'breathe yourself fertile'

aka my latest bullshit, unethical find

I call this Substack The Antidote.

I call it that for a reason. And though it’s actually an eclectic space of many things, I do want it to stay true to the name and mission. This is a place to land into when you’re at the intersection of;

‘I have tried it all’ and ‘why am I not pregnant yet’.

It’s at this juncture that we are the most vulnerable to turning on ourselves.

The rhetoric of the fertility wellness and spiritual world is powerful and seductive. It offers a way through our stuckness if we do the work, pay the money and believe hard enough.

This isn’t inherently a bad thing and, small print as usual - take what you need from these words, leave the rest. This isn’t about demolishing the feelings of hope and possibility that new approaches can give us. It is about the ethics of monetising our vulnerability with promises that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Let’s take the idea that you can dedicate yourself to breathwork in order to increase your fertility.

We can’t really argue that dedicating time and attention to the breath will reap benefits. What this looks like for you and for me will no doubt be different. The breath is one tributary of our nervous system that we do get to conduct. For me, it’s an essential part of soothing my nervous system.

It seems reasonable to predict that by developing our capacity to breathe more effectively, all manner of physical benefits could ripple into general wellbeing. So, I am very much team breathwork for the win.

Can I promote in a workshop of mine that breathwork will increase fertility? No.

There is no peer reviewed scientific evidence that I can bring to this claim. As such, it would be ethically problematic at least and at worst, exploitative. We don’t know if focused attention on breathing impacts egg quality and a quick google search will yield only people in the wellness/spiritual field telling you that it does. And there are plenty - I spotted a particularly persuasive one yesterday.

What sits uncomfortably for me is that the spotlight is shone on egg quality and not sperm quality in the countless sources I found making this claim. The gendered nature of this pseudo-science shows no sign of abating. A woman doing breathwork is going to do little for male factor infertility. And yet, the claims are bold - ‘oxygenate your ovaries to promote egg quality’; oof. Red flag waving.

The broad brushstroke commentary that I’m making here is a refrain that will keep playing in my writing. The ethics of fertility wellness and spirituality matters to me. You matter, we matter and we deserve ethical sensitivity, criticality and someone to redress the balance. We deserve far far better than being told we’re not breathing properly either and so of course we aren’t fertile.

There is a particular feeling of futility and self blame that we can be left with alongside our negative pregnancy tests. And it’s never as loud as when we’ve bought into the suggestions, claims and promises that THIS is the thing that will get that positive test - paid for it, tried it and come away empty handed.

You didn’t do it wrong.

We need to be so tender to ourselves that we keep trying and hoping on things we stumble across that look like solutions for us. Of course we do. And maybe, just maybe, we can get bolder in asking questions about the classes, offers and products that we find.