How do you stay calm and strong, Sophie?
I get this question every time I meet someone new in the IVF community and they heard my story. Like how do I stay strong ? How do I keep going? How do I keep on doing the things I do?
Heather Bonker Photography
Yoga is the key to a peaceful life
My automatic response is YOGA, but it’s not as easy as that. And to someone who’s not done yoga before or are in the midst of the emotional trenches of IVF - it may sound unattainable or even out there.
But my hope usually is that they get curious and want to try yoga.
Even those who are regular practitioners (I see you my yogi friends) - you do yoga everyday and you’re still not pregnant.
What’s the point right?
The truth is YOGA is not the magic pill to get pregnant!
Neither is acupuncture and even the IVF option itself.
You can do everything perfect and not have a baby! And you can do everything imperfect, and have a baby!
And if you go into something expecting your ideal outcome, there’s a tendency to get disappointed if it doesn’t go the way you want it to go.
But yoga can help you find peace, that is, if you want to find peace amongst all the chaos, stress and messiness that is happening around you.
It is the key to inner peace and my secret to being calm and strong.
To be honest,
I'm not calm all the time!
I’m not strong all the time!
I’m not positive all the time!
I’m a very anxious person. I get overwhelmed easily.
But because of my yoga practice, I discovered that in order to be happy, I need to find a way to create peace in everything that I do with or without a baby.
So in my post today, I'll share my top 3 yogic tools (non-physical) that has helped through the emotional struggles, the sadness, the loss that this fertility journey brings, and I hope it will bring you some light and peace.
3 yogic practices to help you find calm and strength in your fertility journey
1) allow yourself to be sad
I used to hide my sadness. If people ask me how I am, I will say I’m okay. but really I’m not. I wasn’t even aware I was hiding my sadness until I did a yoga retreat in beautiful Catskills mountain in New York in 2017. You can read that story here.
The gist is when you hide the authentic part of yourself, it’s like putting on a mask, and all that does is cause misery and over time, because you are pretending to be happy and you’re not, and then you'll just explode.
Does this resonate with you?
My yoga teacher, Baron Baptiste says this - in order to heal you must feel.
If you need to heal from something, you need to able to feel, instead of squelching your emotions.
I’m not asking you to cry or scream in front of strangers or even family or friends, but I’m asking you to find a safe space where you can feel what you feel and keep feeling and to let it all out.
2) talk about your feelings
I will keep saying because it’s true - If you keep everything inside, all your anger and sadness will fester.
And the trick to be vulnerable is to find your safe space.
My husband is my safe space but it took a few difficult conversations before we got to this stage.
You know how men likes to fix things?
I’m guilty of that too, of giving unsolicited advice, when all he wants is to talk through what happen to him at work or his friends. And so, we used to get in silly arguments over nothing when all we wanted was someone to listen and not judge.
Change starts with me. And I started the inner work of “not making him wrong”, and though it was super hard not to make any comments even though I KNOW I’m right, and there were few accidental words exchanged, but my response got better and kinder with every interaction.
And we worked on our listening skills - like whenever I need that safe space, I will tell him upfront that all I need is for him to listen. And vice versa.
Because at the root of our suffering, we feel that we are alone, that no one understands, that no one hears us.
And really all we need is for someone to listen to us talk about stuff, to rant, to complain, to cry without being quick to fix or give advice or give unwarranted comments.
I know and understand it is very hard to share our feelings. And sometimes we might share it to the wrong person who will make us feel small, ashamed and misunderstood.
And it takes courage to start and it's possible to find that safe space. You just need to be willing to try. And In the way, you will discover who your true friends are and you’ll be lighter for it.
If you really can’t trust anyone, I would suggest that you mspeak to a professional like a therapist or counsellor.
3) Being in the Present moment
When you practice the physical asana, it’s really a practice of being in the present moment.
In fact, you don’t even need to move your body - when I’m feeling anxious, I always take a moment to pause and focus on my breath, which gives access to be present.
When you’re not present, you are either living in the past (that’s when you start worrying) or in the future (that’s why you get anxious).
Right now, do a quick check in - are you 100% attentive to reading this post or are you multitasking? Baron says this “we are either here or nowhere.”
Yoga is my secret to being calm
To sum it up - yoga is the reason why I am calm. It gives me stability and a routine that gets me out of my head and into my body.
When I say yoga, it's not only the physical practice, but the other tools like meditation, the breathing practices, inquiry or journaling guide me along the way.
The real goal of yoga is to still the fluctuations of the mind and according to Mr Patanjali, the wise yoga sage, if you can master that - it will bring you to a blissful life.
There’s no true mastery without practice. My bliss or my peace didn’t happen overnight. Yoga requires consistent practice in each every moment, and every moment is a teaching moment, and opportunity to practice yoga off the mat.
Yoga saved my sanity throughout this fertility journey and it helped me find the courage to acknowledge my sadness and to be vulnerable with my husband.
It gave me a purpose in life, that l want to live a peaceful life.
And so the secret to being strong and calm in your fertility journey and in life is to practise yoga.
