The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility. Heather Grzych

as much as possible, rather than being alone.

      Classic behavioral rasayanas also include the practices of truthfulness, devotion to love and compassion, nonviolence, living a pure and simple life, being free from anger and conceit, and being calm, sweet-spoken, positive, and respectful to elders and teachers.

       Aushadha Rasayana

      Ayurvedic herbal rasayanas are suggested to be taken for three to six months prior to pregnancy. Three classic preconception herbal rasayanas are chyawanprash, shatavari, and ashwagandha. These herbs have been used for thousands of years to support preparation for pregnancy.

      The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility is long overdue, and I am honored to write this foreword as this subject is very personal for me. My wife and I have raised six beautiful children using the principles of Ayurveda, and I am so grateful to Heather for writing this book so that many more can have access to this wisdom.

      — Dr. John Douillard

      Dr. John Douillard, DC, CAP, is the creator of LifeSpa.com, the leading Ayurvedic health and wellness resource on the web, with over nine million views on YouTube and over 130,000 newsletter subscribers. Dr. John is the former Director of Player Development for the New Jersey Nets NBA team and the author of seven health books, including the Amazon bestsellers Eat Wheat and The 3-Season Diet, along with the newly released Yoga Journal video course Ayurveda 201 on Ayurvedic psychology. He is a repeat guest on the Dr. Oz show and currently directs LifeSpa Ayurvedic Clinic, the 2013 Holistic Wellness Center of the Year, in Boulder, Colorado.

       Introduction

       How This Book Came About

       Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness.

      — JULIA CAMERON, The Artist’s Way

      The writing of this book arose of my own necessity to stay sane during a time of great uncertainty. I started writing parts of it years before I got pregnant as a sort of journal of things I was learning about how to preserve my fertility. I would save each page and file it away in a folder on my computer somewhere. It never occurred to me that I would be sharing my writing on fertility with anyone — until one day, after giving birth to my son, I decided to go back into the folder where I had tucked away every word.

      What had I been writing about? I asked myself.

      As I read through the titles of my writing, the themes began to emerge: the difficulty of deciding whether to have a child, the conflict between career and family planning, the concern about health issues that could potentially impede fertility, the fear resulting from not knowing if one can get pregnant, the benefits and risks of waiting until one is older, and the reality of only being able to control so much in the process. These were not only my issues. I also heard them come up over and over with my clients, colleagues, and friends. I knew there was something bigger than me that had to be addressed.

      As a modern woman, I had always felt lucky to have the educational and career opportunities that women before me did not have, and at the same time, despite how great I considered my life to be, and even how good I considered my sex life, I always felt disconnected from my fertility. Not all of me was thriving in this new world. Once I hit my late thirties, I started to feel like my fertility was slipping away from me because I hadn’t yet settled down with someone and didn’t feel like my life was where I wanted it to be if I was going to become a mother. I did what a lot of women do today — I considered all my options as the clock was running out. I ran my hormones, contemplated egg freezing, and went on the hunt for a suitable partner. However, soon I realized that everything I was doing was based on the fear that I could not just make pregnancy happen.

      It seemed to make sense that I would have approached fertility the same way I made everything else in my intellectual, professional, and physical life happen — with my thoughts, will, and efforts — except conception doesn’t work that way. It requires far more receptivity and surrender. I made the vow that I was going to become a mother only if my body was ready for it and if the larger conditions of my life were favorable to it. And then, despite my fears about the biological clock, I stopped looking for ways to get pregnant and instead started tapping back into my primal nature. Going primal meant getting to know my body beyond the muscles, bones, skin, and fat. I had to get to know its history, emotions, desires, and urges. It also meant getting to know my menstrual cycles more.

      When I decided to go primal, I wished there were a manual to tell me all the best-kept secrets of fertility that I could simply follow like a recipe and ease my mind. I looked through every ancient Ayurvedic medical text from India that I could find a decent English translation of and tried to locate this recipe. I tried to find it in the ancient yoga texts, too, then in the Kama-sutra, and in the great religious books that I had avoided for most of my life, but the recipe didn’t exist in those places, either.

      What I did learn from studying and practicing Ayurveda is that any symptom or event is merely the evidence of the mechanism behind it and that we have to go deeper to get at the actual patterns that created it. I knew that my own conception would happen only through focusing on the patterns of my life and health that would either support or hinder it. I spent two years working with one of the great women’s health practitioners of the worldwide Ayurvedic community, Dr. Sarita Shrestha.

      Since Dr. Shrestha lived in Nepal, I didn’t get to meet with her very often — only once a year. Therefore, I spent most of my time trying to understand the principles behind her treatment advice and elaborate herbal formulas while studying my own body in my daily life. I began to understand my own emotions and how my body responded to the world around me. I uncovered attachments to things that were actually impeding how it functioned. I found deep-seated fear that I covered up with smarts and strength and control. I unearthed the wounds and the joys of my past. I found myself becoming so angry and sad at times that I wanted to punch the sky. These things were always there, but I had ignored them. Dr. Shrestha’s guidance led me deeper inside myself. The study and practice of Ayurveda helped me understand what I was seeing so that I could detox, rejuvenate, and move forward into my future. Then, the universe started conspiring to make me a mother.

      Your Fertility Journey

      I’ve often wondered what determines whether a woman will become a mother. Obviously there are physical factors — like the condition of the body due to circumstances of birth, behavior, and environment — and there are mental factors having to do with confidence, vulnerability, and sexual and emotional intimacy. We might also suspect there is a third dimension completely outside of our control, the spiritual element. Is it simply written in the stars when we are born, or do we have any control over it whatsoever? Must we become obsessed to make it happen? Likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle of all this.

      I’ve worked with women who wanted kids and didn’t have them, and I’ve worked with those who didn’t want them but had them anyway. It turns out that what we want isn’t nearly as important as what happens. That is a difficult pill for a woman with a biological clock to swallow. However, it’s not as if you should just say it’s all out of your control. So much is within your power. This is the inspiration for this book: focus on what you can control, and leave the rest up to nature.

      If you’ve picked up this book because you are considering becoming a mother, then welcome to the most insane ride of your life. Thankfully, there are billions of women who have been in your shoes before. Someone, somewhere, will understand your story.

      If there are fears, blockages, or conflicts holding you back from having a child — well, it’s time to face them. Not having children will not make these things go away. If you do not face them, they will remain and simply take on a new guise, in the form of wondering if you made the right decision once you hit perimenopause, and they will likely show up in other areas of your life, too. It’s good to get your feelings about motherhood sorted out as early as possible, preferably while you are young, because