Can Meditation Get Me Pregnant?
- Becky
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
A little while back I was offering women the opportunity to download a free guided meditation. I promoted it with a post that said, “Calm bodies have babies,” and I got a little bit of hate for it.
The comment read, “There's no meditation I can do that will thin my blood and prevent clotting in the placenta. Anticoagulated bodies have babies. This pissed me off.”
First of all, it’s never my intention to piss anyone off!
Second of all, I’ll be honest:I don’t actually expect meditation to fix her problem. I don’t expect it to clear blocked fallopian tubes. I don’t expect it to fix thyroid problems, or get rid of fibroids, or resolve recurrent miscarriages, or solve any other physical, diagnosable issues.
That said, I think meditation (or more correctly mindfulness, in whatever form you choose) has an extremely important role to play in everyone’s fertility journey, regardless of diagnosis or chosen form of treatment.
As you’ll see below, a better post would have read “Calm bodies function better.”
Stress and Infertility
This is definitely an unpopular opinion in some corners of the internet, but stress can be a major player when it comes to fertility problems. I learned this firsthand on my own fertility journey, and I see it in the women with whom I work.
We live in tremendously stressful times. Let us count the ways:
Complete connectivity and an “always on/available” mindset
A sense that “Go, go, go” is a normal way to live life
Fraught politics
Chemicals in every aspect of our environment
Self-comparison to all the carefully curated posts we see on social media
Pressure to succeed both at work and at home
Pressure to do all the things perfectly
And the list goes on…
In short, this world is not set up to prioritize the things that your body desperately needs when it’s trying to conceive:
Rest
Relaxation
A sense of safety and security
And that is taking a toll on all of us.
Please don’t misunderstand: you haven’t given yourself fertility problems, and you shouldn’t be blaming yourself for anything. We’re all simply the product of the moment in time in which we live.
Ok, so I’m stressed out. I still don’t see why that matters when it comes to getting pregnant.
Every system in your body is connected, and the way each system functions often depends on signals they get from other systems. The two that we’re interested in today are your nervous system and your reproductive system.
I could totally geek out and give you a detailed explanation, but I don’t think most of you are here for that, so here’s the gist:
One of your nervous system’s primary jobs is to keep you safe. It’s a rather blunt instrument and when you experience high levels of stress in your daily life, your body can’t distinguish that from the imminent threat of being eaten by a lion, and so it kicks into overdrive.
When your nervous system is triggered, many changes occur in your body, but the two most important for this discussion are that:
Blood is directed to the big muscles in your body—your legs, arms, and heart—to prepare you for either running away or fighting for your life.
Large amounts of cortisol (your primary stress hormone) are released into your bloodstream.
The result is that your reproductive system is unable to function as it’s meant to. There’s very limited blood flow to your uterus, and cortisol significantly limits production of all your reproductive hormones which can have a negative effect on both ovulation and implantation.
Your body simply isn’t willing to get pregnant when it senses that it’s in danger.
But I’ve got a diagnosed problem and we’re going to use IVF. This doesn’t apply to me.
I respectfully disagree. Here are 3 reasons why:
When you’re doing IVF or IUI, you still want your body functioning as optimally as possible. By using mindfulness techniques to help manage stress, you can make sure that your body is working with your chosen treatment, rather than against it.
Some recent studies have shown that high stress levels can reduce the success of IVF. There is still much research to be done in this area, but if you’re going to put this much time, effort, and money into the process, it stands to reason that you would want to do everything possible to give yourself the best shot at success.
The IUI/IVF is pretty stressful all on its own, and can be an emotionally challenging experience. Mindfulness is a wonderful tool for combating this added stress, and helping you feel a bit more like your usual self as you navigate the process.
My diagnosis is unexplained infertility. What about me?
Unexplained infertility—that bucket you get dropped into once you’ve been trying to get pregnant without success for at least 12 months, yet all your diagnostic tests come back totally normal.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get pregnant—many women with unexplained infertility go on to have children either naturally or using an assisted reproductive technique—but it is more than a little frustrating!
Here’s my take: every body responds differently to stress. Some people’s bodies are more resilient than others. I say this as someone who has learned that her body is not particularly resilient and that it breaks down easily when stress levels get too high.
If you’re dealing with unexplained infertility and you’ve not tried any mindfulness or stress management practices on your fertility journey, this is a great time to start. There is no one-size fits all solution for unexplained infertility, but managing and getting your nervous system off of high-alert can remove a significant barrier.
At the end of the day, mindfulness isn’t a magic wand, and I would never promise you that a single meditation will get you pregnant. But supporting your nervous system is one of the few things that actually improves how your body functions today, no matter what diagnosis you’re working with or which treatment path you’re taking.
If you’ve been living in fight-or-flight for months (or years), mindfulness can give your body a chance to shift out of stress mode and back into a state that’s more supportive of hormone balance, ovulation, and implantation.
If you’re curious to give it a try, I created a short guided meditation specifically for women trying to conceive. It’s designed to quiet your nervous system and help your body feel a little safer and more grounded—because that truly matters.
