Welcome to the newly renovated home of the Fertile HeartTM Community founded in 1997 soon after the publication of my book, Inconceivable, the first book written about "infertility" from the patient's point of view. Although we will use the term infertility in the resources of this website I place it in quotes here, because to me, there really is no such thing as infertility. In the decade and a half of teaching and learning and working intimately with hundreds of people I have yet to meet someone who was "infertile."
I have met women and couples who for myriad of reasons had difficulty conceiving and giving birth to a biological child, but not because they were infertile. As I see it, they were facing this particular challenge, as I faced it almost 20 years ago, in order to grow stronger physically, emotionally and spiritually. Their bodies were not fighting them. They were protecting them and their future children from harm. Their fertility might've been dormant but very much alive.
Though I didn't know it at a time, my own diagnosis of "irreversible secondary infertility" was a gift that continues to unfold each day. The journey that began with trying to conceive my younger daughter sparked a pilgrimage that led to re-claiming my fertility in the most awe-inspiring ways. Perhaps the most compelling reason for conceiving this community was a deep knowing that a similar pilgrimage and gifts await every single person longing for a child, no matter what obstacles their latest fertility test revealed.
The Fertile HeartTM Ovum Fertility Program (aka the Indichova-Baum-Ovum-Work that makes a nifty acronym, IBOW) developed in the last 20 years through my personal experience and through counseling and research, is an original birthing practice, which has helped bring thousands of babies into the world often after years of failed medical treatments. The program centers on the idea that as useful as it can be to engage a counsel of experts, our most powerful fertility-enabling-ally is to be found deep within each of us. The tools of the Fertile HeartTM Ovum practice are meant to help us awaken and access that guidance.
The Ovum program does not in any way exclude the support of a wide range of fertility treatment tools, such as fertility foods, fertility supplements, mainstream and holistic treatments such as craniosacral therapy, classical homeopathy, massage, osteopathic manipulation for waking up sluggish ovaries and more. More about each of these on our Holistic Fertility Treatments page.
We in fact have wonderful monthly Guest Teacher Teleconferences with both mainstream and holistic fertility practitioners, and e-books with transcripts of past sessions. Many of my clients have found inspiration listening to The Holistic Fertility Treatment Options CD, that features a wonderful panel discussion with a nutritionist, an herbalist, a craniosacral therapist and a classical homeopath.
We also have an extensive offline referral service which we hope to activate online in the near future. The only thing that I find not useful about engaging fertility experts is giving over all responsibility for our healing to outside authorities. (Take a look at The Whacky Hormones Blog and the comments from our sisterhood to illustrate my point.)
Since we are free of sponsors of any kind you will also find here an honest questioning of the misuse of medical technology and even the misuse of such popular healing modalities as fertility acupuncture and fertility yoga both of which are now routinely recommended by IVF clinics worldwide. All of these are tools that harm or heal depending on how we use them.
Take a tour, look around, if you are searching for companions on your journey, say hello on one of our fertility forums, chances are someone will hear you and offer a word of encouragement.
I hope you'll join our mailing list and visit often. We'll always have some soul-filling treats for you! Welcome again and congratulations on following your longing. After all a longing would be a terrible thing to waste!
Julia Indichova
Founder of Fertile HeartTM
P.S. As I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of placing our offline referral service online, so if you know of a practitioner who has been particularly helpful and who is aligned with and open to supporting our mission, please let them know about us and let us know about them. Thank you!
julia Indichova is the author of Inconceivable (Doubleday 2001) and The Fertile Female (Adell Press 2007) She is the director of the Fertile Heart™ Studio in Woodstock, New York, which offers daylong workshops. Julia also leads an international fertility phone support group, and a monthly open circle in New York City. Her work and story have appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, Oxygen, Chicago Fox News, Chicago Parent magazine and in Health magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. After 9/11 she founded the Birthing a Child-Friendly Planet Project, with an ongoing series of seminars meant to inspire individuals to give birth to healthier bodies, books, and businesses, all in the context of repairing the world.
