Fertility yoga, hormonal yoga: help to get pregnant?
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Can yoga help with infertility? The practice of "fertility yoga" would triple the chances of success, reduce pain related to menstruation or endometriosis, stimulate your ovaries. So how and why does it work?
What is Fertility Yoga?
It is a yoga that adapts to a woman's menstrual cycle and has been shown to help pregnancy, particularly in the case of IVF. According to Dr. Alice Domar, a researcher at the Department of Behavioral Medicine at Harvard University, stress reduces the chances of having children because it interrupts the cycle and increases prolactin levels. In 2010, she conducted a study in which she prescribed some of her 100 participating patients "fertility yoga" classes twice a week for three months prior to IVF hormone treatment. The results are impressive: the pregnancy rate of patients who have completed the courses is 52%, compared to 20-25% with IVF alone. Therefore, you are 30 times more likely to get pregnant. But then, where does this extraordinary power come from?
Why yoga can promote pregnancy?
There is an obvious essential link between stress and infertility. "There is a very important cognitive process. The more infertility stresses you, the less likely you are to ovulate, because the brain releases cortisol, a hormone that is very bad for female fertility," explains Charlotte Muller, "fertility yoga" teacher.
And this former lawyer, a pioneer of the practice of fertility yoga in France, knows what she is talking about: she made several failed attempts at IVF, before returning to the United States and discovering the work of Alice Dolmar. "Stress can block fertility, and because yoga helps release tension, it can promote pregnancy," says Evelyne Le Corre, a Hatha yoga teacher for more than 15 years.
Yoga allows hormonal rebalancing
Certain poses and yoga sessions will activate the production of female hormones. Slow breathing, for example, will increase the secretion of serotonin, known as the happiness hormone. In addition, yoga promotes good general health and improves blood circulation, including in the genitals.
A better connection with your body and your vital energy
Yoga means "union". It is a bond that connects the body and the spirit, the physical and the mental, etc. It helps to reconnect with the body itself and thus create spaces of relaxation, warmth and well-being. All this, of course, will favor implantation.
Increased ability to accept ART treatments
"As it can help with depression, a breakup, a desire, yoga helps to better accept IVF."
But beware: "Yoga can help to a certain extent (relaxation) but not on a purely medical level. It really does not have proven or unproven fertility abilities. That is the issue of doctors. Yoga is not magic, clarifies Evelyne Le Corre , is before us our best friend".
What is a fertility yoga session like?
A dynamic yoga at the beginning of the menstrual cycle: "During the first part (from D5 to D14) that prepares for the puncture (in the case of IVF), our body is loaded with energizing hormones. So we have to be active", explains Charlotte Muller, now a happy mother.
Then a calmer yoga in the second part of the cycle: "This part of the menstrual cycle corresponds to the post-ovulatory period (from D15 to D28). Against the rules or a pregnancy test, we prefer a very soft and meditative yoga, continues the ex attorney".
In general, we will focus our attention on Hatha Yoga postures focused on the belly and pelvis (hips, perineum, buttocks, etc.), in order to stimulate our ovaries.
Slowly but surely, we are becoming interested in so-called holistic practices. In fact, they consist of taking into account the person as a whole, instead of treating only the symptoms of a disease. However, we know from experience how everything is related, and how the mental and the physical have strong resonances with each other. So it's quite natural that fertility yoga, even if it doesn't do everything, can help you have a baby.
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