodes off my car. Could this mean that the dreamer will have car trouble this week? Does it indicate that something is wrong in his body? This dream is a riddle until the dreamer tells us that he lost his temper badly the day before. Now it makes much more sense! We even have an idiom very close to this that expresses someone losing their temper, “He blew a gasket.” This dream is likely to reflect the man processing his out-of-control behavior from the previous day. A dying dolphin is out of the water and is completely drying up. Why would anyone dream of a dying, drying-up dolphin? To discover more about the dream, we need to find out the dreamer’s associations, life situation, and insights. This is why “the dream belongs to the dreamer”: only the dreamer can really know what the dream is about. This dreamer was a blocked artist who felt that his creative inspiration (aka the dolphin) was completely drying up. Dreams are deep, but they’re indirect. This indirectness is exactly what can make them so opaque sometimes, even to their co-creator, the dreamer. Each of the dreams we’ve just looked at addresses deep issues and concerns, holding up a mirror to show the dreamer how he or she experiences life events.

How to Unwrap a Dream: Core Techniques

Dreams are like onions; their heart is hidden under many layers. Some dreams can be unwrapped over weeks, months, or even years, continuing to reveal rich new layers of meaning. Here are some quick and easy ways of reaching the heart of a dream and what they mean. Practice # 1: Re-enter the Dream  Carl Jung developed a technique called “active imagination” to focus on any inner imagery, such as memories or daydreams, or even a mood or emotion, in order to discover more about it. In terms of dreams, active imagination means that a dreamer imaginatively re-enters a dream while awake.

1. Find a quiet space where you can relax and close your eyes.

2. Bring the memory of your dream vividly into your mind. See the colors, feel the emotions again, notice the details. Take a moment to conjure up the dream scene and relive it. This is applicable to all types of dreams.

3. Now you are ready to engage with your dream; for example, by focusing on the imagery and watching it move and transform.

Practice # 2: Ten Key Questions for Unwrapping a Dream

1. Who are you in this dream? (A younger self, an observer, an animal, a different person, or yourself as you are today?)

2. How do you feel in your dream? What are the strongest emotions?

3. Do these emotions resonate with any situation in your life, past or present?

4. What is the core image or scene in this dream? (“Core” means the central, most arresting, most energized or emotional image.) This is considered as one of the most important elements in understanding one’s dreams and what they mean.

5. What are your associations with this core image or scene? Note down keywords or phrases.

6. If every dream figure and symbol represents a part of you, which part would the core image represent? Use your keywords to make it easier to connect with the core image.

7. If you were to ask the most negative or scary part of your dream if it has a message for you, what might it say?

8. Is there any light or beauty in your dream? This might be moonlight on water or a vibrant animal or person. Close your eyes and focus on it. Ask it, “What do you want me to know?” It might respond, or change into something else.

9. What does the dream want? Different dreams have different meanings but what is your dream really about? Consider the actions and emotions within it, along with any surprise events or unexpected feelings. Sometimes stepping back from your dream and viewing it as if it were a movie can help you to pinpoint what the dream is attempting to convey to you.

10. If you could go back into your dream and change the ending, what would happen?

May these 10 key questions help you uncover what certain dreams mean. Excerpted from Mindful Dreaming: Harness the Power of Lucid Dreaming for Happiness, Health, and Positive Change by Clare Johnson, Ph.D. Reprinted with permission from Conari Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser

About The Author Clare R. Johnson, Ph.D., is a world-leading expert on lucid dreaming. She is Vice President and Board Director of the largest dream organization in the world, the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Her work on lucid dreaming has been featured in documentaries, magazines, radio shows, and television. She is a regular speaker at international dream conferences, and she leads lucid dream workshops and courses on how to unlock the creative and healing potential of dreams. Learn more at deepluciddreaming.com

photo: ian stauffer

The Mindful Open Awareness Meditation: What Is It? Open Awareness Meditation, also known as “open attention,” “open monitoring,” or “soft focus,” is a form of mindfulness meditation in which you allow the many things present in your consciousness (sounds and other sensory input, as well as your thoughts and emotions) to arise in your awareness and then naturally fall away as they are replaced by different sounds, thoughts, etc. This kind of meditation is considered a “yin” practice. The ancient concept of yin and yang refers to the two fundamental sides of nature—both spiritual and physical, both feminine and masculine. This does not refer exclusively to male or female, but to the masculine and feminine in all aspects of life. Yin is the feminine aspect of all things and is associated with that which is expansive, open, and receptive, while yang is the masculine aspect of all things and is associated with that which is precise, active, and specific. Every person has both yin qualities and yang qualities, and the same is true of meditation practices. Attention is the yin to concentration’s yang. Attention (mindfulness) and concentration (focus) work together to provide a full, rounded experience of being both focused on the task at hand (whatever it may be), as well as having complete awareness of, and an open mind to, the many aspects of the moment you are in. In most meditation practices, you will be exercising some level of both concentration and open attention. The Mindfulness Sutras (or the Satipatthana Suttas, as they are known in their original language, Pali) are the primary foundational texts for what we know today as mindfulness and mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness refers to the experience of being totally aware of all the information your senses are processing. In the Eastern traditions, there are six natural senses that all humans are born with. This includes the five conventional senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—and the sixth sense, thought. This sixth sense of thought often comes to the foreground in mindfulness practices and in meditation generally. Our brains are built to think—thoughts are their natural product—and you will find that your brain goes on producing all kinds of thoughts even as you are meditating and trying to focus your attention on other things. What mindfulness meditation does for us is beginning to change our relationship to the thoughts occurring, especially as we gradually learn to consider them as sensory input rather than facts or events we need to respond to. Thoughts provide important information, but they are not fundamentally different from or more important than, say, the taste of pear or hearing a Mozart symphony. This can be a difficult lesson to learn because thoughts present themselves as reflections of reality. In other words, they present themselves as true. But just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true, or even particularly important. Let’s consider an example of the tricky ways thoughts can make us believe things that aren’t necessarily true. Imagine you send a text to a friend, inviting him to your birthday dinner. Hours later, you still haven’t heard back, even though this friend usually responds right away. By the time you go to bed that night, you’ve decided that he doesn’t want to come and is trying to think of a good excuse; your feelings are hurt. Then the next day, you wake up to a text from him: “Sorry for the delay. Phone died, was out all day without my charger. I’d love to come!” Just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true. Mindfulness practice can teach us about the nature of thinking, and perhaps even more importantly, it can teach us that we are not our thoughts. This might seem like an obvious or even silly point to make, but consider for a moment the negative thoughts you have about yourself—about your weight, your intelligence, or your career success. If you’re like most of us, you probably have a set of negative thoughts about yourself that you’ve been thinking for years and which you find yourself returning to regularly. In her book Says Who?, mindfulness teacher Ora Nadrich explains how our thoughts can hold us captive and how using mindfulness can help reframe our attitude toward negative and fear-based thoughts, mindfully replacing them with productive, supportive thoughts. We often allow—and rarely question the validity of—certain negative thoughts (for example, “I need to lose ten pounds,” “I’m not talented enough to make VP,” or “My spouse is too good for me”). If you’ve been thinking negative thoughts for long enough, you have probably come to believe in and identify with them. You think you are overweight or not good enough instead of recognizing that these are simply thoughts that you have about yourself that may not even be objectively accurate. You are not your thoughts; you are the thinker of the thoughts. We could never act on all of our thoughts, and there are many thoughts we shouldn’t act on or believe in if we want to live a healthy, well-balanced life. So, this mindfulness meditation practice will help you discern which thoughts support your goals and well-being and which thoughts are destructive or unhealthy and should be discarded. In mindfulness meditation, you practice checking in with all of the sensations and thoughts you are experiencing, as you experience them. Gradually, you will practice opening your awareness to the simulta­neous observation of the various aspects of the moment—without any expectation, without any judgment, allowing them to fluidly change. The key to getting the most out of an Open Awareness Meditation is to allow everything to be as it already is. It is in our nature to want to change or improve things, especially if there is discomfort on any level. To the extent possible, you should try not to do that during your meditation practice and simply allow things to be as they are. For example, you decide to meditate outdoors because it’s a peaceful, quiet day with comfortable weather. As your meditation begins, you hear a car drive by, your neighbor’s dog barking, and the gentle breeze of the wind. The mental perspective to hold here is that you accept and allow the dog to bark and the car to drive by, without entertaining the desire for things to be any different than they are. The thought may arise “Will that dog be quiet?” but your practice will be to let yourself have that thought without following it or dwelling on it. The sound of the car and the barking of the dog need not interrupt the meditation; rather, they can become a part of it. Of course, you should always try to meditate in a place where you will be safe and as undisturbed as possible, but keep in mind that in any meditation practice, a crucial component is to allow—even welcome—changes to the outside environment without interrupting the meditation. Simply observe, experience, and allow things to be as they are. This Open Awareness Meditation will make you more aware of the thoughts passing through your mind. Studies show that the average individual thinks anywhere from 30,000 to 70,000 thoughts every single day. By holding an open-focus awareness, you create a larger mental “container” for your thoughts to pass through. Gradually, with regular practice, mindfulness will give you the opportunity to more clearly see and experience the many layers of your thinking process.

What You’ll Get Out of It

Today you will open your awareness to include the fullness of the moment you are in. We can compare our attention to light: If we focus our concentration on something, we might say that we are “shining a spotlight” on it. When we practice open awareness, rather than shining a spotlight on one particular thing, we might say that we allow our awareness to “shine” in all directions around us, like the glow of a candle flame. We will refer to this “glow” of awareness around us as our field of awareness. Your field of awareness is the sum total of all of your sensory input. The practice of open awareness is an exercise in allowing your senses to experience the fullness of the present moment, becoming aware even of the subtleties that you may normally overlook, ignore, or miss altogether, like the temperature of the air around you or the faint creaking of floorboards. When we simply notice and allow things to be as they are, we naturally disengage from the impulses that would try to control or change things. This is not a practice in passivity or ignorance—quite the opposite. This is a practice in opening your mind and allowing yourself to receive all the information you possibly can before making any moves or taking any action. Notice the word allow. We do not force ourselves to pick up on sensory input; the awareness expands naturally from a practice of calm, relaxed allowing. When we are resistant to something that is happening, we have a biological tendency to “brace for impact,” which means we withdraw and tighten the muscles in our body. The mind then immediately begins thinking of all the way things could or should be different than they are. When we are open to something, we tend to be more curious about, and even more willing to embrace, the unknown, which leaves the body more at ease. This allows us to be more open to understanding and learning about what we are experiencing. With an open mind, we tend to see more possibilities and multiple perspectives on things. Open Awareness Meditation will strengthen your ability to really see things as they are and accept them for what they are. By practicing Open Awareness Meditation, you will cultivate:

1. Discernment

Open Awareness Meditation allows us to understand more about the moment we are in. The more we know in any circumstance, the more informed our decisions can be. Through practicing mindful awareness, we cultivate discernment by being more sensitive to the bigger picture and how the present moment relates to it. This increased understanding allows us to discern which thoughts we want to entertain, which thoughts we need to release, and what might be the right decision for us to make given the circumstances.

2. Decreased Depression and Increased Happiness

In studies published by Scientific American, Science Daily, and more, mindfulness meditation practices have been successfully applied as a treatment for depression and proven to ameliorate depression symptoms such as lethargy and lack of quality sleep. Other studies show increased happiness and joy. There are also reports of increased laughter after going through mindfulness training.

3. Core Creativity

In Dr. Ronald Alexander’s book Wise Mind, Open Mind, he maps out the different ways that a mindfulness meditation practice can help you tap into your core creativity and the mental perspective of limitless possibilities.

4. Self-Awareness and Better Decision-Making

We all have many sides to our personalities. As you practice observing your thoughts, you will become more aware of the tone of your internal voice and the kinds of thoughts you are having and develop the ability to intervene before saying or doing something you might regret.

5. Reduced Stress

Mindfulness practices are proven to have significant effects on reducing the physical symptoms of stress. It is well known throughout the medical community that stress aggravates just about every single health problem and illness. By reducing the symptoms of stress (like tension in the muscles and concentrated amounts of stress hormones in the bloodstream), we reduce their negative effect on our overall health.

6. Perspective

By developing mindful awareness of the various aspects of your environment through Open Awareness Meditation, that same skill naturally transitions into other areas of your life, providing a sense of proportion, big-picture perspective, and being present within a larger context.

7. Improvement in Your Life

Through the practice of witnessing things as they are, you will become more aware of your ability to change things that are not working for you. By becoming more attentive and aware of the thoughts arising in your mind, you will create the opportunity to question and reframe them.

The Open Awareness Meditation Practice: How to Do It

Meditation Length: 5 Minutes What You’ll Need

+ A comfortable chair or cushion where you can sit with your spine comfortably erect.

+ A quiet place to sit where you won’t be easily disturbed (by someone walking in on you, for example).

+ A timer (if you decide to use the timer on your smartphone, it is best to put the phone on airplane mode or silent to prevent distractions from incoming alerts).

+ Your meditation notebook and a pen or pencil.

Get Started Please read through this entire meditation before beginning. Ideally, you will remember the instructions and not have to interrupt the awareness meditation to check the next step. For this meditation, you should be sitting up—or even standing. Try to have your weight comfortably balanced between your left and right sides. If you are sitting, I recommend allowing your hands to rest comfortably in your lap or on your knees. If you choose to stand, have your arms resting comfortably at your sides. The key points for posture are:

1. Sit comfortably. 2. Not so comfortably that you’ll fall asleep. 3. Sit or stand with your back comfortably erect.

I attended a lecture by Harvard Medical School professor of psychology and Buddhist scholar Daniel P. Brown in which he explained that the popular notion of meditation solely as a relaxation technique is inaccurate and actually detrimental to the powerful mind-training effects of meditation. In a state of deep relaxation, the mind tends to wander. Sitting up straight or standing with an erect spine will support your mental alertness, making for effective meditation. As you sit, you will notice micro changes in the body. These can be any number of things, such as tension rising in your shoulders as you hear an unpleasant sound, subtle changes in the breath as you settle deeper into a relaxed state or chills on your skin as the temperature in the room changes. The exercise is to practice holding a soft focus, open to experiencing all of these things at once. Please read through this entire meditation before beginning. Ideally, you will remember the instructions and not have to interrupt the open awareness experience to check the next step. Before Meditating

1. Find a place to sit or stand where you won’t be disturbed.

2. Take a moment to get into a comfortable position that you will be able to maintain for the duration of the practice with as little movement or adjustment as possible.

3. Set your intention: “I will meditate for five minutes, opening my awareness to the various sounds, sensations, thoughts, and emotions that may arise and allowing everything to be as it is, just for these five minutes.”

Begin Meditating

1. Set your timer for five minutes.

2. Allow your eyes to gently close.

3. Feel your breath as your lungs expand and contract.

4. Notice the sensations along the surface of your skin, feeling the air in the room.

5. Bring your awareness to space above your head, noticing any sounds or movement in the space above you.

6. Move your awareness to the space below you, noticing where your body touches the cushion or floor. Notice any subtle vibrations from the floor.

7. Keeping your body in a restful stillness, bring your awareness to space in front of you, as far as your senses can reach.

8. Next, notice any sounds or movement to your right.

9. Move your awareness to space behind you, filling the room, even expanding beyond the room. (Any sounds on the other side of the walls?)

10. Move your awareness to your left.

11. Envision your awareness as a glow in all directions around you, mentally scanning all directions at once—simply witnessing the moment as it is.

12. If the mind wanders, bring your awareness back to the breath as it expands and contracts, and expand your awareness in all directions around you from there.

Wrap Up It is always recommended to end a meditation gently and mindfully. For some people, this means slowly beginning to move and stretch the body before opening their eyes; for others, this means saying a brief prayer or setting an intention for their day, such as “And now, I am going to have an efficient, effective, positive workday.” Whatever way is most natural for you to wrap up, go for it. What matters is that you give yourself a moment to exit the meditation without a sense of rushing. Transitioning mindfully out of meditation helps you keep the relaxed state developed during your practice, thus extending the “shelf life” of the benefits of calmness, clarity, and openness. Take a moment to record the details of your awareness meditation. If you end up meditating for longer than the suggested five minutes, please be sure to note this. If you have time, take a few minutes to write down your answers to the following in your meditation notebook:

+ Did any particular thoughts or memories come to mind that stood out?

+ Were there any sensations that surprised you? A sound or feeling that was unexpected?

Go Deeper: Ten Minute Meditation (or Longer) Begin with the above open awareness practice, but set your timer for ten minutes instead of five. If after ten minutes you feel you want to keep going, continue the meditation for as long as you wish. I typically recommend 20 to 40 minutes for regular practice. Go Deeper throughout Your Day: Mindful Check-In

+ Do a mindful check-in at work: Take a brief moment to mindfully experience the workplace from your usual spot. Mentally scan in all directions around you.

+ Do a mindful check-in during your meals: Notice the fragrances, the sounds, and the thoughts arising in your mind.

+ Do a mindful check-in at the market: When visiting one of the places you usually do your shopping, take a moment to notice the temperature, the smells, the music, and the conversations happening in the background.

+ Anywhere you find yourself, do a mindful awareness check-in: Whenever appropriate, take a moment to close your eyes and listen in all directions around you. Be present with wherever you are, whenever you are actually there. Take it all in!

Excerpted from Practical Meditation for Beginners: 10 Days to a Happier, Calmer You by Benjamin W. Decker, published by Althea Press. Copyright © 2018

About The Author Benjamin W. Decker is a meditation teacher and social activist in Los Angeles. He is the Director of Education at The Institute for Transformational Thinking and a founding teacher at Unplug Meditation, The DEN Meditation, and Wanderlust Hollywood. He is also the former Director of Partnerships at the humanitarian aid organization Generosity.org and former Director of Partnerships at the anti-human trafficking organization Unlikely Heroes. Learn more at bendeckermeditation.com

photo: maiwind photocase.com

Defining Happiness

What does the word “happiness” mean to you? What emotions does it evoke, and what images spring to mind when you reflect on it? In your experience, what would you say are the key ingredients of meaningful, true happiness? Take a moment, close your eyes if you’d like, and consider what this concept means for you. One of the many challenges of happiness research is the fact that the very notion of happiness can be quite difficult to define, making it equally difficult to understand how to be happy. Indeed, happiness is a topic that garners a great deal of attention; yet pinning down exactly what it is can prove elusive. There have been many different opinions over the years on what comprises true happiness. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, considered happiness to be something that occurred “when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” In contrast, the French physician and philosopher Albert Schweitzer once jokingly declared that happiness is “nothing more than good health and a bad memory.” Though these definitions may be interesting, they do little in terms of helping us understand happiness in life from a scientific perspective. An important contribution of the positive psychology movement in recent years has been helping us gain a common understanding on how to live a happy life. For example, one of the world’s foremost experts in the psychology of happiness, Martin Seligman, initially defined happiness as being comprised of three separate yet interconnected elements:

+ Positive emotions + Engagement + Meaning

For Seligman, “positive emotions” refers to experiencing pleasant emotions regarding our past, present, and future, and is marked by the experience of generally positive mood-states across these domains. “Engagement” denotes the idea of flow, a state of mind in which we are so engrossed in the task at hand that time seemingly stops. Finally, “meaning” refers to the idea of being connected to a cause greater than oneself. According to this viewpoint of happiness, true well-being consists of a combination of each of these three components, with a sense of meaning or purpose serving as one of the most important keys to being happy. Seligman has since expanded this definition of happiness to include two additional components to the three outlined above: relationships and accomplishments. Reflecting these, Seligman’s updated conceptualization of well-being can be remembered by the acronym PERMA, which denotes the following five elements:

+ Positive emotions + Engagement + Relationships + Meaning + Accomplishments

Another prominent researcher in the field of positive psychology, Sonja Lyubomirsky, has described happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, or worthwhile.” As with Seligman’s definition of happiness, this one too emphasizes the multiple layers of true happiness and well-being. Rather than consisting merely of pleasant, fleeting emotions, real happiness in life also includes a deeper sense of meaning, satisfaction with one’s life, and purpose. Throughout this article, in order to help us remain on the same page and have a common understanding of how to find happiness, we will consider well-being and happiness to similarly consist of:

+ A strong presence of pleasant and positive emotional states, both in the present moment as well as towards the past and future;

+ A sense of connection to those around us, as well as to our pursuits, vocations, and activities;

+ A deep, underlying feeling of life satisfaction; and

+ A sense of meaning and purpose that can anchor us even when fleeting positive emotions may not be present.

As you can see, the sort of happiness that’s being described above is a much deeper and richer phenomenon than what we might expect. Whereas the “Hollywood” depiction of happiness focuses primarily on intense positive emotions such as joy, ebullience, or pleasure, happiness, as considered by positive psychologists, is a bit of a different experience. Positive emotions are certainly a part of the picture, but equally (perhaps even more so) important are those deeper experiences of meaning and purpose, satisfaction with our lives, and connection to both people and causes in our lives.

Happiness: A Timeless Pursuit

Although much of the research on happiness is recent—having emerged since the early 2000s since the birth of positive psychology—it should be pointed out that interest in the secrets of happiness dates back centuries. Indeed, the topic on how to be happy has been a concern of philosophers, theologians, and scholars for thousands of years. From Greek and Roman philosophers in the West to Buddhist and Confucian thinkers in the East, questions related to the “good life” have certainly been prominent throughout the years. Within the field of psychology, the lion’s share of the focus has historically been centered on the reduction of misery and the management of illness. Nonetheless, there have been a handful of pioneers over the years who have attempted to investigate issues such as contentment, thriving, happiness, and flourishing. These individuals include luminaries such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Marie Jahoda, among others. For them, questions related to fulfillment, happiness, and optimal functioning were considered critical to understanding the human condition. Despite a longstanding interest in the topic, the emergence of positive psychology has proven to be a remarkable turning point in the field of happiness research, and has led to a tremendous boom within both the mainstream and academia. For the first time in history, researchers have begun to approach our timeless interest in happiness by utilizing rigorous methods of scientific inquiry. Today, we know more about how to find happiness and boost well-being than at any other point in history. Best of all, rather than having to rely on testimonials or theory, we can rely on science and research to guide us in our search for ways to be happy. Recent research has helped us to understand which strategies do and do not boost our well-being in the long term. Above all, the aim of this article is to present these findings to you and to teach you the necessary skills for a happier life.

The Benefits of Being Happy

If you’re like most people, perhaps you considered starting a new exercise regimen, changing your diet, or reducing your substance use. Each of these would undoubtedly be a great place to start, and there’s research to support each of these ideas when it comes to our health. But it just so happens that there’s another way to improve our health, increase our life expectancy, strengthen our relationships, and even improve our job performance: Namely, becoming a happier person. By doing so, we have the opportunity to vastly improve our mental and emotional well-being, strengthen our physical health, and transform our lives. Best of all, the latest happiness studies suggest that it’s not a case in which people become happier because of these benefits; rather, the reverse appears to be true—people who are happier tend to be healthier and more fulfilled in life. We all know from personal experience that being happy is a good thing in and of itself. Indeed, for most of us, personal happiness (or the happiness of those we love most) factors heavily into many of our major life decisions. But though it undoubtedly feels good on an emotional level to be happy, it turns out that this is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, as more research comes out related to the psychology of happiness and well-being, the more we understand just how critical it is across a large number of areas in our life. One of the most exciting findings to emerge from the happiness literature is that happiness doesn’t just feel good—it’s good for us as well. Although happier people perform better than less happy individuals across a number of domains, four areas, in particular, stand out: improved psychological health, better physical health, stronger social relationships, and enhanced cognitive performance.

+ Better Psychological Health

Negative emotional states, such as anger, sadness, or fear, prompt very narrow, survival-oriented behaviors. As an example, think of the “fight or flight” response that we experience when we feel acutely anxious or fearful. Our focus narrows, we perceive threats more intensely, and our mind and body go on high alert. This deeply ingrained tendency is wonderful when it comes to things like survival and spreading our gene pool. Unfortunately, it’s pretty lousy when it comes to our own happiness. Whereas negative emotions prompt the type of responses outlined above, positive and pleasant emotions have the opposite function in our lives. As psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has shown, positive emotional states serve to “broaden and build” our personal resources. We seek out novel experiences, connect with others interpersonally, and think more creatively. Psychologically, positive emotional states help buffer against negative experiences, increase our resilience, and can actually help to “undo” the effects of negative emotions on both a psychological and even physiological level. Moreover, this cycle has a way of feeding on itself, such that Fredrickson has dubbed it the “upward spiral” of well-being. In recent years, there has been a groundswell of research emerging on the psychological benefits of becoming a happier person. By fostering the skills in the pages to come (such as gratitude, compassion, and interpersonal connection), happiness studies show that doing so can buffer against a wide range of psychological problems including depression, anxiety, stress, and more. These skills can be utilized not only to treat these sorts of problems but to buffer against their recurrence as well. Overall, from a psychological standpoint, it certainly pays to become a happier person. But although this is a worthy goal in and of itself, some of the most impressive benefits to boosting one’s happiness lie in other parts of our lives.

+ Better Physical Health

Reflect for a moment on the last time you visited your doctor for a health check-up. You probably remember being asked a number of questions about your health habits, such as how often you exercise, what your diet consists of, how much alcohol you consume, and so forth. This makes good sense because these sorts of behavioral choices can have a tremendous impact on your physical health. But do you know what else makes a huge difference when it comes to your health? You guessed it—becoming a happier person! There have been a large number of studies to suggest that happiness and well-being not only feel good—they’re good for us as well. Research suggests that happier individuals live longer lives, have stronger immune system functioning, and get sick less frequently than less happy people. In one longitudinal study, it was found that happier people were less likely to fall prey to chronic health conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, and were even less likely to struggle with substance use problems. By actively learning how to be happy and attending to it with the importance it deserves, it appears that we can become healthier too.

+ More Fulfilling Social Relationships

Renowned psychiatrist George Vaillant once famously stated, “happiness is love—full stop.” The sort of “love” Vaillant was describing was essentially close interpersonal connection and the impact that it has on a person’s psychological well-being. In recent years, numerous studies have supported this notion—that our own happiness is inextricably connected to our interpersonal relationships. Moreover, there appears to be a bidirectional relationship between these two variables. In other words, happier people tend to have stronger, more meaningful relationships with those around them; but by also consciously fostering these relationships, we can have a powerful effect on our own happiness in life.

+ Better Cognitive Performance

You may be wondering about whether happiness might have a negative effect on things like job performance and achievement. Indeed, we sometimes run into the stereotype of happy people lacking the “edge” they need to succeed in these realms. But do “happy people finish last,” to borrow an old phrase? Actually, a happiness study suggests that the exact opposite is true: Happier people perform better across a range of cognitive tasks and tend to be more flexible in their thinking as well as being more creative. These benefits are reflected in studies of both students and adults in the workplace, with findings suggesting that happier individuals perform significantly better than their less happy counterparts. Indeed, happier individuals are more likely to obtain jobs, succeed in those jobs, gain promotions, and earn more money. So it pays to be happy, not just figuratively, but literally as well!

Roadblocks to Happiness and How to Overcome Them

Have you ever daydreamed about owning a bigger home, purchasing a shiny new car, or getting a long-awaited promotion at work? If so, you’ve probably done this for a very specific reason: you believed that these supposed “secrets of happiness” would make you a happier person. We all fall into this pattern of thinking and acting, and many of our major life choices are made with the goal of happiness in mind. Indeed, everything from our relationship choices to where we decide to live is influenced by an internal (often unconscious) decision about whether it will make us happier. The idea that if something good happens to us, then we’ll be happy, is a very common belief that most of us fall prey to from time to time. I call it the “if/then” style of happiness seeking, and it tends to promote the idea that if we achieve some desirable outcome in our lives, then we’ll be happy. For example, we might tell ourselves that if we were to purchase a beautiful new home, or if we were to move to a new city, then we would be happy. Although the “if/then” style of thinking is certainly seductive when it comes to our happiness, we all know from personal experience that these sorts of external changes rarely lead to lasting and true well-being. It’s not that good things happening to us don’t make us happy, because they do. It’s just that positive changes like those outlined above make us less happy than we expect, and the gains that we achieve last a much shorter time than we expect. A classic example of this phenomenon can be seen in studies conducted on lottery winners. Just as we might expect, winning the lottery typically leads to an immediate and sizable boost in terms of a person’s happiness. The problem is that these gains are quite fleeting, almost akin to a happiness “sugar high.” Indeed, within a handful of months, most lottery winners return to their original baseline level of happiness and life-satisfaction. As it turns out there are many examples like this, of positive changes in our lives that we expect to lead to lasting increases in happiness but don’t. Some common examples of things that many people expect to make them happier but don’t, in the long run, include (but are not limited to):

+ Money and Income: Most, if not all, people think that money is one of the essential keys to being happy. Once basic needs are met, additional money makes very little, if any, difference in terms of a person’s happiness level. Some estimates suggest that once an annual income of roughly $75,000 is met, additional money makes no difference when it comes to making a person happier.

+ Geography: Studies show that with the exception of people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, the average person’s happiness is not affected by where they live geographically. Differences do exist when comparing countries, but that is more related to systems of government and/or oppression. Climate and geography, however, do not appear to play a role in happiness.

+ Getting Married: Research suggests that following an initial boost in happiness (roughly 18 months on average), married individuals tend to revert back to their previous happiness baseline levels.

+ Having Children: Although there is conflicting research on this topic, numerous studies suggest that day-to-day levels of happiness and life satisfaction fall among parents following the birth of a child, and are particularly low during the teenage years. Only once a child moves off to college or leaves the home do happiness scores tend to revert back to their original baseline among parents.

+ Physical Attractiveness: Studies show that the people who score the lowest of any profession for happiness are models.

But why do all these seemingly wonderful things have such little (if any) benefit to our long-term happiness? The answer lies in a few key areas, which we will now briefly turn our attention to. As it turns out, there are a handful of factors on how to be happy, making it hard for us to feel lastingly buoyant; three of which we will briefly discuss below.

– Hedonic Adaptation

Human beings have a remarkable ability to adapt to changes in their environment. For example, think of the last time you entered a dark movie theater—at first it was probably quite difficult to see, but shortly thereafter your eyes adjusted and you could make your way to your seat. Or consider the way that a rather unpleasant odor stops being so noticeable after a short while. These examples demonstrate a process called physiological adaptation—in other words, our ability to adapt to physiological changes in our environment. A similar process occurs when it comes to our happiness and is known as hedonic adaptation. This refers to the idea that we tend to “adjust” to so-called hedonic (pleasant) changes in our environment, and find ourselves back to our baseline level of happiness rather quickly. It helps explain, for example, why lottery winners revert to their previous levels of happiness only a few months after they win an enormous sum of money. But it also helps explain why, for example, accident victims who lose the use of their legs return to their prior level of happiness in a somewhat similar time frame. A key take-home message regarding the psychology of happiness is that hedonic adaptation is neither good nor bad. In fact, the same process that drags us down after something wonderful happens helps bring us back up following tragedy. So just as financial windfalls and strokes of good fortune fade over time, so too do the painful emotions associated with loss and setbacks. But due to its tendency to “undo” the benefits of positive changes in our lives, hedonic adaptation serves as a powerful barrier to lastingly increasing our happiness. And it helps explain why so many of the factors that we normally think will make us lastingly happier (such as more money, a change in appearance, entering a new relationship, and so forth) lose their luster after a short while.

– The Genetic Lottery

Our genes play a powerful role in many areas of our lives, from our personalities and our appearance to our risk of certain illnesses and diseases. As it turns out, our genes also play a powerful role when it comes to our happiness levels. Through researching both fraternal and identical twins, as well as non-twin siblings, scientists have come to find that a large portion of our happiness is genetically influenced. How much of an influence do genes have in this area? Estimates vary, but most studies seem to suggest that our genes account for as much as 40-50% of our level of happiness in life. If you’ve ever known someone, for example, who seems to take setbacks in stride, or always seems to see the glass as “half full,” there’s a strong likelihood that that individual may have hit the genetic lottery when it comes to happiness. Conversely, we all know people for whom being happy seems to be an uphill struggle, and those individuals may have been less fortunate when it comes to a “genetic” predisposition to happiness. Although our genes play an important role in determining our happiness baseline or “set point,” it’s crucial that we don’t take this message too far. Indeed, it’s better to think of it being akin to weight: Some of us may be naturally heavy or thin, and in the absence of proper diet or exercise we may drift towards where our genes predispose us. However, this does not mean that we’re doomed to be mere reflections of our genetic “set point,” and we are all able to transform ourselves based on the choices and behaviors we engage in, whether in terms of weight or happiness.

– Our “Negative” Brain

Have you ever felt as if a dozen good things can happen to you in a day, but a single bad experience is all you can think about when you get home that night? If you are having a hard time figuring out how to become happy in a difficult situation, you’re not alone, and in fact, we can thank another key barrier to happiness for this sort of experience: our very own brain. When it comes to our happiness, it’s worth remembering that our brains developed over the millennia not to be happy, but rather to survive. And sometimes the very things that helped us to survive as a species also make it hard to feel lastingly content, peaceful, and happy. Life was quite difficult for our early ancestors, with constant threats of famine, warfare, and natural disaster surrounding them at all times. In order to help us to survive, we became highly attuned to threats and danger, and to focus on the negative aspects of our environment rather than the positive ones. And although our world has changed in many ways since that time period, it’s a drop in the bucket from an evolutionary standpoint. As a result, we are still operating with much of the same basic “machinery” that our ancestors did hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our brain has a built-in “negativity bias” in order to help us survive. This means we remember bad outcomes much more easily than good ones, and negative events impact us much more strongly than positive ones. This negativity bias has been shown to be so strong, that some studies suggest we need to experience several positive events during our day to overcome just a single negative one. The neuropsychologist Rick Hanson has described our brain thusly as being like “Teflon for good, and Velcro for bad.” This negativity bias leads us to feel unhappy and stressed much of the time, especially if we are not actively working on shifting out mindset towards the positive.

What’s Really Under Our Control?

Although the barriers to true happiness listed previously are formidable, they are not insurmountable. And despite all the factors that make it difficult to become happier (such as hedonic adaptation, our genes, and the negativity bias), it is absolutely possible to become lastingly happier. We just need to look in the right place and foster the right kinds of habits. If the bad news (for some) is that genes account for up to 40-50% of a person’s happiness level, the good news (for all of us) is that our circumstances around us account for only a small portion of our happiness—as little as 10%. Keep in mind, these sorts of external circumstances (how much money we earn, whether we are married or not, where we live, etc.) are where we tend to look to become happier. Yet these things (which can be very difficult to change in the first place), account for only a small portion of our happiness level. The best news of all is that we are left with an entire 40-50% entirely in our control, and determined by the choices we make, the mindset we cultivate, and the habits we engage in. There are 10 core principles that have been shown to create lasting increases in our happiness levels. Each has been researched extensively, backed by numerous scientific studies, and each has been linked to meaningful changes in a person’s happiness over time and with practice. Best of all, none of these principles are fixed; rather, they are all learnable, and changeable, with effort.

 What Are the 10 Keys to Lasting Happiness?

If you need more tips on how to become happy in life, these practices have been strongly linked in many research papers to lasting well-being:

1. Gratitude

Studies show that fostering a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the positive aspects of our lives has a powerful impact on our own happiness level, making it one of the major keys to happiness. By shifting our focus towards the good in our lives, research suggests we can become much happier.

2. Kindness and Compassion

Another crucial element of well-being comes through expressions of kindness and caring towards others. Indeed, numerous studies show that giving to others, whether through formal volunteer work or other means, is one of the most powerful ways to be happy.

3. Self-Compassion

Around 80% of people tend to be harder on themselves than they are on others. Unfortunately, this sort of self-criticism takes a tremendous toll on our well-being. Self-Compassion—learning to treat ourselves with kindness and caring—has been shown to have powerful benefits on our mental and physical health.

4. Mindfulness

Some studies suggest that we spend roughly half of our waking hours mentally detached from the present moment; in other words, we may be physically in one place, but mentally we are somewhere else. This same research suggests that the more our mind wanders, the less happy we tend to be. Mindfulness—the ability to be non-judgmentally aware in the present moment—has been shown to have immense benefits to our happiness and well-being, along with our physical health.

5. Optimism

We’ve all heard it said that it’s best to see the glass as “half full,” but recent research underscores the importance of optimism to both our mental and physical well-being. Indeed, optimists tend to be both happier and healthier than pessimists across many different areas.

6. Interpersonal Connection

We live in a world of infinite connection these days thanks to technology and social media. Unfortunately, some studies suggest that the quality of our interpersonal connections has deteriorated as the quantity has gone up. This is unfortunate because much research shows that one of the best ways to finding happiness is to enhance the quality of our closest interpersonal relationships.

7. Forgiveness

When we are hurt, anger is a natural response. But holding onto anger for months, or even years can have a toxic effect on our mental and physical health. One of the secrets on how to live a happy life is learning to let go of this anger can free us, and the practice of forgiveness has been linked to a number of powerful benefits to our health and happiness.

8. Using Our Strengths

Learning to identify and harness our own personal strengths is one of the many ways to be happy. In fact, it has been shown to have a number of benefits when it comes to boosting our own level of happiness and achieving a greater sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.

9. Savoring Positive Experiences

Sometimes good things can happen in our lives but we quickly move onto the next thing. Similarly, because negative experiences have a much more powerful effect on us, it’s easy to lose sight of the good experiences that might occur each day. The skill of savoring is one of the main keys to happiness as it helps us to amplify and draw out positive and pleasant experiences, to better allow them to “sink in” from a happiness standpoint.

10. Caring For Our Bodies and Health

Among the many ways to be happy is by taking good care of yourself. During times of stress, it’s particularly easy to lose sight of self-care, and our health is one of the first areas to suffer. By attending to our sleep, exercise patterns, and even the food that we eat, we can lay the groundwork for increased happiness and well-being. This piece is excerpted with permission from The Happiness Toolbox: 56 Practices to Find Happiness, Purpose and Productivity in Love, Work and Life by Jonah Paquette.

About The Author Jonah Paquette, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, speaker, and author. He is the author of Real Happiness: Proven Paths for Contentment, Peace, and Well-Being and The Happiness Toolbox. Dr. Paquette is a psychologist for Kaiser Permanente in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to his clinical work and writing, Jonah offers training and consultation to therapists and organizations on the promotion of happiness and conducts professional workshops both nationally and internationally. He is also a frequent media contributor, having been featured in print, online, and radio outlets. Visit his website: jonahpaquette.com

Emotions, Mind, and Spirit

Donald M. Epstein, D.C., author of The Twelve Stages of Healing and Healing Myths, Healing Magic, has often said that healing is “an inside job.” He means that the most essential components to healing, such as life force, harmony, regeneration, and repair, are not given to us by others but come from within. This is the basis of mind body healing. The innate healing power of the mind is part of our birthright and is within reach of every one of us. In his essay “There Is No Cure for Healing,” Dr. Epstein writes: “Healing is a process, not a magical event. Nothing new is added to your body or mind… Nothing is taken out. Healing involves a greater experience of oneness, wholeness, and reconnection with all aspects of your being.” Many of us have known the power of the mind to heal the body because we’ve known people who experienced a health problem and, despite the finest medical care (and often a positive initial medical prognosis), got sicker and died. We have also seen people with life-threatening terminal diseases who were given up on by their doctors return from the brink of death to enjoy long, healthy, and productive lives. Most such cases of mind body healing are downplayed by members of the medical profession because they go against the dominant view that outside agents like drugs, radiation, and surgery are the determining factors in recovering one’s health. The belief that healing primarily occurs from within is incomprehensible.

The Power of the Mind to Heal the Body: José’s Story

Fifteen years ago, my friend José was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which had spread to the liver. His physician, a prominent oncologist at a major Boston hospital, referred to José as a sad case to his colleagues and held out no hope for his recovery. He recommended surgery as the only way to prolong José’s life. José decided to return to his native Brazil, where he was examined by other oncologists at the hospital affiliated with Brazil’s finest medical school. They confirmed the original diagnosis and, like the Boston doctor, held out no hope for his recovery. They offered him surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, all of which were refused. José, a psychiatrist, had a medical degree and knew that these therapies would kill him. He decided instead to retreat to the countryside, where he embarked on a holistic path to mind body healing that involved intense spiritual and psychological work, using a number of native healing plants. This led to important insights about his life, which brought about major changes in attitude, belief, behavior, and diet, all of which had a positive (and powerful) impact on his health. When José returned to the hospital in Rio de Janeiro for a checkup six months later, a CT scan and other tests determined that the cancer had completely disappeared. His doctors were flabbergasted. Since they knew that nearly everyone with advanced pancreatic cancer dies within six months of the initial diagnosis, they simply could not accept evidence of a complete remission, let alone one taking place in the absence of traditional medical therapy. Although they were happy for José (who remained in excellent health for another eight years before dying of a heart attack), they announced that they must have erred in their original diagnosis and that he didn’t have cancer after all! The idea of a complete recovery from pancreatic cancer through holistic healing was inconceivable to them.

Mind Body Healing

The holistic view of healing teaches that human beings are more than just the physical body and that emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and spirituality play an essential role in healing. Rather than conform to the predominant medical view that there is one cause and one cure to disease, holism stresses the mind body connection and maintains that health and disease depend on a dynamic and often subtle interplay among the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our being, as well as our relationship to the environment in which we live. During the past few years, an important new field called psychoneuroimmunology has come into being. It is concerned with identifying the links between the mind, the brain, and the immune system and how they communicate with each other. Researchers like Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., research professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., have scientifically confirmed that our minds and feelings influence health, and our health has a powerful effect on the mind. In her book Good Health in a Toxic World, Sara Shannon summarized the major findings of psychoneuroimmunology in understanding the interplay between mind body healing:

1. Mind-directed, cell-enhancing chemicals communicate directly with the immune system.

2. Mental attitude and mood can alter the course of disease.

3. The mind can will changes in the body.

4. Stress-related hormones weaken the immune system.

5. Chemicals made by the immune system communicate with the brain.

6. The brain talks to the immune system, and the immune system talks to the brain.

These discoveries reveal the mind body connection and show more emphatically than ever before that the way in which we view ourselves and life’s situations can affect our immune response. Fear, hopelessness, and the feeling that nothing works have been linked to the production of neurochemicals that can lower immune response and promote the aging process. Chemicals (known as neurotransmitters) that are created by positive feelings toward life and its highs, lows and challenges strengthen your immune system, slow down the aging process, and protect you from cancer and a number of viruses. While these different thoughts and emotions may have a temporary impact on health, chronic, repeated, and habitual thought and emotional patterns can have a far more profound, long-term impact on our well-being. This effect underlies the power of the mind to heal the body. Feelings of fear, hopelessness, worry, and worthlessness all affect our body-mind system, however subtle these effects may be. Critical attitudes, beliefs in negative outcomes, anger, resentment, and the belief (whether conscious or not) that “I have no control over my life” have been linked to a number of disease states, including cancer, ulcers, and heart disease.

Stress and Distress

Researchers such as Hans Selye, M.D., have found that it is not necessarily the stresses of life that lead to disease, but rather how we adapt to these stresses. The ways in which we adapt are often based on our perspectives on ourselves and our life, many of which are learned from childhood. When a stressful incident occurs (whether the loss of a loved one, a difficult task, or a change in economic status), we tend to look at the problem through these old perspectives. If we are stuck in rigid, fixed perspectives about ourselves and the way that life should be, we often find it far more difficult to deal with life’s changing events. Instead of adapting to the situation and seeking practical solutions, we may instead feel hopeless, frustrated, and afraid. Rather than becoming a stimulus for action, the life challenge leads us to fear and paralysis.

Disease: A Wake-Up Call to Change

In the context of holistic mind body healing, illness should never be viewed as a punishment or a failure. Instead, disease can be seen as the result of a lack of alignment among the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our being. Rather than being viewed as “bad” or “evil,” symptoms are the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. They are a wake-up call that tells us that we need to change old attitudes, perspectives, and lifestyle habits that may have contributed to our health problem. To the degree that we are sensitive to our body’s subtle messages, we can often deal with a problem before it becomes serious. Life-threatening diseases like cancer and AIDS can play a special role in the transformative process. They challenge us to the very core of our being and can mobilize us—as cancer did for my friend José—to make major changes in personality, thinking, and lifestyle. Illness forces us to make choices. Choices based on fear and other limited perspectives often lead to more suffering, whereas those based on knowledge and hope have often been found to lead to healing. These choices that facilitate mind body healing may involve seeking greater inner alignment and harmony, changing a destructive emotional or thought pattern, relinquishing resentment, letting go of childhood hurts, and coming to terms with other difficult aspects of one’s past. In their book Living in Hope, Cindy Mikluscak-Cooper, R.N., and Emmett E. Miller, M.D., list some traits that long-term survivors with AIDS have in common. Many are similar to those of long-term cancer survivors. The ones appearing here are applicable to individuals suffering from all serious illness, whether it is life-threatening or not. These traits include the following:

+ Having a sense of personal responsibility for their health and a sense that they can influence it.

+ Having a sense of purpose in life.

+ Finding new meaning in life as a result of the illness itself.

+ Having previously mastered a life-threatening illness or other life crisis.

+ Having accepted the reality of their diagnosis, yet refusing to believe that it is a death sentence.

+ Having an ability to communicate their concerns to others, including concerns regarding the illness itself.

+ Being assertive and having the ability to say no.

+ Having the ability to withdraw from involvements and to nurture themselves.

+ Being sensitive to their body and its needs.

Other common traits among long-term AIDS survivors that speak to the healing power of the mind  are addressed in Scott J. Gregory’s book A Holistic Protocol for the Immune System. Ten points in particular stand out, summarized as follows:

1. They had expectations of favorable results regarding their situation.

2. They took charge of their healing and took control of decisions that vitally affected their lives.

3. They developed a sense of humor and learned to laugh.

4. They developed compassion toward others.

5. They were patient in their expectations and did not expect to be healed overnight.

6. They changed their attitudes about themselves and developed a stronger self-image.

7. They realized that there was no one thing that could cure them and sought a combination of life-reinforcing factors and modalities.

8. They had no fear of death—or life.

9. They educated themselves in prevention and treatment.

10. They were fighters.

Self-Nurturing

An important component in the mind body healing process is creating an environment that will facilitate the healing power of the mind. This is not unlike a farmer preparing the soil in expectation of an abundant crop. While the environment will differ according to our personal needs and life situation, it involves often-overlooked aspects of ourselves: our emotional being and our mental being. The following sections offer a few ideas that can enhance self-nurturing on emotional, mental, and even spiritual levels.

Nurturing the Emotional Self

Our emotions play an important role in health and disease. Positive feelings produce neurochemicals that strengthen the immune system; negative, repressed, or distorted emotions can decrease immune response and open the door to a variety of health problems. This is why emotional well-being is an important aspect of healing your body with your mind. Rather than try to repress, deny, or control our emotions, we need to nourish and guide them so that they can help us become integrated and whole. Emotional nurturing can involve creating a support system. This may take the form of being with others who support our mind body healing process, such as relatives or friends. At times, we may need to distance ourselves from those who are not supportive or let them become more aware of our needs and how they might assist us in a positive way. Accepting all of our feelings (including sexual feelings) can be a powerful mind body healing technique. Expressing anger, grief, frustration, and sadness is not always as easy in our culture as the expression of joy, excitement, and affection. Like a river whose current is obstructed, emotions that are blocked tend to become polluted and harmful, as by their very nature emotions are to be experienced and expressed. Long-term repression of emotions has long been viewed as a factor in a number of common diseases, including cancer, stroke, and heart attack. It probably contributes to less dramatic diseases as well, such as depression and chronic fatigue. This is why we need to reclaim our mind body connection through emotions and allow them to be expressed in non-destructive ways. Candace B. Pert writes in Molecules of Emotion: “I believe all emotions are healthy, because emotions are what unite the mind and the body. Anger, fear, and sadness, the so-called negative emotions, are as healthy as peace, courage and joy. To repress these emotions and not let them flow freely is to set up dis-­integrity in the system, causing it to act at cross-purposes rather than as a unified whole. The stress this creates, which takes the form of blockages and insufficient flow of peptide signals to maintain function at a cellular level, is what sets up the weakened conditions that can lead to disease. All honest emotions are positive emotions.” Through meditation, dynamic exercise, or different forms of body-oriented modalities such as bioenergetics, network chiropractic, Zero Balancing, and other mind body healing techniques, we can learn to accept our human emotions and channel them into more positive areas of expression. Another important component of emotional nurturing and healing your body with your mind is humor. In his book Anatomy of an Illness, Norman Cousins wrote about how ten minutes of belly laughter at frequent intervals (he watched Marx Brothers movies and old Candid Camera television shows) helped him overcome a life-threatening disease. Perhaps most importantly, we need to heal old emotional wounds from the past. Making peace with others, which can include forgiving those who have hurt us, asking forgiveness from those we have hurt, letting go of resentment, and especially forgiving ourselves, is essential to this process.

Nurturing the Mind

At this point in human history, we have access to more information than ever before. While access to information can be valuable, the unrelenting amount of gossip, sensationalism, superficial ideas, and negative, fear-producing concepts from advertising, news reports, and politics is a type of mental pollution that many of us can do without. They dull our mental awareness, keep us living on the periphery, and inhibit our innate mind body connection and healing capacity. Of particular concern is the constant barrage of negative reports concerning death and disease. Despite Louis Pasteur’s advice that “the microbe is nothing; the soil is everything” (meaning that a healthy body will not provide fertile soil for germs to cause disease), news reports and magazine articles often focus on an ever-increasing number of outside agents that will give us cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a myriad of other diseases. This creates a mental environment of fear and hopelessness. Unless we throw out our radio and television and decide to avoid reading the news or going online, we probably cannot escape this onslaught. Yet we can avoid much of this negative information through our powers of discernment and discrimination. We can also choose not to hook into initial reports on certain diseases, understanding that many are the result of a limited approach and partial understandings. For example, in the early 1980s, we were told that AIDS was a terminal disease. After it was found that many patients remained alive and productive five to ten years after their original diagnosis, the media decided that it wasn’t necessarily a terminal disease after all. In 2003, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) was touted as a disease that would kill millions, but fewer than eight hundred people died. More recently, the bird flu pandemic was touted as a disease that would kill millions of Americans. While not minimizing the dangers of avian influenza, instilling fear as a way to deal with disease is counter­productive. According to Dr. Marc Siegel, a practicing internist and associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, “If anything is contagious right now, it’s judgment clouded by fear.” Instead of a bird flu pandemic, we have a fear pandemic. History and logic dictate that the best way to fight off bacterial and viral diseases is with commonsense prevention techniques coupled with a strong immune system. Questioning is an important aspect of healing your body with your mind. As children, a lot of us formed certain ideas about ourselves, our talents, and our tasks in life. We also created ideas about other people and the world in which we live. While many of those ideas may have been useful at one time, they may not be useful now. The image that my older brother is mean and will beat me up may have been true when we were five, but at age fifty, this is no longer the case. The old idea that I’m no good at art may reflect a bad experience in a second-grade art class that still stops us from experiencing our innate creativity as an adult. For this reason, we need to question whether an old concept is still valid and whether it can be changed. As a result, we expand our perspectives, which can bring us new opportunities for understanding and personal growth. A common negative image is believing that because a friend or relative has died of a certain disease, we will also. While we may be genetically predisposed to certain health problems, this does not mean that they will manifest as symptoms. A friend once put it to me this way: “Just because my father had cancer doesn’t mean that I will. I don’t think like him, eat like him, or live like him. We are different people.” In addition, we need to be aware that the body that we have now is not the same one we had five or ten years ago, because every cell of the body is in the process of dying and others are being regenerated constantly. The health of future cells, and therefore the future health of our entire body and mind, is dependent on how we live, eat, and think in the present. As members of the human race, we have become imbued with beliefs or myths that often prevent the healing process; we need to create other beliefs that facilitate the  healing power of the mind. In his breakthrough book Healing Myths, Healing Magic, Dr. Donald Epstein focuses on social myths (“healing means understanding what went wrong or who did what to me”), biomedical myths (“healing takes time”), religious myths (“disease is a punishment for my sins”), and new-age myths (“I must understand my feelings to heal”) and suggests alternative ways to help us reclaim our innate ability to heal. He wrote: “Every culture sleeps within its own mythology. If we wish to awaken from our sleep, we must be willing to evaluate the way we are programmed to experience our world, our circumstances, and ourselves. Then we may choose our own stories of the world we live in, and the way in which we will live in it. When we awaken from our sleep and question the stories given to us by our authority figures, we may choose to continue with those stories, or we can create new stories that work even better for us. Choosing our own stories can be a liberating, life-transforming, and empowering experience.”

Spiritual Nurturing

Spirituality is often believed to have little impact on healing by physicians, yet it can provide the foundation for deep healing to take place. People know the source of spirituality by many names. Whatever label we choose to give that source, spirituality involves tapping into the deeper levels of our being where inner wisdom and love can be found. As we connect to this love-wisdom, we are able to create a greater sense of harmony and alignment among all aspects of our being, allowing the healing process to occur. If we participate in self-nurturing on the emotional and mental levels, spiritual nurturing is a natural result, because all are interconnected and interrelated.

Mind Body Healing Technique: Creative Visualization

Creative visualization is often used as a mind body healing technique. There are a number of excellent books dealing with visualization available in bookstores and libraries. Louise Hay outlines the three basic parts of a positive visualization, which anyone can adapt to their individual needs:

1. An image of the problem or pain or dis-ease, or the dis-eased part of the body

2. An image of a positive force eliminating this problem

3. An image of the body being rebuilt to perfect health, then seeing the body move through life with ease and energy

Positive visualization can incorporate literal images, symbolic images related to treatment, or abstract images. One universal image is a source of bright, white healing light; we can imagine it shining around (and through) every aspect of our being. Excerpted from The New Oxygen Prescription by Nathaniel Altman © 2017 Healing Arts Press. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. InnerTraditions.com

About The Author Nathaniel Altman is a medical writer and researcher who has written more than 15 books on nature and alternative healing, including The New Oxygen Prescription, The Honey Prescription, Healing Springs and A Russian Herbal. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit his website: nathanielaltman.com