Take a minute to repeat the following sentence three or four times. Make sure each time to make the tone you use a bit more authoritative, and switch it from a sentence you are reading to a command your brain is giving to your body…

“I have the power over my body to bring it back to its natural state of balance.”

Now try to conjure up an image – anything that comes to mind – of what your brain-body connection means to you. This is the super-power that exists within you that connects thoughts and beliefs to your physical self. This image will help strengthen the connection and you will begin to realize that the power is inside.

Some people think of a bridge that connects two land masses, and with the bridge the two areas becoming one. Or the image of your hands moving closer to one another and then the fingers eventually becoming intertwined to the point where you can’t tell one hand from the other. Whatever makes sense to you, this simple act of awareness of our innate powers of healing becomes strengthened.

Think about this image as you go about your day, as they day progresses you should begin to feel a small change, a feeling that your intuition for healing and balancing is increasing and you do have the power to bring calm, and balance to your body just by having your brain take a the lead for a bit.

Proactive control over our own bodies starts today.

We all know the basics of how to get pregnant. The birds and the bees are something that is taught to us in our grade school years. The reality of getting pregnant, however, can be much more complicated than health class leads us to believe.

When it is explained to us in grade school it seems as though nothing could be simpler. A man and a woman fall in love, have intercourse and make a baby. Then we grow up and we actually decide to have a baby of our own. It is then that 1 out of 8 couples realize the reality of getting pregnant is often the furthest thing from what we had expected it to be.

I believe these unrealistic expectations that are set early in life just add to the pain when a couple struggles with fertility. Couples are not prepared for the issues they are facing because it is never talked about until there is an issue. And society does not have a clue what one goes through when struggling with infertility because they were never taught about the complications. This got me thinking and asking, should there be any education on how complicated the journey can be during the birds and the bees discussion, and if so who should be responsible for helping young people understand the full picture of trying to conceive? When and where is it appropriate to share the education about the real truth on how to get pregnant?

I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions!

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take,
but by the moments that take your breath away..” – Unknown

In last week’s How Einstein Would Get Pregnant series, we talked about the role of the brain – specifically the hypothalamus and the pituitary – in fertility. How each month, there is a beautiful feedback loop that flows through our cycle.

This week, we are doing something a little different. In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month, we asked our good friend Stephanie Clark Fitzgerald, to visit with us and talk about the adoption of their new baby boy. Please check back tomorrow to listen to the full podcast, and please subscribe here to automatically receive the our Apple iTune’s podcasts.

We are setting our sights on you, PCOS!  We are in our labs right now mixing up a deadly concoction of brain-body therapy to rid you forever!

When we sent out our questionnaire a few months ago as to what next product you would like us to develop, PCOS was high up on the list. We’ve heard you and are working very hard to help you help yourself heal from PCOS.

By way of quick background, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is a hormone dysfunction. It effects approximately 1 in 10 women, and is most often never diagnosed unless there is a specific problem pertaining to trying to get pregnant. We don’t know the cause, nor do we have a pharmaceutical cure. PCOS symptoms vary to a large degree, but include not so fun things such as menstruation irregularity and anovulation, insulin-resistance and being overweight, male-pattern excess hair growth or loss (depending on location), depression and a few other wonderful traits.

Essentially, PCOS is a hormone inbalance. From my tons of research, I’ve uncovered the fact that we really don’t know which is the first “domino” to fall, but our cycles are completely out of whack. In a normal cycle, we have a hormonal feedback loop that starts with the Hypothalamus sending GnRH to the Pituitary which sends out LH and FSH in increasing amounts to the ovaries which in turn send estrogen back to the pituitary in increasing amounts to reduce the LH and FSH (and surge LH around ovulation)…and then progesterone enters the picture. Everything works in order to effect the menstrual cycle. With PCOS, there is either not enough estrogen (or too much andogens/testorone in relative figures), not enough LH or FSH (or too much of either of them) or not enough or too much progesterone. The cycle breaks down and can’t recover itself.

I was diagnosed with PCOS as a late teen – probably because I had a great OBGYN and a few symptoms such as irregular cycles. I had trouble with conception not so much with our first, but most definitely with our second child.

All this research has been bouncing around like a tennis balls in my head.  I am now convinced that we need to get our cycles back on track. Simple as that. If at some point the cycle broke down at one point AND our natural state is balance, then we can find the right feedback loop again. Our brain-body communication can do this, I’m convinced of it.  How?  A daily guided visualization to get the body back on track.

I think anyone with PCOS trying to get pregnant can benefit from our daily Natural Cycle program to help the hormones find balance, and then we are set out to create supplemental programs to be listened to every other day – one for insulin and weight loss, one for male-patterned issues, one for depression.  Anovulation and cycle irregularity will fix itself by virtue of the Natural Cycle program which focuses on hormonal changes and balance as you proceed through the cycle.

We sent out a tweet about 5 days ago asking for beta testers, and was overwhelmed with the response. As a fellow “cyster,” I know the frustration and contradictory information and the fact that there is no cure at this point. We are set to change that. Stay tuned.

As our good friend Keiko recently wrote, I’m “gonna get my dork on” and show you the awesome books that I am bringing on vacation. I can’t wait to eat them up. I don’t think I am over emphasizing when I say that reading has changed my life.  It has opened my brain to new ways of thinking and approaching life. I wasn’t always a huge reader – it kind of grew into a passion while I was commuting into New York every day and had a good 3 hours to kill.

Fiction is not for me. I love a good book filled with real stories, real people, and real circumstances. And then I apply them to my situation and it feeds my brain and gives me new ideas.

I just got back from Barnes & Noble and my local library. Here are the books that I intend to gobble up while I lay like a vegetable on the beach.

I even like the way they LOOK.  Don’t judge a book by its cover?  Yeah right – I do it all the time!  Aren’t these covers gorgeous?  Look at the Proust Was a Neuroscience by Jonah Leher (who also write an awesome blog called The Frontal Cortex on the Wired Magazine website).

If any of them warrant more attention after I read them, we will add them to our Books We Love category.

Do you share a similar passion for books? What do you like?

When people talk about Circle + Bloom they use different ways to describe our programs and how it works. We hear our programs referred to as meditation, mind-body therapy, relaxation exercises, etc.

To a certain extent our programs incorporate parts of all of these descriptive terms, but our programs are also different from all of these as well. As one customer said, “five years ago when I was doing fertility treatments I used a different meditation program and it did not even compare. I think the fact that the meditations change with the cycle really makes it much easier to get in touch with your mind and body”.

Stumbling across this great book called Made to Stick, I had an ephiphany. The book talks about the importance of using stories to help people remember and understand your message. Among many reasons, the book states stories resonate because they cause mental stimulation. The listener begins to imagine the events that are being told to them.

And here is the shocker. When we imagine an event unfolding in detail, the same modules in the brain are activated as when we are actually part of the event. The body and mind do not differentiate from the imagination and the actual event. The listener physically and emotionally connects to your story.

And there’s more. The authors shared the results of an experiment conducted by UCLA students. In the study, there were three groups, one group stimulated their brain in general terms. So for example, we might be thinking “I am not getting pregnant, and I want my body to get pregnant, I want my body to do what it needs to do to get pregnant.” The second group stimulated their brain in process terms. For example, “This is day ten of my cycle, and my body is doing what it should do to gear up for ovulation.” And then the third group’s thought in outcome terms – or – “I will get pregnant, and it will be so great when I get pregnant. I can visualize being pregnant.”

Which group do you think had better results of achieving what they were mentally thinking about achieving? Group Two! Thinking in process terms was much, much more effective.

What does all this have to do with what makes Circle + Bloom different? Absolutely everything!

Our programs are fundamentally built on the process terms foundation. We make the mental stimulation easy for you to apply this to the way you think about and go about conceiving. Our programs follow specifically what your body should be doing for optimal reproductive health during the conception and pregnancy phase. We know of no other meditation, mind-body or relaxation program that takes this approach. They will use either the general term approach or the outcome approach – both are good, but we do not feel as effective us the process approach.

There are a few other differences to other typical mind-body activities such as yoga, acupuncture, on site mind-body programs. Circle + Bloom can be done in the privacy of your own home, when you want, on your own time. No need to drive anywhere, no need to sit in waiting rooms. And yes the cost is much lower as well.

We hope this helps to explain what makes Circle + Bloom different. If you are using our programs and doing other things like yoga, meditation or “alternative therapies”, we would love to hear other differences that you see as well! Comment below!

We are constantly on the hunt here at Circle+Bloom to ensure that our product descriptions and overall company messaging gets to the point and the maximum number of people understand what we are all about.

Among other things, we’ve been focusing lately on the “cliff-notes” or short-hand way of describing our programs.

Historically we have been using “Mind-Body Programs.” Given feedback and various discussions we have had we feel that this description might be causing more confusion and not helping people understand our programs:

Enter the brain.

What is the true difference between the mind and the brain?  Our mind is our emotional-being, our existence beyond the physical make-up of our bodies – or better described as our souls.  On the other hand, we have our brains. Where we think. Where we analyze and make decisions. Where we direct our bodies (BOTH consciously and unconsciously) to do things. The brain works in complete harmony and in tandem with our bodies on a constant basis. Our thoughts and images communicates with and instructs the body – and then the body communicates back with our brain. When we think of our brains, we think of a specific area of our body, where our intelligence resides.

What it boils down to is the perceived value or the words that best describe and convey our program descriptions. We are using our BRAINS to visualize and think and therefore enable our BODIES to improve our own reproductive ability.  Hence we have been using such descriptions as the Brain-Fertility Connection, the Brain-Body, and Brain-Health.  Our programs use our brains in a new way to make our bodies do what we want it to do.

What do you think of when you hear “Mind-Body” or the difference between the Brain and Mind?  How would you go about describing our programs?

Having a list of intentions – or some people like to call affirmations – can be life changing. Here are mine. I would love to hear yours.

We would LOVE for this to be a “wiki” list of intentions. Please add your own in the comments section.