There’s no one better to talk to us about yoga and fertility than my guest today, Lynn Jensen. After her own challenges with fertility, she created her Yoga for Fertility program in 2002.
Lynn has taught Yoga for Women classes at Microsoft Headquarters in Seattle for the past decade and is co-author of Yoga and Fertility: A Journey to Health and Healing.
She’s a registered yoga teacher and prenatal yoga teacher, as well as a certified yoga therapist, and holds a master teacher certification in Energy Medicine Yoga. Lynn has been a featured presenter at RESOLVE and other fertility conferences, and was on the faculty of the Mind Body program at Pacific Northwest Fertility in Seattle.
We talk about all the different ways yoga can support someone in their fertility journey – mentally, physically, and emotionally. I learned a lot from this conversation and I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!
Dr. Aimee: I am very excited to have Lynn Jensen joining me today. Hi, Lynn.
Lynn Jensen: Hi. It’s nice to be here. I’m super excited to be on your show, too. It’s been really fun watching your interviews with some of my colleagues, like Judy Simon and Dr. Lora Shahine. I just watched your interview with Dr. Lee Rubin, and she actually was one of the people who almost single-handedly ensured the success of my Yoga for Fertility program when I started it 20 years ago because she was sending all of her patients to my classes, so it was fun to see her interview.
Dr. Aimee: That’s really special. We’re all connected in this amazing way, and I’m so glad that the universe brought you into my life now. I think it was Judy that connected us. Right?
Lynn Jensen: Yes, that’s right. It’s great to be here.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you. We’re going to talk about Yoga for Fertility and if it can really boost success rates. That’s what you’re going to talk to us all about.
Lynn, I know you practiced yoga while juggling a corporate career before launching your own business. What brought you to yoga?
Lynn Jensen: I started practicing yoga when I was living in Japan in my mid-20s. I had always been an athlete and a runner. When I got to this city in Japan, it wasn’t very practical to do those things, so I actually bought a book called Yoga for Runners, and I started doing yoga in my little apartment there in Japan. Then when I came back to the States to go to graduate school, I found a yoga teacher and just continued to practice.
Really, yoga became such a lifeline for me. I was working for a software company managing their international sales and marketing, so I was traveling 70% of the time out of the country. I was doing yoga in airports and hotel rooms. Sometimes I would get off a flight from Singapore and go straight to yoga class from there. It really was so helpful to reduce the stress of that lifestyle.
Dr. Aimee: I hear that from my patients as well, so I’m glad you’re here to talk to us about that. How did your own fertility journey influence or impact how you teach?
Lynn Jensen: We started to try for a family when I was in my early 30s, thinking that it would be easy, like everyone thinks. It wasn’t. In hindsight, it was probably totally crazy to try to conceive, given my work situation and the fact that I was out of the country most of the time. After several years of trying, we finally ended up doing all of the things. We did IUI, we did IVF cycles, I did a stretch on Lupron to try to control my endometriosis, we had a long journey with fertility. It’s actually helpful now because I understand what my students are going through; many students in my classes are doing fertility treatments.
During all of that, I was continuing to do my yoga practice regularly. What I noticed was that my friends who were going through similar fertility treatments at the time were having a harder time. I just noticed that I was on a much more even keel than they were with this fertility process. They would come back and tell me about things like bursting into tears in a meeting at work or yelling at their partner, and I just wasn’t on that same emotional roller coaster.
In the end, our third and final IVF cycle didn’t work. After about six years of trying to conceive, we switched gears and went to our next plan, which was to go down the adoption track. When we did that, everything shifted. Three months later, we had our baby son at home with us, so clearly that was the right track for us to be on.
Then when he was about 2, and I could start to think again, I started to think, in hindsight, that the yoga practice I was doing during all that time was a pretty strenuous practice and really wasn’t the most supportive that I could have been doing from a fertility standpoint. I started to think about how, even though I didn’t end up conceiving, that yoga was super helpful during the process. And I wondered: could there be some kind of yoga that was specifically designed to help women who are trying to conceive? So I started doing a lot of research around that.
By this time, I was certified as a yoga teacher, and had been teaching yoga for several years. I put together a program which would be supportive for people who were trying to conceive. That’s the program that I launched in 2002.
Dr. Aimee: I’d love to hear more about how and why yoga can help with fertility.
Lynn Jensen: I don’t necessarily think that all kinds of yoga are super helpful for fertility because there’s a lot of different “brands” of yoga out there and they have different goals. A lot of the yoga that’s out there right now I call yoga aerobics because it’s “get fit yoga” or “core-strengthening yoga”. Those have pretty different goals from Yoga for Fertility.
If we’re doing the kind of yoga practice that really is designed to specifically support fertility, then there are a lot of ways that yoga is going to help. Some of those are physically by increasing the blood flow and the energy flow to the pelvic area and the reproductive organs. Also, yoga supports the regulation of the endocrine system, helping to balance hormone levels. We put a lot of emphasis in my classes on stress reduction and activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and just helping people get out of that fight or flight mode, which many people spend a lot of time in. Reducing the level of stress hormones is super important for anyone going through this process, because it’s just a very stressful process, as we all know. And stress is not fertility-supporting!
Finally, in my Yoga for Fertility classes, we’re actually modifying poses to some extent, depending on where someone is in their monthly cycle and whether they’re in a fertility treatment program or not. We also work on mental and emotional levels, because yoga calms the mind, and reduces anxiety and negative thinking, which I find helps a lot of my students. Yoga has been shown to increase levels of the neurotransmitter GABA, which is the calming neurotransmitter.
Yoga helps to create this two-way communication channel between the mind and the body. A lot of times I see that women who have been dealing with fertility challenges for a long time, they’ve cut that off. Their body is not doing what they want it to do, so they’ve stopped listening to it. It’s really important from a fertility standpoint that you’re able to get the messages from your body. It’s not just one-way, the mind telling the body what to do, but the body needs to be able to communicate back.
Finally, for my classes, the emotional support piece is also really important. We always do a check-in. I do a lot to make it feel like a community in the class, and people really value that they’re now with this group of women who are going through similar things and are super supportive.
Dr. Aimee: That’s wonderful. I’m so glad that you’re bringing light to this. You did say something a little bit earlier that I want to go back to, and that is how you took Lupron because of endometriosis. We all know one of the side effects of Lupron is it makes you feel like you’re in menopause all of a sudden. I also take care of patients who are in the menopausal transition and they’re trying to still have a baby through either their own eggs or through donor eggs. You’ve done research on menopause and yoga, so I’m super curious to hear from you as far as how yoga can help my patients who are going through this and suffering through some of the side effects of Lupron or even their own natural menopause.
Lynn Jensen: The same things apply that apply to fertility when someone is dealing with menopausal symptoms or perimenopausal symptoms. The hormonal balancing aspect is really super important. We also all know that when you’re on Lupron it’s a little bit crazy-making. The things that help to calm down the central nervous system and help to calm the negative thinking and all of those things are super beneficial for menopause as well.
Dr. Aimee: A lot of my patients ask me, “Is it okay for me to do yoga while I’m in my fertility treatment,” whether it’s IUI, IVF, or FET cycles. What do you think?
Lynn Jensen: Absolutely. On average, at any given time in my weekly classes, there could be 60% to 70% of the students doing one of those treatments. We do have to modify sometimes, and that’s part of my classes. We do a check-in at the beginning of class, so I know going into the class what’s going on with everybody. That’s one reason that I keep my class sizes reasonably small, so that I can track that.
Particularly, we need to pay attention if somebody is on stim drugs, or just recently post-retrieval, or just immediately post-transfer. For a few days post-transfer we need to really modify things. Other than that, because my classes are super gentle anyway, we can mostly all do the same things. We do things a little more gently for those in the second half of the cycle than somebody who is in the first half and trying to boost their ovaries. Occasionally, there will be poses where I say if you’re first half of the cycle, you do this, and if you’re second half, you may do something different.
Dr. Aimee: You said you try to limit it, but how many are in each cohort?
Lynn Jensen: I generally limit my classes to 16, because that’s about how many I can keep track of and help modify for.
Dr. Aimee: Can you tell us some of your yoga secret poses? What are the poses, and what poses should patients be doing in the first half of the cycle versus the second half?
Lynn Jensen: In the first half of the cycle, we can be a little more stimulative. You could be doing poses that I would call belly compression poses, for example, a Locust Pose where you’re lying on your belly. We often go in and out of those poses because when we compress it, the blood flows out of the low belly area, and then when we come out of the pose, it gets a whole fresh blood supply. That also works with twisting poses, so when we go into a twist, it sort of “wrings out” the organs, and when we come out they get a whole fresh supply of blood and nutrients.
Those are the kinds of things that we have to be a little more careful with in the second half of the cycle. In my classes, I always have to assume that anybody who is in the second half of the cycle could be in very early pregnancy or implantation stage, so we do things a little more gently.
Dr. Aimee: Great. How do you bring yoga philosophy into your Yoga for Fertility classes?
Lynn Jensen: I do like to bring in some of the concepts that are more Eastern in nature, because some of them offer a perspective that we’re not aware of in our Western culture. I usually bring in a new theme every week for my classes. Sometimes it’s a theme to bring in one of these concepts that helps us see our situation from the yogic perspective.
I’ll just give an example of one that I like to talk about. It’s a concept called “Jing” from Chinese medicine. Jing essentially translates as “Life Essence”. In the Chinese medicine view, we’re born with a certain amount of Jing. Over our lifetime we use that up; by doing stressful things, by being in difficult relationships, by having a poor diet.
I tell my students it’s like your debit card – you can’t just keep using it and taking it out. At some point, you need to put it back, otherwise you’re going to end up in a big deficit. There are things that you can do to restore that Jing, to put it back into your “Jing account”. Things like yoga, meditation, walking in nature, spending time with people you love, hanging with your pet, eating a healthy diet. Those things are Jing enhancing. When we’re trying to conceive, that’s a time when we really need our life essence to be strong.
Dr. Aimee: I love this. When patients ask me about embryo transfer and how to prepare, I think now I’ll just say make sure your life essence is very strong. Basically, what I’m also trying to say is make sure your stress is low, you’re sleeping well, you’re feeling good, your relationships are sound. But truly, just making sure your life essence is strong captures all of that.
So, you’ve just taught me something that I didn’t know about. Thank you for putting it in these terms, because I think that Western doctors and Western medicine practitioners, these aren’t concepts that we were taught. Thank you for helping us bring the Jing back for our patients.
I imagine that if I were to ask you this, you would also be able to teach us a great visualization or meditation for someone who is struggling. I always tell my patients to pick a mantra, but I bet you also teach this in your class. If someone is struggling, do you have a meditation, or a visualization, or a breathing practice that you can recommend for them to try at home?
Lynn Jensen: We do all of those things in my classes, and I always encourage my students to practice at home. I would say the thing that I really most strongly encourage students to do at home is a pose called Legs Up the Wall Pose, which is just like it sounds; you’re lying on your back, your legs are up the wall, so you’re in an L-shape.
That pose can be done really any time during the cycle. The only times to not do it would be if you’re on your period, or if you’re just post-retrieval and trying to get your ovaries to go back to normal. Any other time, it’s a great pose to do because it’s really nourishing the organs in the whole pelvic area. It’s also calming to have your head lower than the rest of your body.
Generally, what I suggest is that my students do that pose for five minutes a day. Five minutes is a small investment, and it’s a really powerful fertility supporting pose. For visualization in that pose, I suggest just putting your hands on your low belly, so you’re having that connection, that contact. There’s a lot of healing energy in your hands, so you can send healing energy into your whole reproductive area.
Also, making a connection between the heart center and that low belly reproductive center is super important. Again, from the Chinese medicine tradition, they say that this heart to uterus energy channel needs to be open and energy needs to be running through that channel in order for conception to happen. This is also something that is not a Western idea, that the heart is important and involved in the fertility process.
When you’re lying on your back with your legs up the wall, with your hands resting on the low belly, then just imagine that energy from the heart center traveling down your arms and connecting into the low belly, into the reproductive center there. It’s a really powerful practice and visualization.
Dr. Aimee: I’m redesigning my exam rooms, so what I’m thinking is that maybe I kind of position things so that Legs Up the Wall Pose could be something maybe patients do. I’m not joking. Maybe have an experience where patients do it maybe after their IUI, after their insemination for five minutes, your healing hands on your belly in Legs Up the Wall Pose.
I say this because the other day I walked into an IUI room, I knocked on the door, and the patient had her legs up the wall. I was like, “Oh, wow, that’s a first,” but now I think maybe she practices yoga and she knows.
Lynn Jensen: She could be one of my students. I’ve definitely had students come and tell me that they have done that. That would be fabulous.
Dr. Aimee: If someone is going through fertility treatment and considering yoga, how do they start, what’s a good place for them to go?
Lynn Jensen: I would really strongly recommend that they find somebody who has training in teaching Yoga for Fertility, because it’s not part of a regular yoga teacher training program. I’ve been running Yoga for Fertility teacher training programs since 2014, so there are a number of teachers trained here in the US, and also outside of the US, to teach Yoga for Fertility. If there is not someone in their area, then there are a lot of online classes that they could do with teachers who have expertise in Yoga for Fertility.
Dr. Aimee: What if someone wants to join your in-person or online classes, how do they go about doing that?
Lynn Jensen: It’s all on my website at YogaForFertility.net. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram, so you certainly should be able to find me. I would love to have them join my online classes. I’m actually just about to start a new session.
Dr. Aimee: Wonderful. Tell us more about the sessions.
Lynn Jensen: I run my classes, usually, in eight-week sessions. They’re not drop-in classes because I’m trying to create that safe space, that space of community within the class. I also offer my classes on-demand. If they’re not able to make the class schedules for the online classes or the in-person classes here in Seattle, they can sign up to get the recordings of the classes each week.
I’m also working on a membership program for my website, so that would be a place where they could go and search for, say, a 20-minute video on yoga for the first half of the cycle, or yoga for preparing for an FET cycle. So they can choose a yoga practice that is specific to where they are cycle-wise or treatment-wise.
Dr. Aimee: That’s great. Thank you for bringing all of these options to patients everywhere, because I imagine people are busy, they’re working, and they might want to join a class and just don’t have the time. That’s great that there are so many options out there for patients to do Yoga for Fertility.
Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience today?
Lynn Jensen: There are a few things that I see pretty frequently which are obstacles that many of my students are dealing with, and they are things that yoga can help with. For instance, things like over-thinking, over-researching, trying to apply their normal analytical planning, organizing, micro-managing skills to this fertility process.
Those skills have gotten them to where they are in their career, and a lot of my students are really Type A. But those skills work really well in a linear process, and as we know, fertility is nonlinear, it doesn’t go in a nice straight line. More thinking and more research is generally not that helpful.
Yoga can help shift our mindset to one where instead of pregnancy being something we’re trying to achieve, what we’re actually trying to do is receive it. That’s a very different mindset and a very different way to approach it.
Dr. Aimee: That’s so fascinating. I have many mantras and sayings just to help me with my daily life, because you can imagine I take care of a lot of people who are under stress. One of them is “if you believe it, you can achieve it.” I need to change that. For me in my life, in terms of accomplishments, projects, inventions, and stuff like that, I am constantly trying to innovate, but when it comes to baby making, I agree, it should be “if you believe it, you should receive it.”
Lynn Jensen: I love it.
Dr. Aimee: I think that resonates so much with me. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Lynn Jensen: That’s beautiful. I might borrow your mantra from you with that little change.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. Thank you for joining me. What a delight. I’m so glad that the universe brought you into my life so that your wisdom can then be imparted on so many patients out there all over the world who are struggling.
Just one last question, aside from being active and doing yoga, how do you stay so fit and healthy?
Lynn Jensen: Honestly, it’s yoga. I do yoga and I walk. Those are generally the recommendations that I give to my students also when they’re trying to conceive, that they walk and they do their yoga practice, and not do things that are too strenuous exercise-wise. I get pushback on this a lot, but very strenuous exercise is Jing depleting, or can be, especially if we’re under a lot of stress. So, that’s what I tell them to do, and that’s what I do.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. Thank you again. Have a lovely day.
Lynn Jensen: Thank you so much, Dr. Aimee.
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