Fertility Yoga with Ashley Statchon of Metta Mama

In today's episode of Health Youniversity, Dr. Susan Fox sits down with Ashley Statchon — yoga teacher, fertility and prenatal specialist, oncology yoga instructor, and director of Metta Mama — for a conversation that starts with the nervous system and ends somewhere most fertility conversations never go.

Ashley came to yoga as a competitive gymnast looking for a physical challenge. What she found was something that would reshape how she understood the body entirely — and years later, when a breast cancer diagnosis at 43 put everything to the test, it was breath, movement, and the practices she'd been teaching that carried her through. Today, she brings that lived experience into fertility yoga, prenatal care, postnatal support, and oncology.

This episode is about what yoga actually does to and for the body as a nervous system intervention. Why cortisol timing matters. Why 70% of the information flowing through your central nervous system travels from body to brain, not the other way around. And why trying to think your way out of a stress cycle is, biologically speaking,  unlikely to work.

You'll learn what fertility yoga is and why it's relevant - whether you're just beginning to think about conceiving or deep in an IVF cycle.  You’ll also understand healthy cortisol rhythms — and how most of us derail those rhythms  before breakfast.  You’ll learn that the psoas, hamstrings, and pelvic floor hold the stress cycle in the body long after the moment has passed, what legs up the wall actually does physiologically.  Ashley shares how breath, meditation, and visualization stabilized her liver enzymes during chemotherapy — and what that taught her about the body's capacity to respond,.  We discuss that research shows infertility carries the same measurable stress load as a life-threatening diagnosis — and what ahimsa — nonviolence — looks like when you turn it toward yourself.

This episode is for you if you've been wondering if yoga improve fertility beyond flexibility and relaxation, if you're navigating IVF or IUI and want to know what you can do in your own body to support the process, if you feel chronically wired but exhausted or if, you or someone you love is navigating a cancer diagnosis alongside a fertility journey.  If you're in the Bay Area, attend Ashley's in-person eight-week fertility yoga series at Metta Mama.

💻 About Susan Fox: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/about

Take your 5-Element Fertility Quiz:  http://yourfertilityquiz.com/

Detox to De-Stress:  View the FREE Masterclass on the importance of detoxification to prepare for a healthy pregnancy:  https://susanfox1.easywebinar.live/gentle-detox

Learn about our program entitled Your Fertile Health: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/programs

Schedule a Fertile Health Assessment: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/your-fertile-health-call

Let us journey with you as you navigate your fertile health. Connect with me:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Health University, where we talk all things fertility, pregnancy and postpartum, and the prep for perimenopause, all those walks of life across a woman's a woman's journey, reproductive health. And today we're going to focus on fertility. This is National Infertility Awareness Month in April, and the week will be April 19th to the 25th. So we're airing this at this time because we really want to highlight the opportunities that exist for you within this National Infertility Awareness Month. And I'm delighted to have with us Ashley Statchin of Meta Yoga. And I'm going to turn my head to the side to read your bio, Ashley, because it's quite comprehensive. So her work follows a philosophy of quote, meet yourself exactly as you are. And I love that. Let's have an exhale. She came to yoga as a former competitive gymnast, initially drawn to the physical challenge, but across her work, her approach became grounded in the nervous system support, including stress regulation and an opportunity to rebuild trust in one's body and to move through life's transitions with greater ease and resiliency. She's the director of Meta Mama, where she teaches fertility, prenatal, and postnatal yoga classes, and labor support workshops. Her work centers on the lived experience of motherhood, holding space for the physical, emotional, and identity shifts that come with conceiving, carrying, and raising children. She also teaches oncology yoga and yoga for healing. And I'm I'm really interested in learning more about this as well because sometimes those two paths cross. So welcome, Ashley. Thank you for joining us today. This is going to be a really fun and interesting conversation, and I'm sure we're going to get lots of new pearls of ways to look at yoga that we may have not looked at before. So, did I miss anything in your bio that you want to make sure that we add?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Um, thank you, Susan, for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. Uh, Susan and I are both local and have had the privilege to meet in person and sort of share clients and students. So it's really fun to be able to spend some time with you this morning.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And for listeners and viewers, we are in the uh northern San Francisco Bay Area in Marin County. Ashley's practice is in San Rafael, my practice is in Mill Valley. And so if you're in this local area, come see us in person. And if you're not, there's more that we can offer you, and we're going to talk about that. So I want to.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I also expand real quick, just because your podcast and listeners, you know, expand out of the fertility space. Um, MetaMama is a uh yoga studio for new and expecting moms, and it started as sort of a the foundation is pre- and postnatal. That was what we started three years ago, bringing people in. Um, the goal of MetaMama from the very beginning has been to expand throughout the uh female journey, both um, you know, towards the younger mencies uh start of the hormonal ride out to the perimenopause-menopause space. So we do offer teen yoga, some kids' yoga, um, and then I have put together panels with uh practitioners from the Bay Area to support women in the perimenopause-menopause space. Because a lot of my postnatal mamas having kids a little later, uh they have, you know, a two or three-year-old, they're not sleeping, they're uh not feeling great, they, you know, maybe are frustrated and easier to be irritable, uh, maybe getting upset a little quicker, which is all signs of low progesterone, which is the beginning of the perimenopause journey. Um, and they go to their doctors and don't get the answers, you're just a mom, so you know that that's to be expected. Right. Uh and then we share at the beginning of each class, go around where we are. And I had heard from quite a few moms that they weren't feeling like themselves, but they just sort of felt like they had to deal with it. Yeah. So I put together a couple panels based on that need. Uh, so we have we are tapping into the perimenopause, menopause uh population, and you know, it's all connected.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

That art it's it's just it's my image is is a bridge, right? We're we're all taking steps across that bridge, whether we are in the pre-prenatal, the prenatal, the pregnancy, or the postnatal to prepping for perimenopause, so that so that a woman doesn't have to go through many of these uh uncomfortable um you know signs and symptoms. Because if we can give her prep, then then she can uh have an easier time through perimenopause.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

So well, the hormonal bridge behind all of that, the estrogen that starts to estrogen, uh progesterone and testosterone that starts to show up when a woman goes through menses. Um there's a rise and a fall. I won't get into exact numbers, but you know, that during pregnancy or during your 20s, as you're preparing for pregnancy, uh into pregnancy, the dip of estrogen. I mean, your estrogen is quite high through pregnancy, and then it literally baby comes out, it drops down to almost zero. Um, and then if you are not getting your period, you're technically in a menopausal state during that perinatal year, which hot flashes, joint pain, you'll have some of those symptoms. Um and then rising back up as you get out of the perinatal year uh into the perimenopause where things are just all over the place hormonally, and then you're back down. So supporting from the beginning to the end uh that hormonal journey because it's all connected. And what we're gonna speak about is the fertility aspect, and there's a lot of support you can give yourself hormonally through that period that will do nothing but serve you as you look.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Exactly, exactly. And I want to put, I want, I want to highlight and put a pin on that in this. Wherever you are in this arc of time, viewers and listeners, if you're in your fertility journey, which is what we're focusing on today, improving your whole health and your reproductive health for your fertility journey will have the beneficial impact for your postnatal and perimenopausal prep time. So, so listen up, and here we go. I'm good. Um I'm excited to learn about your impression of like what is fertility yoga? Why do we why do we want to consider fertility yoga as a support mechanism for someone who's perhaps thinking about or struggling with fertility?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah. Um, I mean, fertility yoga can be for anyone who, as you said, is thinking about uh getting pregnant and just wanting to sort of cultivate a really uh uh healthy interior terrain. Um it can be for somebody who's been struggling, who's going through IUI, IVF, who's thinking about, I mean, really the whole the class that I teach, the eight-week series that I put together, uh, is a container to hold space for anyone in that uh on that journey. Um there's so fertility yoga is basically supporting the whole body and really focusing on reproductive organs. Can we create space for the reproductive organs? Can we bring more blood flow to the reproductive organs? We could do that with very specific poses. Um, I'll just give like a little bit uh we do a lot of legs up the wall. Um pose in every class, and we do it for about five minutes. Um, it increases blood flow to the reproductive organs. It calms the central nervous system with the legs up the wall. Uh, a lot of times we'll do it with the hand, one hand over the heart, one hand over the womb for the heart-womb connection, which is big in Chinese medicine.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Absolutely. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So dropping into your heart uh and then connecting to your womb. Um that's just one of the poses that we do. It also reverses the flow of energy qi, it reverses the blood flow and it gives you a moment to drop in and start to bring uh stability to your nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

And that's where I'm glad you got the nervous system. We think of our nervous system simply as fight or flight, rest and digest, sympathetic, parasympathetic, but it is a much more nuanced and complicated system. And and I would would love to hear your impression of like how does yoga influence the nervous system and create more stress uh resiliency because we don't live in a bubble. So how do these how does it how do these practices not only treat now but set us up for success later?

SPEAKER_01 10:20

So yoga is such a beautiful way to tap into all the layers, uh the energetic, the emotional, the mental, the spiritual, the physical. Um I can answer this question in many different ways, and I'll try not to take up the next 35 minutes. Um so the nervous system, you have an autotomic nervous system, um, parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest, sympathetic, which is your uh fight or flight. And the short answer is because when we're in a more heightened, so I also want to call out the fact that cortisol and adrenaline, which are the uh hormones that your adrenals, which sit on top of your kidney, release when we feel that there's a threat. Um, a lot of times we hear negative association with them. I do want to mention that there is something called hormetic stress, which is productive stress. And that is a good example of it, is in the morning when you wake up, your cortisol is supposed to rise. Uh, it's called a cortisol awakening reaction, and it's what gets you out of bed and gets you going in the morning. Um, it's supposed to rise to sort of uh about 45 minutes after you wake to the peak, and then it starts to go down, but you're riding this wave. And this is what really we're supporting. How can you build the peak to be something that is getting you up in the morning, getting you going, uh allowing you to, you know, get get going in the morning, whatever that is that does first thing be productive.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

It's well, I refer to it as you stress, not distress, you know, because we do we want to rise and shine and and and express ourselves for the day.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, and in Chinese medicine, you have a 24-hour body clock, and from basically uh 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. with a little bit of variation there is your most productive time of day because of the where the energy and the organs are hitting, and you have two hour clocks for every uh every part of your body. And so that morning is like that hermetic stress. Now, what happens is we end up with a cortisol reaction spiking in a lot of us in the morning because we grab our phone and the news and the dings and the emails, or your kids come in and you're like, get out the door, let's go, let's go. And so that it spikes. Um, and then it takes all day to get back down to a space that not only are we riding the wave, but that to a stress resiliency space where we're not living up here all day. Now, the challenge is when we spike it in the morning, and then just our lives end up spiking more because our body can't tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat. Right. And back in the day when we were threatened, our body would have to run away from something, usually either a saber-toothed tiger or a bear attack or somebody coming into your village that you didn't know. Um now our threats are what we perceive. If it's an e if your work is stressful, every email that comes in, you get more heightened. Right. And so we're all day up here without taking the intentional rest to build that stress resiliency. Um, and we end up at the end of the day here, and then our body has to work overnight to process that stress.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

So, what I think I'm hearing from you then, Ashley, is that yoga itself, the practices will help us take uh to either avoid the spike or take us down from that spike so that we can, so that we're not, you know, sort of working from that sort of high intensity uh stress response.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, so what I was gonna then mention, so then we're you know, a little bit heightened in our life because society doesn't tell us to slow down, it doesn't encourage that. The, you know, we're picking up a phone on our rest moments and we're either heightened because of social media or news or whatnot coming at us from every angle. And when your body stays heightened like that, it gets addicted to stress and it doesn't know how to come down. So even if you come, you know, sit outside and take a breath, you're still your mind's still going. So what yoga can do is start to train that how to ride the stress resiliency wave. You know, maybe uh we are in a more uh energetic pose and we're feeling expansive and we're really focusing on that engagement aspect. And then I'll have you come down into a child's pose, which starts to drop you into that parasympathetic nervous system. So physically we can build a little bit of hormetic stress through a pose or a uh sequence. And then I always ask in every class I do to then maybe it's just taking a pause and taking one hand to your heart, one hand to your belly, bringing everything into the midline, which makes your body feel safe pro-perceptibly in uh in space. And so we start to build that stress resiliency into our practice, and then physically I can invite you to take that off the mat. Are you, you know, needing to be in a back-to-back work meeting that's really intense? Do you then roll into checking your email? Or do you take a pause or do you walk outside? Or um, I don't know, like I have uh like tea time is me time, or you know, you have a thing where I will make myself a cup of tea and then it's sort of a ritual, and it might only take five minutes, right? But you're then coming back into that, you know, more grounded state where the stress can come down. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And so you change your nervous system with tea time is me time. Is that is that just the actual holding the cup of tea or the preparing the cup of tea? Taking it, yeah. Yeah, you're beginning to um to lower that stress response. You're beginning to pause.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, so our our body is always looking for balance, it's such a beautiful system. Um sometimes we work against that because our body has the ability to push through. Uh, and when we are disengaged, this is the other thing that yoga can do to help calm the central nervous system is drop back into your felt sense, your interiorception, the the body sort of leading the way. Um when we're disconnected from that because we're just being human doings and not human beings, uh, we don't clue into the fact that we need to take a pause. And again, it's not on you. I'm not blaming anyone, but society says go, go, go. And especially if you are working and have kids and are taking care of parents and have friends and obligations, and you are helping a neighbor, like there's not enough time in the day.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, but but to this conversation, there is. We just need to take it. We need to exactly wear it.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Well, and what it and the other thing I want to mention that yoga can help, and I sort of touched on this a little bit, is we get stuck in the stress cycle. Yes. And the when I mentioned running away from something, the muscles that tighten up are the psoas, the hamstrings, the traps, the core, because we might have to run all the blood brushes to our extremities, leaves our digestive system. And that puts us on guard. And those muscles don't get, we don't get the energy out somatically or movement-wise or uh lengthening, relaxing wise. And then we fit, and those are all the muscles that stay tight. 70% of the information that comes from your central nervous system is from your body to your brain. Only 30% comes down. So if we're trying to rationalize getting out of stress, we're basically stuck in this cycle.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

We're missing a yeah, we're missing a cue. Is that what you refer to as the internal brain? Oops. Sorry, we're speaking at the same time. I apologize.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Um, which is another way that yoga can help build stress resiliency, is working from the bottom up, ground uh body up to release those really tight muscles. And then you have more space in your brain to say, I actually feel a little tense. I'm going to take a pause. That's another way we build stress resiliency into, or I build stress resiliency into what yoga can support.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Beautiful, beautiful. You mentioned that you work on the internal terrain. Is that what you were just describing? Or is there something more to the concept of air quotes internal terrain?

SPEAKER_01 18:59

So your internal terrain is basically everything going on internally. Um I am a yoga teacher. I am also uh I know quite a bit about health and wellness in the holistic system, but that's not, I mean, I'm not a certified or anything beyond uh my yoga. So I try to really create that internal balance, that internal terrain, starting from letting go of those fight or flight muscles. Um also hormonally passion for it. I um have had two kids. I understand the hormonal uh fluctuations. Um I also was in forced menopause for a year through chemo. Um and then I got my period back for three months and I've gone back into menopause. Okay. Now it's not forced menopause, so it's a lot smoother, but that those hormonal fluctuations, uh, and I think a lot of people who've been in the fertility journey and on the uh you know IUI, uh IUD or not IUD, IU5, um, or pregnant or postnatal, they have those hormonal fluctuations. Right. Uh there's certain axes through your body, the hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal access, the HPA, hypothalamus, pituitary ovarian, HPO, that you can really help stabilize to support some of those hormonal fluctuations through yoga. Um there's quite a few poses to tone that access. So so that internal terrain that I speak of can be supported through yoga as well. Uh, a lot of that will help regulate blood sugar, insulin, which can sometimes be indicators of infertility. So that internal terrain is is all all of the above.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

The whole symphony. The whole symphony. Okay, great. Um, you know, you you touched upon, you know, your for your your own experience of having gone through chemotherapy, and there are reasons sometimes why someone is you know needing to do a quick IVF to read you know our egg retrieval because of a cancer diagnosis. So So I've put together a free 28-day detox masterclass that you can access by clicking on the link below. With your permission, I'd like to go down that road a little bit and have you share with us what did you learn? What were your experiences, what did you learn, and what can you share for the listening and viewing audience who may themselves or may know someone who is uh needing to navigate this this you know kind of uh time of of either forced menopause, as you say, or just the the the emotional turmoil as well as the physical and physiological.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah. So my cancer journey was unexpected. I was 43 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Um I was triple positive, which is hormone positive and HER2 positive. The good the that those are all uh natural hormones and a natural protein that your body uh makes. It's just an overproduction. Um I needed to have a massectomy, chemo, radiation, a year of targeted therapy that Western medicine saved my life. Yeah uh hurts you especially as a is an aggressive form. And just within the 10 years, we have this targeted therapy that has allowed many, many more women to survive. And I want to acknowledge uh everyone who's come before me on this journey because they have paved the way and their bravery, um, their uh resiliency, um, and just also the research that has has resulted in a lot of the therapies we have now. So I really uh, you know, everyone who's come before. Um I chose to have the Western medicine treatment because it saved my life. Um the thing about Western medicine is it's more of a we can fix a problem, but we might not be able to balance and support the healing. And this goes for a lot of uh, you know, a broken bone. You still have to have physical therapy, or maybe you have to have fascial manipulation. Um we can get pregnant with the support of Western medicine, but we have to sort of again lay the healthy terrain really in order to support it. So I did all the Western medicine, um, but in order to support my immune system and everything else that comes with internal terrain, I really took a complementary medical uh path. The naturopathic oncologist who helped support me through nutrition, through supplements. I use my own uh yoga knowledge to really create safety in my body through my central system. Because again, when we feel threatened, whether it's uh external, internal, how we perceive, um, our body wants to protect us.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

And when it wants to protect us, which is a beautiful thing, it doesn't have any energy left to heal. So what I learned through this journey was just, I mean, I one of the foundational things I do now on a daily basis is I just put one hand on my heart, one hand on my belly, take a couple deep breaths, and just repeat like, you are safe. There's no threat. You are I am safe. And it's such a simple practice, and yet it so resonates with you're pulling everything into the midline, which when you physically feel safe in space, your body knows how to organize. When your physical body knows how to organize, your mental, emotional, energetic body starts to feel safe, and your nervous system starts to feel safe.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Um, so that is something that was foundational through my journey. Uh also learning to trust your body again.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

And listen.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

This can apply through everything I teach: fertility, prenatal, postnatal. Um, I think there's a moment that every woman goes through when they get a diagnosis, or when they can't uh make a baby, or when their physical body feels discomfort, either pre or postnatal. Uh, we drop into this self-talk of something's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

My body is against me.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Exactly. My body's failing me, or I have failed my body. And if I can just I want to highlight again, because the listeners are uh for this conversation our fertility and and the science, the research has shown that an infertility struggle has the same degree of stress or an equivalent degree of stress to a life-threatening diagnosis. So we're talking the same thing, and that's really what I want. I wanted to highlight that you know that you went through this, but also wrap in, envelop back in that the fertility struggle itself can benefit from these very same practices that are yoga.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Oh, I mean, that's what has dropped me into the fertility space. Um, so I teach fertility yoga, prenatal yoga, postnatal yoga, oncology yoga, yoga for healing, and someone from the outside is like, that's really random. It's not at all. It's in this container of you know, holding space for yourself, uh, build rebuilding the trust, um, dropping into your felt sense, which women from the very beginning, especially of our generation, have been told to disconnect from the body. And so it is all about finding safety in the body. And uh, you know, one of the things I like to talk about that I did learn on my journey, um, and then I can apply to everyone uh that I teach, what happens how we how we talk to ourselves. There's a practice in yoga called ahimsa, it's one of the yoga sutras, it's uh nonviolence. And it can I talk a lot about how nonviolent communication to ourselves. We automatically go to a place of scarcity in our mind. It's ingrained in our gene code, it's how we protect ourselves. So the work is coming back, coming back, coming back home, coming back to that heartfelt sense of abundance and um and just giving safety to our body. And one of the ways we can give safety to our body is treating our body like it, like we would a sick child. If a child is sick, you're not like, I can't believe you're sick, like you betrayed me because I can't go to work. Yes, goodness, how can I support you? How can I prop you up? Can I bring you some soup? So when you are going through an infertility journey or an unexpected longer journey to get pregnant, uh remembering that you can cultivate that internal heart expansive sense, which is connected to your womb, which creates safety in your nervous system. You know, what can I do for you? You're you're safe. I can take care of you. Like, you know, you're doing so much, and I'm here to listen to the signals that you are giving me, the information you're giving me, and take time to figure out how to support you.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Right. And what I'm hearing is is reminding ourselves that, you know, you you are a whole person, you are whole and well having an experience of disruption, shall we say, or imbalance. And that by reminding ourselves that we can take care of ourselves, it then raises the agency that we need in order to engage with the issue. Um, you know, if we're if we're needing to go off to IVF or we're needing to go to an oncologist, we we be approach that with a more holistic uh sense of self. And and I think that that's only going to improve the outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

And on so many levels, it's a beautiful opportunity to learn more about yourself. We are taught through society, through Western medicine that there's our body and our mind and our energy are pieced.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

And we're asking you through yoga, through acupuncture, through uh uh these lenses to think of the system as a whole and integrated mind, body, energy, um, spirituality, uh uh the emotional aspect. Um their whole system's practices. Yeah, when that's all integrated, we can have a much more expansive view. And another thing that I I really concentrated on during my um the the two aspects of yoga. So I got trained in uh 2011, and I came to it through the physical. And then as I went through my training, it was to deepen my practice, but not to teach.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

I am not an outward person, I'm not gonna teach. I don't have enough, you know, I had some self-doubt like everyone does. I I who would listen to me? Like, what do I have to offer? Um, and then again, I so then I started teaching just because I something uh it just something inside of me was like, well, maybe like maybe you do. And I sort of just basically pushed myself through the self-doubt. And I was terrified every time I taught and I was standing in front of class, but I also would sort of this before I knew a lot about nervous system or intuition or felt sense, I would sort of drop into my heart and say, fake it till you make it. Like nobody here knows that you are nervous. And so I would lead with that thought, and you just sort of, you know, work through it, and um, and then same thing, I didn't want to teach prenatal. I was like, I don't have the knowledge. And my teacher who I was taking prenatal with was like, you do, like you you got this, and um it just you know it allows it allowed me to sort of continue moving forward, but I digress. Uh the breath practice and the um meditation practice was always eluding me. I got cancer and started to realize how foundationally supportive the diaphragm is to so many aspects. It's our vagus nerve entry point. Yeah, our vagus nerve goes through it. The vagal nerve comes from the medilla oblongata in the back of your brain, it comes out behind the ears, it wraps around uh the esophagus, down into the stomach, and that goes through the diaphragm. So every inhale and exhale is toning your vagal nerve. And then from an immune sense, your diaphragm sits on your thoracic duct, which is where your lymph, which is the foundational part of your immune system, that's where everything gets cleaned out of. Uh moves through your body, which you have to move, your lymph doesn't have a pump. So another way that yoga really supports you, and it uh it's flushed into your thoracic duct, into your circulatory system, out into your detoxifying organs. And it's how we get rid of excess hormones, stress hormones, uh cellular waste, cancer cells that the body catches, um diaphragm sits on top of it. So every time you take a long, slow breath, it's massaging that thoracic duct and supporting your immune system.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

It is being that arterial pump, if you will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

So when I learned that, I was like, I can get down with breath. So a lot of breath work. Um, and then the meditation piece, when I I started doing more research about how does meditation support your body? Um, I will just do one short tell share one short story. Chemo, before you get chemo, I had six rounds. Um, and I did not lose my hair. I did cold capping and uh a nutrition protocol that allowed me to not lose my hair. I lost about 50%. But uh that's another part of the internal terrain. How do you support your body even as you're you know pouring a chemical in it that is saving you but also affects every cell in your body? Right. Um so you get blood tests two days before chemo to make sure your body's healthy enough, immune system function. And after my second round of chemo, my liver function went down. Not enough that I couldn't do chemo, but enough that the doctor was like, all right, let's just keep an eye on this. This is very typical, it tends to continue to dip. And I said to myself, knowing what I know, so the detoxifying aspect of your body, your liver is very foundational, your breath as well. Um, I don't want my liver going down. Like, this is what's going to make sure that this chemo moves through me. Um, and so I found a uh meditation uh that uh Joe Dispanza, who is a meditation sort of from the medical viewpoint, he's a quantum physics guy. Uh, the blessings of the energy systems. And it's energetically sort of chakra based. Uh, there's an additional chakra that he an energy center he calls them. Um, and I sort of made my own up because his is like three hours long. It's all about going from convergent energy, or we're just really, really focused on one thing, which one thing, and we forget that whole listing. You still hear me?

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yes, you your your image froze, but I can hear you. There we go. Now you're back. Yes, something, something happened.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

So it's convergent, like you know, my uterus, my uterus, my uterus, and then we forget the integration over the whole body. And you get more of a divergent focus, which is spaciousness around. And so I did this energy meditation, which I will bring into the fertility yoga series, right? Where I imagine I went through the chakras, and I just all the chakras are connected to uh certain organs, certain blood systems, um, certain hormonal points. I envision the space around each organ, reproductive organs. This is included. And then I imagined the chakra system, the light, the energy sort of radiating out. And so you start to expand the capabilities and the capacities of that system. Beautiful. And I went back for my test three weeks later, and my enzymes were my liver enzymes were completely where they were supposed to be, and they never went down again.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

So through this oncology journey, I really from a medical perspective, from a data-driven science perspective, I have proof that meditation, that energy focus, as well as the breath supporting me through my journey, and I bring that into fertility yoga. We'll do a lot of uh diaphragmatic cultivation. You also, your diaphragm and your pelvic floor are supposed to work in symmetry with the intradominal pressure. A lot of us are dysregulated, our pelvic floor is gripping because we're in heightened stress, it gets weak, then it doesn't move down, lengthen. Uh, that can cause constriction in the lower part of our body, pelvis, reproductive organs, the diaphragm gets weak. So we really I do a lot of pelvic floor support, which is nervous system support, and not only strength for releasing and creating that spaciousness around our reproductive organs, our uterus, our ovaries, uh, but we'll also release your central nervous system tightness. And it also serves you through your pregnancy, your postnatal, and beyond.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

The labor and delivery for that matter, as well. So I want to I want to hone in a little bit on the yoga class, the fertility yoga class. So, viewers, listeners, this is a live in-person class. So if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and particularly in Marin County, the information will be in the show notes to register and learn. And then uh Ash and I were talking off-camera a little bit about the potential for having this be something that can be an online service as well. She said she did uh suggest that she does do one-on-one online classes. So until such time as that other course is is available for you know uh an instant download. Perhaps um doing a one-on-one would be something that that would be of use to you if you're not you know physically uh in our in our zip codes. Um and and I want to be mindful of yours and the listening viewers' time because of course we all we do live in a time space continuum and everybody's got things to do. So I want to first say thank you for your time. I want to thank the listeners and viewers for taking the time to spend with us because you could be you could have done anything in these past 45 minutes, but we hope that you found this conversation useful and interesting and that there are some takeaways that you can do. And Ashley, toward that end, are there any parting words that you would like to make sure that listeners and viewers leave with so that um so that they can uh you know improve their fertile health uh through yoga fertility?

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Yeah. Um, so the series, just to touch on it briefly, the other really important part is the community. You come and be in community with other women, going through a similar journey. Uh, and that also hugely got me through cancer and every other aspect of my life. It's the foundation of MetaMama, creating community through this uh through the journey of um, you know, these touchstones in a woman's life. Um the fertility yoga class has a, and you can look on the website, it's at metayogastudio.com. Uh, it's under the MetaMama drop-down tab under events. Um, each week has a theme: safety in the body, creating tri energy, dropping back into your uh sense of self. Um and I have created a workbook. So there are there's a question that we will unpack each each session. It's an eight-week session and it's a closed container. So if you sign up, you don't have to worry about other people coming in. It's a really intimate uh experience, and I want to respect that. Um so it's a there's a workbook, there's a question that we will uh either work on during class or it's a take-home. Um the poses are laid out so that you could take them home and continue to do them. Um, and then the theme of each class is is there so you can you know ruminate each week on on what what the theme is and then maybe take a deeper dive on your own. Um I'll finish with legs up the wall, like we were talking about, because that is a foundational posture that everyone should be doing. Okay, great. Special fertility, that hand over heart, hand over womb. Uh, and a mat, you can just legs up the wall is you bring your back on the floor, you bring your hips towards the wall, and then you switch around so your legs are up the wall, you can lay on a blanket, uh, not really elevated, just to be mindful of the back. Um, hand over heart, hand over womb, the expansiveness you can envision that heart expansiveness, and then that light sort of surrounding your heart and connected to your womb, relaxing the pelvic floor, relaxing the jaw because it's connected to the pelvic floor. Two to five minutes. Um, and uh just cultivating abundance, higher frequency emotion, which is abundance, um uh love, uh uh joy, um, just imagining that sort of radiating from your heart. And that is something you can do two to five minutes daily. It's really supportive, taking deeper breaths. I do want to say if you've just recently had an egg retrieval, that is not you want your ovaries to settle back down, but a nice variation is on the ground in Supta Bhadakanasana, which is soles of the feet together, knees out to the side, something under those legs so you're not collapsing into the joints, so pillows maybe. And then same idea, hand to heart, hand to womb. Imagine your ovaries just starting to relax back into their position. Um, and that's probably for you know a couple days, and then you can go back to legs up the wall.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Uh after a uh, you know, uh uh what's it called? The when you the words just escape, when you put the eggs in after you know embryo transfer?

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Transfer. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Um it's controversial. Some doctors say no legs up the wall. My understanding of philosophy is that can support uh that transfer. Um, if always talk to your doctor. Um that's something that you feel the trust is there and that you want to take, you know, their advice. But yeah, the only contraindication is if you are just having uh a retrieval.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Yeah, so that's because that those those ovaries will have been injured. I mean, they're they're they're using a needle to aspirate the eggs out of your ovaries, so they're injured, and you don't necessarily want to be bringing more blood flow until they settle down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

And then again, just that idea that you know, ovaries, thank you so much for that hard work. You are safe. You are safe. Like I got you. We're doing, we're in this together.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Beautiful. Oh, Ashley, this has been a lovely conversation. As I say, uh listeners, viewers, check out the show notes. You'll you'll be able to uh uh connect with with Ashley through the website, and her email is uh I think at in the website as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

My email's not in the website, it's Ashley at metayogastudio.com. All right, and I do offer privates one-on-one in person or not. Um, and if you're in the Bay Area, please come check out the Meta Mama offerings uh kids yoga, teen yoga, family yoga, prenatal, postnatal, mom and tots.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

You can come bring your uh toddler and they just bop around the studio with other toddlers while you get some yoga time. I love that. Uhcology yoga, uh, yeah, lots of offerings.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Beautiful. Well, I thank you for creating the the meta yoga studio. I know many of my patients have benefited from including meta yoga uh classes in their fertility journey, in their pregnancy journey, and in their postpartum journey as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

So um my honor, and I also want to credit uh Amy Greywitt, who started the studio, who's so open. She has such an open, abundant mindset. And she invited me to help her create MetaMama. And um, it's just been a beautiful partnership, and I really appreciate the MetaStudio uh team. Beautiful that allowed me to, you know, wax poetic about all things. We didn't even get into fascia. We'll have to do that next.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

We'll do that another time. We'll we'll pick up one for uh pregnancy and postpartum. I'm sure that's where fascia will also have an important highlight as well. So thank you, thank you, thank you for your time. Viewers, listeners, if you're in the Bay Area and can get to the studio in person, I highly recommend it. That link will be also in the show notes as well. And so until next time, we will just sign off with what we often sign off with here at Health University class dismissed.