Did you happen to see this Time article last year on increased miscarriage rates associated with the use of antidepressant drugs?  I was struck not by the findings or the data around the drugs – after all, most pharmacologic agents are discouraged during pregnancy – but I was struck by a comment specifically referring to the data collection and the elevated rates of miscarriage in women suffering from depression:

“…the study was an observational one that looked retrospectively at data already collected, which means that it's possible that some part of the miscarriage risk picked up by Bérard can be ascribed to depression itself rather than the drugs used to treat it. Indeed, the authors acknowledge that some past research has shown that women who are depressed during pregnancy are at increased risk of spontaneous abortion.”

What leaped off the page to me was the straightforward fact that depressed women have an elevated miscarriage risk.  The article did not dive into depression itself, which is obviously a multi-layered, complex human health risk. 

What my own mind immediately jumped to however, is something I see repeatedly in my practice as a fertility specialist—that women suppressing their fears or ambivalence around having children often have the longest and most difficult time achieving pregnancy.  It’s almost like their efforts are on one track and their spirit/emotion is on another, and perhaps, her body is confused.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a woman be courageous enough to admit and wrestle with her fears around parenting, or around her body changing, only to fall pregnant once she gets that honest and lets herself off the hook for being ….for being, well, human!

With children, and even in pregnancy, almost everything about life changes. Why wouldn’t this cause self-doubt? Don’t we humans often “want things both ways?”  It’s normal!  A woman can deeply want a child and be terrified she won’t know what to do, or be bad at parenting, or afraid she’ll resent not having control of her time anymore. This is only the beginning of a very long list of mental crimes she can convict herself of.

Many women facing fertility struggles have somehow drunk the KoolAid that you have to stay positive and be doubt-free in order to conceive. My experience as a fertility specialist is just the opposite.  When women open their hearts to ALL of who they are and ALL of their feelings, somehow the body relaxes into a higher state of fertility.  After all, she is birthing—herself!  Life begets life.  Somehow, when she permits herself all of herself, things start to change.  Always for the better.

Depression is painful and complex, and the treatment of it is often complicated as well. I do not pretend otherwise. This article is not about that.  I simply share with you all a moment of mental leapfrog I had while reading the article in Time, and my experience helping women bring forth their children. 

And it represents a wish for all on the fertility journey -- for the abundance and peace that comes from making room for ALL of who you are.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1992988,00.html#ixzz0rzCYHgFm

Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac., CEFP, Founder and Director of Oriens

  Need to talk or work something through?  Rev. Sandra can help!

I've been thinking about a play I saw last summer, which blurred the boundaries between art and life. The play, Guest Artist, by well known actor Jeff Daniels, focused on the relationship of a seasoned Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the young playwright who idolizes him.

Predictably, both characters learned about their life and their art from each other. Through twists and turns, the elder writer taught his student the subtleties of being a great playwright, while the youth had the courage to question his elder’s motives and lifestyle. Fear, risk taking, and having the courage to speak your own truth, all of these were explored in the truly moving performances. But what was most striking to me was how both characters were uncompromising in defining their lives through their art.

At two different points in the show, both characters stood on bus seats, (the whole play takes place in a bus station) holding a manuscript, proclaiming at the top of their lungs, THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! Both characters were exclaiming that their art defined them as people. So this got me to thinking… Our art isn’t just our manuscript, or our song, or our dance… but OUR LIFE.

What does it mean to think of our lives, themselves, as art? To consider every moment we live art?

The passion that these playwrights exclaimed about their work is the very way that we, as humans, need to proclaim the creation of our lives each day.

All of our life, each choice that we make, and each action we take – every moment is like brush strokes on a canvas. We are 100% in control of the art of our lives – we are the sculptor, the painter, the singer. Our lives are creations of ourselves. How do we choose to appreciate this? Do we choose to believe that we are in creation of our own life, having the courage to tell our truth? Or do we perceive life as something “being done to us” – allowing fear and attachments to what others may think to dictate how we paint on our life’s canvas?

Do we have the courage to honor the creation (read: the choices we have made) of our lives? Do we have the courage to tell the truth about which choices truly serve us? Do we have the courage to admit that we may be hiding behind our fear, anger, blame, and judgments?

Can we stand up on the proverbial bus seat and proclaim, MY LIFE IS MY ART!?

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader

  Speak privately with Elizabeth about your Women's Health & Hormone needs.

“It’s all in your head.” Only recently, this was not uncommon thinking and the professional medical response to women suffering from the hormone instability natural to the decade or more prior to menopause.

Even now we see patients being given anti-depressants first and questions asked later. Sometimes she is offered birth control pills. But many women in their 30’s and 40’s either don’t want to be on medication or they are hoping to conceive.

Just as we think of puberty as the ramp UP to hormone stability and peak fertility, peri-menopause is the ramp DOWN. We've spiraled around for a second run on the same issues: cycle changes, mood swings, wired-tired, insomnia, concentration issues, acne, anatomical changes, body image issues, attention span shifts, metabolism & weight changes and more.

And, just like in puberty, with all of these changes we're invited to deep pondering and reflection…another opportunity to ask, “Who am I? What do I want in my life? How do I want to DO my life? What turns me on? What isn’t working for me?”

If the menopausal years are the Driver’s Seat—you’ve cracked your career and are enjoying the privileges, or you are making a career change that expresses your talent and interest more authentically, you know who you are, your self-expression is full, you’ve made some money, your kids are independent—then the decade or so leading up is your Learner’s Permit.

You’re in a maturity transition.  :)

This is a natural stage of life. The physical changes in your cycle, energy, cognition and other aspects of your health are NOT just about aging. They are largely about – and can largely be controlled by—your attention to yourself!

In these years we tend to be gunning hard. We’re full throttle professionally; we’ve earned our place. We’re multi-tasking like sorceresses—family, career, aging parents, children, pets, household. And very often we’ve depended on will-power and the regenerative mojo of youth to sustain the pace!

But now the piper needs a payment. And while it may seem like an inconvenience after so many years of doing as we pleased, she’s not exacting a very high price. But default on your payment at your peril!!!

To enjoy the abundance of this time of life and minimize or ELIMINATE many of the symptoms, we need to pay attention to our bodies through nutrition, exercise, sleep. We need to make alone time for introspection to ask those key questions. We need to prioritize and attend to ourselves! “Work smarter not harder”—genius and true.  And for goodness sakes, we need to lighten up and PLAY more.

There is SO much you can do to have an easier and much more enjoyable hormone transition! Talk to us! Get off the hormone roller coaster!

Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine, Maya Abdominal Massage, Nutrition, Counseling and Yoga – every single one of these has been changing women’s lives for thousands of years.

You’re hitting your prime! . . . Enjoy it!

Call or email Oriens to find out how You can be supported through your transition!
212-213-5785 or info@oriensliving.com

I’ve always loved cardinals. They are one of the few birds that stay north the winter time. When the landscape is gray and white, the bright red color of the male cardinal is stunning and exotic and always takes my breath away.  At my home in the Catskill Mountains, we’ve had a gorgeous pair hanging around our home for a few years now.

In February, I watched as the male started to feel his mating mojo and began a very curious ritual. He would sit in the bushes by the kitchen window and fly into the window, over and over again, banging his beak into the glass.  Amazed that he was not hurting himself, my husband told me Mr. Cardinal may be seeing his own reflection in the glass, and, thinking it was another male, simply defending his woman – and his little piece of the world. Every morning we would awaken to the thumping of his beak into the kitchen window.  It was loud! As time went by, his little ritual expanded to include flinging himself into the window by our bed and then, even more creatively, the rear view mirrors on not only my car, but our next door neighbors’ car as well. This bird was crazy!

Well past mating season, and babies fledging, he is still engaged in his daily rounds.  But now, when I hear the thumping on the window, I am oddly comforted. Somewhere over the last months, the bird morphed from being a symbol of crazy confrontation and destructive willfulness, to becoming a symbol of endurance, and therein the power of perseverance.  Rather than seeing his bizarre behavior as a mad response to competition with attack, I began to see this ritual as Mr. Cardinal meeting himself, over and over again, with perseverance, determination and patience.  He went from wacko warrior to Spiritual Warrior. Yes, the beat, beat, beat of his beak reminds me of the beat of my own Inner Amazon Warrior.

Physically, I understand endurance. The “no pain no gain” theory.  But I’m talking about a much larger sense of endurance – the spiritual quality of endurance. When I stumble and disconnect from my own sense of endurance, I can become mighty impatient and confrontational, mostly with myself

If we view life as something to willfully confront, to control and manipulate, then we are like my Crazy Cardinal, banging into a perceived illusion of competition and attack.  When we accept our life as it is, though, we awaken endurance, and we begin to use this new found sense of determination to strengthen our self-respect and self-love.  We become like my Warrior Cardinal, perpetually coming back to Self, meeting ourselves where we are, with perseverance and loving patience. It is from this place of self honoring that we can begin to make the choices needed to change our lives.

This is how we transcend our limitations.

Endurance is enhanced by a deep sense of gratitude for Life, for the gift of your Life and for the gift of being You.  Yes, gratitude…and patience.

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader


Need to talk or work something through? Rev. Sandra can help!

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of Spirit.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability---and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only Source could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give the Divine the benefit of believing that her hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (with minor adaptations)

It’s August 27^th, 2010 and today is the anniversary of my beloved Mother’s passing. It’s not an easy day for me… and this could very easily be a real downer for the topic of my blog. But the truth is I see it a day to celebrate her life, and mine.  I have also come to realize that by sharing my (our) grief, by telling the story of my (our) grief, I can come to understand it’s power of transformation. This, too, is something to celebrate.

My mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. While her struggle with the disease and the attending pain was devastating, the drawn out nature of her passing offered the unexpected gift of time to make sure all had been said, shared, and tenderly held. When I received a call from my father giving me the news that mother had been given a prognosis of “3-6 months”, the inevitable screeched into my mind, and all fantasies of dramatic recoveries were over.  I was sitting on the back porch of a friends’ home.  At the precise minute that I hung up the phone with my father, frozen with disbelief, poised to explode into tears, a hummingbird arrived, buzzing right up next to me, mere inches from my face.

Native American wisdom, which is a part of my personal spiritual practice, speaks of the “medicine” of animals. According to this belief, each animal has great wisdom, or medicine, to impart. It is said that Hummingbird conjures love as no other medicine does, and that Hummingbird feathers can open the heart.  Without an open and loving heart, you can’t drink deeply of the ‘nectar of the flower’, the great joys of life.

My mother loved life. Like a Hummingbird darting from one beautiful flower to another, she tasted the many joys of life. She brought people together and brought out the very best in them.  Harmony and beauty were her gifts to all of us. She had loads of Hummingbird medicine to share.

In that split second when I received the call and the hummingbird came, I had this strange glimmer of recognition that there was going to be a gift of beauty and joy for me. And somewhere inside me, I could have clearly articulated that, even in that moment.

My mother did not see 6 months, or even 3. She died 24 days later. I was with her in that tremendously painful and overwhelmingly beautiful moment. A precious gift.  The grief that engulfed me after her death became my great teacher.  Wise, unyielding, paradisiacal. She was my best friend in life, and her death broke my heart – but a broken heart is an open heart. 

I descended into grief, but slowly, ever so slowly, I ascended, with a deeper appreciation for the joys of life, for the gifts she gave me, in life, through her illness, and in her death.

In honor of my Mother, and the Hummingbird medicine that we now both have, I’ve hung a hummingbird feeder on my back porch. As I write, there are 2 beautiful Hummingbirds feeding.

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader


Need to talk or work something through? Rev. Sandra can help!

Need to talk or work something through? Rev. Sandra can help!


We all have expectations, desires about what we want out of our relationships, our work experience, and our life. We expect and assume what [we think] is our due or worth. We fantasize about the outcome of each set of circumstances based on these assumptions and expectations.

What I most often witness (or can experience myself) is that what is expected in each circumstance is NOT what ultimately unfolds.

Expectations can also stand in the way of us experiencing life as it really is. We become attached to our expectations, and never stay present to what Life is actually dishing up, missing the opportunity, the gift of being “in the moment.”

In Buddhist terms, this is the cause of suffering.

And in our desire to control circumstances with our expectations, we can dismiss what unfolds for us in any given situation, judging it to be “less than” or undesirable, not realizing that it’s exactly what we are seeking!

“As long as you have certain desires, about how it OUGHT to be, you can't SEE how it is".
–Ram Das

When you are stuck in OUGHT and SHOULD, you are holding onto the past, and/or desperately trying to live in the future. Our spiritual traditions tell us that there is only the present moment.

This is the place of ‘sitting still’. Stillness within us is the present moment. And it is here that joy resides.

The word expectation comes from the Latin root spectare, which means to look at or to see. We must develop the courage to SEE ourselves clearly, beyond our expectations.

The willingness to quiet the mind and to expand one’s idea of Self, to become comfortable with change, to let go of the need to be right and embrace life more fully…

Great expectation, I’m listening.


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 Work with Sandra personally, in-office or by phone/Skype.

I absolutely love animation! I dragged my husband to see the mega hit movie, Avatar, recently. OK, I really didn’t drag him, he was a tiny bit curious. As I said, I am a huge fan of all things animated but he is not. To his credit, he kindly (and dutifully) accompanied me to the jam packed movie house.

 His sense of duty was quickly replaced by rising interest as the story unfolded and the amazing technology of half real - half animation was revealed. By the end of the movie he was cheering with me.

We were captivated by the clear message of care, honor, and respect for our planet and all sentient beings, along with the outrageously fantastic visual effects.

One element that profoundly struck me was the greeting given by the Na’vi people, “I see you”. This greeting implies a connection beyond seeing what is obvious to the eyes. Much like the Sanskrit greeting, “Namaste”, which means “I bow reverentially to you.

I honor the Spirit within you”, the greeting “I see you” is used through out the movie to convey deep respect for the whole being. Jake, our hero, learns to truly see Neytiri, the blue-skinned native woman who becomes his mentor and ultimately his partner. And he learns that this deep seeing leads to understanding and revering the interconnectedness of all life.

In the course of your busy day, do you really see others? Do you look into the eyes of those around you and see the sacred brightly shining back?

This is precisely what is explored in the sacred space of spiritual counseling. In spiritual counseling, we listen with more than our ears. And we see with more than our eyes. We listen with our hearts for the whole being.  We offer the opportunity to be witnessed, to truly be seen and be heard.

The eyes are the window of the soul. I see you.