This content was created by Erica Hoke. This content was uploaded by Erica Hoke. This is a YouTube interview/talk segment titled "Stress & Fertility: Suzanne Gunderson & Erica Hoke Reveal Easy Tools to Help on WFLA Bloom" (created May 1, 2024). The host (Speaker A) interviews somatic wellness specialist Suzanne Gunderson and Erica Hoke (author of the Her Infertility Success series) about how trauma and anxiety can impede conception and practical somatic "pocket tools" to release stress, regulate the body, and process infertility-related trauma. The conversation explains somatic healing, its effects on reproductive function, and how clients can use short, self-applied practices in the moment.
Chapters
Life traumas and anxiety can play a big role in keeping couples from conceiving. Joining me now with ways to release that stress is somatic wellness specialist Suzanne Gunderson and the author of Her Infertility Success series, Erica Hoke. Ladies, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
So Suzanne, I really admire your line of work. I've had somatic healing myself and it was really groundbreaking for me on a personal level. And you say, holding on to past traumas can keep people even from conceiving.
Absolutely. I mean, the body is capturing a state of overwhelm and is stuck in that, almost like a freeze response. So that way we can't move forward to be able to reproduce, do normal body functions. We need to be able to have a regulated body. And so somatics and anything that helps the body to relax and calm down and feel more of a state of at ease Helps the reproductive system and conceive naturally.
Can you explain to our viewers exactly what somatic healing is? Because there's, you know, that book The Body Keeps the Score, and it does.
Yes, yes, yes. So we have an amazing stress response in our body. When we are relaxed, our body is behaving normally. Normal functions are happening. We blink, we reproduce, we swallow, we digest. All these things that we don't have to think about are happening for us. But when something comes into our neuro-perception of our body's experience, we begin to rise into a threat response. And the body squeezes in and starts to react. And all the blood leaves our viscera and it goes out to our limbs to literally fight or flight. That's what it means when we're saying fight or flight. And it can be a very hot, anxious experience. And when the body becomes overwhelmed in that experience, it shuts down and freezes. And it will lock into that position. And the only way out is to be able to help the body release that squeeze and bring some pulsation and rhythm back to the body, have even temperature, even blood flow through the body, bring the body back to those core organs that would help us reproduce. So we need to be able to help the body recover from those states so that we can be more regulated and more at a pace of being able to activate normal body functions.
Erica, in helping us put this show together, and we've had Erica on the show many times before, but I wanted to do a one-hour special on this because fertility is the outcome, but really, if everything you do, even if you're not trying to have a child, you're going to heal your body today when you watch this show. Why was it important for you to bring an expert like Suzanne on to Bloom?
Well, infertility itself is a trauma. So aside from having any history of sexual assault or abuse or any of those kind of things associated with trauma, infertility itself losses, failed procedures, the inability to conceive itself is a trauma. And so what I help my clients with is processing with, with Suzanne's help, is processing those traumas on a monthly basis, meaning processing the trauma of not conceiving that month, processing the trauma in place. I call them, I call Suzanne's tools pocket tools for them so that when they go to the restroom and they, you know, get their monthly cycle and they know that they're not pregnant that month, they can process it there in the moment and go back to their dad ask without stuffing that 800-pound gorilla back in its cage.
Very good. We literally have just seconds left. How many sessions would somebody need?
It really is— once you— everything that I teach is self-activated and self-use. So once you have these pocket tools that you can use, you can use them in the moment of your triggers. It's not that there's a prescribed amount of sessions to heal for anything. I mean, we're just on a healing journey living here, right? So, um, you know, these tools you can use anytime, anyplace.
Oh, I think it's incredible what you do. Thank you so much for sharing it with our Bloom Viewers, and thank you, Erica Hoke, for the introduction to Suzanne. And you can read more about this story on bloomtampabay.com. We will be right back.
