What is meditation?

Meditation is often talked about in hushed tones, as if it is a secret society and you need all sorts of special skills to join in.

The truth is quite different: meditation is one of the most straightforward and accessible ways to relax, de-stress and focus on current goals, such as getting pregnant.

Even if you believe that you are doing all the right things to boost your fertility and conceive, the likelihood is that you suffer the curse of the modern woman, who is constantly rushing between work and personal commitments and struggling to please too many people, too much of the time.

Learn to relax

Knowing how to relax can help women undergoing infertility treatments, according to a study on the role of stress in getting pregnant, published earlier this year in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

The findings, according to the New York Times, did not conclude that infertility was “all in the mind”, but they did show that taking part in alternative mind-body relaxation methods could help women to conceive.

What to avoid

A common misconception about meditation is that you need to sit in a quiet room (or in a cave!) for a day or perhaps a whole week to really meditate. In fact, meditating for just a few minutes a day can be incredibly effective.

Another mistake is to think that the goal of meditation is oblivion. If you have been trying to get pregnant for many months, you may well be searching for some light relief and a way to forget your sorrows, but the point of meditation is the opposite to forgetting; it is to focus on what you really want and need, by shutting out all the mental chatter whizzing around in our minds at any given moment.

Mind and body

Once you are able to focus on your true goal – having a baby – the likelihood of your body falling into step with your mind should improve. As with other natural and alternative methods of boosting fertility, there is little scientifically proven to show that meditation can help but if you believe that your mind, body and spirit all need to work together to make a healthy baby, then you’re on the right track.

How to get started

There are lots of different types of meditation, which use a variety of tools, such as music, chanting and hand movements, to guide you. The British Meditation Society is a good place to explore the practice, and the best way to get started is to find a class in your area. Meditation courses and groups are often affiliated to religious groups, such as Buddhist organizations or your local church, but anyone can join in. Another popular form of meditation is Transcendental Meditation, popularized by The Beatles.

What's next?

Once you have mastered the basics, you can meditate at home, on the bus, in your lunch hour – absolutely anywhere at all.

Everyone comes to meditation with a different goal, but the main thing to remember is that it is not a test or a challenge. We all have the capacity to make free, clear and sound decisions, such as you have by deciding to make a baby but these decisions are very often clouded by the demands of our busy lives. Meditation can help all this along by spring-cleaning your mind.

The British Meditation Society's website