Cultivating Fertility Naturally: Ashley Holme's Holistic Journey to Motherhood and Empowering Women's Wellness
Apr 17, 2024Episode 25
Shelly Jefferis
Embark on an intimate journey with Shelly, as she sits down with the phenomenal Ashley, a beacon of hope for countless women aspiring to embrace motherhood through natural means. In a world where the path to conception can feel like a battle against one's own body, Ashley's story stands as a testament to the strength and success that holistic practices can bring to fertility wellness. After experiencing infertility herself, Ashley began focusing on her own fertility from a holistic approach. Through her experience, her work as CEO of Holistic Fertility Coach Inc., was birthed where through coaching and support, she has helped many women successfully have families of their own.
This episode explores how quality nutrition, stress management and practices like yoga and meditation can impact our fertility in unexpected, yet powerful ways. Ashley emphasizes the importance of integrating mind, body and spirit. The discussion also reiterates the importance of taking time to exercise, in addition to being aware of certain toxins we are exposed to and how they can ultimately affect our fertility and the success of a healthy pregnancy. This episode shares the intricacies of how wellness weaves into every aspect of our lives in our fertility journey, from the foods that nourish us to the communities that sustain us. So listen in and be inspired to foster a fertile foundation for not just conception, but a radiant, holistic life.
High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix
Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
Embark on an intimate journey with Shelly, as she sits down with the phenomenal Ashley, a beacon of hope for countless women aspiring to embrace motherhood through natural means. In a world where the path to conception can feel like a battle against one's own body, Ashley's story stands as a testament to the strength and success that holistic practices can bring to fertility wellness. After experiencing infertility herself, Ashley began focusing on her own fertility from a holistic approach. Through her experience, her work as CEO of Holistic Fertility Coach Inc., was birthed where through coaching and support, she has helped many women successfully have families of their own.
This episode explores how quality nutrition, stress management and practices like yoga and meditation can impact our fertility in unexpected, yet powerful ways. Ashley emphasizes the importance of integrating mind, body and spirit. The discussion also reiterates the importance of taking time to exercise, in addition to being aware of certain toxins we are exposed to and how they can ultimately affect our fertility and the success of a healthy pregnancy. This episode shares the intricacies of how wellness weaves into every aspect of our lives in our fertility journey, from the foods that nourish us to the communities that sustain us. So listen in and be inspired to foster a fertile foundation for not just conception, but a radiant, holistic life.
High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix
Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health, Shelly Jefferis
Speaker 1:
journaling and dumping those thoughts. At the end of the day, it's so important to become aware of the thoughts that are running in our mind day in and day out and begin to rewire and reprogram those thoughts to ones that serve us in our journey and for your body. How do you love to move If you're going to the gym day in and day out and you don't love that and you're just forcing yourself to do it because it's good for you? There's so many ways to move. Do what you love.
Speaker 2:
Do you get confused by all of the information that Vabar does every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you, to bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will. We all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives, full of energy, happiness and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today.
Speaker 2:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley and I will be your host today and I am introducing someone who I'm really excited to share with you today and I'm excited to hear about her work. She is the CEO and founder of Holistic Fertility Coach Inc. She supports women struggling with infertility to conceive with ease by creating a fertile foundation within. So welcome, ashley, I'm so excited to have you here and have you share with our listeners, but also with myself. I'm really really looking forward to hearing about what you do. So welcome, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, how did you get involved in doing this for your profession?
Speaker 1:
Really, it was my own fertility journey and my own personal experience and really knowing that there's so much more available to us and so many women are struggling and there's not sufficient and adequate support for all the people that are seeking to conceive and to grow their families and the wisdom that I have gained is so to embody these ancient healing and holistic practices that really are for you to bring your mind, body and spirit back into balance and alignment and so that you can feel like you as you're going through this journey and the things that I've learned not only helped me to conceive naturally versus using a fertility clinic, but they're also practices that I still use day in and day out, because they have really transformed my health and wellbeing so much.
Speaker 2:
Well, I'm excited for you to share much of what that includes and entails, and it's really interesting for me personally because we did go through infertility treatment and I would have, of course, loved to have had someone like you. But I find it fascinating now because, I mean, this still happens nowadays, but back then you didn't really hear so much the term holistic. And not that it wasn't around, it's been around forever but it has become much more talked about and more and more people are looking for the healthy, holistic approach to whatever might be in their lives right, and so I'm just very, very excited about this because it's such a critical topic and critical time in a couple's life. What are some of the practices that you share and you have your clients do that help them to have success?
Speaker 1:
I embody a bunch of sort of energy medicine, I call it, and that includes yoga, and there's various types of yoga that I use in, yoga being one and restorative yoga being another one, as well as meditations and yoga nidra meditations and chakra meditations, yoga nidra meditations and chakra meditations and chakra and energy work, reiki and ayurveda, which is the sister science to yoga, so that you can nourish yourself optimally to your inborn constitution, and it's not a fad or a diet or a trend, it is a lifestyle and what will serve you for your whole entire life. And that's really not what you see a lot of out there is. Everybody wants the quick fix and the quick everything, and this is not that. This is ancient sacred wisdom that is really going to benefit you now and for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:
I love this because, when it comes to so many areas of our wellness and just to kind of piggyback to what you're saying, so many people want success now, yesterday, right, last week, and in order to really truly have sustainable results and success.
Speaker 2:
It's not an overnight success, no, it isn't. And so I kind of think about it. When someone is on a health journey to, let's say, lose weight, you know it's so easy to get want something to happen fast, and that's not how our bodies operate. So I think it's so important, like you're saying, is to help your clients understand that it's a, it's a process and it's a journey. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. And you're so spot on about that, especially in the world that we're in, with the medicine that we have available to us and in so many ways that's a very positive thing, but in many ways it's not necessary. That's a very positive thing, but in many ways it's not necessary, and we are caught up in such a quick, fast paced society that I think, and you might agree as well, that that contributes a lot to some of the challenges that we're having to conceive in the first place, right.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. I know for myself over a decade ago, when I was using the clinic that you know it was I felt rushed. I feel like my body didn't have time and space to catch up. It was one protocol to the next and this didn't work. So we're moving on to this next and it's like wait a minute.
Speaker 1:
All of this stuff is so foreign to me I'm not used to all of these drugs and chemicals and it felt like an outer body experience versus an inner body experience. There wasn't anything when I left the clinic to help me with my mental or emotional health, and that is truly what I struggled with the most was that I didn't have any tools or resources available to me. And, yes, I bought books and yes, I bought, and I was reading about EFT, which I'd never heard of in a book. But it's like if you don't have someone to guide you through that and you're not in a space in place to be able to do that for yourself, then it's very beneficial and helpful to have someone hold your hand, know that you're not alone. And these are tools and practices that you can use to calm the nervous system, calm out of fight or flight mode, into rest and digest mode, which is the optimal place that you want to be.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's so good, I love that so much. Another thought I was having as you were talking. I'm very much into sharing about just toxins and how we're kind of bombarded by them daily and it really makes me think that what is happening in the environment and in our food and in our water and all the things that, that has to have some impact as well, don't you think?
Speaker 1:
absolutely, the world and society in which we live in is quite toxic ridden and it's really beginning to make those shifts and changes. Perhaps you don't throw everything out overnight, but the next time you go shopping you buy a frying pan that doesn't have, you know, stuff that's going to peel off and go into your food and then you then consume it, right. Or you know, I don't use perfumes now. I use oils that are for my chakras, and it's just that it's not that you can't have things, or maybe you have a special perfume where once in a while, but you don't wear a day in and day out.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's perfect, that's exactly. I love you saying that. I say the same approach is you know it doesn't. We're not looking for perfection. You just eliminate or swap out one to two things here and there. It's never going to be perfect and 100% clean, right, but we do the best that we can. So, yeah, those are some great suggestions that you do, and I love that. What do you recommend when someone is just first coming to you? How do you get them started and what are some of the first things that you recommend you get?
Speaker 1:
them started. What are some of the first things that you recommend? Really, we look at nutrition as to see what they are consuming. You know, I get them to give me a food journal for a week to see what they are consuming and there's no judgment there, but it's just looking at that and then I determine their Ayurvedic dosha and then we make adjustments from there, and so it's really just bringing more harmony and ease within your body and beginning to pay attention to your digestion and your elimination and all of these functions day in and day out that we may not even be paying attention to that are actually giving us so much information about what is going on internally within us.
Speaker 2:
That's amazing and that's so important in our just day-to-day lives. So many are kind of out of touch with being in touch with what's going on with their bodies and inside of their bodies and how they're feeling. And again it's. We get caught in the society of go, go, go, that we're not really stopping to think okay, is this how I'm supposed to feel, or is this not normal? And so that's so great, just that you help them start to recognize signs and signals of how they could or should be feeling, and that's that's awesome.
Speaker 1:
It must be so special and rewarding for you to do this kind of work and, and when you have a couple have success in conceiving that, that must be just the best feeling for you it is such a joy to just see the shifts and changes once people start to embody this, because oftentimes we haven't been raised this way or we haven't lived this way before, but you can notice vast improvements so quickly from you know. One of my clients was like food tastes so much better and I'm like it's always tasted like this. But you know, we have just not been nourishing ourselves in the way that we have been able to receive all those juicy benefits from it, and so people really start to glow before they are pregnant, because it is just this inner transformation that begins to happen.
Speaker 2:
And that makes so much sense. You know you're just helping them get healthy from the inside out, and that is what it's all about. That's what it's all about you. How old are your children?
Speaker 1:
about. That's what it's all about you. How old are your children? So my twins are 11 and I have a five-year-old, so there's a big gap of and span of time in there. And you know, when I left the clinic it's not that I had a bad experience at the clinic, I just said to myself you know, I'm never going to put myself through that again I felt very blessed that I was able to have twins boy, girl twins. You know the dream, quote unquote.
Speaker 1:
And yet I still walked away, not having any answers. I had unexplained infertility. You know, all the tests were always clear. All of the evidence didn't show that anything was quote unquote wrong. It really was me discovering and learning that I'm more than just this physical body, that I have an energy body and that there's so much more to me that I wasn't tapping into. And that is truly what has transformed my life. And you know, once I landed on my yoga mat and began to embody these practices, I conceived easily and naturally and quickly. And you know, once I landed on my yoga mat and began to embody these practices, I conceived easily and naturally and quickly. And it was night and day difference between the first time around and the second time around, versus being stressed and a high risk pregnancy and an emergency C-section. Versus conceiving naturally, having my water break, going hiking, delivering my baby and being back at baby and me yoga 10 days later. Night and day difference same person, but completely empowered in my mind, body and spirit.
Speaker 2:
Wow. So this this is what is so inspiring as well is that you truly can share and work with individuals because of what you have experienced. I mean, you've literally experienced both. So so your twins you went through fertility treatment then, yes, okay. So I mean what a blessing to have your twins and then now your younger son. But I mean, this is amazing.
Speaker 1:
You've gotten to experience it both ways, and so I did it the hard way and the easy way, and I would forever choose the easy way and the way that felt natural and healing and holistic and had no side effects, and that's really what I didn't want any more of. You know, I'm very careful and particular about what it is that I put into my body and the effects that it's going to have on me because of that experience.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. How long did it take you to conceive naturally with your, with your youngest?
Speaker 1:
It was less than six months.
Speaker 2:
Wow, that's amazing. Versus years Right, especially when you've gone through what you've already gone through. That, right, there is a testament to what your body can do and what you are sharing and working with clients to do. That is huge and it's a challenging, challenging time, but you are giving these women and these couples hope and it sounds like you have a pretty good success rate, so that's very, very exciting.
Speaker 1:
It's really just. You know, it can go hand in hand with using a clinic, and it's often what people say to me the most when they're like they hear who I am and what I do is oh, I wish I would have known you. You know, however, many years ago, because you know, they understand and necessarily have the resources available to them either and I didn't either, and I was like this helped me so much and I didn't even realize when I landed on my yoga mat that that was going to be the path for so many other things. But it's not just about the poses or breathing. Yoga is so many more things than just that.
Speaker 2:
Well, and it paved the way for what you're doing today. I mean, I love how they always will say you can best help the person that you were 5, 10, 15 years ago, and that's exactly what you're doing, and so you can actually look back and connect the dots and go, ok. Well, this is why I experienced and went through what I did to be able to do what I'm doing today. So that's just beautiful. How can people find you, ashley?
Speaker 1:
I have a Holistic Fertility Coach Facebook group which you're welcome to join, which is a safe, sacred space. You're currently trying to conceive. I offer meditations and other experiences within the community. I just had someone in earlier today and we did laughter yoga and it was my first experience of it, but I'd only heard of it at the end of last year and I wanted to offer it as a different tool and resource when you're in those challenging times to connect as a couple and to also know that that inner child is still in you and that you can still find joy in your journey even though it is challenging. And so there's just so many things that we can do for ourselves that aren't external, that are really internal, and it's really just shifting that locus of control from external to internal. There's lots of things that we can't control, but when we can focus on our nourishment and our movement and our breath and our stress and our energy, then that has a massive positive ripple effect in our lives.
Speaker 2:
It absolutely does, and that's the perfect way to do it. Just to explain it. It's a ripple effect. It just it's going to affect everything else when it comes to just our day-to-day lives, just how we function on a day-to-day basis. So you actually have a physical clinic where people come to.
Speaker 1:
It's. Everything I offer is online, so you can work with me from anywhere in the world. It is for four months, and that is at a minimum, and then you can renew monthly thereafter. But it's really taking that time and concentrated energy and effort to focus on your health and wellbeing and to know that what you do now is affecting your egg quality three to four months from now. So just being conscious and aware of those decisions that we make day in and day out that do truly impact us?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And do you also have a physical space where people locally, or is it all online?
Speaker 1:
It's all online because this was truly birth during the pandemic, when you know, I was at home and it's like, hey, I have three kids at home now and how can I help women in a more meaningful and impactful way, and knowing that this helped me so much and being able to offer this to others is just a blessing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it sure is. That is such a blessing. What are some last few tips or words of advice or inspiration you'd like to share with our listeners today?
Speaker 1:
I would love for whoever's tuning in to do something for your mind, body and spirit daily, and what that looks like for you is unique to you. For your mind, whether it is meditation or journaling and dumping those thoughts at the end of the day, it's so important to become aware of the thoughts that are running in our mind day in and day out and begin to rewire and reprogram those thoughts to ones that serve us in our journey. And for your body, how do you love to move if you're going to the gym day in and day out and you don't love that and you're just forcing yourself to do it because it's good for you? There's so many ways to move. Do what you love. And for your spirit, what makes you feel like you day in and day out and what makes you feel connected to yourself and sparks that inner joy, because sometimes this can be a process that makes us feel disconnected. So when you can do that, it's so important and will serve you so well on your path to motherhood.
Speaker 2:
That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that so much, and that just is so in alignment with the message that I put out here with this podcast is just really doing something for you, doing something for your wellness and, like you said, it's going to look a little different for each and every one of us, but as long as we can be aware and be intentional and put our wellness as a priority, it just spills out into the rest of our lives. So this has been so wonderful. Ashley, I'm so excited that we connected. Thank you so much for being on today and joining. I just I'm excited to hear more about your, your successes, and maybe at some point we'll even have a couple of your, your moms, on as guests and have them share about the experience. I think that would really be really be inspiring for some of our listeners.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much. I've enjoyed being here and sharing this with you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thank you so very much, and thank you everyone for tuning in today and listening, and please reach out to Ashley if you or someone you know perhaps is dealing with infertility, and she is the gal to reach out to, and I hope that you will share this with anyone that you know who might be on their quest for motherhood. And, as Ashley said and as I always say, take some time for you and your wellness today, enjoy the rest of your day and have a blessed week. Everyone, thank you for listening. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode.
Speaker 2:
I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did, and if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review words of wellness so that more can hear this message and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness, on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy and blessed week. Thank you, you.