Nearly seven million women in the U.S. have been diagnosed with unexplained infertility.(1) That means that according to Western Medicine there is no physiological reason why these women can't conceive. The question then becomes: if the physical body is not the cause, could it be that the missing factor might be somewhere in the mental and emotional realms?

One in seven women seeks medical help to aid conception. Inevitably, given this demand and the low success rates of conventional treatments for infertility, alternative practitioners have not been slow to offer therapies that they claim will increase fertility.

When most people think of hypnotherapy, they think of losing weight, smoking cessation or issues such as overcoming fears and phobias, but few people are aware of how hypnotherapy is being used for promoting fertility.

Several thousand years ago, the Chinese observed that women who had difficulty conceiving often had an underlying emotional issue that was preventing conception. This concept is once again receiving serious consideration as infertility has become more prevalent in our society.

As infertility has become more prevalent in recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in what role the mind/body connection might play in creating a healthy conception. One of the pioneers in this field is Dr. Elizabeth Muir, a clinical psychologist based in London, who introduced the practice of hypnotherapy in working with infertility patients. Dr. Muir conducted a ground-breaking study where she focused on the mind/body connection—using mostly hypnotherapy and some psychotherapy—with women who had unexplained infertility. The results of her research showed that, after completing Dr. Muir’s program, 45% of the women who had experienced infertility were able to conceive.