Enhance Pregnancy With Fascia And Breathing Techniques

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

Thank you so much for being here.

Deanna Hansen

Thank you so much. It’s an absolute pleasure to share with your community.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

Thank you. This is going to be an incredible conversation, unlike anything else that’s being featured in the summit. It’s a conversation that isn’t had enough and that people are not aware enough of. I’m excited to be able to bring this to the Super Fertility Summit. I love to start from the end and ask if there’s one thing that you hope that the mama dada person of every gender listening to our voices today will take away from our discussion. What’s that one thing?

Deanna Hansen

To prepare your body before the most amazing event creates such a different outcome, and to be able to understand how to truly access and sell health to prep. It’s that it creates magical changes in your body, in how you feel, in what you experience. It’s all about understanding the fascia system and how to truly support it through melting adhesions, releasing scar tissue, and optimizing proper diaphragmatic breathing. That’s what facial decompression, which I’ll be sharing a lot about, is about. I’m so excited because giving mothers this opportunity to prepare their bodies beforehand is a very exciting change that people don’t understand yet. That’s what I’m excited to share with you here.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

I’m so excited. There are so many things that I want you to dive into. I would love to hear you talk about the relationship between fascia, fertility, and pregnancy outcomes. Then maybe we can go a little bit deeper and talk about the relationship of fascia to cellular health and the relationship of fascia to detoxification because most people understand, or if they’re looking deeply at fertility and pregnancy, that cellular health is important, especially as we get older, and they understand that detoxification is important. also, especially as we get older, for fertility and pregnancy outcomes, as well as the health that we’re passing down to our super babies. But I don’t think that people understand the links directly between fascia and fertility and then through these pathways of cellular health and detoxification.

Deanna Hansen

I’d first love to share what fascia is how it’s impacted by external forces, and then how that impacts our reproductive health. We have trillions of cells in the body. One of the roles of the fascia is to ensure that we keep those cells in correct alignment because if we do, there’s optimal space in and around the cell. Space allows for ease of introducing nutrients into the cell as well as ease of removing waste from the cell. As long as there’s space, there’s flow. As long as there’s flow, there’s health. No matter what we’re talking about in the body, that is the reality. especially when we’re talking about reproductive health, we want to ensure that the body has the space so that there’s the ease of the transition going from not being pregnant to being pregnant, and then through that whole journey, because space allows for that elasticity, but also for the structural component to be supportive. Fascia is comprised primarily of collagen and elastin. This creates structure, flexibility, and mobility. Now the challenge we have is gravity. Is this constant force pulling us down? But it doesn’t pull us down in a linear fascia. We’re dominant on one side, so we end up spiraling down toward the Earth as we age.

This is important for the mother. That’s a little older because the older we become, the more gravity has impacted our fascia system. As we start tipping off balance because we are dominant on one side, we’re sitting in front of computers all day. We’re not conscious of proper alignment and proper breathing. The collagen component of the fascia starts to migrate. As I’m right-handed and 70% of the population is typical, what will happen is that I will shift my center of gravity over to my less dominant side to keep that dominant side free from action. Now the fascias are here to support us. As I start tipping, the collagen migrates to areas to create building blocks or structural support. I don’t tip over. But like scar tissue, this creates blockages in flow. If that doesn’t get resolved through changing postural alignment, they will continue to build up and add up. The denser we become as a result of negative alignment, the faster gravity keeps manipulating us. Talking specifically about the alignment of the pelvis, whenever I’m looking at a body and I’m doing an assessment, I always look at what’s going on in the feet because the feet direct what happens up the chain. Fascia, those adhesions in the fascia will grip and adhere to the bone with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch. That’s an incredible seal. It’s a magnetic seal. As I start tipping off balance, my entire fascia structure starts to migrate to support me standing upright. If I’m in incorrect alignment and my feet are underneath my hip joints, my hip joints sit properly in the pelvis.

But what I see in people is that we always have one side that acts like a flat tire. One leg pulls away from alignment, and the other side anchors. If you translate what’s happening in the feet to what’s going on in the hips, now we’re getting the hip joints, migrating inside the pelvis, squeezing the life out of the reproductive organs, creating adhesions in this area, and creating stagnancy. This is problematic when, of course, we want this area to be open, fluid, and healthy so that we can become pregnant. The goal and work of facial decompression are to melt the adhesions, pump life into that newly created space, and then also understand proper postural foundation so that we can support proper cell alignment. Then again, if there’s optimal flow, cells are happy; they’re not hungry. They’re also clean cells that are part of a body that is riddled with adhesion and scar tissue. The cells become starved and dirty. That’s not what we want.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

That is such incredible, incredible information. There are so many places that I want to visit. One of the things that came to mind for me was your discussion of gravity and how gravity is pulling us down more and more as we’re getting older, and the denser we become from these patterns that we hold in our body, the more gravity’s pulling us down. It made me think about how pre-term labor and preterm birth are more common among older mamas and also among mamas who use IVF. It made me think about how this, and we’ve done a ton of studies on pregnancy and preterm birth, don’t fully understand what initiates labor and therefore how to prevent preterm birth. But it occurs to me, as I’m listening to you, that one of the pieces that we’re missing in the scientific community is this physical aspect, the structural aspect of fascia, and the gravity pulling us down as we’re getting older. That may be a contributor to the higher rates as we get older. that, to me, it is important that we go and do some studies on that.

It’s so incredible. Then, I also think a lot about adhesions. in there and specifically in the reproductive organs in and around the reproductive organs, endometriosis, and maybe even related to fibroids. I would love to hear you talk about how we can use our understanding of fascia, create that space, and clear out the adhesions to take some of the ability to affect endometriosis into our hands. Hormonal imbalances have a lot to do with this nutrition, the microbiome. There are a lot of things that we can do, but these actual structural aspects are important as well. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Deanna Hansen

My view of endometriosis is that when we are perfectly aligned with every cycle, our body is releasing the lining. However, if we’re not correctly aligned, we don’t have gravity assisting us to release us because there’s a twist in the pelvis. Now, that’s why, in my view, we cramp. Because the body is trying to push out what it’s trying to release. If it’s not coming out with ease, then the body’s cramping to create that additional energy to move it out. Now, what I see with people with endometriosis is that there’s so much congestion that there’s a migration of this uterine lining. As that isn’t released every month, it keeps building. This old tissue that’s not properly released now is attracting foreign invaders to come in and take home here, creating problems. then dirt and debris also get trapped, which can be part of the cysts, the fibroids. If we can’t have that optimal flow of release, things get stuck, trapped, and held within those adhesions. The goal of fascia decompression is to get into this space and heat those adhesions, melt them, and create enough energy through proper diaphragmatic breathing. Because this is the foundational component, the breath, is it okay if I talk a little bit about the breath right now?

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

Yes, please do.

Deanna Hansen

We want to have a container that functions optimally. I’m just going to bring my camera down here for a moment. The diaphragm is a plate of muscle. That’s the foundation of the rib cage. When it’s working properly, when we inhale, it moves down. When we exhale, it lifts. If we’re working, we’re getting this continual mechanical action in your organs. Through here, if this is strong, it’s a support for everything above. The challenge is pain. Fear and stress cause us to reactively hold our breath. We’re still going to breathe anyway, but we’re going to end up breathing through the muscles of the upper chest. If that’s not resolved, this muscle becomes weak. Then this is what happens. We come crashing down into the pits, and as soon as we do that, all of the weight of everything above displaces the internal organs. If we’re breathing up here, we’re also not getting this mechanical action in through here. This area becomes cold and frozen. Now normal processes can’t function properly. We can’t digest; we can’t absorb.

The liver becomes cold, so it becomes clogged like fat at room temperature. Butter at room temperature is a solid. We need to create heat in the area, and the mechanical aspect of the breath creates beautiful heating. Also, when we are diaphragmatic breathers, we feed the body up to six times the oxygen, not because we’re pulling that much more air into the lungs but because we’re directing the oxygen to the receptor site at the base of the lungs. then we also release the majority of our toxins through full conscious exhalation. Just as a little fun side note, the full exhale is the counterforce to gravity. We have a very different opportunity to direct what happens to the body as we go through time. Then what we previously thought. When we’re feeding cells, oxygen cells are like a fully blown-up balloon. They’re round, they glow, and they almost defy gravity. But you take half the air out of a balloon. Now it’s a wrinkly piece of rubber where dust and debris get trapped in the creases. If we’re not conscious breathers, that’s what’s happening to our cells. They’re starting to deflate. As we deflate, there are structural changes that happen within the fascia and the whole body structure. Again, those adhesions get created, and the dirt and debris get trapped. With this process, it’s about releasing the negative impact that is held in the diaphragm. It’s like we have a frozen diaphragm, like a frozen shoulder. We’re told the cells are starving and the cells are dirty. by releasing the adhesions throughout the whole body, and we have to look at the whole body because there’s a cause site for our issue.

If we just go to the area of concern, we’re never going to get the results that we want. We have to look at what’s going on with the limbs. The limbs are the puppet masters for the core. If we only address the core, as soon as you start walking, your legs and feet are going to pull you back into that negative alignment. Those adhesions are going to continue to develop, trapping debris and causing those cells to starve.  If they’re starving, they don’t have the energy to do what they’re supposed to do. Oxygen is the most important nutrient for all cells, and especially if we want to grow life, we need to be able to feed these areas properly so that we can have the best outcome and the healthiest children on this planet.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

I love that. The healthiest children on this planet. That’s such a good addition to our definition of super babies because they are among the healthiest children on the planet, and I’m so thankful for that in mind, body, and spirit. It’s so beautiful. I remember years ago I read something that was a quote from J.Lo, and said something like, Before 25, you have the face that you were born with, and after 25, you have the face that you earn. I had never heard anything like that. It took me a little while to understand it, and then I realized that as we get older, the face becomes stuck, and our primary expressions are our primary moods, which are reflected on our faces. The same thing is true of the body. You can see so much of someone’s state of mind, personality, and mood locked into their body. I’m sure you’re a pro at this, and we are all aware of it to some degree. These blockages that happen, even though they are very mechanical, structural, and concretely physical, are often a reflection of our internal state and the thoughts that we have on repeat, the psychological habits and moods that we tend to lean toward in life. It’s interesting to think about how we don’t have to stay stuck in those places. We can become consciously aware of them. We can physically work them out. that can also have this incredible feedback loop with what’s happening on the inside of us, not just at the cellular level, but how we’re feeling in terms of mood. We’ve seen that the right posture correlates with different hormones, how confident you feel, and all kinds of things. that’s a beautiful place to focus on exiting the stress and emergency of feeling like I’m, I’m not, I’m not successfully getting or staying pregnant, or I’m afraid I won’t be able to because of my age, an endometriosis diagnosis, PCOS, or anything else. You give me new information and hope that is so tangible and practical. But as a scientist, I understand, and you as a practitioner understand, the ripple, the powerful ripple effect that what we’re talking about has on the mind and the body. Thank you so much for that. I would love to hear about the importance of fascia during pregnancy. We’ve talked about how critical it is in the prime after leading up to conception for our healthiest fertility, for our healthiest cells, which are the foundation of our fertility and our healthiest genetic expression. But once you’re already pregnant, what does that mean for the health of the pregnancy, the health of the developing baby, and also what does it mean for when the baby emerges? You’ve made some interesting observations about how babies have changed in response to our modern world, and even just very recently. Can you share a little bit about that?

Deanna Hansen

Yes. I love this conversation. I read years ago, when I was studying to become an anchor yoga teacher, that we are born into this lifetime with a signature posture, and the goal of this lifetime is to break through that signature posture. The way I see it is that we are born into this lifetime with our mother’s breath, and our lifetime is to change that. The mother of my generation, I’m 54 years old compared to the mother of today, who would, let’s say, be 25 to 35 years old, and whatever the age range, is very different in posture because I did not grow up in front of technology. We were out hanging from trees when we were playing like it was a very different world from the perspective of toxins, convenience, and just how we live in general. The mothers of today have grown up with this negative collapse from being on their phones, growing up in front of technology, as well as all of the other things that were confronted with from just the dirty world that we live in. Now the babies aren’t coming out breathing diaphragmatically. In the past, you saw their bellies rise and fall so beautifully. Not that there aren’t some that still do, but I’ve seen so many babies now who don’t have that natural breath. From my generation, we lose it over time because pain, fear, and stress cause us to reactively hold our breath, and gravity kicks in, and we keep getting more and more compressed where the babies are coming out, not breathing properly, so their development is hindered as a result of that.

As the mother going through the journey, what we want to understand is how we can support the proper diaphragmatic breath that puts us into that parasympathetic state. That’s where we heal, where we rest, and where we’re calm. If we’re breathing in this stressed upper chest breath, that’s what your baby, as it’s growing, is going to be adopting as the breath comes out. The baby’s going to be coming out into the world already with anxiety issues. Then you put on the stresses of life from that moment going forward, it’s going to be able to support that proper relaxed breath as well as understanding proper alignment because we want to be able to grow symmetrically. If we’re collapsed on one side, that’s going to affect what’s going to happen as the baby grows. Maybe that’s why they come out with scoliosis because they’re already twisting and flipping in the womb. first steps out of support. Your body, structurally as well as with your breath, will give you the best outcome. Once you are pregnant, you need to manage that pregnancy going forward.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

It is so beautiful, and every time we have another conversation, it is just a reminder of how interconnected we all are and how interconnected all parts of us are. We always talk about the fertility and pregnancy systems, which are complex networks. It’s not just in the ovaries, and these conversations just bring that to the forefront. I hope to leave people with the understanding that your fertility is affected by so much more than we realize, in so much more than the traditional approaches are looking at and assessing when searching for the problem, which is why such a large percentage of fertility challenges are called unexplained in fertility because we need to be looking at this system in a much broader way. You talked about the positive side and the root causes. If you’re just looking at where the symptoms are showing up, you’re missing the cause. Sites are the root causes. That’s so beautiful. I would love for you. I’m thinking about so many of our mamas. I’m going to just think of one case study as an example. This is a mama who came to us in her 40s, which is standard; the average age at first birth of our FPI primemester mamas is 40.6 years old, as compared to 26 years old in the United States at first birth. almost 15 years. and she came to us in her 40s. She’d been trying for six years. She had a very severe endometriosis and fibroids and had seven or nine uterine surgeries. 

 She had to have a lot of things removed. But then the surgeries also left her with a lot of scar tissue. She had only gotten pregnant twice; she miscarried both times. The rest of the time that she was trying, she was never able to get pregnant, even with fertility treatment. She got pregnant immediately upon finishing her Primemester, stayed pregnant, has a perfect super baby girl, and talks about how she went into pregnancy with so much fear because she had so much scar tissue and she had to have a plan. They planned her C-section from the very beginning. They were not going to allow her to give birth vaginally because of all of the things that had been going on with her uterus leading up to her natural conception. What would you do with this? This is a beautiful success story. is one that we can replicate over and over again. Yet I feel like with the addition of a tool like this, there is a greater level of mastery in the body and certainty in the body. I would love to hear if you are looking at this mama when she first got her positive pregnancy test and she was so afraid, like, Am I, first of all, am I going to stay pregnant finally? Then, once I stay pregnant, first of all, I’m a woman of color, and women of color are so at risk of giving birth in the United States of America. At the time that we’re recording this, it’s Black Maternal Health Week, and we know that up to 80% of maternal deaths are preventable. Women of color often go into pregnancy with a combination of delight and fear because of the system around them. But what would you say to her about having the confidence that her uterus and her body can do what they’re made to do?

Deanna Hansen

I just absolutely love this question. It’s so beautiful because I teach people that we’re trapped in a pain-fear cycle. It’s not the problem; it’s the fear that we attach to the pain. That’s the issue when we’re breathing through the muscles of the upper chest; we’re connected to a stress frequency in the brain, which connects us to thoughts of the past and future, which aren’t real. I like using the acronym FEAR, False Energy Acting  Real. When we start connecting to the diaphragm, we bring that frequency into a relaxed phase. We turn on the vagus nerve; we bring the body into that rest and digest mode, where we have that potential for healing on such a profound level. The first thing I would share is that we have this inside of us to bring us to a space of calm and to take that fear out of the equation. Yes, we have pain. Pain is pain. Is the baby crying? Pain is the language of the cell. We don’t want to squash that, but we want to know what to do with it.  Then, from there, I would want to address the foundation because the foundation, her feet, and the way that they’re going to be playing away and creating balance are going to be creating those adhesions up the chain. When we don’t have proper breath, our body becomes cooler overall. so that frozen areas in the pelvis, need heat to create life. If we’re cold because of scar tissue riddled throughout, there’s not that much energy in that space. But this process melts those adhesions and melts through scar tissue. It’s all about understanding magnetics. When we have magnets far enough apart, they have no attraction.

Pull them close together, and they seal with force. Try to move those magnets apart by pulling them apart. You can’t, but you can shear them. The process of what we do is teach people how to get into the tissue and move through it.  We were developed through the Fibonacci sequence. Everything develops through the sequencing of numbers, as does how we age. When we can move in through the tissue in a spiral pattern, as we teach you, we melt through those adhesions, we melt through that scar tissue, and we teach you how to connect with your proper breaths so that you pump that life force into the space. Then everything changes. The lovely part is that you feel it right away. As soon as you understand how to connect to your diaphragm and start bringing this breath in, you feel calmer, lighter, and more aligned. Then it’s a journey from there. But it’s an efficient journey, and we make it efficient by looking at the body from all the different angles that we need. As far as those concepts, which are the limbs, we can best scar tissue and issues at a distance and work our way up toward that space, especially if there’s a lot of fear around that space. It’s a very controlled, lovely protocol that empowers you because you understand immediately that I’m not afraid. I’ve got control. 

Pain is pain. But as women, we’re so adapted to pain. It’s like the pain is not the issue. The thought of what this means for my future is where we get tied in. We pulled that fear out of the equation, and now we simply have a roadmap. Pain is the roadmap to a healthier body. It’s not scary. The lovely part is that pressure overrides pain. The pressure fibers are larger in diameter than the pain fibers. When we do have a lot of pain, simply adding pressure by not rubbing means we don’t want to rub the surface. We want to apply pressure. Just like if you were holding your baby and comforting your baby. You hold, you hold near your heart, and you might rock, but you don’t rub; you hold. We want to look at our cells like all these babies that are here to allow us to thrive. If we can treat our cells with the same love that we would treat our baby, then we can make some huge advances very quickly in our health.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

So beautiful. One thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about how when the breast is not full when we’re not breathing from the diaphragm, the body becomes colder, and it made me think of when people are charting their temperature to understand their cycle, and they find temperatures that are lower than they should be. Usually, that’s an indication of a thyroid condition and hypothyroidism specifically. It made me wonder if there’s any link between the way we’re breathing and thyroid function. I’m sure that there is true oxygen and other pathways, but that’s important information for anybody who’s listening or who has any issue with their thyroid. I have loved this conversation so much that I feel like I want to ask you one more question. In the interest of time, I will wrap up with two questions. The first one is if there was one thing that you could tell a woman, man, or human to do to take care of their fertility and their future. Super baby, what would that one thing be? Then my second question is, What does super fertility mean to you? Like, what’s the feeling that it evokes for you?

Deanna Hansen

The most important thing is to understand this muscle, the diaphragm. This is what God gave us to breathe with. Unless we’re conscious of it, we’re not conscious of it. then we’re breathing through the muscles of the upper chest and the entire way you perceive life changes. We’re a different physiological animal in all aspects when we breathe from these different spaces. Giving yourself that time to learn diaphragmatic breathing and making it simple would be the most important thing I could add one more thing. Also, your thoughts matter, like what we put into our minds, whether it’s outward to someone else or how we think of ourselves. There’s a frequency that comes with that. We do not want to shut down the codons in the DNA. Negative thinking does that. The fear wave is different from the love wave. The love wave equals our DNA; the fear wave, if you superimpose it, starts shutting down the codons in the DNA. Start hearing what you’re saying to yourself and others in your mind, and change that. What we put out comes back. Be aware of those things. To me, the super baby, I’m so excited because there’s so much we can do to change what’s going on and to create these. I don’t even believe for a moment that, at least in hundreds of years, we have truly experienced the beautiful gift of this container for our soul and the potential that we can have. People say we only use 10% of our brain. I believe we’re only breathing 10% of our capacity when we understand how to turn on this incredible mechanism, the diaphragm, that is the source of life for us. It’s the connection to God. What is possible for our future is mind-blowing, and I’m so very, very grateful to be part of this time in the world where these things are starting to come out and we get to see and live the changes.

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

I love that so much. It’s beautiful. Deanna, it’s been so incredible to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for your work and for sharing this incredible information and inspiration with us. To all of you listening. Thank you so much for being here. I’ll see you at the next interview.

Deanna Hansen

Thank you.