Free All Is Well: Heal Your Body With Medicine, Affirmations, and Intuition by Louise L. Hay, Mona Lisa Schulz Page B

that sex is bad or the
    experience of sexual pressure creates thought patterns connected
    to impotence.
    Looking at fertility through the lens of affirmation theory, we
    see that if you have trouble conceiving, you have concerns about
    the timing or the need to be a parent in general.
    And, finally, who hasn’t had a lower-back problem when
    they were concerned about money? Fear of money and the fu-
    ture are negative thought patterns associated with lower-back pain
    and sciatica.
    So what does science tell us about the mind-body connection
    behind negative thoughts and emotions affecting the organs of
    the second emotional center?
    Studies have found that the rate of infertility and menstrual
    cycle irregularities is higher in women who have inner conflicts
    about being a mother and who are worried about changes in their
    bodies.1 While they feel social pressure to have children, mother-
    hood may not fit in with their long-term goals. The emotional
    stress surrounding this issue increases cortisol and decreases pro-
    gesterone, which hurts successful implantation of the embryo into
    the uterus. It also decreases oxytocin and increases norepineph-
    rine and epinephrine; all of this works together to suppress sex
    hormones and turn off the mechanism that pulls sperm up into
    the uterus.2
    If a man is under a lot of pressure, the anxiety he experiences
    causes his body to produce antibodies that make sperm “impotent,”
    as they say. The stress and sadness also cause the testes and
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    A ll i s w e ll
    adrenal glands to produce more cortisol and less testosterone,
    which decreases sperm counts. Both of these problems can lead
    to infertility.3
    There is a lot of scientific literature that shows how relation-
    ships affect the health of the pelvic organs. Depression and anxi-
    ety stemming from relationship trauma have been shown to affect
    female reproductive health by making the adrenal glands produce
    too many steroids. This changes the levels of cortisol, estradiol,
    and testosterone in the body. The imbalances between these three
    hormones can cause everything from irritability to pain to fi-
    broids and ovarian cysts, not to mention weight gain.4 In fact, one
    group of studies showed the connection between chronic pelvic
    pain and sexual abuse. Sexual trauma, especially in childhood, is
    known to help set the scene for pain in the genital and urinary
    tract, as well as the third emotional center issues of eating disor-
    ders and obesity.5
    Women with cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer are likely
    to have had more sexual relationships at an earlier age, a higher
    number of premarital sexual experiences, extramarital affairs, or
    several marriages and divorces. More than half of these women
    grew up in homes where the father died young or deserted the
    family.6 Essentially, these women never had adequate love from a
    man as children. It’s quite possible that their later sexual behavior
    is a cry for love, an effort to find what they couldn’t find at home.
    Without an internal representation of love, they constantly try to
    fill up the empty hole inside with an abundance of unbalanced
    relationships. Very frequently these women enjoy the sex they are
    having, yet they tend to be selfless and do whatever pleases the
    man, physically and emotionally.7
    The influence of financial struggle and a poor economy can
    be seen as a burden on the backs of the country’s workers—liter-
    ally. A number of studies have shown that backache and increased
    muscular tension occur when people become depressed or unhappy
    about their finances, especially if they hate their jobs.8 For example,
    one study found that job dissatisfaction increased the risk for back
    pain nearly sevenfold.9 Lower-back pain is the number one cause
    of workplace disability in the U.S., not just for furniture movers or
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    It Takes Two
    dock workers, but also for