Episode 9: Navigating the Emotional and Mental Journey of Infertility with Ashley Holmes

Infertility affects 1 in 6 people across the globe, but rarely is it talked about publicly and many women suffer in silence. If you’ve experienced the rollercoaster of a fertility journey, or you know someone who is, this episode is for you.

My guest, Ashley Holmes, a holistic fertility coach, shares how navigating your inner world and making the time to process your emotional experience helps to make sense of your reality whether or not your fertility journey results in the arrival of a baby.

This is a tough topic and this conversation is very powerful.

Episode Highlights:

• The lowdown on my own fertility journey
• What happens when you end up with no baby after years of trying
• Accepting ‘what is’ even though it’s not what you want
• Feeling whole and complete regardless of your circumstances
• The power thought patterns have on the way you feel
• How to sit with difficult feelings
• Techniques for processing through uncomfortable emotions
• Dealing with deep rooted anger
• Managing the effects of cumulative stress 
• How Ashley uses Ayurveda and energy healing to create mind & body balance
• The 3 Ayurvedic constitutions
• Becoming conscious of what you’re not only putting into your body but onto it too
• Finding a supportive community to journey with rather than trying to cope alone

Acceptance, courage and inner work and essential components on what can be a rough ride for some women. I found this conversation with Ashley very insightful and I hope, if infertility is something that’s affected you, you listen and know that you’re not alone.

Access the FREE chapter of Ashley’s book Nourish here.

Visit Ashley’s website here.

Connect with Ashley on Instagram @ashley_holmes3202 

If you've got big goals, but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Check out two of my FREE online workshops:

My 7 Step Formula for Getting Unstuck

4 Ways to Stop Procrastination in its Tracks

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi folks welcome to episode 9 of the second season of the lemons and pineapples. Podcast today's conversation is about navigating, the emotional and mental journey of infertility. It's a big topic and much like menopause, which I had a conversation about in Episode 6. It's 1 that's very important to talk about

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Emma O'Brien: my guest is Ashley Holmes. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about her before we jump in.

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Emma O'Brien: Ashley supports women struggling with infertility by creating a fertile foundation within. Women are empowered through one-on-one coaching to nourish their mind, body, and spirit, navigating the mental and emotional roller coaster ride by embodying holistic practices to ease stress and heal. Naturally, Ashley is a best-selling author and aims to bring light and awareness to infertility, so that women don't suffer silently welcome to the Podcast Ashley.

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Ashley Holmes: Thank you. I'm excited to be here, and to have this conversation, and to bring some light to it.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, I think it's super important. So I'm going to share very openly here. I had my daughter when I was 22. I'm now 43. So I think that was a time in my life, and I think it's a time in most women's lives where you can literally get pregnant by sharing a chair with a man. Obviously we did a little bit more than sharing a chair, but it's generally when the younger you are the easier it is to get pregnant.

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Emma O'Brien: So when I met my now husband I don't think I was particularly faced about having any more children. I don't think he's not. These doesn't have children.

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Emma O'Brien: We threw caution to the wind for a while nothing happened. So we just kind of went, okay, that's how it's gonna be, and

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Emma O'Brien: off we go. We've got a bunch of dogs, and life's gone in a different direction. But

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Emma O'Brien: in preparing for today I was reflecting on it, and I thought I don't think I would feel that way

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Emma O'Brien: if I hadn't have already had

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Emma O'Brien: a child.

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Emma O'Brien: I'm coming at it from a space of it being.

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Emma O'Brien: You know I've got a I've got a kid. I don't

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Emma O'Brien: feel the need to have another one. I don't know how I feel.

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Emma O'Brien: If I hadn't have had Rosie and my daughter.

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Emma O'Brien: So my 1st question for you and I think this is quite a heavy question to ask is, How do you help clients

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Emma O'Brien: navigate and get to a level of acceptance when there is no baby at the end of a fertility journey.

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Ashley Holmes: I think that

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Ashley Holmes: it's really a journey of going inward and finding that peace for yourself, and it's not going to be a 1 and done thing. And I think that's the important thing to know about healing is that there will be times and there will be moments where this is going to surface, and you might have tears in your eyes, and you know it might

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Ashley Holmes: affect you for a long time. But I think that

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Ashley Holmes: just knowing, I think that if you can know that you put everything you possibly could into it, and that

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Ashley Holmes: if that is what your Karma is for this lifetime, there are still plenty of ways that you can give love and to love children, and to spread your love, and to give your love in that way, that

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Ashley Holmes: to find just what works for you, what resonates with you, whether you work with children or you know whether you just you know you're a dog, mom, or whatever it is for you. There are many ways to sort of fill up your cup. If you can't have that child naturally, or the way that you desire to have it.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, and I think it might. It must be very hard because I look at it. And I think

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Emma O'Brien: you know, we we had conversations about it. And you know I saw the guy who was like, do you want to do anything about this? So I said, Well, no, not not really cause at 43 you're starting to push, it being quite difficult and a very expensive exercise as well.

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Emma O'Brien: and I do sometimes have moments where I just think, you know.

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Emma O'Brien: we're going to get to, you know, retirement age.

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Emma O'Brien: All things being equal, we get to retirement age, you know, and my, you know my daughter's around.

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Emma O'Brien: and I think that's great. I

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Emma O'Brien: I feel for

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Emma O'Brien: feel for my partner's parents a little bit in not having any grandchildren.

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Emma O'Brien: I think that's that's quite a tough one again, like you said, it's it's it is an interesting take on it. Maybe that's also there.

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Emma O'Brien: comma.

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Emma O'Brien: But what are the steps you would take someone through to really try and reach that level of acceptance, because for some people I don't know that they buy the

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Emma O'Brien: the comma

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Emma O'Brien: solve, I guess, for it might not be quite enough, and I found in my own coaching practice

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Emma O'Brien: one of the biggest ways you create. Unhappiness in life is literally kicking against what is and fighting reality.

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Emma O'Brien: So what are some ways you would work with your clients to actually help them get to that level of acceptance.

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Ashley Holmes: Well, you you sort of nailed the needle on the head there with

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Ashley Holmes: accepting what is, you know, we have expectations. We have attachments to what we thought things would look like be like should be. And that's really what creates our internal suffering that we experience in the external world. So it really is

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Ashley Holmes: a healing of the mind, body, and spirit together. You know. How are you feeling whole and complete as you are, even if

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Ashley Holmes: there isn't a child here present that you birthed into this world. And it's really just that self-love, that self care, that self compassion for yourself, because it's really important to not beat yourself up about it. Not think that there's something wrong with you, not think that you were broken, and that's why it didn't happen. You know there's a lot of

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Ashley Holmes: things that can go on within your mind, and yet you are the only one that can truly tap into your subconscious mind. So it's really one-to-one in working with the emotions, the feelings, the thoughts that are coming up for you, and probably

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Ashley Holmes: lots of those are looping and aren't serving you in in the trajectory that you want your life to go. So, just becoming aware and cognizant of them, and through that awareness you can help to shift. And really.

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Ashley Holmes: and yoga, they're called some scaras which are like these mental grooves that are within your brain, and so.

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Ashley Holmes: by healing and working with them. You can

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Ashley Holmes: lessen that groove, and it's not so painful, and it doesn't come as frequently. And you can

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Ashley Holmes: just begin to create new neural pathways in the brain that are

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Ashley Holmes: pointing you in a different direction.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, I think I think that's that's really important. There's quite a few things in there that I think are are really great is

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Emma O'Brien: 1st of all, is having the awareness of the thoughts that you're having. So we have this lovely model of circumstances, create thoughts, thoughts, create emotions and emotions create behaviors or actions. So you've kind of got to work

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Emma O'Brien: backwards to get to the source of the problem, which is the thoughts. That's where our trouble starts, isn't it? And it's where the the healing begins as well. And I'm I'm glad you've brought that up, and it's

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Emma O'Brien: digging into what are the looping dialogues that are happening for you, and being

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Emma O'Brien: brave enough to sit with the difficult feelings.

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Emma O'Brien: I think that's the hard work, and that's the hard work I find coaching people.

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Emma O'Brien: you know. I I tend to coach women who are going through life transitions, career transitions. And it is sitting in that messy middle sitting in the space of the the anger and the fear and the disappointment, and the sadness, and

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Emma O'Brien: just being courageous enough to to sit there and process through it.

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Ashley Holmes: Definitely. We are not taught to sit with discomfort, and for a lot of us we have been taught to suppress those emotions within us because they're not seen as

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Ashley Holmes: valid, or you don't feel like you can freely express them. Obviously you're not allowed to hurt people with your anger, but you are allowed to feel. Anger and anger is one of the broad spectrums of emotions, and that is often something that surfaces a lot with the women that I work with is the anger is guilt. It's shame. It's these emotions that

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Ashley Holmes: we are uncomfortable navigating because we have been led to believe that it's not okay to feel, have express these emotions. Yet we all have them. And so it's really just giving us

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Ashley Holmes: ourselves permission to move through them. And we can do that in so many ways. And Yoga is a beautiful way to actually

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Ashley Holmes: understand the organs, and where we house our emotions, and how we house our emotions and give ourselves the space and grace to move through them, and to actually let things go. Because it's 1 thing to say, yeah, I let it go. It's another thing to actually physically embody that and process that and do it.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, I think that's it. This is one thing to say. You've let go of it. It's another thing to put it down and walk away and know that you have actually let go of it.

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Emma O'Brien: That's the journey. I think it's a life's work going through this this inner work. It's been. It's been a journey I've been on for about 8 years now of this real self work journey, and it gets easier. I think the the longer you've been doing it, you understand? Oh, there's my old friend, you know, anxiety arriving.

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Emma O'Brien: and it becomes

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Emma O'Brien: quicker to process through it. They don't ever go away very frustratingly. But but but that's part of being being human. We have to learn to navigate them, and, like you've said.

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Emma O'Brien: learning to process anger without

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Emma O'Brien: spewing it onto

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Emma O'Brien: somebody else.

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Emma O'Brien: So we've talked about Yoga as a as a great tool for for helping to work through emotions. What are a couple of other tools you help and and advise women to use if they're processing through anger cause. I can imagine if you're at a stage where you've spent a lot of money.

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Emma O'Brien: Not just, you know. It's not about the money. But you've spent a lot of money, a lot of time. There's been a lot of stress happening on a fertility journey, and you've got nothing to show for it. I'd I think I'd be absolutely seething with rage. To be quite honest.

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Emma O'Brien: how? How do you help people process through that? So they can kind of go through a grieving process.

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Ashley Holmes: It's it's very important to

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Ashley Holmes: to feel your anger, to feel the grief.

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Ashley Holmes: and to give yourself the time and space to do that, because we often just try to rush through or think I'll deal with this later, or

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Ashley Holmes: I don't want to feel this to deal with this right now, and we're just shoving it under the rug, and yet it's still there, and it will, it will surface. You will one time

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Ashley Holmes: at some point in time feel like a volcano about to erupt, and that's how I felt on my yoga mat was.

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Ashley Holmes: I didn't, and I don't perceive myself as an angry person, and yet I was like what is bubbling and surfacing beneath me that had been pushed down for so long. And so I think that

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Ashley Holmes: all of us really need to

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Ashley Holmes: come to understand that we need to be looking internally and not always externally, for answers for everything, and to become aware of what is going on within us, you know.

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Ashley Holmes: is our stomach, and not stay in and day out, because this is making us physically and emotionally sick because we're at the end of our rope, and that's not a place I want anybody to be.

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Emma O'Brien: No, no, and I think that's just so important is sitting sitting with it. I think half the battle with difficult feelings is acknowledging them, and like we've said, just learning to sit with them, even if you sit for 30 seconds with it, cause it's hard, I think the you know, like you've shared.

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Emma O'Brien: We're not taught to do it, and women especially are not taught to do it. You're told, you know. Don't make a fuss, don't kick things, you know. Don't. Don't you know it's fine for little boys to be angry, and for, and even for men to be angry, it seems to be that it's more acceptable. But for women to get angry, it's

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Emma O'Brien: it's a problem. And you know, we like you said we don't have the tools to be able to deal with

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Emma O'Brien: this volcano of emotions that comes up. So it's it's great that that you're doing that work with folks. My second question on a slightly lighter note is for folks who are on a journey of trying to conceive.

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Emma O'Brien: How do you

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Emma O'Brien: help them? So I know from my my experience I'm a heart meth practitioner

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Emma O'Brien: stress is incredibly bad for your

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Emma O'Brien: body. It's bad for your heart. It kicks out loads of hormones, and I imagine, for

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Emma O'Brien: when you're trying to conceive. Having a bunch of cortisol and adrenaline running around is really, really counterproductive. But it is a stressful process. So how do you help folks manage that stress so they can increase their chances of being able to to have a baby.

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Ashley Holmes: Really, that is

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Ashley Holmes: the biggest piece and part of it is that it is stressful. It is said to be as stressful as say, cancer. Yet it's not given the same acknowledgement or recognition as something that is weighing on you so heavily and is so stressful. And

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Ashley Holmes: it is an ongoing stress. Right? It's a cumulative stress. Okay? Well, it's not this month it'll be next month, you know. It wasn't this year. It'll be next year, you know. We'll have that maybe a Christmas next year. It is really just this

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Ashley Holmes: thinking in the future not being present, and

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Ashley Holmes: really a journey to come back home to yourself. So

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Ashley Holmes: the stress we use, Yoga, we use breath work and meditations, and Chakra balancing and Reiki and I use the sister science to Yoga, which is Ayurveda to nourish yourself optimally, because

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Ashley Holmes: often when we are so stressed and we're full of cortisol and adrenaline, we're not reaching for the healthiest things, either, you know, because we are just trying to make it through. And

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Ashley Holmes: Ayurveda is the science of life and healing the mind and body together naturally. And when you understand your ayurvedic, inborn constitution, it just allows you to flow through life with more ease and realize what is putting you out of balance, and what can help to bring you back into balance. And that was a big lesson for me, and something that I needed to learn, because

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Ashley Holmes: my ayurvedic constitution is a pita, so I'm primarily composed of fire and water. And yet I was the one teaching hot Yoga classes one after the other, and just adding more fuel to my fire and realizing that spicy food and those things put me out of balance, and to just create more harmony within. And then everything functions more optimally. And you're actually getting the nutrients that you need from the food that you're eating.

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Ashley Holmes: and therefore

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Ashley Holmes: everything is functioning that much more optimally for you. And I think that what is healthy for someone else, what is working for someone else may not necessarily be serving you.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, I think it's so powerful, isn't it? And I just want to speak to what you talked about with when we're stressed. We don't make good decisions. And

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Emma O'Brien: I I'm I'm glad you brought that up. We don't make good decisions in our lives and our interpersonal relationships. We, you know, we also don't make good decisions about what we want to eat, because I think often we're driven by

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Emma O'Brien: the the adrenaline of the cortisol, which will, I imagine, push you to snacking on things that taste good cause you. You're feeling depleted. So you want an instant kind of gratification, and of course none of that helps to feed your body and prep it for anybody sharing it with you for a while, either. So could you talk a little bit about the the Ayurvedic types that you've just touched on here.

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Ashley Holmes: So there is vata which is composed primarily of air and space. And for a lot of people

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Ashley Holmes: these are the people that may be eating salads and lots of fruits and lots of vegetables. Yet this is raw, cold food that is really actually putting your body further out of balance, because

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Ashley Holmes: it's taking so much

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Ashley Holmes: digestive fire to actually assimilate it and get it into your body. And so I think that is

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Ashley Holmes: really a big misconception that the health world has, you know, if you're doing this and you're being healthy and you're nourishing yourself. And yet for vata people that is not optimal for them at all. You know they want to be eating warm, nourishing foods that are easy for them to digest and take into their system. So

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Ashley Holmes: that is a

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Ashley Holmes: a highlight for the vata type. I spoke about myself of the Peda type. And then there's the Kafa type, which is earth and water, and so these are the people

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Ashley Holmes: and the type that

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Ashley Holmes: maybe shouldn't be having such heavily

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Ashley Holmes: dense foods.

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Ashley Holmes: You know, those are the types of people that really can use more movement. They can use lighter foods, you know they they're very grounded people, but they

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Ashley Holmes: sometimes need a little bit of a kickstart to get going, and you know

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Ashley Holmes: it's just understanding yourself. Your body working in rhythm with the seasons and with what is available to you wherever you are in the world, you know you're in the UK. I'm in Canada, but

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Ashley Holmes: just finding what is available to you, and you know, at your local farmers market, and really just being conscious and aware of what we're putting in our body and on our bodies, and realizing that there are a lot of toxins within our environments.

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Emma O'Brien: And how does one find out your type you've just shared? There are 3. How do you know which is you.

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Ashley Holmes: There's, you know, you can do an ioretic quiz to find out, and I go through a very thorough one with my clients where, you know, I'm asking for childhood pictures where I'm looking for things to see. What is the constant from then to now, right? Because we change a lot through the years. But there are distinguishing things and features that that are you, and those don't change, no matter, you know, through time and space. So

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Ashley Holmes: really just

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Ashley Holmes: a deep dive, and also once clients work with me, you know we dive into. It's not just your body constitution. You also have a mind constitution, and for me. I may be peta in my body, but I'm better in my mind, which means I'm prone to overthinking which a lot of us are, and so it's very

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Ashley Holmes: It's what I'm seeking.

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Ashley Holmes: I need to be even more aware and even more present when I find myself in those

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Ashley Holmes: in those loops in those spirals, and kitch myself before I continue down the rabbit hole.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, brilliant. It's face fascinating. I find this is just so interesting the the different systems. And I think Ayurveda so cool because it's it's holistic. It looks at every part of you and like you said not just what you're eating, what you're putting on your body, your thoughts.

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Emma O'Brien: what, what action you're taking, and you know how the whole thing fits together.

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Emma O'Brien: Could you share to close us off some advice you have for women who are in the midst of a fertility journey who are listening to this episode today.

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Ashley Holmes: I would really love to share that. You're not alone because everyone who's experiencing it often is the only one in their inner circle that's going through it, therefore, can feel very lonely and isolating, so to find support, and to seek support.

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Ashley Holmes: to help you, to navigate this with more ease and peace and grace, because it is possible for you, and I think that earlier on that you can do that, and to set yourself up for success, no matter what happens, because even if there isn't a baby when people finish working with me yet

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Ashley Holmes: they have drastically improved their health and well-being, no matter what, and from the time I need them till the time our journey ends, and it doesn't end, you know. I'm you know, forever, friends, and am always available to offer reiki session when you know there's a turbulent time or those types of things. I really think it's important to know that someone has your back, and truly, to just navigate

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Ashley Holmes: the waters that you're going through, because we will always have obstacles, and there will always be things that we're faced with and things that we have to overcome, and to really fill your toolbox with what resonates with you, you know, this may be a different line of thinking, or a different

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Ashley Holmes: perspective from the medical world, and I can just attest to. I've done it both ways. I have twins. I have used a fertility clinic, and I also conceive naturally, by what I am offering to

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Ashley Holmes: to people that choose to work with me, and I know which way that I would choose, because I didn't think it was possible for me to conceive without a clinic. And it absolutely was so. It really goes to show you the limiting beliefs that we can hold, and that we also have the power to change them.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, I think that's such powerful advice. Thank you for sharing that with us, and thank you for sharing your wisdom today, Ashley. It's been, you know, like I said, this is a

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Emma O'Brien: a tough topic for people, and and it requires a lot of inner work to navigate the the outer journey of going through it like you've said, regardless of of the outcome.

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Emma O'Brien: You're sharing

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Emma O'Brien: access to a chapter of your book with the listeners. Just talk a little bit about that. I'm going to pop the link in the show notes, but just share what they're going to get in there.

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Ashley Holmes: So the chapter that I wrote for nourish is called Virtualisle in mind, body, and spirit, and it really dives into my journey and my personal experience, and really, truly, how this helped and worked for me, and what you can get a glimpse of what this could look like for you, because oftentimes we are feeling very defeated in our position, and it really is just to inspire and give you hope.

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Emma O'Brien: Amazing. I'll pop the link in the show notes. And then where can people connect with you online.

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Ashley Holmes: You can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram. So for Ashley Holmes and the beautiful baby coming out of the lotus flower. You will see my my

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Ashley Holmes: logo. Everywhere I go, because it really is.

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Ashley Holmes: and it stems from, you know the saying, no mud, no lotus. So if you are in the thick of it right now, you know you will not be there forever, I promise you.

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Emma O'Brien: Amazing. And just share your website address, please, Ashley.

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Ashley Holmes: It is

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Ashley Holmes: holistic fertility coach, inc

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Ashley Holmes: slash

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Ashley Holmes: site, slash camera.

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Ashley Holmes: So it is a canvas site, and it has all all my details, all my articles for Brains, magazine, and anything else that if this is new to you, if you haven't heard of our Beta, you can go in. You can read and begin to understand.

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Ashley Holmes: A little bit more, and dive a little bit deeper.

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Emma O'Brien: Brilliant. I'll pop that link in there as well. Thank you very much for joining me today. This has been a really interesting conversation.

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Ashley Holmes: Thank you so much, Emma.

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Emma O'Brien: Thanks for being with us today, folks. I will see you same time next week bye, for now.