Welcome James. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the mind body fertility connection with James Schwartz, James, again, um, very happy you were here and you're talking about one of my most favorite topics. So what you know, I love to know is like how, how did you come into this work, helping women who struggle with fertility and especially your expertise in the mind, body fertility connection?
Well, I started working with this back in 2003. I started working with fertility clients and I opened up my hypnotherapy practice. And my wife is an acupuncturist. We have a network of acupuncturists in our, in the Denver area. And what happened is these acupuncturists saw that the women who were trying to get pregnant were doing everything right in terms of, you know, their, what they eat and how they exercise and getting acupuncture and herbs and things like that. But what they noticed is they were all experiences, an incredible stress. And so they sent them to me. Okay. And back then there were no books or teachings or classes or anything on this sort of subject. So I had to kind of invent and experiment and try different things. And that's what I did. And I didn't realize at the time that I was sent about six women initially, when I first opened my practice and I didn't realize that these were really difficult cases, some of 'em had been told, you know, you need to just adopt, cuz you're not gonna be successful with mm-hmm. <affirmative> trying to do even an in vitro. It's not gonna work. And what turns out is all six of 'em got pregnant and five of 'em were, it was completely natural. They one had to use some medical technology because she had some physical issues. Um, so they all went full term and had healthy babies. And so they started telling their acupuncturists and their friends. And before I knew it, this became my specialty.
Mm-hmm <affirmative> it's I believe it's so true. I mean, what I see is that, and I always say, I mean, that's often the field where doctors aren't educated yet and what breaks my heart is that so many women don't know about the mind body, uh, fertile connection. And, um, as it's your expertise, I, that, that's also what I focus on. And I see that it's it, isn't unexplainable. It's very explainable, right? When a woman has unexplained fertility and she has tried everything, then there is a reason, but it's not in a medical field. That's basically what you experienced too. Right?
It is. And what I found is when I first started unexplained, infertility was that was kind of the catch phrase. Now that's changed over the years what's happened is, um, I think so many patients want, they want some kind of reason, give me some reason. And so mm-hmm, <affirmative> doctors have come up with these things like, you know, low ovarian reserve or, you know, things like you got a little endometriosis or you're too old or your eggs are too old, things like that. But basically what they're talking about is unexplained. So we've got about 7 million women a year in our country with unexplained infertility. But think about what the implication of that is, if it's unexplained, if there's no, no physiological reason for it, then that means it's you have to look at the mind and the emotions and you know, the, the, the issue that's so huge in our work is the stress issue.
And I wanted to talk about that for just a second. Yeah. Because if, when people back in 2003, this has changed a little bit, but the doctors would say, you know, it's all physiological. The stress doesn't have anything to do with what's going on with the infertility. And so that's one of the reasons I felt like I needed to write the mind, body fertility connection book, because that really was a disservice to the clients. They weren't getting educated the way that they should. And if you look at just a few things in stress, I'm just gonna mention a few of 'em cuz there's a lot of 'em. But if we talk about like what happens in the body, when we're stressed, we produce cortisol. A lot of people have heard of that. That's, you know, and that creates kind of a fight or flight response.
So when you think about it, the blood and the energy goes to the extremity so people can fight or they can run and things like that. That's why they call it fight and fight or flight, but the energy and the blood goes away from the core of the body, from the reproductive system. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, or when we get stressed, it engages what's called the sympathetic nervous system. And even though the sympathetic nervous system sounds like, oh, it's nice. It's sympathy. It cares about me. It's actually the opposite. So it, it kind of puts us in stress. It creates the rapid heart rate and the elevated blood pressure, things like that. Um, even things like the hypothalamus gland, which is the control center for reproductive activity, the hypothalamus gland tells the body, you know, what kind of hormones we should produce and how much we should produce.
So if that's stressed, it tells the, the reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone and LH and FSH. It says, you know, this person's not ready to reproduce right now. And so I'm just giving you a few examples. If you look at Eastern medicine yeah. You can say, okay, what it does when we're stressed, it causes things like liver Chi stagnation, and then maybe we get kidney deficiency or spleen she deficiency. So all these things, what they're doing is the stress is creating physiological responses that are basically taken us from what I call reproductive mode into survival mode. And we can't get pregnant. Yeah. And that when that happens and I think it's a real disservice with the Western medical people to ignore this and say, oh, just keep doing, you know, more and more procedures. We'll just keep piling those on. As opposed to, you need to work with the, the stress issues you need to work with the whole person
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Now back to our podcast. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. And I, I have to say, I, you know, I see this too. I mean, I, I had one client and <laugh>, she could not get pregnant, uh, with her IVs for absent. She had 16 IVF Procedures. Oh my gosh. And Right. It's like, oh no, no, I'm trying something that doesn't work. And um, it, it, it, it it's, it's just true. Like you say, there's more and more and more procedures. And then there is this beautiful, I think, mind, body wisdom, where now there is so much science about it, which I'm very highly excited about it. So there's like really we're gonna, um, you know, we're, we're, we're backed up now. <laugh> like the sciences is like, yeah. So DGE, what would you say is if we're talking about stress, right. And, and I know our listeners are maybe wondering, like, what can I do then? How do I get not stressed? Because I know you can get stressed from being stressed than thinking like now, now I'm even more stressed. Right.
Right.
What is a good way?
<laugh> yeah. Well, and in what I do with my practice, which is hypnotherapy, I first teach the client how to do self hypnosis so that they, every day they relax their mind and their body. And sometimes we include things like confidence work or taking their power back, things like that to make them, you know, feel better about themselves. Second piece of this is visualization and self hypnosis, and it can be really powerful and self hypnosis. And we know about the law of attraction. So what we think and what we imagine and what we visualize is what we can create or manifest. So that's a powerful tool. But then the third thing is I work with people on mind, body healing, both based on both Eastern and Western medicine. So, you know, when you think about it, our minds are really powerful. So think there's, there's things that we can do to change our physiology.
At least in my belief system, I, I think that's true and I've seen it happen with my clients, but the fourth. And this is the most important part of what I, what I have to say today, probably in terms of stress is that it's about processing our old issues. And people just think of stress as like our day to day stuff. You know, our difficult job, or we've got family members that have health issues or taxes or whatever, but it's our old stuff. And the example I give in the mind body fertility connection book is about a woman. Who's maybe had a couple of miscarriages. She goes to the doctor, doctor says, you've gotta reduce your stress. So she cuts her hours from work, you know, from 50 hours to 40 hours a week. Great start, good thing. But the thing is with those miscarriages, she's got that this fear inside of her, you know, could that happen again?
She's got the emotional pain that maybe hasn't been processed. And so as much as her conscious mind is saying, I really want to have a baby. Her subconscious might be saying, oh no, oh no, I can't get pregnant. It's too scary. I can't go through that again. That has to be worked on that has to be processed. And that's what creates stress. It's not just the day to day stuff. It's our old issues. And those old issues can be anything from miscarriages and terminations to body image concerns, or past issues of abuse in the family, or feeling not good enough. There's lots of different things that can contribute to those. And if those are ignored again, it's gonna keep us in the survival mode instead of the reproductive mode.
Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, what I like is that you explain it so, so real and, and, and such language that it's so understandable, right. When I hear it, I'm like, yeah, this is exactly true. And, and for everybody, I think who's listening. It's like super simply like, yeah, this, this is how it works. Change them. Would you have like any last word of wisdom for audience? Well,
I, I strongly recommend hypnosis. And the reason I do is because we have a conscious mind, which is our thinking mind, and we also have the subconscious mind, which is what holds our old beliefs, our thoughts, our, our emotions, our feelings, our memories, our experiences. And so we need to access the subconscious mind cuz that holds the roots of these issues. And it's just not easy to get to with other modalities. That's why hypnosis works really well for that. So yeah, what I recommend with clients is they do kind of a balanced approach where they do maybe some hypnotherapy, some acupuncture, you know, to balance the, the body and everything. And I also recommend my massage. We didn't have time to talk about that, but that's another modality that I think can be really supportive and it's good to have someone who's kind of nurturing on your healing team.
Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. Wow. Thank you so much, James. This was like, um, nine minutes like this, everything that I would hope woman would hear. Thank you so much, James. You're welcome. Yeah. Can you mention your website so people can find you?
Yes it's. My business is called a Rocky mountain hypnotherapy center. It's in Lakewood, Colorado, and people can put in our like Rocky M for mountain hypnotherapy.com to get to my website or just type in, you know, Rocky mountain hypnotherapy. Um, the name of the book is the mind body fertility connection. And um, I recommend people give that a look. And just even if they're going with, uh, Western medicine, maybe just do a balanced approach, do a little bit of both, you know, do some of the alternative modalities that can kind of support them in that journey.
Well, thank you so much.
This was thank you for having yeah. The pleasure James. Now I want to remind all of you that there is hope and there is help. And sometimes it just takes one little tweak. You never thought of to open your body and mind to construction. Again, this was <inaudible> with the get pregnant now podcast. And I believe that every woman who launched to be a mother, she deserves all the help to get pregnant, to make her baby dream come through for more information, go to get pregnant now.com and make sure you join us for the next episode. I am sending you so many sweet healing baby with first. Bye bye.
