We are happy to introduce our NEW Tell-A-Friend Program. In addition to giving your friend the gift of taking time for themselves to help reduce stress, we are now adding two more reasons to share with your friends.

Reason NO. 1:
15% off for your friend on their first order.

Reason NO. 2:
You get a little thank you from us as well. When you tell a friend through our Tell-A-Friend form you will be entered to win a $150 American Express gift card! The drawing will be on March 15, 2011, so hurry tell as many friends as you can.** You will get an entry for EVERY friend you tell.

One Simple Step Is All It Takes!
Fill out the form below and you are done. You will be automatically entered in the $150 American Express gift card drawing, and your friend will receive an e-mail (with your note) telling them about Circle + Bloom and how to get 15% off on their first order!

And of course we would love for you to share Circle + Bloom with all your friends on Facebook, Twitter and any other social networks you are part of. We do not have a way to track how many friends you tell through these channels, so entry to the gift card is only through the form below, but you can share the 15% discount code FRIEND15 with them all.

And REST ASSURED, that your friend will receive only THIS ONE EMAIL from you regarding our programs unless they independently subscribe to our newsletters. As always, we never sell, rent or do anything but permission-based emailing. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

**Void where prohibited. Offer only to U.S. residents only. Must be 18 or older to enter.

Maybe you are like me, but I always found when reading books and materials about fertility – the topics surrounding the technical details of what your LH, FSH, ovulation, progesterone, temperature, pituitary glands all were supposed to be doing – I would usually be put right to sleep.  Maybe it was a combination of the fact that the topics were hard to understand as well as not grasping how it could directly help me conceive. I suppose I was always looking for the magic bullet, and that wasn’t it.

However, I now realize that through our ability to visualize and tap into the incredible mind/body connection, this physiological-understanding is of supreme importance.

A friend of mine, who is a Cornell-educated ER doctor who is also suffering with brain cancer, does guided visualizations every day that help her physiologically “cleanse” her body.  She is a huge proponent of what we are doing, and has taken the time to review our scripts and provide feedback.  It’s her tenet that the more you know about HOW your body works, the more technical you can be with your visualizations, the better you can “guide” your body to do exactly what you tell it.

Candace Pert, PhD., author of Molecules of Emotion also mentions this same phenomenon on her book, speaking about an experiment she had done with her own body in visualizing a rush of positive endorphins:   “It was clear that the knowledge I had of physiology - just where the endorphins were located and how they were secreted – had enabled me to consciously intervene and intentionally change my molecules.”

In summary, the more you know, the better you can visualize, the more effective you can be at finding your body’s true harmony.  Which further confirms my theory at the outset, which is there is no magic-bullet.  It takes time to learn how the body functions, and we have taken great strides to provide detailed education information in our program introduction and throughout the website.  But the more you put into it (and yourself) the more you will get out of it.

As always, let us know how we can help!

photo credit (CC): Michael Scheltgen

In speaking with women trying to get pregnant, more times than anything else it became clear that the words “trying to relax” were the last words that they would want to hear. Typically, the reason had fundamentally to do with the idea that the fertility problems stemmed from their head, sometimes with blame and guilt attached to it.

However – and of course the whole premise behind Circle + Bloom™ – is that there is truth in those words. Simply put, our bodies are not a disconnected vessel cut off from the outside world. Our minds are constantly reacting to the environment that we are engaging in, and our bodies react accordingly. Deepak Chopra says that our bodies are constantly eavesdropping on our thoughts and being changed by them – for the better and the worse.

Not only that, but it is known that depression and stress levels in woman trying to conceive are as high as those experiencing life threatening diseases such as heart disease or cancer.   Why does trying cause so much anxiety?  What can we then do about it?  What can we do to reverse the effects of “trying?”  With my first pregnancy, we were “trying but not trying” and I was pregnant within six months.  With the second one, however, TTC became my daily mantra, and every month was like a judge and jury finding out whether or not the defendant was guilty or not.

So how do our thoughts translate into the physical realm?  How do these fleeting bits of non-matter affect on our bodies? This question taunted me for almost two and half years. I dove headfirst into dozens of books on subjects ranging from fertility, mind/body, psychology and hypnotherapy.  There is still a lot to learn, and it is a bit like connecting the dots.

We know the following:
•    Stress has a real and measurable impact on the body;
•    Infertility, or trying to become pregnant, creates lots of stress;
•    Fertility is reduced by stress;
•    Constant worry, depression or anxiety creates chronic stress; and
•    Stress causes numerous other health-related ailments.

Please come back from future installments as we will cover numerous ideas along these lines, including:
•    The negative effects of “trying” on our bodies
•    The mind/body connection and how it relates back to fertility
•    Law of reversed effort
•    Stress reduction techniques (yoga, visualization, deep-breathing, etc.)
•    The hypothalamus-pituitary-ovary connection
•    Chronic stress and the effect on our hormone circulation
•    Research being completed by fertility specialists currently

When we talk about the “mind/body connection,” the mind in this case is the part of our brain that subconsciously interacts with our body.  In one instance, it’s the part of our brain that tells our lungs to inhale and exhale, as well as convert the oxygen into food and energy in our blood.   This is the part of the brain that operates on its own, although, with skill, it’s something that can be influenced if we so choose.

So, this is not something that is “in your mind.”  If it was, I highly doubt there would be 7.3 million women in the U.S. with infertility.

The fact is, however, that the stress we experience in our modern existence does have ramifications in the body.  The rates of depression and anxiety are growing all the time, despite the efforts made in modern medicine.  Over the past century, medicine has become a science where diseases are now treated mainly with drugs, with little or no thought or attention to the mind’s role.  Dr. Herbert Benson’s groundbreaking book released in the late 1970s, called The Relaxation Response, revealed that with daily meditation and other stress-reducing exercises, we can bring high-blood pressure down to normal levels. His medicine is less science and more of an empathetic understanding of the whole interconnectedness of our very complicated molecular structures.  Everything works together – both on the positive and, unfortunately, on the negative as well.

The mind-body connection works very simply. Imagine at this moment biting into an apple, orange or a bunch of grapes. Take a moment or two to really imagine how it would taste…..and now feel the saliva in your mouth.  A real physiological change brought about by a single thought.  Amplify that now with a program like Circle + Bloom and imagine the possibilities.

]]> http://www.circlebloom.com/are-you-saying-this-is-all-in-my-mind/feed/ 0 http://www.circlebloom.com/welcome-to-the-circle-bloom-blog/ http://www.circlebloom.com/welcome-to-the-circle-bloom-blog/#comments Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:17:25 +0000 Joanne http://www.circlebloom.com/?p=81

About two years ago, I was struck with the idea for Circle + Bloom™.  It seemed to grow and become more complex all on its own. Almost out of my control, I knew it needed to exist. It has become my passion, even with a full-time finance job and two young kids at home.  Vacations and weekends were my time to work on this project, and everyone in my life can attest to this craziness that has consumed me.

If not evident already, this idea revolves around the impact of stress and fertility. Throughout my 30s, this issue has come up in many ways – throughout my own struggle with pregnancy (which did end with a perfect outcome) and scores of friends who went through absolute heart-wrenching experiences. This has been underscored with my long-standing interest in mind-body health and the ability to illicit real physical changes through imagining meditation which is – the ability to use intense relaxation sessions combined with visual imagery to bring about real physical changes and open the possibilities for healing.

I really dove headfirst into multiple areas of medicine, mind-body connection, reproductive health, etc. – reading anything I could get my hands on, talking with experts in the field, interviewing friends who are experiencing unexplained infertility, drafting the Circle & Bloom program, etc. I even took classes on website programming.

I will be very honest with you at all times:  I am not a doctor, nor will I ever pretend to be. I am not a therapist, hypnotist, or any other medical person in any way shape or form. I will never promise that I can “get you pregnant” with any potions, magic-pill or any other such nonsense – nor am I a faith-based devotee like the Christian Scientists, etc.  But, with the infertility rate rising each year, I believe there is a fundamental problem with the overall approach to fertility issues.

The standard approach to solving fertility problems is from the neck down, when a full body approach examining underlying the emotional state and anxiety levels may help to turn things around.

I invite you to join us into how we can take control of these issues ourselves by researching the mind-body effects on our reproductive health. Your comments, questions, support for others will all work to create a place where we all learn to realize our full potential.