Niravi B Payne, controversial author of The Fertility Solution, talks to Ronita Dutta about her holistic approach to fertility

Niravi B Payne, whose supporters include ER's Alex Kingston and country singer Kenny Loggins', believes a woman's fertility is often affected by stress and emotional upsets dating as far back as her childhood.

With over 17 years of experience in the field of mind-body medicine, she speaks passionately about her subject. According to Payne, her book - which encourages women to look deeper into the psychological reasons behind their inability to conceive - 'is not just challenging the medical system's view of fertility. Its basic intent is to heal the unnatural split between mind and body and to offer a very comprehensive, solid, well tried, documented and highly successful programme. It invites the reader to look at herself as an individual, not as an age group or by the quality of her eggs'. Payne's programme encourages women to delve deeper into their psyche and to question the medical system's diagnoses of 'unexplained infertility'.

From the waist up
Payne is worried that the medical profession is only interested in women and fertility 'from the waist down, as though everything above the waist has no bearing.' Her method known as The Whole Person Fertility Program, on the other hand, is concerned with looking at a patient's emotional history alongside their medical history. 'The book is telling women that they're unique, they're not just an age or a numerical fact. They are individual and here's an incredible programme to help them.'

On their first visit clients are given a 'health attitudinal and lifestyle profile questionnaire.' It includes questions about every aspect of their life, from their medical history through to questions about whether they do any sort of relaxation or physical exercise, whether they have plants or animals at home, what their sexual life is like, what they consider to be the most tension provoking trauma in their life, whether they've ever had an abortion, and so on.

Once the questionnaire is completed Payne and the client go through it together. 'Everything that is done is not just me looking at [the individual] saying "Well, I think this". It all comes out of their own voice. They write their own story and going over their responses helps them realise things. As I get the profile we review it together; she has a copy, I have a copy, we look at it together and then we map out a chart of her siblings, her parents and their siblings and begin to see the connections.' Often, once the process is underway, the woman conceives.

Changing roles
In Payne's experience, certain issues crop up again and again which are crucial in determining the reason for the lower fertility rates among women today compared with that of their mother's generation. She cites the shift of women's role within society as a major reason for this change. Many of the women who come to see her have had at least one abortion at around the same age that their mothers gave birth to them. Their reasons for termination were because they didn't want to replicate the lives of their mothers. 'Getting pregnant in their early 20s would mean a loss of autonomy, a loss of economic independence and consequently a loss of freedom. This is the dichotomy that many women are faced with when they now decide they do want a child. All of these have physiological consequences. They're not simply things happening in a bell jar. They're happening in the body and those issues produce disruption of all the hormonal balances.'

Payne has this to say to critics and cynics who accuse her of giving women false hopes: 'I'm not offering guaranteed pregnancy, all I'm offering is a right to investigate and I'm giving women the tools to investigate. I've put my heart my soul and my vast experience into this book. The evidence is not purely anecdotal. Don't accept the medical profession's final word. Here's the book, here's the documentation. Try it!"