Finding Fertility When Nothing Is Working Through A Holistic Approach: 54

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nurse, Grow podcast. Today I have a guest that I have been waiting to talk to now for a couple of months. Her name is Dr. Fiona Tesoni, and she works with all things Chinese medicine and especially focused on fertility. So Dr. Tesoni, welcome, and we're so happy to have you here today on the Heal, Nurse, Grow podcast.

Cheryl, it's a pleasure to be here, and I'm glad we're— our line's finally connected. We're not ships passing in the night anymore.

Uh, so can you just start out by telling people a little bit about how you got into Chinese medicine? And then after that, a little bit on how you got focused on the subject of fertility, because this is something that I am particularly interested in. Um, I don't have any biological children myself. I'm now 50, so that ship has sailed, but, um, I have 4 friends who have also struggled with infertility. So it is not uncommon. It is amazing to me that I have that many people in my life that have either done IVF or done some kind of drug therapy because despite all their best efforts, they haven't been able to get pregnant. So I'm excited for you to share with people some things that they might be able to try and, you know, how you got into all this.

Well, I got into Chinese medicine when I was working and living in London. You know, all Australians tend to have the 2-year work and tour and travel. And so most of us tend to head to the UK. And so I was, you know, working and traveling and living in London and using it as a base for travel. And I was probably going to pursue a career in law. Like I had been sponsored to study law in Australia after coming— after I finished my travels in the UK. But I actually had some acupuncture while I was in London. And I had a back injury that I had been managing for the past 6 years. So I had a really bad water skiing accident. I had a posterior bulge. So I had debilitating pain and it was with me every single day. And I tried all different modalities to help my pain. I saw chiropractors, physios, osteopaths, kinesiologists. GPs wanted to give me opiates. And I tried acupuncture really as a last resort. And it was so miraculous. But what was really interesting is that when I went in for my back pain, the practitioner asked me about my menstrual cycle. And I thought, how does this correlate to my back pain? And I thought that was— it's something that really stuck with me that he wanted to understand about that. And now being a practitioner myself, I understand that your menstrual cycles gives you so much information about how energy is moving in your body, if there's energy that's stuck. And I had dysmenorrhea and painful periods, and that does correlate with people that have back pain. So it's interesting that he asked me about that menstrual cycle. So long story short, he did acupuncture on me. I had 2 sessions which not only healed the pain but fixed the posterior bulge that I had with me for 6 years. Wow. So I was hooked. I was like, this is my calling. You know, it was this serendipitous experience that happened in my life. And I thought, I don't want to pursue law. I'm going to get the prospectus to study Chinese medicine in Australia. And I did a 3-year 360-degree turn and went down the health and healing modality. So I came back to Australia to study Chinese medicine, and I originally started with acupuncture, and then I did my master's in Chinese herbal medicine. But I started it with acupuncture because I really thought that I would pursue a career in, you know, musculoskeletal injuries. And initially I started with sports injuries and things like that and working with athletes. But then the same thing, you know, you have female patients come to see you and you're always asking them about their menstrual cycle. And see, Chinese medicine looks at not just what the issue is, that's just the branch, you know, they go to the root of what's going on. So basically I was gynecologically working with women and helping fix a lot of issues around menstruation. Be it amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, you know, clotting factors, you know, endometriosis, polycystic ovaries. And so there was this gravitational pull that just took me in this fertility direction. So it wasn't something that I planned. I never thought I would be prescribing herbs or putting needles into people. I didn't think that was my calling in life, but here I am. And I think life is about stepping stones. You know, you never know where you're going to end up, but it's an incredible career.

Yeah, that sounds amazing. And I love that story because the way I got into what I do is it has nothing to do with the plan either. So I think it's not that unusual. One thing that might be interesting for people before we go into more about how you work with people on their fertility, if people aren't familiar with acupuncture, and I've had it before myself, and being a yoga person and kind of being very interested in Eastern modalities, I'm kind of familiar with it, but probably not to the extent that, you know, most people hear it and they're just like, they know that they get needles stuck in them, but they don't know about the chi and they don't know how to the, like, what's the theory behind it. So maybe you could go into that a little bit for people so that they have an understanding of how it works with the root cause and how it works with the energetic system of your body.

Of course. Well, you know, as organic living matter, we are all energy. We are energy embodied on mass. Yes. So basically, and everything relates to everything else. We're so connected. This web of energy connects us to me, to you, even in this conversation. But if we just look at the human body, for example, we have meridians and this is where the energy flows through these 12 primary meridians. And they traverse very similar pathways to arteries, nerves, and veins, although they're not arteries, nerves, or veins. And, you know, before when I started practicing, it was very hard to quantify it and qualify it because we're talking about something that's invisible. You know, it's like measuring electricity in the body. That's the analogy I try to give people so they can understand it. But what they started to do in Korea was map the— they started injecting isotopes in the body and they could actually take an X-ray of that isotope and it was mapping all the meridians that they had hypothesized for, you know, 2,000 to 5,000 years. So we now have a meridian system which you can see under an X-ray, and it's fascinating. And so basically we insert these metal instruments, you know, called acupuncture needles. They're very fine. And I think this is where it gets a bit scary for some people because they think it's a big hypodermic injection. You know, when you've had your rubella, you know, when you've had your vaccinations and rubella injections as a kid, you think, oh, that's what acupuncture is. Well, it's the antithesis of that, meaning the opposite of that. It's the strand of a hair, right? That's why we use guide tubes because the needles are so fine and they're malleable, meaning they bend. So we have to put them in a guide tube and they're inserted very superficially into the skin. And if you look what metal does, metal is a conductor of energy. So basically we insert the needle into the skin in the peripheral regions of the body. And there's about 365 points over the body. And that's just naming a few of them. And basically we're going to encourage the energy flow. It's like almost opening up a dam. Sometimes we have to find where the blockages are. And we have to move the— open the dams and get the energy to move. But sometimes there can be depletion. So we need to become alchemists and we need to move energy in a direction, you know, especially if somebody is like deficient or, you know, fatigued, for example. We might need to nourish or tonify or build that energy up. So these 12 primary meridians are all named after the the same organs in Western medicine. And this is where it gets a little bit confusing because we have the spleen energy, but it's not your spleen like it does in Western medicine. We also have the kidney meridian, but it's not your kidneys as we would say in Western medicine. So these pathways are named after the organs. And so that's where it gets a little bit confusing for people because when I say Oh, you have kidney deficiency. And in Chinese medicine, the kidneys rule the back and the spine and the knees. So for example, when I was being treated with acupuncture, they treated my kidney meridian and my bladder meridian. And you know, you could probably talk to a Western doctor and then they would say, but there's nothing wrong with your kidneys. You've just done a kidney function test. So there's a bit of misunderstanding until you understand the theory behind Chinese medicine and It's a rabbit's warren. So we could spend the next 3 hours talking about Chinese medicine theory. But in a nutshell, it's just based on these 12 meridians and we're correcting the imbalances. Basically, the whole aim of Chinese medicine is to restore the balance, is to bring balance into the qi flow. So qi is energy and we're basically restoring that flow.

Well, and that makes a lot of sense and how that might relate to fertility, I think, because even physical blockages are sometimes the cause, but there's also a lot of energetic things. And by the way, thank you so much for mentioning that they had done the isotopes and been able to visualize that, because I have never heard about that before, and that is absolutely amazing. I just love that.

Oh, it's like, it's like proof. Yeah, there's proof. There's enough— there's— there are other studies too where, like, for example, On my foot, there's a point called Liver 3 right between the big toe and the little toe. And it's at that junction between those metatarsal bones. Now, Liver 3 in Chinese medicine, it treats the head and eyes. Now, what they did is they put electrodes on the brain. And basically, when they stimulated that needle, the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain lit up in this, experiment which govern vision. So basically we're getting all these theories in Western medicine to prove our science. So that's why I think we've come into mainstream health now that we've got that full, you know, proof and understanding that this is actually real. Because when I first started Chinese medicine, can I just say my introduction to Chinese medicine with, uh, with the health funds was a man, Chinese man, standing over a body on the table with two dead fish going Oh gosh. And we were treated like witchcraft doctors. And I'm sure, you know, 3,000 years ago I would have been burned at the stake. But now it's like everybody's on board with the acupuncture, you know, because scientifically proven. Yeah, it is scientifically proven. Finally, finally we've got rid of the dead fish and now it's become mainstream. We've got, you know, GPs are practicing it. We've got osteos incorporating it into their treatments. What physio doesn't do dry needling nowadays? You know, it's all accurate under the banner of acupuncture. Clearly, clearly those are— they're not trained the way that we are in terms of— we've had 4 years of comprehensive study and understanding the Chinese medicine theory and diagnosis and patterns of disharmony and all of that that goes with it. But Everyone's on board with acupuncture and Chinese medicine now. It's, it's wonderful to see it evolve over the past 21 years because when I first started, it was in the dark ages.

Yeah, I'm sure. And now actually sometimes insurances will even cover it now, which is pretty amazing.

It is covered by all major health funds in Australia. I know that particularly. But yeah.

Oh, wow. That's fantastic.

It's really great. Yeah. Yeah.

So that leads us right into how people can use this. And I just, as a side note, I will tell people that I've had both acupuncture and dry needling, and by far acupuncture is far more pleasant. The dry needling— Indeed it is. Yeah. —is a little intense. But anyway, that's just a side note. So Dr. Tesoni, if you could chat now a little bit about, you know, you kind of told us how you just happened to probably because a lot of people are struggling with fertility nowadays. You know, it's like you keep wanting to put it off, put it off, and then when you finally are ready, uh, then for a lot of people it's maybe too late, or they have some health problems that are, that are challenged getting in the way. So, um, you obviously were experiencing people having this issue, and now that's what you specialize in. So when people come to you, they probably tried a lot of things, I'm sure, at that point. And so then how do you go about working with them differently? I know you mentioned it's kind of very holistic, much like Chinese medicine, that some of— some things with their diet, obviously the acupuncture. So I'm just excited to hear how that process goes.

Yeah, well, initially when I first started, we— I, as I said, I primarily worked with women. And, and so, you know, I was working gynecologically and helping women find their balance, you know, overcome their issues gynecologically, be it PCOS, endometriosis, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, clotting factors, all those kinds of things. But then I started— over the last 10 years, I would say that there's been this global decline in sperm. So I've started working primarily with couples together because it really is now 50% the woman and 50% the man. And, you know, we've got, you know, declining sperm counts, we've got low morphology, low motility. And, uh, so a lot of this can be lifestyle-based You know, so a lot of the time when I'm working particularly with the males, it's to clean up the diet lifestyle, you know, because the testicles need to be cool. And most of the diets nowadays of guys, it's like fast food and, you know, and so it's just like literally it's an anti-inflammatory diet that I'll put the guys on just to cool them down, get their cortisol down, improve that love hormone, that oxytocin. Improve that blood circulation to the testicles. And then with working with women, it's working on whatever issues they've got. So then it's a fusion of bringing them together. So we'll be working diet, lifestyle, nutrition, mindset, and then it can be intimacy issues. You know, the stress of trying to conceive can really pull couples apart because, you know, baby-making sex can be routine sex. And so, you know, that's where, you know, I'll bring different things into the mix, like the Five Languages of Love with love and intimacy, finding each other's love language and communicating that way with each other, or even, you know, doing some tantra techniques. So, you know, my work as a practitioner is working out where the deficiencies are. Is it in the relationship? Is there trauma? You know, sometimes it can be, you know, you may have had an accident or you may have had recurrent pregnancy loss and there's a lot of grief and sadness. So we've got to sometimes work with a team of people. Sometimes I will refer them to counselors to workshop what their past trauma is because a lot of us, a lot of us, we all, we all have truckloads of things to work through and this fertility process brings it all to the light. You know, it's like a Pandora's box when I start working with people. So there's so many layers to being a human being. There's metaphysical, there's the physical, there's the emotional, and then there's the spiritual. You know, I often work with religious people, you know, Orthodox Jewish people, Italians, Catholics, all different types, Muslims. I've got so many people that I work with, Hindus. And I love that. And I love learning about different cultures and, and traditions. And so I've got to incorporate that into the process as well.

Yeah, there's— there are so many layers. And like, as you mentioned, just knowing that— like I mentioned, how many people that I know that have been through that process, and, and it is very stressful on both parts of the couple. And as you mentioned, um, you know, it's, it's not always on the woman. It's a lot of times, you know, there's this whole thing with declining test— I don't know if it's the same in Australia, but in the US, like, men's testosterone has declined significantly in the last 50 years. I suspect it's multifactorial, but certainly a lot based on diet, I think, as you mentioned. So when they come to you, you know, you do have all these emotional things and maybe physical things like low motility, some of those things that you mentioned. But when you're just talking about overall health, what are some of the things that you have them do almost as a rule? Like, is there anything that you just recommend across the board for people just for overall health?

Totally, totally across the board for overall health. Like, it's about getting the pillars in place. So everyone learns that we start the day with a standard glass of water, 200ml, and add a fresh squeeze of fresh lime or lemon, and then 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Because really it's about setting up the day. And I like to begin the day, so I like to work on that cortisol awakening response. So open the curtains, look at the sunshine, or walk out onto the patio and, you know, start to get this circadian rhythm working. You know, have your blinds closed, sleep in a dark room. So I get sleep, sleep is a big pillar. So we work on your sleep. We work on waking up with water and hydration and setting up that microbiome because the microbiome is that second brain. So everyone starts the day with the Lemon Love. I call it the Lemon Love. And sometimes you might need to titrate up with the apple cider vinegar depending on if you've got gastroesophageal reflux disease. And so they'll all start with that. And also remember, after you've slept, your body's just dehydrated. Your, your every organ is wanting hydration. And remember, we need so much hydration for this fertility process. We need it for sperm particularly, but we need it to nourish the ovaries and for, for the maturation of the follicles. So everyone Medicine starts with that. Then it's like the cleanup of the diet. So I love, you know, the paleo way of eating. I love anti-inflammatory diets, but there's not one diet that fits everybody. That's the beauty of Chinese medicine. Like, you actually do need to have carbohydrates to ovulate. So, you know, some people can tolerate grains, some people can't. And it's about understanding everyone's patterns of disharmony and their diagnosis and just working out what diet fits their type. But basically, under the banner of an anti-inflammatory diet, I call it the cleanup. Usually there's some form of liver detox in there. So I will get them to do acupuncture weekly. I'll get them to do some liver detoxing herbs. And then we start to, it's almost like till the soil, lay the foundation. So you get really basic pillars in place. Then it's like, all right, exercise. With fertility, it's like not over-exercising because we don't want our adrenals to be taxed. So I always encourage all my couples, as a bare minimum, walking 30 to 40 minutes a day. But then it's doing what you love. So if you're a runner, and I have these, you know, I work with, you know, bodybuilders and, you know, world champions that are at 9 and 10% body fat, and I'm having to claw them back a little bit. To train like Lady Jane, you know, not at the VO2 max. And, you know, because in the fertility process we need extra body fat and we need the cortisol down, we need to raise the oxytocin and bring the cortisol down. So I have to pull back and I do interval training or more of a HIIT routine for my overachievers. But exercise is another pillar. So it's just structurally getting those little things in place. And I always get everybody to do the breathing. Like I'm a yoga teacher, Iyengar background trained as well.

So I can tell when you put your foot up earlier, I knew it. I knew it immediately. He's got the spread toes. Yes, that's right. I don't know if I can do it because I'm not warm enough.

So yeah, I did my Iyengar training and it's really nice to bring in different things, threads in this process. So I find the breath is so powerful. So I teach everybody just diaphragmatic breathing, which is, I call it the belly breath. It's really just learning to breathe into your lower, the lower part of your abdomen. Now most people, they shallow breathe. They're like, they breathe and their diaphragm is like It's almost suffocating their esophagus. So by learning to breathe into your belly, it calms the vagus nerve, calms your nervous system. It just sets up that, you know, rest, nest, and digest before you go to sleep. So I teach everybody the breathing technique, and I get everybody to, you know, create a dream plan and visualize, because using our powers of procreation, is powerful. It's potent. So I get everybody to dream again, to think of a future time and place where you're either in utero or with your newborn and use all your senses of perception. So what can you smell, taste, touch, and make it so tangible that the subconscious mind— and give it as much detail that we move in that direction and it opens up the heart again to receive. And if the heart's open and happy and dreaming, then the uterus is receptive and those embryos are going to stick. So there's so many layers to this process. But yeah, they're— but they're the basic pillars. I—

oh my gosh. Okay. I almost want to cry because I can just— I know now why you're so successful, because what you just described, I think maybe one of the most important things of all the things that you just described, you know, you talked about people struggling with this, having past possibly miscarriages and things like that. And it really does create, I think, like a deep sorrow that is very difficult to overcome. And so your technique of that, that visualization where it's very rich and very tangible, as you said, and just all the details. I just think if people did— of course, I want them to do all the things that you said because that's all amazing for anyone's health. But I think that that last part about the visualization. I just think that'd be so powerful for a lot of people because I think they just get so in that process, that stressful process, and they forget to have that hope still, which I think— exactly— that if you're going to conceive, you do.

And you have to believe. Like, part of— I have so many people, I would say that there's a big percentage, and I'm not, I'm not going to put a number on it, but a big percentage of people come to see me and I can see in their eyes they don't believe it. They don't believe this is possible. So I've got to spark that belief system. Like, first of all, we have to believe this is possible, that it's possible for you. And, you know, it has to start with that. So that's why we start with this dream. And the more detail I get people to bring to it, you know, I even get them to sing their lullaby or, you know, for yes, I had a session yesterday and one of the husbands, he's quite religious. His song, his lullaby that he was singing to his wife's belly was Jesus Loves Me. And I was just like, oh, we were all teary in this. I was just like, I said, so anytime you don't believe this, you sing that song, Jesus Loves Me, and let yourself light up. Because when you're singing, it's really hard to be sad when you're singing. When you're singing, you're connected to God. You know, you're in a state of receivership. So I get people to sing and couples to sing when they, even when they're not believing it. But I said, because your heart's listening, your ovaries are listening. Like every cell in your body is conscious because it's that, that energy that we're all connected, this web of connection in your body. It's like, so I've got to literally start talking to everything with love. So it's like everything that I do is like, how do we increase the dose of love? Love in this process.

Oh, that's so amazing. And such an Iyengar kind of principle too. I think when he had that, I mean, I think people know him best for the alignment stuff, you know, but I think that there are underappreciated parts of his teachings.

Well, you know, even if I'm like, as we go through the coaching, I get people to do sequences. Like I will always instill the menstrual sequence. To my patients that are menstruating. So these are postures that are, you know, designed— forward bends— to encourage blood flow, to calm the nervous system, to restore. And, uh, so, you know, throughout the cycle, whether we're in the follicular cycle, we're ovulating, I will give them different yoga poses to do. And even if they're getting into bed at night, I get them all into supta baddha konasana, which is the bound angle pose. Laying on your back where the soles and feet are touching, it opens up the pelvic grim, and they can connect to their heart, their womb space, and they can just literally breathe in, and it calms the nervous system before they sleep, but releases the spine, the hips, and then all those beautiful, all those, those organs, be it the testes, or if I'm working with the uterus and the womb and the ovaries, it's getting increasing that blood flow. So it's all subliminal, and I love to infuse the Iyengar stuff in because Guruji, you know, I met him in 2006 when I went to the Institute. And, you know, it was just a couple of years before he died. And it was amazing to see this man still doing a half an hour shoulder stand and hanging over the backbender and doing all these poses at 90, 92 he was at the time. And these discourses, his mind, it was was— he was an inspiration.

Yeah. It's— I think that's kind of the beauty of people that get out of the Western medicine practice mode because I think when you're open to one sort of thing, like whether it's yoga or whatever, it makes you more open to seeing the connection between all of them and also just having an open mind to, you know, for example, they always knew that acupuncture worked and we knew about chi and we knew about all that, but they couldn't really prove it before. And then you just described now how we actually have the technology where we can see some of these things. And so it's hard for people though to trust without some of the scientific— and I'm guilty that I am like a big, like, show me the, show me the research kind of person, you know, but, but that's one thing that yoga has been a gift to me is that it has opened my heart and my mind to just letting things in that I can't totally understand, but that I can, but I know that they work. And then I just, I just trust that for whatever reason it works.

And I have prayers that I give them, you know, a uterus prayer about tuning into the womb space and, you know, just adorning the palace. Like, that's the beauty of Chinese medicine. I love the metaphors that they use. So the womb in Chinese medicine is known as the palace for the child. So it's called Zhi Gong, the palace for the child. Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it? In Western medicine, it's known as an unnecessary organ. And I think that's so disrespectful. You know, this is this organ of creation. So I love that we give this beautiful metaphor. So I am always giving my patients these visuals to let's light up the palace. Let's adorn it. Let's light it up with light and visualize like a cup of light as you breathe into it. Fill up your cup with love and light and golden diamond platinum light. And, you know, they feel that. They feel that when they breathe.

Yes. Can— so once, once your couples conceive, then, I mean, I assume that they're still doing all these wonderful health practices that you've already put in place. Are there— is there anything additional that happens once conception has happened to sort of just nurture the whole process from an Eastern medicine perspective? Like, how do you do that differently than just— obviously they're still going to get their ultrasounds and all of those sorts of things, but what other things do you recommend throughout the pregnancy?

Well, pregnancy, basically, if you look at it very simply, we, we look at the womb, it's a warm place, and babies don't want to stick in a very cold palace. So it's all about warming foods. So everything when you're pregnant is all about being cooked, no raw foods. And you'll see that it's recommended to most women that they avoid, you know, raw fish and soft cheeses, you know. So Chinese medicine already had that understanding thousands of years ago. So it's all soups, stews, slow-cooked foods. Bone broth is king. It helps everything, you know, gives your embryos everything that they need to grow and to mature and develop. So I call it the fertility elixir of life. So a cup of bone broth a day while you're pregnant and warming foods. It's also pulling back a little bit You know, especially that first trimester, I tend to, you know, call things back. It's going to be very gentle yin yoga. It's going to be walking. It's tuning in, sending love and light to your embryo, you know, and really finding some of those meditative practices. So I'll often give them yoga poses to do in addition. But then it's also two things that will come up. There can be morning sickness. So we have a beautiful point on the wrist and it's called Pericardium 6 and it's 3 fingerbreadths down the midline of the wrist in between the tendons. And that point is the— I call it the Wonder Woman power activate. It's the point that's— yeah, yeah. It's like imagine Wonder Woman with her bands on. But this point helps with morning sickness. So I will give people acupressure and things that they can do And also there's that anxiety in the first trimester. So there's a point between the eyebrows and this point is known as the third eye. It also connects to the heart. So when women are feeling anxious, I get them to tap it. And we've also got a point at the top of the head, Ba Hui. It's called Du 20 and it helps the embryo stick. It's the implantation point. So I'll often get women to wake up in the morning and do some tapping. EFT tapping, and especially if they're anxious, and then they can massage this point on their wrist. So it never ends. The therapy never ends. And I like to impart as much of the acupuncture and the meridian therapy. I incorporate that as they go in the coaching so that they can go, right, morning sickness point, anxiety point. Ah, I can massage my earlobes. Because if you look at the ear, It's actually an upside-down fetus. And oh, just interesting. Yeah. And so at the top of the ears, you know, in that triangular fossa that connects to the uterus and it calms the nervous system, we call it Shen Men. So I get women to massage their ears and their earlobes. And yes, there's various points along the body. And so basically, if I I just, I walk them through to that first 12 weeks, because that first 12 weeks until they get that first scan, there's a lot of trepidation. So usually even if women stop their coaching with me, they're still in contact with me. Like I call it the cosmic umbilical cord. Like I've always got a thread to my patients and I still have threads to my patients like 10 years on. They still reach up to me. Like I had a patient just recently reach out to me on Instagram, put me on an Instagram story to say, oh, Dr. Fiona helped me with my PCOS back in 2017 and 2019 and helped me conceive my babies and got me in the right place. And it's just nice that I've got— it's like a big family, you know. I feel like I'm so blessed in this work because I'm connected to so many people. And couples.

Well, speaking of work and how people work with you, I think that you have a couple of, a couple ways you work with people. I think you work with them privately, but you also have some programs. So I would love it if you would share with people what you do in those programs, how they can work with you. I'm assuming nowadays, you know, a lot of virtual stuff because you are over there, way over there in Australia, which I hope to get back there someday, but it might be a while. Uh, so if you could just share how people can work with you and about your programs a little bit, that would be Awesome.

So I work online nowadays and my fertility coaching has now become international. So I primarily work with the US and Canada, but I still work in, in, in other different countries. And basically what I have is two programs. There's the 3-month coaching program where you work with me on Zoom hourly every week and I send you the Chinese herbs. And then I'll organize acupuncture for you weekly in your country. And I usually find somebody that is registered that can administer the acupuncture for the patients. And then I've got the 7-day intensive program, and that's working with me 7 days, and it's a 90-minute Zoom call. And that's to get a taste of what the fertility coaching will be like over those 12 weeks. But in that 12 weeks, we'll go through, as I said, all those pillars. I teach them acupuncture meridian therapy. I teach them about the theory of Chinese medicine, how to nourish their bodies, you know, and work out the nutrition that is right for their body type. And then wherever the deficiencies and excesses are in their relationships, what they need, what we need to focus on. They learn, I teach them fertility qigong, which is basically Chinese yoga. These are breathing techniques, but they're using, we're using movement because a lot of people don't have access to yoga and classes. So I teach them what they need to know to open up their wombs and they get their chi flow. So I teach them Qigong, EFT tapping. I teach them about nourishing their bodies with food and nutrition, how to detox their lifestyle, how to improve their relationships, breathing techniques, mindfulness practices. So there is so much to the program, and it really is tailored depending on what that couple needs. But that's kind of it in a nutshell. That's amazing.

And so if they want to reach out to you, this— any of this sounds interesting, they want to learn more, you mentioned Instagram, but I'm assuming you have a website. And this will all of course be in the show notes, but if you could just share with people what are the best ways then to find you.

Of course, on Instagram I'm Dr. Dot Fiona Tizzoni. On, on the Facebook group. I have a private Facebook group where you can actually join. It's called the Pregnancy Accelerator Program, and you can join. And, you know, it's a free service that I offer to women. It's a community that I have, and you can ask any questions, and I'll get your questions answered in that group. It's a community where women are trying to conceive, and we're all supporting one another and what they're going through. So the questions— women learn by the questions that other women ask in the group. So I've got the Facebook group and then I've got the, the website pregnancyaccelerator.com. Okay, awesome.

I just can't tell you how much I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. I only wish that I had found you about, well, first probably 15 years ago, but if I could have found you 5 years ago, I, there are so many of my friends that I think you could have really helped. But hopefully now going forward, everyone will have this resource and know more about you. So thanks again for sharing today. And I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show.

Thanks a million, Cheryl. It's been an absolute pleasure.