Spring Fling - how to be fertile in mind, body and heart

Spring has finally sprung! The days are longer, the nights are warmer, and all things in Nature are ready to wake up and get fertile.

"Fertility" usually refers to reproducing offspring - but for the modern female homo sapien, having a fertile mind and spirit is just as important as having ovaries that do their job right. After all, in our busy lives we don't just give birth to children - our ideas, thoughts, what we give to others and to ourselves are all part of our creative nature, and should all be celebrated.

Here are some ideas to jump start your spring and get your juices flowing!

A Fertile Body

Time was when a woman who couldn't conceive was considered somewhat of a failure in society. But in this day and age -  with all the added pollutants, stresses and responsibilities that women have - it's harder than ever to find the time, resources or even desire to have kids. Even though the optimal childbearing age for women is between 25-29 years,  most women are waiting til their 30s or even early 40s to have kids. That in turn creates a greater risk of infertility and birth complications.

As if that wasn't enough, The National Institute of Health has found that sperm counts in men have dropped dramatically. One study shows a yearly drop of average sperm count in the US at 1.5%. In Europeans, that number is double (maybe all that cigarette smoking?). Looks like we've got some slow swimmers in this lane...

If I even started with insurance costs at this point, this post would be a mile long. Suffice it to say that holistic strategies exist (athough we do recommend visiting a doctor of your choice -holistic or Western- to properly asses and diagnose anything). A couple of websites offer self-hypnosis and massage as a way to create a healthy and receptive environment for conception. The self-hypnosis doesn't just tackle medical reasons for infertility; it also helps deal with underlying emotions and other "mental blocks" that may exist in women trying to conceive. And massage, well, doesn't it help just about everything?!

Here's a sneak peak at the self-massage treatment:


A Fertile Mind

Springtime is a great occasion to open up new vistas and grow out of stagnant habits and thoughts. But how do you give your noggin the extra jolt it needs to feel new again? Unsurprisingly, the answer seems to be exercise. Just like working out your other muscles, your brain benefits from the blood flow and the "happy hormones" released by exercise, resulting in increased creativity. In a study conducted by the Creativity Research Journal, a group of 60 students was divided into 3 - one did no exercise, while the other 2 groups did. All groups were then given the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking (the second group of exercisers took their test 2 hours after the exercise, while the first group took it immediately after). It came as no surprise that the exercise groups scored significantly higher than the non-exercise group.

Another way to spark your brain up is by doing mental exercises. Braingle.com and other brain-teaser sites are choc full of activities you can do to improve memory, cognition, and reasoning. If all that feels just too much like high school for you, try a word game like Scrabble or Boggle - creatively thinking of ways to put words together may open up some room to be creative in other fields as well.

A Fertile Heart

How many more potential opportunities will you be able to find if you start meeting new people? Listening to new music?  If you signed up for a class or joined a volunteer group?

I recently joined the Rotary Club in San Francisco and was completely amazed to find out that the 100-year old organization I had just gotten inducted into was primarily responsible for eradicating polio from the planet. They took an epidemic where kids of a certain age knew at least one other kid permanently crippled from the disease, and turned it into an easily-administered inoculation that wiped the virus out and has confined it to only 4 countries. I had that awesome, rare moment where I truly felt how small I was in the world, but also a great desire to make that little bit mean something to the world before I left it.

Giving back, paying it forward - whatever you call it, creating happiness and restoring normalcy in the  life of an underprivileged person is just as precious and important as carrying a baby to term. There is no shortage of sadness and injustice in the world, and each of us have a responsibility to help alleviate as much of it as we can, while we can. A fertile heart may not get you instantly rich, or win you any awards (unless like Bill and Melinda Gates, you can afford to give $250 million at the drop of a microchip). But peace of mind and gratitude from strangers who have benefited from your generosity are priceless gifts that may well lead to other - more fruitful - things.

To find other volunteer resources near you, visit www.volunteerinfo.org and www.rotary.org