April 5, 2015
This month I would like to share something one of my students sent to me. She has been struggling with infertility for years and is now teaching Yoga to other women who are trying to conceive. She has really opened my mind and heart to her plight and the deep pain many women share. This was written as a response to a recent donor’s inability to fund a program for infertility due to the fact that the funds were reserved for conditions of the heart only.
” Of course the heart is affected. When you are told that you can’t have kids- you want to die. It’s like someone ripped your heart out and stomped on it. Of course the heart is affected.
There is an enormous amount of stress involved in fertility treatments. Stress effects every part of the body, especially the heart.
The heart is perched on top of the diaphragm, the main muscle responsible for breathing. Do you know what happens when someone tells you that you’re chances of having children are slim to none? You stop breathing. Which means that the diaphragm which was built to massage the heart (and all the other organs) every time we take a deep breath, well, the heart doesn’t get that built in masseus. The heart weakens, the organs are stressed and we start to die a little every day.
We stop breathing. There’s nothing to breathe for. Of course it affects the heart.
The women who are going through fertility treatments turn to Karen and the Rimon Center for help on a different level. There’s an ear to listen to them, a shoulder to cry on, and there’s someone telling them to breathe. So simple, but they actually forget how to breathe. They are holding their breath for days, weeks, months. Of course it affects the heart.
There’s someone telling them that life is beautiful, that they can find the peace and tranquility that’s inside each and every one of them. Someone tells them to open their heart- the source of love, compassion and loving kindness- to open their hearts up to themselves and to the glorious world; to all the potential that’s out there, to all the good that’s out there.
At the end of the yoga class, getting ready for relaxation pose, the women get comfortable on the mats, but I notice some with their hands over their hearts- always protecting, defending it against any more pain and suffering. I go over to them, lift one hand ever so gently, place it next to their body, take the other hand and do the same, palms up, in a receptive mode, coaxing them to relax, release and let go. Encouraging them to soften their bodies, to relax the chatter in their mind and surrender to this moment, this exact moment where they can find peace.”
Hopefully they will find their peace, it DOES affect the heart- but it doesn’t have to.