Mindfulness & fertility: a nervous-system approach
A personal diary
The two-week wait always surprises me, even this second time around. Not because I don't know it's coming, I do. But because of how it settles in, both in my body and in my mind. On the outside, life continues: work, gym, the routines that hold a week together. But internally, something shifts. I notice more. Every sensation feels like it could mean something. I open my cycle tracking app again, even though it's still the same day as the last time I checked.
For those who don’t know this part of my story yet: I'm navigating secondary infertility. I'm very aware of how different this is from the first time. When you wonder whether it will ever happen, whether your body can do this, or if you’ll ever be a mother. I don't take that lightly. I have our daughter, and I don't take that for granted for a single second. And still, the hope comes back every month. For her, really, for the brother or sister I so want to give her, the way my own sisters shaped who I am. If you're reading this from a different place than I'm in right now, I see you.
What I was already doing
My evenings during the two-week wait have their own quiet rhythm. I go to bed a little earlier. I put a hot water bottle in my bed to keep my feet warm. I try to read instead of scrolling, which works about 60 percent of the time. The meditations are non-negotiable during these two weeks. I place my hands on my belly before sleep, take a couple of deep belly breaths, and sometimes, quietly, whisper to my body: let’s do this, you’ve got this.
The mindfulness practices I've built over time have genuinely changed how I move through these two weeks. And if you're anything like me, you're always quietly looking for one more thing that might help. Just that gentle curiosity of: what else can support this? That's what led me to Reishi.
What Reishi does, and why it's relevant here
If you've never heard of it: Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is a medicinal mushroom that's been used for over two thousand years, primarily in traditional Chinese medicine. Known as the Mushroom of Immortality, and almost universally associated with calm, restoration, and inner balance.
It's an adaptogen, meaning it helps your body regulate its stress response and return to balance over time. What makes it particularly interesting in the context of a fertility journey is how it works indirectly:
It supports the HPA axis, the hormonal pathway that governs your stress response – helping cortisol levels stay more balanced over time, rather than chronically elevated
It supports the parasympathetic nervous system: the state where rest, recovery, and reproduction can actually happen
It promotes deeper, more settled sleep
It helps the immune system stay in balance, which quietly matters during the two-week wait, as immune function plays a role in implantation
It supports the liver, which processes and clears hormones each cycle, making it part of the broader hormonal picture in ways that often go unmentioned
Calm, restoration, balance, and better sleep. I'll take it!
Two weeks of reishi: what I actually noticed
I decided to try Fungtional’s Pure Reishi. It’s organic, vegan, and alcohol-free, which matters both for the taste and for peace of mind when you're in a fertility cycle. It comes in a small glass bottle with a pipette, which makes it very easy to use, and the branding is on point. On the bottle, it says: for your inner peace. And honestly, that sums it up quite well.
My plan was simple: the daily prescribed dose in my sleepy time tea each evening, right after dinner. Like a small ritual. What I didn't expect was to notice it so quickly. After finishing my cup, something in my system would quietly settle. The best way I can describe it is that a soft blanket of calm comes over you. My thoughts didn't disappear. They were still there. But like if a warmth came over me, a softness, a quiet settling, and with it, a feeling of being a little less on edge. That restless undercurrent that I didn't always notice until it was gone: the slight itch of my eczema in the evenings, the low-grade irritability that comes with it. It was quieter. Not gone, but softer, like my system had decided it didn't need to be quite so alert anymore.
I also noticed I was sleeping more deeply, waking up feeling more rested. That alone: hallelujah!
What happened when I tried it in the morning
I'll be honest: I was sceptical about daytime use. In my head, Reishi was an evening thing, a wind-down thing, and I wasn't sure I wanted that same soft, mellow feeling carrying into my day. Little did I know.
One Sunday, I felt curious and tried a dose in the morning instead.
It was different. Not the settling-down feeling of the evening, but something more like steadiness. A quiet baseline underneath the day, as if the reactivity had just turned down a notch. A kind of inner calm that stayed with me throughout the day. It reminded me that Reishi is an adaptogen: it responds to what your body needs rather than imposing a single fixed effect. I'd been using Fungtional's Lion's Mane on working days for focus, but after that morning, I've started weaving Reishi into the two-week wait more intentionally – a small dose morning and evening – and it's become part of what I'd now call my two-week wait routine.
One last thing about Fungtional
The taste is worth mentioning: earthy, slightly woody, with a faint natural bitterness that disappears entirely in a warm tea. You notice it in the feeling it creates more than in the flavour. And the alcohol-free formula means there's nothing sharp or astringent, just clean, simple drops that ask very little of you, which is exactly what you want when you're already working hard to take care of yourself.
It didn't feel like adding something extra. It slipped into what I was already trying to create: a little quieter, a little more gentleness, a little calmer in my body during a phase that asks a lot.
Reishi won't change the outcome of a cycle, and I'd never claim otherwise. But for the quality of how I moved through these two weeks, more settled, less reactive, sleeping more deeply, it made a real difference.
If you are curious to try it. Fungtional has given the Florish community a little something. You'll find a discount code in my Instagram caption. I hope it brings you some of that same inner calm.
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