More than one in six couples in Australia experience delays in conceiving. While the common perception is still that women are largely at fault when there are fertility problems, medical researchers are stating unequivocally now that the male carries at least 50% of the responsibility.

In fact, since 2004, a flurry of research into male fertility has had alarm bells ringing. Researchers in the US, Europe and Australia have estimated at least a 50% drop-off in male potency since our grandparents time and have even identified Sick Sperm Syndrome, a phenomenon that has raised many questions about whether the decline in male fertility is really is getting worse and what, in our modern lifestyles could be causing it.

As early as 2005, Professor of Developmental Biology at Queensland University, Peter Koopman said when discussing declining male infertility, “A little like global warming, what we will see with fertility is that things will reach breaking point…We’re starting to see a precipitous decline in fertility and if that continues over the next 10, 20, 50 years, it will be impossible for men to reproduce naturally. And I think that is a grave situation for the human race and for our quality of life.”

Research has identified a number of reasons why this decline is happening. Firstly, with our new understandings of trans-generational genetic mutation, it is now acknowledged that a son can not only inherit his father’s bad habits, but also the damage done to his father’s reproductive capacity as a result of that bad habit. For example, if a father develops lung cancer, DNA damage in his spermatozoa also occurs. As a consequence of that DNA damage, there is a four-to-five fold increased chance his children will develop childhood cancers of various kinds.  So his children are genetically weaker that he was.

Moreover, the newer technologies being used in IVF clinics around the country to offset the dramatic reduction in the amount of sperm available due to the recent rapid decline, is to isolate a single sperm to fertilise the oocyte(woman’s egg). This effectively bypasses Nature’s brilliant plan of having the strongest sperm win the conception race, thus ensuring a stronger offspring. Technicians are doing the selecting based on their limited perceptions of the strongest sperm. Natural selection is being compromised and babies are being born genetically weaker than their fathers.

Secondly, not only is there a decline in the quantity of sperm, but also research is demonstrating that the rise in male infertility is directly linked to the increase in testicular cancer particularly amongst young men in their twenties. And one of the main reasons is environmental toxins which damage the sperm when it is in the vulnerable ’production line’ phase, increasing vulnerability to cancer but also impacting on the potency of the sperm itself.

It is during this production process within the testes of the male that genetic material is being packed into the microscopic head of the sperm. This cargo is designed for delivery at the crucial moment when it binds to the oocyte, after its victory swim up the vaginal canal of the woman.

A range of specific and non-specific environmental toxins have been cited as responsible for little or no sperm production, slow sperm or non-functional sperm, during the production line phase which means effectively that the chances of being a victor sperm are minimal at the least and impossible in most cases. 

Studies on male fertility over the past twenty years by the Queensland Fertility Group was based on the job that the study participants do, indicating the level of environmental toxicity that the workers were exposed to, according to the clinic’s scientific director Keith Harrison.

 The studies showed that white collar workers, people who work in offices and don’t get their hands too dirty, around a quarter of them have significant semen defects.  For blue collar workers such as transport workers 50% of them had semen defects. In occupations where the men actually get their hands dirty, such as builders, electricians, painters, plumbers, again there’s a 50% incidence of abnormal semen. However, of the men who really get their hands dirty; motor mechanics, fitters, turners, welders, machinery operators – there was an almost doubling in the incidence of semen defects. Similarly, farmers and graziers and people in mining industries demonstrated double the incidence of semen defects as office-based workers.

 And the problem may even be even closer to home – or getting home after a day's work! Italian scientists say traffic pollution can affect male fertility by damaging sperm. After studying 85 attendants at tollgates on Italian motorways, researchers at the University of Naples in southern Italy discovered that the men had poorer quality sperm than other young and middle-aged Italian workers in the same area.

"The sperm count did not differ significantly between our study group and the controls but, in general, the sperm of the study group was more feeble and less active, so it has a lower fertility potential," said Dr Michele de Rosa, a researcher at the university.

Levels of testosterone and other hormones in the men, who were exposed to pollutants for about six hours a day, were normal, but sperm motility, or ability to swim, was lower, which could affect its ability to fertilise a female egg.

"Our study demonstrates that continuous exposure to traffic pollutants impairs sperm quality in young and middle-aged men," Dr De Rosa said.

The researchers said the toll workers had been exposed to higher levels of nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, carbon monoxide and lead than the other men in the area. They identified nitrogen oxides and lead as the most likely causes of sperm damage.

Furthermore, the effect of chemical intoxication can impact more than production of sperm in the adult male. It can impair embryonic development. For example, although the issue of oestrogens in the environment is contentious, many chemicals can produce oestrogen effects in animals and especially on developing foetuses. Exposure to some pesticides and plastics at high enough levels can disrupt male hormones, particularly in the developing foetus. If this damage has happened to the male embryo during gestation, it will take at least 20 to 30 years for that damage to be identified, which is when the now adult male attempts to reproduce himself. Many of the hazardous chemicals cited have not been around for long enough to determine the degree of damage to the DNA. Laboratory testing on animals however, do not paint a promising picture for male fertility.

As well as environmental toxins there is also a concern about the toxic effect that pharmaceutical drugs are having on male fertility. The concern is that while pharmaceuticals may be tested rigorously for their sematic toxicity (do they make your hair fall out or cause kidney or liver poisoning?) there is little effort given to studying their reproductive toxicology. Anti-depressants have been cited as compromising the health of the sperm.

 Researchers at the Cornell Medical Centre in New York put 35 men on the anti-depressant drug Paroxetine for five weeks. After a month, changes in the DNA of the men's sperm were discovered. Dr Peter Schlegel was the lead researcher for the project.

"If you look at normal sperm counts and motility, the standard measures of fertility, you saw no changes, but if you looked at sperm DNA, the genetic material in more detail you actually found dramatic changes in almost half of the men, normal men, who are on this drug," he said.

Paroxetine is sold in Australia as Aropax. Millions of prescriptions for various anti-depressant drugs are written in Australia every year.

In the face of all this doom and gloom, is there any glimmer in the darkness? Well, it seems that if men are prepared to take the pill, there may well be.

 For research has found that a combination of anti-oxidants and vitamins can significantly increase a man's fertility.

A tablet (ah-ha – a pill for men?) containing vitamins C and E, folate, zinc, lycopene and garlic oil has been found to help protect a man's sperm from damage caused by smoking, toxins and infections.

The study conducted in Australia found that the success of pregnancy doubled in the infertile couples who took the pill.

So in real terms what does all this mean? Well, according to current figures, even the most fertile of couples having unprotected sex at the right time of the month have just a 1 in 4 chance of conceiving that month. So getting pregnant isn’t as easy as our mothers warned us. And given that the proportion of abnormally low semen volume, sperm concentration and motility, increases significantly with the age of the male, along with women’s tendency to put off wanting to have children until they are older, it seems that we are fast heading to a future where having children will be the exception rather than the norm.

However, the problem of male fertility is not easily resolved. The male biological inscription determines that men are often the last to admit that there is anything wrong with them. That is why it has taken so long to even recognize that half of the current fertility crisis rests with men, and is not just the domain of the female. Women have carried the larger part of responsibility for contraception for fifty years now at great expense to their procreative power (the pill decreases fertility) their emotional stability (studies show the pill causes depression) and their birthright to pleasure (the pill has been proven to permanently decrease libido).  Men have had no need for chemical interference in their hormonal functioning because it was always assumed that women would bear the load.

The problem of rising infertility rates in the human species must be addressed if we are to bequeath future generations the endowment they are entitled to: that of the right to evolve. In the opinion of those observing the downward spiral of our reproductive power, we may well be heading to a future where reproduction is so compromised that humanity is on the path to devolution: that is each generation is becoming less healthy than the one before.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine the axiom for health and wellbeing is moderation in all things, including moderation. Lifestyle it seems is a major contributing factor to rising rates of infertility. This is something we can all do something about. Eating well, regular exercise, resting and recuperating in balance with work and social activities, a regular detoxification program and taking supplementation if there is a deficiency are all easy ways to bring our bodies and minds into the balance required to create healthy sperm and eggs.

Balance also means bringing the opposites into a state of equilibrium. So, as men and women, gender polar opposites, come together to take responsibility for a challenge, there is where wholeness lies. Let us work together to create a healthy future for our children

 What do you think? I would love to have your opinion.

One of the workshops that Spirit of Woman conducts is called the Energy of Parenting, which covers the absolute power of positive parenting on the health and well-being of offspring. I was delighted to hear on the Health Report this week (15th March, 2010) a discussion on the power of positive parenting, including positive fathering on, not just adequate mental functioning, but high performance mental functioning.

Based on a study conducted by Felicia Huppert and others, Director of the Wellbeing Institute and Professor of Psychology, and published as 'Parental practices predict psychological well-being in mid-life:…' the discussion centred around how to attain 'positive mental health' or what can be called 'flourishing in life', rather than just 'existing with the absence of a disorder', which is the focus of most studies previously conducted.

What sets this study aside as distinct from others is not only the emphasis on optimum mental functioning, but also the fact that it is a long-term study that follows children through to late adulthood. Commenced in 1946 in England the study followed women since their birth in that year and recorded information, including memories of how their parents behaved towards them up to the age of 16.

Based on an accepted measure of the way that offspring perceive their parents, rather than any objective measure of the parents themselves, the study identified three dimensions of parenting. One dimension is warmth and care, another one is the extent to which the parent is engaged in what the child is doing, or kind of just laissez faire and doesn't seem to care very much, and the third dimension is control. So it looks at the extent to which a parent is very controlling, or over-protective, or intrusive and explores the extent of engagement, such as when they take a real interest in what their child is doing and provide guidance, but not in an authoritarian or controlling way.

The study sought six main areas in which to question the way that psychological wellbeing comes about: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, positive relations with others and self acceptance.

The study found, i n the main, that the more warm and caring a parent is the better the child on all dimensions. However one unusual finding was to do with autonomy, in that when a mother was very warm and caring a daughter was less autonomous. Or putting it another way – a daughter was very autonomous, assertive and defiant if her mother was less caring in the sense of how warmly she responded to her child, when she had difficulties.

Overall, the study clearly showed that warm and caring parents need to be positive and give appropriate praise, engaged and interested in what the child is doing and to be 'authoritative' rather than authoritarian. That is, rather than being over-controlling and over-protective, they need to give the child a sense of trust, some respect and freedom while at the same time being quite clear about boundaries, about what the behaviours were acceptable and what were not.

Another unexpected finding was one that validates a notion that I have written about in my book "The Essence of Woman". It concerns the importance of positive fathering to his daughter's ability to develop confidence and autonomy as an adult. All previous literature focusses on the mother's behaviour in terms of a daughter's mental health. But this study showed beyond a doubt that the father's behaviour is actually more important than the mother's across all dimensions. So while it was important that the mother was warm and caring, and that affected many dimensions, the father, if he was warm and caring brought benefits across all dimensions. The particular difference was in terms of engagement and control – in other words confidence and autonomy. So the father who was trusting, respectful, appreciative and showed good guidance rounded off his daughter's development by giving her the set of skills necessary to navigate 'the world'. She can engage with people while at the same time maintain her own sense of  self with confidence. The Spirit of Woman blend, Daddy's Girl was designed with the importance of  the father-daughter relationship in mind. If you would like to read the full transcript on the Health Report click here.

Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear what you think.

I read an article in the Weekend Australian Magazine dated May 16th – 17th 2009, which has profound ramifications for those women (and their partners) struggling with their fertility.

A recent University of Queensland study showed that children born to older fathers have, on average, lower scores of tests of intelligence than those born to younger dads.

Data analysed from more than 33,000 American children showed that the older the man when the child is conceived, the lower a child’s score is likely to be on tests of concentration, memory, reasoning, and reading skills.

A Swedish study reveals further, that the risk of schizophrenia begins to rise for those babies whose fathers were older than 29 and is higher if they are older than 55. The same age factor applies with the risk of bipolar.

Perhaps not surprising if we consider that ageing affects every cell in the body and has no gender bias. Somehow the perceptions around fertility as solely a female issue need rethinking. Men are part of the equation, and not just the pleasure part!

Sperm are not ageless, nor are they bullet-proof. Production of healthy sperm is dependant on the well-being of the man – a poor diet, stress and a toxic overload in the body, due to excess alcohol and smoking, dramatically affects the quality of a man’s sperm. So too, it is now confirmed, does ageing. If the little blighters have no tails, poor motility, are immature or are low in number, a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant are dramatically reduced. Similarly, if she falls pregnant the baby she bears will be less than optimally healthy, regardless of how ‘in the pink’ she is .

Due to the cringe factor, many women take sole responsibility for fertility. Furthermore, it is women who ‘hold the time lines and calendars in our heads, who have to surrender space in our bodies and clear time in our lives’. Women are the ones who have to juggle their careers, or settle for a partner who may be less than ideal because their biological clock is ticking over. Mainstream medicine has long discouraged ‘older’ females from having babies. In this sense and more, women have been long held responsible for the ultimate health of their child.

Tables may turn when women are armed with this information about sperm ageing. No longer does the image of the older man with a younger woman on his arm seem so attractive, if older men are liable to be seen as past their fertility ‘use-by date’ by women.

The stereotype has always been that while older women just get old, men become more ‘distinguished’ with age. Women might find that, when they tune into their feminine intelligence, biologically inscripted to select the genetically best father for their offspring, they might now take age into account as well. Men may be forced to stick with women of their own age, because the biological drive of younger females to conceive under optimum conditions, puts them out into the grazing paddock.

We are in this together, males and females. Let’s stack the deck so that when all the cards are on the table, both genders are realistically appraised, without a bias that puts one on top of the pile, in favour of the other. Goodness knows, in the interests of evolution of the race, each succeeding generation must improve on the one before it.

For that to happen both men and women need to evaluate their health and well-being and make choices that ensure optimum chance for survival and thrival of their offspring, prior to conception.

Introducing ……….. Blue Mink

This is one of the exciting NEW flower essences that is part of my Spirit of Woman Australian Flower Essences range. The range will be launched at the Endeavour College

on 21st June, 2009. For details and to register for an invitation click here

Blue Mink
Ageratum Houstonianum

Description:
Native to tropical Mexico, this member of the Asteraceae or Compositae family (which contains daises, sunflowers and asters) is a popular and easily grown annual that has escaped cultivated gardens and now flourishes as a classified weed.
It is fully established in Australia and is commonly known here as Blue Mink or Blue Top.
It has low sheen, heart-shaped leaves that are slightly furry, with showy blue, lavender and mauve-pink fluffy, soft flower-heads.
Medicinally, it is classed as an anodyne – an agent that soothes, comforts or relaxes. The juice of the plant is used externally to treat cuts and wounds.
An ornamental plant, the flowers are very attractive to butterflies that can be seen dancing around their soft, blue fluffy flower-heads in the sunshine.
Doctrine of signatures:
The soft, puffy appearance of this attractive little flower calls out to be touched. It gives the impression that it could be used to stroke the skin soothingly.
It has heart-shaped leaves that are soft, furry and pleasing to touch.
Its soft blue, lavender and pink colours are classically feminine and evoke a sense of tenderness.
Medicinally, it is classed as an anodyne, which is used to relax and soothe, so it carries the quality of softening the hard lines of tension and stress that grip and tauten the body.
Its use in treating cuts and wounds on the skin suggests a strong healing quality for emotional wounds that have penetrated deeply through the protective barrier of the aura which, when intact and healthy, protects the skin and keeps us feeling safe and relaxed.
It loves to grow in the filtered sun, evoking the image of lying in a relaxed state, soaking up gentle warmth and feeling no anxiety, stress, tension, pressure or sense of threat.
It likes to be protected from harsh cold windy conditions, signifying the sense of wanting to be kept safe from the outside world.
Originally a cultivar that has escaped and now roams free across the landscape, it suggests the feeling of freedom that women experience when they are liberated enough to relax and enjoy their sensuality and sexuality.
This soft and attractive little flower evokes a feeling of wanting to touch it. It resonates with women because of its tactile softness and feminine colours. It is particularly appropriate for women in the area of sexual expression and intimacy where stress is an ongoing factor in their busy lives.
Stress affects women differently to men, particularly in the areas of sex and intimacy.
The stress hormones of cortisol and adrenaline boost the inflow of testosterone into a male’s bloodstream causing him to want to have sex. In fact, sexual connection relieves a man’s stress by draining the build-up of tension from his body leaving him feeling relaxed and soothed and brimming with oxytocin, the hormone that fosters connection and love of intimacy. A sexually satisfied man will sleep easy after a love-making session with his partner, feeling secure and comfortable.
But the hormonal drivers work differently in a woman’s body. They cause a distinct physical and emotional adverse response to sexual advances from her partner. Cortisol and adrenaline dampen down the oxytocin inflow into a woman’s body so that she does not respond to touch in the way that she normally would when relaxed. They also diminish the production of the neuro-chemical dopamine, which triggers her desire for pleasure.
So stress acts to restrict and harden a woman to the sexual advances of her partner.
In fact, often her stress is increased when he reaches for her because she feels so stretched already, and the last thing on her mind is sex when all she wants to do is sleep! Blue Mink relaxes and soothes, paving the way to being open to physical contact.
One of the old-fashioned advices that came to me from my grandmother was, if you want a happy marriage and you can’t ‘make it’, then fake it!
The women’s liberation movement looked sternly down its nose at this old adage as it seemed to be suggesting that a woman is acting against her best interests by giving in to her husband’s request for sex when she doesn’t really want it.
The biological reality is that, for women, all the normal triggers for sexual desire do shut down when she is stressed, making sex seem like a chore rather than a pleasure.
But the secret is that there is truth in what our grandmothers were saying.
Research demonstrates that even though we may not be open to sex at the outset, by going ahead and engaging sexually, the hormones of sexual pleasure, relaxation and satisfaction start to flow once sex begins.
Below conscious level, the ‘pleasure and connection’ hormones, stimulated by the act of sex, switch on the body’s relaxation response, causing the body-mind to unwind naturally.
The outcome is deep healing sleep and relief from the tension burden that could otherwise persist for days and even weeks, if not cleared.
Stress and tension generate an unhealthy tightening of the body musculature and debilitation of the nervous system, causing both physical and emotional pain and reduced function.
Physical symptoms can include headaches, PMT, tiredness, palpitations, acne and digestive dysfunction. Blue Mink assists with these stress-induced conditions, assisting the Body-Mind to relax and release.
Emotional repercussions can range from overwhelm, anxiety, irritability and irrational anger and striking out, to feelings of isolation, separation and a desire to escape from the world. Use Blue Mink first then follow up with another essence, appropriate to the specific emotional state.
In the long-term, chronic stress is the precursor to many debilitating disease states.
Healing Challenges:
For stress.
For dislike of intimate touch.
For feeling stressed by sexual advances from a partner.
For dislike of partner and feelings of mistrust.
For being closed off and hard-edged to children, family or friends.
For deep emotional pain from a past relationship.
For skin diseases, such as psoriasis, eczema, rosacea, neuro-dermatitis, superficial wounds and scratches.
Healing Outcomes:
Relieves stress and tension.
Opens a stressed woman to the comfort and protective energy of her partner.
Softens the hard lines of tension through gentle touch of the skin, in a non-sexual way.
Restores a sense of connection and intimacy, particularly when stressed.
Heals long-held emotional heart wounds from the past.
Has a soothing healing effect on the skin
Soothes a ruffled or torn aura.
For psoriasis, neuro-dermatitis, eczema, especially when worse with emotional stress.

To find out more about this exciting new range of flower essences specifically for women, click here

 Optimum female health depends on staying warm, so Winter is the season to rug up, making sure that your body,

especially feet and legs, is always toasty. This keeps the all-important blood supply to the pelvis circulating

freely, ensuring that periods are painless and trouble-free.

More seriously, chronic cold affects a woman’s fertility, making pelvic circulation so sluggish that there is not enough

free-flowing blood in circulation to nourish a developing baby in the uterus. This can result in problems as the

baby grows in the womb when crucial developmental stages are taking place, leading to health problems after birth. 

Moreover, sluggish pelvic blood circulation restricts free-flow of blood to the genitals, so necessary during intercourse

for a pleasurable and complete climax.

So many good reasons why it is  so important to keep the pelvis, legs and feet warm!

Tips:

• Wear slippers on hard, cold floors.
• Wear closed shoes to work on cool days, even if it means taking them off and replacing them with strappy shoes once when you get to work.
• Wear tights or leggings that protect your legs.
• Wear a long, warm singlet or camisole that covers your butt.
• Take a hot water bottle to bed and lay in at the small of your back. It will warm your whole body. 

Chronic cold in the pelvis is one of the underlying cause of a range of gynaecological problems. It comes from failing to maintain easy, warm circulation in the pelvis and is usually the result of years of neglect in keeping warm.

Apart from the above more serious health outcomes, ultimately it will result in the appearance of unsightly spider-veins at the ankles and the legs, particularly the lower legs. These are irreversible.

Keeping warm all over is very much to be recommended for super-health.

A general tip is to always wear enough clothes to keep hands and feet warm – cold consumes valuable body energy that otherwise maintains the health of the functional organ systems, particularly the digestive system.

At the bottom line, one of the major differences between a dead body and a live one is that the live one is warm!

The colder we are, the more our body systems begin to hypo-function (become under-active and inefficient).

A typical example is a hypo-functioning thyroid – the gland that governs the transformation of food into useable energy. An under-active thyroid causes tiredness, bloating, lower basal body temperature and can lead to a mild form of depression.

Although our Winters are not very cold here in Brisbane, that does not mean that we mustn’t strive to maintain our body warmth. Your body is your the barometer to health – if you feel cold, then rug up.

Click here to read about how you can protect you and your loved ones from Swine Flu. 

Unfortunately the rise of feminism in the latter third of last century failed to take into account that women are intrinsically women, and men are intrinsically men.

Instead, the cry for women to share the same societal advantages as men (in a male dominated paradigm!) was
mistakenly based in a resentful gripe that women were given a raw deal in having to do the drudge work (having children included!) while men swanned around scot-free making pots of money and enjoying prestige and power.

Most men didn’t know what a dish-cloth looked like according to Greer and her followers.

The crucial element that was missed in this misperception was that society’s values for the last five hundred years or so, up until this time, had been singularly shaped by male values. This meant that the functions, jobs, behaviours and unique territory that women are biologically equipped for, were severely under-valued and are still so to a large extent.

That is why women so readily give their power away in areas that they and their feminine network are best equipped to manage, such as the female stronghold of conception and reproduction.

Denial of our Feminine Intelligence

Examples of the denial by women of their feminine intelligence include the long-term use of the pill as their only contraceptive method even though it interferes with the healthy functioning of their reproductive system, submitting to assisted reproduction without trying natural and harm-free strategies that improve their over-all health and, allowing their babies to be cut out of their bodies because they believe (or are told)that they won’t be able to give birth naturally.

So now I hear many of you are saying…”But we have no choice, we have tried to conceive and nothing has happened”, or, “But how am I going to prevent a pregnancy when I am sexually active but not yet ready for children?” These questions have plagued women since time began. They are still the most important questions that women need to ask, and to answer, because sexuality and reproduction are such crucially important areas in a woman’s life, and have such an enormous impact both personally and in wider arenas.

After all, one baby, perhaps conceived and born after only one love-making episode, will tie a woman’s life up for the next twenty years. This is a long commitment and requires major adjustment in all areas of her life. Not only that, but it also impacts on the future generation, as the quality of her reproductive experience, her pregnancy and birthing, and the crucial years of child-raising imprint on the child born to her, either in a positive or a negative manner. And the echoes of that programming will continue on down the line in woman-to-child succession for the next seven generations.

Women Carry the Onus of Responsibility

Nature has designed it that women and women alone carry the enormous responsibility for this task: that is, the primary health and well-being of future generations of the human race.

That is not to say that males do not participate meaningfully and responsibly in the conception and rearing of a child. But his role is different and he has been designed specifically to fulfill certain aspects that only he, as a male, can.

An example of how clearly the major proportion of responsibility that women carry in this role is recognized by a South American Indian tribe still living today in the traditional way that they have for thousands of years.

Within the ambit of their law, both women and men can sit on the governing council that puts forward proposals to be considered for future legislation. However, only women can participate in the final vote to decide whether a proposal will become law. This is because it is recognized by the tribe, men and women alike, that only women have the capacity to evaluate the effect of a piece of legislation on the next seven generations of children!!

What a far-seeing policy!

To carry the responsibility of being fully a woman we need to learn to love our bodies and their uniquely female functioning. This means getting to know when we cycle, when we ovulate, what changes occur to our emotions and our psyche during a menstrual cycle and how best we can flow with the process rather than trying to deny or ignore it.

We need to recognise that when we have a child we go through dramatic personality changes that are irreversible and that will often test us sorely. Having a child can literally make or break a woman. The better she is informed of these changes the more she will rise through the experience to become a stronger and better functioning human being.

We need to understand that intrinsically as human beings we seek connection and loving rather than isolation and competitiveness.

These are just some of the colours that characterise the world of women – and the dye is cast while we are still in the womb.

For more information on recognising your unique power as a woman, and understanding men and women, please consider my book, The Essence of Woman.

How can women take back ownership of their bodies and their souls, so that they are in control of the physical functions and processes that are uniquely their own?

Currently many women give over control of their body-mind to doctors and allow themselves to be guided and led by a medical model that runs on the male principles of scientific rationale, hierarchical structure and a mechanized view of the body.

It is easy for women to feel over-whelmed by lack of understanding of how their bodies, minds and souls work because we have been flooded for so long with values belonging to the opposite gender.

After all, it was a man who invented the pill. Where is the male pill, I ask you?

Any male might know how the body works mechanically, but he cannot fully grasp the magnitude of the effects that female hormones (and synthetic hormones) have on the emotions and attitudes of a woman, because it is outside of his experience.

Women Soothe and Heal by Nature

Healing the body and soul involves a shift on all levels of being. True healing requires feeling – for both the depth of the pain and for the path back to balance.

Healing through feeling is the domain of the feminine principle and involves the female attributes of healing energy exchange through caring, sharing, touching, empathisizing and love.

There are many men who have highly developed female sides and who are very adept in these areas also.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting down males. But the mainstream medical model is so deeply rooted in the masculine principle that it does not allow that the softer feminine approach of energy exchange can have real and lasting healing benefits on the body-mind.

In truth, this is where real healing, on all levels of being takes place all the way through from annoying symptoms to chronic disease.

Women’s Medicine is Mind-Body Medicine

The range of symptoms that might come under the heading of women’s issues and reproduction can include pre-menstrual syndrome, endometriosis, infertility, persistent miscarriages, hormonal depression, peri-menopause and menopausal symptoms, tiredness, lack of libido etc.

But also important for most women are emotional concerns such as persistent sadness, feelings of low self-esteem, lack of confidence, fear of success, relationship trauma which often accompany the above physical symptoms.

A natural medicine approach, as distinct from mainstream medicine, treats the whole person, body, mind and spirit, in the knowledge that there is no physical symptom that does not have an accompanying emotional and attitudinal component.

As women we can own our own bodily processes when we take back control of our health. Conception can occur naturally even in the face of years of unsuccessful trying. Women can take control of their own fertility by getting to know how their body operates and working naturally in sync with it.

 Your body might need some nutritional assistance to assist it to return to peak condition and that may take time however.

You may not have the skills to evaluate what you need to assist your body’s own healing process, but through net-working, attending a female practitioner who will assist you in an empathetic way, informing yourself with all the information that is available today and by trusting in your own intuitive whisperings you can start the journey back to the powerful woman you were designed to be.

By Becoming Healthy as Women We Honour our Men

When we embark on this journey, we honour our men-folk. We stand as their equals, not trying to be like them or to outsmart them, or giving them all our power, but by gifting them with the full blossoming of the feminine essence, and enjoying, for our part, the uniqueness of maleness that they can offer us as their gift.

In this way females and males truly find the balance that nature intended for us and we complete the whole by each being fully one of the parts. Men are hard-wired to like women who are sexy, playful and caring. Is that you right now or are you too burdened to lighten-up?

Females and males are polar opposites, cleverly designed by nature way back when the original moulds were made.

 Living in an urban environment, which allows such diversity of roles for both women and men, often blinds us to our original gender inheritance. Today we are born as uniquely genderised as we were in days gone by.

The truth is that our gender is not only biologically written into the hard-wiring of our genitals but it is also imprinted permanently onto our brain structure. Furthermore it is  reinforced, at the cellular level, by the genderising hormones  that flood our bodies both in utero during foetal development and again, even more emphatically, at the time of adolescence.

Subsequently, from that time on, from moment to moment each thought we have, as either a female or a male, further imprints our gender preferences on every level of being, physical, emotional and mental.

Males and females are very different in their thoughts, feelings, values, perceptions, judgments, ambitions, desires and needs. We are designed to be so. This is how we complement one another and how we can together create a family unit.

In a recent survey both men and women were asked to describe the kind of person they would really like to be.

This is what they said:

What Men Want:

Men chose: bold, competitive, capable, dominant, assertive, admired, practical, prestige, power, to own things.

What Women Want:

Women chose: warm, loving, generous, attractive, friendly, giving, service to others, meeting interesting people

 No wonder that we often don’t see eye-to-eye!!

We have just had International Women’s Day. What a great celebration of the female gender – and then I started to think……isn’t it interesting that we do not have International Men’s Day, And why not, I wonder?

Is it that men are so humble that they do not need to be celebrated in the same way that women do?

Or is it that there is an already existing automatic assumption that in this culture males are the predominant gender, and that there therefore is a kind of obligation to give the little woman a pat on the back once a year?

A bit of a tongue-in-cheek approach really, but, the question does provoke deep thought and has had me very interested to seek answers. I welcome your comments.

It led me to ponder the notion that is being talked about at many levels – in ’spiritual’ circles, by environmental sages and groups, in scientific circles and in the realm of new physics – that the globe is heading towards a polar shift.

It has happened before, according to archeologists, geologists and new age seers. Geological evidence demonstrates that there has been a flip of the globe many times before in the history of the planet.

While I don’t doubt that the planet is undergoing a massive shift at the moment, that is both affecting and being affected by the dramatic climate changes, that are impacting landscapes, changing coastlines and causing the polar caps to melt startling quickly, there are changes happening on other levels of existence on the globe that resonant with the physical changes.

If we recognise that existence on this planet embraces not only the physical dimension but also the relational  or energetic level of human affairs (and plant and animal, of course) then we can be sure that energetic changes are taking place in these realms as well.

As women we have long fitted into a prevailing mind-set that is deeply rooted in the masculine principle.

Cosmopolitan values within this paradigm include hierarchy (there’s a bottom and a top and to get to the top you have to use the intellect not feelings), logical thought (valued over intuition), linear progression (in spite of the fact that nature moves in circles) and competitive (that is working against somebody rather than with them).

Now, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the values described above, that is, unless they are the ONLY values that are operating within a society.

Feminine values are very different. They favour power-sharing, intuitive knowing, net-working for optimum outcomes and process-orientated approaches.

Taken together these values can create a perfectly balanced society when both sets are acknowledged. That way, instead of competing with one another, they can together mould the structure and functioning of the everyday world we live in.

Up until fairly recently however, feminine values have taken second position, and cosmopolitan mainstream society has largely expressed masculine values.

A Polar Shift is Coming

However, nothing ever remains static. Times are a-changing and there is a polar shift occurring. No, not only one that involves the North and South pole of the planet necessarily but rather, one that recognizes that females and males occupy opposite ends of the bi-polar expression of human beings (and all other beings in nature as well).

And feminine values are beginning to emerge from the groundswell of popular opinion and be recognized as
values that need to be embraced by society in this time of tumultuous change.

One example of this is the recent kerfuffle caused by NFL player, Brett Stewart who raped a 17 year-old girl after a big boozie night out. The club (boy’s club!!) was happy to reinstate him to play next week but there was such a reaction from the public that the NFL head honcho reversed the decision and fined the Manly club for the player’s behaviour.

It is not OK any longer for the male macho principle of rape, pillage and plunder and boy’s rule to be tolerated by the general public. The outcry demonstrated that the public is changing the notions of what is fair, compassionate and just behaviour especially for those in the public arena.

We no longer need the ‘expand and multiply’, war-mongering, ‘top of the pile wins’ attitudes in times when the planet is groaning under the effects of years of thoughtless rape and pillage (of the environment and the planet’s resources as well) and the world population suffering from inequality of power sharing.

What we now need are the values of conservation, restoration, support and caring to maintain the resources that we have and to uphold the well-being of the existing population. These are feminine values. This is the polar shift we need.
 

Female and male differences in physiology, psychology, emotional responses, values and perceptions mean that in any heterosexual relationship the two parties that are relating to one another are as alike as chalk and cheese. In fact, they might as well be from different planets.

Differing circulating hormones and inflows of neuro-chemicals have shaped the brains and bodies of men and women from the time they were in the womb, resulting in two totally unique genderised expressions of the human being.  When women and men relate in the confined space of a relationship these differences always come to the fore, shattering the commonly held romanticised view of a love match that will continue forever.

Sex is one of the stumbling blocks. In my last blog I described how the effects of testosterone on males and oestrogen and progesterone on females drives sexual desire and readiness in vastly different ways.  So much so that it is often a wonder that men and women experience any permanence in relationships at all.

After the initial honeymoon period where bucketfuls of certain hormones drive a passionate sexual frenzy for both of them, couples generally experience the slow-down of desire that signals that they have moved into the ’settled’ phase of the relationship. It is at this stage that the divergence between the sexes is most obvious.

For the man, what heralds this shift is a need for regular sex with a ready availability (ever-ready would be more appropriate) but not so frequent. Also characteristic for males is a greater or lesser degree of possessiveness that is mediated by the arrival in his brain of male-specific ‘bonding’ hormones.

For the woman driven by other, more female-specific hormones that are equally as potent, there is a move into a more  ‘nonchalent’ phase of relating where she becomes less eager for sex and less ready to turn herself inside out to please her man. She goes into a kind of ‘taking for granted’ stage.

Many people do not understand this shift and, whether they be male or female, they often question whether the ‘love fairy’ has ceased sprinkling stardust down on their particular union meaning that they have ‘fallen out of love’

When both females and males understand the biological process that is occurring here, that is, the couple have shifted naturally to a phase in their relating that can now accommodate children, they can go with the shift and learn new behaviours that will ensure the ongoing status of the relationship.

Here are some tips on how to survive the shift:

1. Recognise that the changes, whether they appear subtly or with a bang, are not personal. That means:

For him – she is not refusing your advances because she is tired of you but rather because of a genuine physiological change in the function of her body that is preparing her (subconsciously) for becoming pregnant. She needs to be able to divert her attention and love to the newborn for its survival.

For her – he is not becoming possessive of you because he doesn’t trust you, but rather because his biology is directing him to become protective of you (subconsciously) in anticipation of you being the mother of his children. He is biologically wired to protect his family.

2. Learn how to foster the feelings of connection between you, but in different ways:

For him – try to understand that a woman needs to feel connected and that the more she feels that bond the more readily she will desire your body! Connect to her through listening to her. She needs to talk to feel connected. Touch her often, not sexually, but affectionally. That will kindle her desire. Recognise that she needs a sense of security – it is part of her biological inscription, so hear her fears about money and having a home, without criticism. Soothe her fears with an air of certainty. Women like men to love them unquestioningly and to let them run the show. If you can do that she will follow you anywhere.

For her – try to understand that a man doesn’t connect as easily as a woman – he is not wired as thoroughly for connection. Don’t talk him into a corner. He doesn’t want to hear about his failings in the relationship or what he has or hasn’t done to make the household run smoothly. He hears that as criticism that makes him feel uneasy and inadequate. He would rather connect through sex -touch him affectionally and sexually as often as possible. That keeps his fire stoked and his love barometer high. Then he will cooperate just to get more of the same! And don’t expect him to get on with your relatives or friends the way that you get on with his. Many men feel uncomfortable in forced social settings because it makes them feel that they have to put on a show. If that’s your bag, you take care of that side of things recognising again that it isn’t personal, just the way his brain is wired. Men like their women to be sexy, playful and caring. If you can manage that you’ll have him eating out of your hand.