Where to have fertility rituals if you're not in the UK, fertility psychotherapy, and creating your own space for fertility rituals and prayer.
If you don't feel like coming to the UK to visit the Cerne Abbas Giant, there are people nearer to home who perform fertility rituals you may like to get involved in. There are various groups and therapists who offer things from traditional counselling to more unorthodox meditations, including ceremonies for infertility, pregnancy loss and blessings of pregnant mothers and their babies. Many of these ceremonies include guided positive imaginary to help achieve healthy babies.
Some groups are run by women who have previously experienced infertility problems.
For more information, contact Resolve, 509 Marin Street, Suite 236, Thousand Oaks, CA, 91360.
For more traditional counselling or psychotherapy, your clinic where you are undergoing IVF may be able to provide you with further details. Many IVF clinics provide infertility counselling as part of their service.
If you'd like to try your own version of a fertility ritual, you can do it yourself in your back garden or yard. A close friend of mine built her own stone circle in her yard, using large rocks, where she and family and friends would gather to pray, meditate or do drumming. Fires can be lit during beltane, to encourage fertility, or you could try doing your own fertility ritual during valentine's day (which was originally a marriage and fertility festival). In ancient times, an animal would be killed and the potential mother would be struck across the body with the animal skin, which was thought to enhance fertility and guarantee an easy birth. These days we're obviously not going to kill an animal, but the ceremony could be adapted to suit your own life, maybe by having a nice romantic Valentine's meal by a fire, wrapped in a rug, and using positive visualisation to imagine your growing pregnancy.
I believe that personal visualisations and prayer can be just as powerful as visiting fertility sites, or having group therapy.
