The Fertility Awareness Method

This week I gave a talk that I get to give a few times a year to a sizable group of people.

At the end of the evening there was time for questions and answers, and a surprising question came up from one of the participants.

A young, aware woman who wanted to understand how she could have sex with her partner given that she doesn't want to take birth control pills, which throw off the hormonal balance, or use condoms, which take away from the pleasure.

When I mentioned the fertility awareness method, she said she'd never heard of it, but understood that those things aren't safe enough. When I asked if there were other women in the audience who didn't know about the "method," more women raised their hands.

While I was creating the women's health course with three practitioners — the best I know, each with more than 20 years of experience — I learned many things. Some of them I thought were obvious, but it turns out a lot of women still don't know this knowledge, and don't know their own bodies.

So to understand how to have sex safely and without getting pregnant, you need to deeply understand a woman's monthly cycle.

The method refers to a life skill a woman acquires by getting to know her body and her monthly cycle.

It's a process in which the woman learns how to observe, record, and decode the fertility signs her body broadcasts.

In a world where most of us have given up sovereignty over our own health, every girl and every woman can and should learn how her body works.

This is material based on knowledge and scientific research, based on our biology. There are no guesses here.

The woman also mentioned that her partner doesn't trust uncertain methods — and I thought to myself how much we've chosen not to know, that both women and men don't understand our own basic biology. Let's push a pill whose serious effects we don't understand, or wrap ourselves in rubber full of chemicals. As long as it's "proven by research."

Despite what we're told, unlike condoms and the pill as a means of preventing pregnancy — the only science that's truly real in this life comes from our own biology and nature.

The method allows a woman to track her monthly cycle and calculate precisely, month after month, the days on which she can get pregnant and the days on which she's "safe."

The method is based on changes that occur in the body of every ovulating woman throughout the cycle, from period to period.

Tracking the changes in the body lets a woman get to know her body far more intimately than we were ever taught, and also gain control over her desire to conceive or to prevent pregnancy.

So you can call it a method, but beyond everything it's a basic familiarity that connects a woman to her essence and her body. And it's meant both for women who want to prevent pregnancy and are looking for an alternative that doesn't involve hormonal intervention, and, just as much, for women who want to get pregnant and spare themselves unnecessary medical intervention.

How does the method work?

A woman's cycle is essentially a monthly hormonal mechanism whose purpose is to help her get pregnant.

The monthly cycle is divided into 4 weeks, 4 stages — or two main ones: the stage before ovulation and the stage after it. Each stage is influenced by a number of hormones, mainly estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Estrogen is responsible for the changes that occur in the first part of the cycle, as preparation for ovulation, and progesterone is responsible for the changes that occur in the second part of the cycle — preparation for pregnancy or menstruation. In the middle, during ovulation, we have a peak of testosterone that's responsible for ovulation.

At the time of ovulation, a mature egg is released from the ovary and is ready for fertilization for only 10 to 24 hours.

In other words, a woman can get pregnant on only one day out of the month.

On rare occasions a second ovulation occurs within 24 hours of the first (this is how non-identical twins are formed). A man's sperm cells can survive in a woman's body for only 3 to 5 days, and only during the woman's fertile window, which also averages between 3 and 5 days. Every woman is capable of identifying these days.

Did you know that the reason the pill is so effective at protecting against pregnancy is that it eliminates ovulation?

Eliminating ovulation means eliminating the entire female hormonal mechanism. A woman's body does everything in its power every month to get pregnant, and if conception doesn't occur, to produce a healthy period and fully clear the uterine lining. Every month, anew.

So if we eliminated ovulation, what else did we eliminate? The entire hormonal mechanism of the woman. Estrogen, which we said is secreted in the first stage with the end of the period, is a calming hormone. It increases the capacity for attention and giving; under its influence women feel better, more outgoing, and more beautiful. Testosterone is responsible for the sex drive, around ovulation of course, and progesterone helps with the stages of drawing inward and quiet, before the period arrives.

The whole month is meant to be — and is worth — planning according to the biology of your wise body: when it's right for you to stand in front of a crowd or give a presentation, and when you'll want more to draw inward and stay home. It's all influenced by the hormones and the monthly cycle. So when we eliminated them, we eliminated the ability to give the body what it needs, the ability to work with my body according to its needs. And by the way, even to understand who you're truly drawn to.

It's all contained in the biological magic that is a woman.

Is it worth it, for those 6 days (roughly speaking) when there's a high chance of pregnancy, to take the pill for 30 days a month and completely eliminate ovulation — and with it the entire monthly cycle?

In every woman you can observe three signs that change throughout the cycle and tell her which stage of the month she's in:

Basal body temperature (body temperature first thing in the morning)

Natural discharge that changes according to the stage in the month (descending from the cervix into the vagina)

And changes in the height of the cervical opening

You can track the changes in these signs to precisely identify the stage you're in within your monthly cycle, and from there, when you can or cannot have unprotected sex.

This article isn't a recommendation to experiment with the method on your own. Why? Because we've drifted so far from who we are that it takes a workshop or course to understand yourself better and master the method, and yourself in general.

Beyond the women's health course we created, there are quite a few practical courses for learning the fertility awareness method.