Season 1, Episode 1

Creating a Fertile Mindset with Dr. Randine Lewis

 

In this episode of the Conscious Fertility Podcast, host Lorne Brown speaks with Dr. Elizabet Stener-Victorin about polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a complex endocrine and metabolic disorder affecting many women worldwide. Dr. Stener-Victorin, joining from Sweden, discusses the prevalence, symptoms, and ongoing research on PCOS, focusing on its root causes and effects.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of preconception care, healthy lifestyle choices, and holistic management of PCOS. Dr. Stener-Victorin shares her research on the impact of acupuncture, diet, and lifestyle changes on women with PCOS, covering metabolic, reproductive, and psychological aspects. The discussion also explores the benefits of integrating acupuncture and the challenges of clinical trials, offering valuable insights for those dealing with or supporting someone with PCOS.

Key Topics:

  • Preconception Care: Lifestyle changes, exercise, and a balanced diet boost fertility in women with PCOS.
  • Acupuncture’s Role: Helps regulate ovulation and improve insulin sensitivity, especially with other treatments.
  • Transgenerational Impact: PCOS can affect the metabolic and reproductive health of offspring.
  • Holistic Approach: Management includes diet, exercise, acupuncture, and possibly medications like Metformin.
  • Research: Studies are exploring immune function and the effects of acupuncture and lifestyle changes in PCOS.

Watch the Episode

Episode Transcript
Lorne Brown:
I’ll hit our record button. That’d have been the biggest faux pas. We go through all this and I forget to hit the record button. All right. We said this is changing an infertile mindset to a fertile mindset. All right, for editing purposes, 5, 4, 3.

Lorne Brown:
Today, we’re going to talk about changing an infertile mindset to a fertile mindset. What is receptivity with Dr. Randine Lewis. It’s so perfect that we’re having this discussion today for you guys because Randine holds a very special place in my heart, in my life, in my profession. For those that don’t know Randine, she’s the author of The Infertility Cure, the Wave of the Fertile Soul, and then her two new books, Spirit of the Blood is coming out in August 2022 and Birthing the Dow of the summer of 2023. Randine was my first mentor back in early 2000s, 2001, 2002, somewhere around there, and I didn’t know it then. I thought I was learning from Randine how to use acupuncture and Chinese medicine when it comes to treating infertility. But now, at the time of this recording, I realize that she was teaching me conscious fertility all along. I just wasn’t in a place to see it and receive it. But like our podcast is called Conscious Fertility, Receiving Life on Purpose, with shifts in my mindset, I’m able to see now all the pearls and wisdom that Randine gave me back in 2002, but I wasn’t able to see it back then. Randine, thank you for coming on and sharing some thoughts and ideas with us today.

Randine Lewis:
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Lorne. It’s so good to be here.

Lorne Brown:
I don’t know if you know how we met, and we got to get into the discussion for our audience because they really want to know how to change their mindset because a lot of them are looking to receive that life and purpose to get to conceive, but I’ll do a short little for everybody that back in 2002, early in my practice, a woman came to me saying, “Can you help treat me? I’m going through an IVF cycle.” In 2002, my response to her was, “I would love to help you. Can you first tell me what IVF is?” That’s come a long way since then, and she said, “I’m flying out to Houston,” because that’s where it used to practice. “I’m flying out to Houston and it doesn’t make sense to fly out weekly from Vancouver BC to Houston to receive acupuncture and to have my herbs. Would you be willing to put the points in where Randine Lewis tells you to and prescribe the herbs that Randine Lewis tells you to?”

Lorne Brown:
I thought that was a great opportunity to have mentorship and learn, and I believe I was your first one-on-one student, and we developed that mentorship from you and friendship. That’s how I know Randine, and I’m so glad to have you talk to us about changing infertile mindset to a fertile mindset. Now the women that are listening, you know their history. You’ve been a practitioner, you still are a practitioner, but you had an active practice, then you went to holding retreats for patients, and then you went for holding retreats for practitioners that are seeing the patients looking for fertility optimization. Share with us what words of wisdom and advice you have for us.

Randine Lewis:
Well, it’s a tall order. One of the things that strikes me is just our own evolution through this. When we were 20 some years ago, 25 years ago, whatever, there was more of a sense of I will do these points, I will prescribe these herbs. Everything was a howto, that if you do this and if you do this and if you stop doing this, and if you do a little more of this and a little less of this, you’ll be closer to fertility. Now in 2022, I certainly have gotten to a very different place of my understanding of fertility. What is fertility? How do you open up that field of allowance so that life can come through you? It’s a much bigger conversation, and while all of these things that we do with acupuncture, with herbs, with diet, with lifestyle adjustments, with nutritional supplements, with qigong, with meditation-

Lorne Brown:
With IVF.

Randine Lewis:
IVF, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean all of these are things that we can do to, IVF to certainly manipulate, but all of these other things are ways to enhance one’s fertility to down regulate the sympathetic nervous system, up regulate the parasympathetic nervous system, cleanse the blood of some of the toxins, hormonal toxins, things that get in the way of harmonious endocrine system. All of those are very true, but to me they’re about 20% of what fertility is. The other 80% that I’ve seen throughout my practice, and this is why I’ve gone from working in a clinical setting to going on retreats, because I’ve found that it wasn’t so much about the howto, we’re all masters of howto. We know how to take things, we know how to exercise differently, we know how to do yoga, we know all of these things.

Randine Lewis:
We’re masters of that, but there comes a time when, and it’s usually quite disturbing for the one that’s going through the fertility treatments or who’s having challenges with their fertility when they come to this place of I’m doing all of this stuff and it’s not working, and a real surrender to the recognition that all of this doing isn’t making the difference. Again, it probably makes 20% difference, but that 80%, I have found, is more of a mindset. It’s more of a way of being, more way of viewing the world, viewing my life, myself, how I relate with the world, how receptive I am to things as they are. How do I draw the force of life into my life? In fact, if we put it in terms that are more in lines of fertility, how do I draw a new soul into my life?

Lorne Brown:
I remember, and this ties into this about this beingness, that early in the days when I was at one of your courses, you talked about what we call it, the Jing, the essence in Chinese medicine. This is the physicality youthfulness, so women in their 20s or early 30s. Then there’s the shen, the spirit, which you’re talking about this beingness where we see a lot of women in their late 30s or up to their mid-40s. You once said that these younger women, they cannot have their life in order, but they can conceive because they have such strong jing, they have the physical side, and that for women in their 40s, in order to have these babies the shen has to be so strong. Basically you said you have to have your shit together, and women tend to have their together after 40, usually. Life does that to you. You talked about that if you don’t have age on your side, then the spirituality, this beingness, this ability to allow flow and receptivity is what’s going to create the miracle where you’re going to defy what science says to help bring in life. Can you talk to that a bit more?

Randine Lewis:
Yes. Actually the jing or the essence, in Chinese medicine we call it the essence, and this is kind of the starting point. If you could view your reproductive life that at the beginning when you first start having periods, you have a lot of this essence. You have this hormonal overflow, and so it doesn’t take a lot of wisdom. But in order to produce life in Chinese medicine, it’s the heart and the heart houses the spirit, the shen, the consciousness. That is what ignites the essence to produce life. We’re speaking very metaphorically here. Of course, they weren’t. It was very a literal way of living and being that it wasn’t something metaphoric back then. There’s something internally that allows manifestation to come into being, and so the shen, the consciousness, the spirit of who we are ignites the essence, and so it’s this interaction of spirit and essence that produces life.

Randine Lewis:
When we’re 16, 26, 30, the essence is strong, but the spirit is weak. By spirit, I mean consciousness, the wisdom, that aspect that knows that there’s something more than my finite existence here, that I’m not just this physical being with this history that I call me. There’s something beyond that I have access to, and in Chinese medicine we say that the chi follows the mind and the mind is an aspect of spirit. They call it the heart mind. We’re not talking here about just how I think, how I use my brain, but it’s the literal, the mind of the heart and the mind of the body that includes my psyche, it includes my emotional makeup, it includes my subconscious activities. It’s not just my conscious thinking mind, it includes the other side as well. The chi or the energy follows that. When I’m in my 20s and I have all of this essence, it doesn’t take a lot of Chi or a lot of shen to bring into being, but later on, I better be more aware and more conscious of how I’m using my essence, how I’m viewing the world, how I’m looking at myself, how I’m following my destiny.

Randine Lewis:
I hope we get into the discussion about receptivity because we’re still talking about shifting a mindset here, but how I’m using my consciousness in my life, not only in my fertility but in my life. A lot of the work that I have done with people is really examining the ways that we have shut off the life force by the ways that we’re living our lives out of harmony with what nature intended in order for life to come through. There’s more of a demand for that the more mature one is, and that’s just one of the laws of life, that as you go through a few more turns of the sun, you’re invited to be more conscious and to be more present and to show up more for your life so that the Chi can follow that so that you are enhancing the Chi, you’re enhancing your mind, you’re enhancing your consciousness. You’re not just blindly saying, “How can I get a baby?”

Lorne Brown:
Can you talk then on receptivity, because what I’m hearing is what we think which we did when we were younger is if I just effort a little bit more on the outside, if I just take a few more supplements, or a little bit more drugs in the IVF, if I just do more, I may be able to force this baby to come to me. What I think you’re suggesting on receptivity is more of an allowing process and the efforting that is being efforted is in inner work. You’re efforting on the inside, not so much in the outside. Can you talk a bit about how consciousness and allowing or receptivity sometimes these women have these miracles happen to them and what happens to the women that still don’t have a baby that come through them?

Randine Lewis:
Okay. Well, to me, the entire endocrine system, the reproductive system is based upon the concept of receptivity, not activity. Every time a hormone is released into the system, in order for the cells for it to make a difference to the cells, the cells have to have this receptor on the surface that takes in the message of the hormone, that induces the changes inside the cell. This receptor is what governs the entire endocrine system, and this receptor is a quality that we call, we call yin. It’s just taking in, it’s receiving, it’s like eating, drinking water. There’s a passive quality to it, but it’s not passive at all because as soon as this receiving happens, then it sets in motion all of these internal activities. Receptivity is, it’s contrary to taking action to make things happen.

Randine Lewis:
The mindset of infertility, and this is my terminology, I made it up, but to me, the mindset of infertility looks a little bit like “What do I do? How do I do it? When do I do it? How do I make it happen? Who’s going to help me make it happen? Who am I going to go to? What about this? What do I take? What day of the month am I most receptive?” All of that has an anxious component to it. It stirs us into a sympathetic dominance. It makes our adrenal glands dominant, it makes norepinephrine and cortisol dominant, and those stress hormones are antagonistic to the fertility hormones, to estrogen, and follicle stimulating hormone, and progesterone, and all of those. Physiologically, there’s a lot of data to back that up.

Randine Lewis:
But receptivity as a mindset, what does that look like? I can understand these things that deciding to have children, trying to conceive, even those terms are somewhat confusing because they’re not a part of how life comes into being. There is no deciding for life to come through. There is no trying for fertility to happen. It happens according to its own laws, and we can put ourselves into these states where we’re in the flow of the laws of nature and there’s an allowing that comes through. Receptivity as a mindset begins with understanding that my trying isn’t going to make it happen, that my trying and failing and it’s not working brings me into a state of fear, and the more fearful I am, the more I try to control my environment because I don’t like being out of control. I don’t like the possibility that this may not happen in the way that I predict it to happen, so the tendency is to become more controlling, to kind of rev up those adrenal hormones.

Randine Lewis:
First, I encourage individuals to start to notice that state of mind, start to notice when you are in that trying mode, trying to make it happen. How do I do this? How do I? Feel how it impacts your system, feel how it revs things up. It’s a little stressful. Things tighten. Your musculature tightens, the energies all go up into your throat and your neck and your head, and nothing’s going to the uterus, into the ovaries. First, it’s just noticing that, noticing the physiologic effects of that infertile mindset and then turning that into receptivity. First, I need to be receptive. I need to take myself in. I’m receptive to myself. I see how this way of being has not served me and I become receptive. Now I start to not only recognize, but I can interrupt when I’m in that state of anxiety. That state of anxiety is what pulls all of the energy up into the upper body and takes it out of the lower body. You also said something about what is this state where the miraculous comes through that…

Lorne Brown:
Those women that you’ve witnessed, I’ve witnessed, where on paper they’re told they’re not going to get pregnant, their age, their hormones, their history says this isn’t going to happen, and yet it happens. The outliers.

Randine Lewis:
I love that. There’s something about that that I have witnessed throughout my career that two things can happen when somebody puts their fertility in the hands of the doctor, in the hands of somebody else. The reproductive endocrinologist says, “Well, based on your age and your FSH and your AMH and antral follicle count, you’ve got a 0.5 chance of conceiving on your own.” Now one of two things can happen, and the first thing is they become smaller. They’re like, “Oh, no.” They become small and fearful. “Oh, no. It’s never going to work. What can you do for me? Can I do donor? Is there any hope?” They become perhaps more receptive to more intervention, but otherwise they become less hopeful, smaller and more fearful. Another thing that happens is that they give up trying. It’s like when somebody says, “This isn’t going to work for you anymore,” well that’s a terrible message to hear and a terrible message to receive. One of the things that happens is it’s like a big internal exhale. Like, “Ugh, I can stop trying.”

Lorne Brown:
They finally surrender and let go.

Randine Lewis:
Yeah. Yes,

Lorne Brown:
We’re chatting here with, because when we look at these outliers, the question is, yeah, there’s always the outliers, which in the West they tend to try and ignore, and in conscious fertility in Chinese medicine, we’re like, “How do we find out what they did so more people can have that?” What I’m observing is that you can surrender and most of us surrender, like you’re sharing, when you’re brought to your knees. It’s so dark and so bad that you finally give up and that makes you receptive. But wow, that’s a really traumatic, tough, difficult place to get there, but it gets you there. It’s a very effective way to get you there. I’m thinking, is there a way to do this consciously where you can get to the same place of letting go and surrendering to being receptive, and that process can actually be a positive, enjoyable journey. We have one way, you’re brought to your knees and you’re forced to let go. That’s how humanity has done it, and then there’s a few people who have figured out that they can get to that letting go, but they can be proactive may not be the right word since we’re talking about receptivity, but can you talk on this because I think you know. You’ve seen this.

Randine Lewis:
Yes, yes. Because as far as the body goes, letting go, surrendering and giving up are the same things. It’s just, it quits trying. It quits going through the stress and the anxiety of I’m going to make this happen. That mental urgency stops, and so when that mental urgency stops, there’s an internal letting go. Now, when I used to have retreats, I remember one retreat, I was talking about this earlier today, that we started doing themes for retreats. One theme that we did early on, the theme was on letting go, and a woman arrived at retreat and she saw that the theme was letting go. She said, “Wait a minute, I didn’t know this was a letting go retreat. I didn’t come here to let go. I came here to have a baby.” That typifies the mindset that letting go is contrary.
Randine Lewis:
In our nervous systems, it is so programmed that if we let go, it won’t happen. It’s the biggest lie. It’s the biggest fallacy, infertility, that if I don’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen. How do I rectify that internally, in my heart, in my mind, I feel it’s a lie if I say I’m going to let go and it’s going to happen on its own. Now, that’s not true either, but one of the reasons we don’t believe that is because everything that we’ve ever achieved came out of this if I focus on what’s missing and I put all of my effort into getting it, I’m going to get it. That’s why our minds and our bodies and everything within us resists that idea. Now, as far as consciousness goes, when we’re speaking about another level, when I’m focusing on what’s missing, in the field of consciousness, what I’m doing is I’m sending these messages out of frantic, urgent, anxious fear. “I’m going to get this thing, I’m going to get this thing, I’m going to get this thing.”

Randine Lewis:
Now that might work if what you’re going to get is a million dollars or I’m going to get this physical thing. As far as the physiology of the heart, mind, body, that doesn’t work. When I’m focusing on what’s missing, my body is in such a state of stress there’s no possible way that it can be receptive to life. We start to notice the mental urgency. We start to really attend to a different level of consciousness. We’re not attending to how do I make this happen? How do I do this? I’m noticing when I’m getting in the way. That’s how we learn to let go. I start to pay attention where I’m holding on, where I’m tightening, where I’m getting this mental urgency that we’re not in the business of making babies.

Randine Lewis:
We don’t grow babies inside of us, we open to the life force and I open to the life force in other ways. I’m not sitting around and looking at baby pictures. What enlivens me? What opens up my heart into this state of calm, joyous receptivity where I am so immersed in the process of being alive I can hardly stand it. I need more of this. Here I am in this moment. I’m noticing my breath, I’m noticing the tingling in my hands and my feet, I’m noticing just the fact of my own existence. I’m noticing that I am, that I am breathing, I am speaking, I am having such reverence for my own life that it draws in that life force. There’s more of it. The more I start focusing on what’s already here in my body, in my mind, in my life, the more enlivened I am by it. My heart starts to open, and my whole nervous system settles down. There’s a calmness. Just like when we do qigong, there’s a calm and yet it’s vitalizing. We fill up with energy.

Lorne Brown:
This idea that you were sharing about the receptivity and this idea of trying so hard, it is going to the part where the woman came to your retreat and didn’t want to let go. Sometimes it’s that. It’s just the languaging here, and what I have found with the women I’ve been working with and bringing in conscious fertility is letting them know they can still want the baby. We’re not telling them, because we’re lying if they pretend they don’t want it. It goes from needing craving this baby. It’s a form of surrendering, letting go of the need of it. It’s a practice, it’s a discipline. There’s tools for this, there’s meditations for this. There’s qigong for this, but it’s a subtle thing. When working with the mind, it’s hard to see and measure this, but there’s a subtle difference between needing and craving this baby and surrendering to not having this baby. That’s the receptivity part. You still want it, but you let go of having to have it has been my understanding of it. I’m curious what your thoughts and feelings are.

Randine Lewis:
Yeah. I refer to it as wanting in a different way. I used a chart on retreat. On a scale of one to 10, what is your desire for a child right now? Almost everybody, it was like maybe nine out of 10, most were 10 out of 10. They had been told previously, part of the process of letting go is that you desire less. You start focusing on other things in your life and so that they would try to falsely put them in that state by like, “Okay, I guess I only wanted three out of 10 because I really love my life and I love my husband and I love my dog.” It’s like, no. If it’s a 10 out of 10, you get to keep it a 10 out of 10. That’s how. I love Kahlil Gibran’s phrase that your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself, so life’s longing for itself comes through me at a 10 out of 10. Now that’s not my job to put a damper on that.

Lorne Brown:
You can’t.

Randine Lewis:
Life’s longing for itself, it’s how do I honor that and not get in the way of it?

Lorne Brown:
It’s intention without tension.

Randine Lewis:
Pretty much, but my intention isn’t even necessary here. This longing for life does not need to be reinterpreted by my mind into how am I going to make this happen? That’s where it starts turning into tension, that now I think I’m the one with the desire, the desire’s coming from me, not through me, and I’m responsible for making it happen, finding the right doctor because I’ve already been told it’s not going to happen. But that’s the mindset that caused the fear to cause the sympathetic dominance to reduce the blood flow to my ovaries in my uterus in the first place. Once I honor and can trust that this longing for life is coming through me, not by mistake, but how do I flow with it in the rest of my life? Not make it number one. That’s one thing. It gets to be a 10 out of 10 out of the 100 different things of my life. If it’s 10 out of 10 and it’s the only thing of my life, then I’m screwed. But if it’s 10 out of 10 and I’m allowing this longing for life to be manifested in 100 different ways, then I’m enhancing it. I’m honoring it. I’m not having to manipulate and play with it and play games with myself and pretend and do biofeedback and hypnosis to try to lessen the desire.

Lorne Brown:
I like this part because for so many people, they feel guilty they have the desire or the want for this child and then they think they’re interfering because they have this want. I know we’re not, this isn’t sharing a secret. I want to talk about your personal experience. You talk about this in your courses, and you talk about this in your book, but you had challenges with fertility and can you share then? Because I think as a listener I’d be wondering, “Okay, I got to become receptive now, so Randine, how do I become receptive?” What are some of the, and it sounds kind of paradoxical as we’re talking about being and receptivity and yet we know what, because you’ve been there yourself.

Randine Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lorne Brown:
What do I need to do next then? Because you’re saying don’t do B, and yet they’re like, “But I got to do something.” What advice do you have for the listeners of okay, they want this baby and if being receptive and conscious in being will help them have this baby, then they’ll do what they can do to become conscious, receptive, which is totally paradoxical on one level. But you talked earlier with me off camera, it’s not paradoxical on another level. Yang turns to yin, yin turns into yang. I think some people would want some howto ideas.

Randine Lewis:
Well, some of the things that I did, first of all, the reason that I can talk so freely about this is because I was like the type AAA plus. I will do it right, I will do it correct. You tell me how to do it, and I’m going to master it. All of those things were failing me, and to a certain extent it brought me to my knees, but in a very good way because this is what opened me. This was at a time I was studying western medicine, I had her already gone through medical school and so I knew a lot about medicine, I knew a lot about western medicine, I knew a lot about the howtos and I was pretty smart, but I was opened to the possibility of Chinese medicine, which I was totally skeptical about. I didn’t think anything like that would work. I thought it was hogwash because I didn’t understand it.
Randine Lewis:
But I started going to acupuncture and taking Chinese herbs, and I started noticing things were happening in my system that, by the way, those half hour segments when I was on the acupuncture table were probably the only times that I was relaxing throughout the day when I was not trying to figure out how to make this happen. That taught me something. It’s like, “Wow, I’m getting filled up in a deeper level here that I have never experienced before,” and it opened the door for other things. Now, this was back when Chinese medicine was not popular. It was not the howto for fertility, so I was really charting these things on my own. I started doing some meditation. I started doing Qigong. I started noticing how my own nervous system was locked up in the chest. I didn’t know how to breathe into my belly at that time.
Randine Lewis:
I started doing Qigong. I’d go out in nature, bare feet, all of these weird things I was starting to do. I’d breathe into my belly. I learned to be open to what we call in Chinese medicine or in Daoist circles, the subtle origins, where I started opening up to something that felt like this miraculous potential, where I could almost see that’s where life is coming from, that’s where life wants to come through me. I would go out by myself in nature and I would pay attention to that. I learned very few qigong techniques at first, but I would move my body in a way that felt like it was in accordance with those subtle origins. How can I move a little slower so that I can capture that? How can I root myself a little deeper?
Randine Lewis:
It was playing with that which preceded manifestation. Then I developed meditations and qigongs that I taught to other people and I still do those, but that’s how it happened with me. Now that didn’t totally take me out of the do, do, do mindset. What took me out of that do, do, do mindset were a lot of failures, a lot of things that didn’t work. Miscarriages, things where I started to realize where life was teaching me I can’t make this happen. There were a couple of times where that brought me to such a state of despair that something else opened up within me where it was just like, “Okay, I give, I give.” It wasn’t in that way of I give up. There was no, the despair preceded the surrender. When the surrender happened, there was such vibrancy to it, such hope to it. It was like “Wow. I don’t know what just happened to me, but I feel more fertile and alive and hopeful than I ever have before, and none of it tallies up with what they’re telling me.”
Lorne Brown:
I’m always several years behind you, Randine, as somebody’s been mentored by you and the qigong, we finally have at my clinic Acubalance, a qigong practitioner to work with fertility, so thank you. I know you told me a long time ago, but finally arrived. What I’m hearing is how to allow, what you did is you did some acupuncture and herbal and dietary, you got around nature, you learned meditation or you meditated, you brought the qigong practice, and it worked by the way. You have a lovely, lovely daughter, a lovely family. What about now? If you could go back to your younger self, that type A person that’s going to do the acupuncture and the herbal, would you have any different advice for her? Is there anything different she would do, or is there a way that, because did you think your type A personality did a few months or years of that treatment? You’re doing everything, but you maybe weren’t as conscious or enjoying the process because of the personality you were back then because you’re not that person today.
Randine Lewis:
No, I am not that person today, but what I went through, that’s one of the greatest gifts of my life is the failures that I have been through. Somebody told me recently if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly, which goes totally against my mindset. I’m going to master it, I’m going to do it perfectly. But those failures, those coming to my knees, the time when life pulled the rug out from under me, that’s what it took for me to give up control. If I went back in any way, being who I am right now in that young woman who is desperately, desperately trying, thinking she was an old woman and thinking she was too old, thinking that it couldn’t happen, I would wrap my arms around her and say, “Honey, you are doing it perfectly. You are doing perfectly. This is part of your destiny, this is part of the walk of life. You are going to learn much, much grander lessons here than what it takes to become a mother. You are going to learn some of the lessons of life that are going to turn you into a different mother, that are going to call in a vibration of the soul of the child of tomorrow, not the child that you would’ve produced from your old mindset.”
Randine Lewis:
It opened me up to a very different way of living, of being with myself, being with life, and then being with my children. I absolutely know, I mean, I’ve talked to you a little bit about some of the challenges with, especially my son. I had some difficulty conceiving my last child. Everything that I went through prepared me to be his mother. He is not a carbon copy. Well, none of my children are. It’s like, again, Kahlil Gibran says, “These are the sons and daughters of the future.” They’re coming from a different place, and it’s our job to open up to that future potential, which allows them, it allows higher vibration, a higher consciousness to come in. If I’m not willing to bow to that and to give up some of the controlling ways of my past, perhaps life doesn’t want to come in at the ways that I used to be, and I had to learn that the hard way.
Lorne Brown:
You changed from an infertile mindset to a fertile mindset. I want to, for our listeners, that piece that you did, how you went back to your younger self and wrapped her arms around her and loved her unconditionally and accepted her for who she is. When you did that, by the way, I got chills. The invitation for the listeners and just a statement is that’s conscious work by the way. That’s conscious fertility work. That is a tool. The subconscious can’t tell the difference from imagination to reality, and so it’s simple, these tools and that is a tool of self-care. That’s a form of surrendering, of loving yourself unconditionally, and there’s so many tools that you can do, but I would invite you to rewind that and listen to that piece there that Randine gave us because that is pure conscious fertility work right there that we heard.

Lorne Brown:
I’m curious if any of you got chills when she did that And did anybody feel uncomfortable when she did that, because then that lets you know there’s something more to work if you’re not able to receive that love because this is what it’s all about receptivity. There’s going to be at least two reactions to that, chills and just feeling relief and being able to take it in. Then some of you are going to get really uncomfortable and upset with that, and that lets you know now where there is a blockage and you’re not able to receive. It’s not that you did anything wrong and your reaction’s wrong, it’s feedback of what’s going on for you.

Randine Lewis:
If I would’ve heard that message in the midst of that, I’d have been so resistant to it. Receptivity includes, and I think the biggest part of it is receptivity to self. That self-compassion where wherever you are on this journey, allowing yourself to be exactly there is the process that begins being receptive to yourself, not trying to force yourself to be any other way. That opens up a vulnerability which is quite uncomfortable, that it takes us out of the control seat and makes us feel, makes a lot of people feel squishy and out of control, and that’s a good sign. If you’ve noticed the discomfort, that as soon as you notice that discomfort, that’s a blockage that you’re coming into. It doesn’t mean you should be comfortable with this. It means you’re coming into an area of resistance within you, and this is good.

Lorne Brown:
This is good. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable to transform it. That’s the paradoxical part. You have to accept the discomfort and accept where you’re at, and then when you truly can accept it, then you can change it. That’s what’s so paradoxical, but you can’t surrender because you want to change it. That’s the nervous system, the consciousness, spirituality, whatever you want. It’s way too wise to fall for that trick. You truly have to surrender it, and then you don’t care, and then you can change if you want to. The mindset. Randine, as always, I enjoy our conversations. I’m going to extend the invitation to have you come back and share more. We got to talk about men, on conscious fertility, and to the women that are struggling with men that aren’t participating in this journey, and just more and more on consciousness because there’s so much to talk about receptivity. If you want to connect with Randine through her wisdom, she has two books related to fertility for the public, Infertility Cure, and it’s the Seat of the Fertile Soul, if I’m remembering correctly off the top of my head. Did I say that correctly.

Randine Lewis:
It’s the Infertility Cure and the Way of the Fertile Soul.

Lorne Brown:
The Way of the Fertile Soul.

Randine Lewis:
Yeah, those are both for the public. Then the books for practitioners are Spirit of the Blood coming out this year and Birthing the Dow, which comes out in 2023.

Lorne Brown:
Then if you’re a practitioner of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Randine has multiple fertility training courses on healthy seminars, and we’ll have you back again on conscious fertility so people can receive life on purpose.

Randine Lewis:
Wonderful. Thanks, Lorne. Thank you, everybody. All my best.

Dr. Randine Lewis' Bio:

Dr. Randine Lewis' Bio:

After her basic medical school curriculum, Dr. Randine Lewis received her Masters in Oriental Medicine at the American College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, interned in China, and received her PhD in alternative medicine. Dr. Lewis has been a governing board member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, as well as a medical expert for numerous online resources. She is the author of The Infertility Cure and The Way of the Fertile Soul, conducts intensive retreats, and teaches workshops for practitioners internationally and online through HealthySeminars.com

She teaches for the integrative doctoral program at Daoist traditions College of medical arts. She has kept up a regular qi gong and meditative practice and uses elemental self-inquiry and body wisdom meditative and movement processes in her work.

 

Where To Find Randine Lewis:

TheFertileSoul.com

@thefertilesoul

 

For acupuncturists who want to study online with Randine Lewis  Healthyseminars.com

Hosts & Guests

Lorne Brown
Randine Lewis

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