Welcome from Founder Julia Indichova
“Cultures change, evolve and heal because of the courage of individuals. Julia Indichova is one of those individuals. Let her be an inspiration for you for how to trust yourself, heal yourself, and reconnect with the wonder of your body and all of its possibilities.”
-Christiane Northrup, M.D. author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
Welcome!
Chances are, few of us would consider a fertility challenge to be a gift you’d want to receive or give to anyone. And yet, my own story and my work with thousands of women and men in close to two decades of counseling and teaching has shown me beyond any doubt that “infertility” is one of the most immense opportunities for healing.
And as I see it, the only sane choice is for us to insist on turning it into a life-saving gift. No matter what!
I founded Fertile Heart in 1997 soon after the publication of my book Inconceivable (Three Rivers Press, 2001), the first book written about infertility from the patient’s point of view.
No such thing as “infertile.”
Although we will use the term “infertility” in the resources of this website, we usually place it in quotes because in the Fertile Heart land there really is no such thing as “infertility.” You might enjoy my revised definition of fertility in one of the earlier blog posts.
So if you need a bit of reassurance, I hope you’ll hear me when I say that in the years of teaching, 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 a myriad reasons had difficulty conceiving and giving birth to a biological child.
Not because they were infertile.
As I see it, they were facing this particular challenge, as I faced it 22 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 have been dormant but very much alive.
Julia teaching the Meeting Your Child Halfway all day workshop; see video excerpt here
Where, oh where, will your true help come from
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 at the age of 42 with an FSH of 42, sparked a pilgrimage that led me to re-claim 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, regardless of the obstacles revealed by their latest lab results.
The Fertile Heart™ Ovum Fertility Program (aka the Indichova-Baum-Ovum-Work which makes a nifty acronym, I.B.O.W)—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 Heart™ Ovum practice are meant to help us awaken and access that guidance.
The I.B.O.W. 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 and more. You can find out more about each of these modalities on our Holistic Fertility Treatments page.
Yes to a support team, but who is in charge
In fact, we have wonderful 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 off-line referral service which we hope to activate online in the near future. The only thing that I don’t find useful about engaging fertility experts is giving over all responsibility for our healing to outside authorities. (Take a look at the Whacky Hormones blog post and the comments from our sisterhood to illustrate my point.)
Since we are free of infertility industry sponsors, you will also find here an honest questioning of the misuse of medical technology.
Our brand new e-book What to Expect from a Fertility Expert: Conversations with Three Prominent Fertility Specialists reveals some sobering observations about the misuse of assisted reproduction and poor diagnostic practices you want to know about before your next consultation.
Sadly, in the last decade I’ve also seen the misuse of such popular healing modalities as fertility acupuncture and fertility yoga. Even these wonderful, fundamentally healing tools can be exploited and cause harm if we use them to slip into denial rather than fully engage with our own healing.
Take a tour and 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.
What To Expect from a Fertility Expert E-book. Now on Amazon Kindle
Congratulations and stay in touch!
I hope you’ll join our mailing list and visit often. Our soul-filling treats include news about free chats let by me, guest teacher chats, recipes, videos and more! Oh, and we’ll send you a free ebook: Heather’s Gift: A Story of Five Miscarriages and One Friendship, when you sign up for the newsletter.
Welcome again and congratulations on honoring your longing for a parent-child relationship. After all a longing would be a terrible thing to waste!
Julia Indichova, Founder of Fertile Heart™
P.S. 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 also aligned with and open to supporting our mission, please let them know about us and let us know about them. Thank you!
