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The Women’s Health Doctor Who Built a Fertility Program Around barre3
Dr. Samar Rashid was in medical school the first time she took a barre3 class. She was deep in the kind of academic demand that compresses your world into textbooks and patient rotations, but every time she stepped into the studio, she stepped out feeling different.
“Clearer and stronger,” she says. “And not just physically stronger, but in a way that made me more resilient as a medical student and that helped me feel in greater service to my patients, like I was able to fully bring my whole self to them.”
That hour changed the trajectory of her career. Today, Dr. Rashid is a board-certified family medicine physician, osteopathic doctor, and the founder of Inherent Health—a San Diego-based, whole-person osteopathic practice. She’s also the creator of Conceive with Confidence, a fertility course built around five evidence-based pillars: menstrual cycle health, sleep, nutrition, movement, and nervous system regulation. When it came time to choose the fitness foundation for the program—the practice she’d ask women to build their bodies around during the most important window of their reproductive lives—it’s no coincidence that she chose the practice she’d been showing up to for years: barre3.
Movement as Medicine
“On this subconscious level, I think my body always understood that movement was medicine,” Dr. Rashid says. “What I didn’t always have was the right movement practice to serve my needs in my current season of life.”
Most of her career has been spent helping women find that practice. In her clinic, she sees women at every stage—preconception, prenatal, postpartum—and she kept noticing a gap between what women were told about exercise and what the research actually showed. Women arriving overwhelmed, carrying the weight of wondering whether they’d waited too long or done something wrong. And women who were moving intensely and consistently and still struggling.
Barre3, for her, filled a space that nothing else had. Movement stopped being something she did to her body and became something she did with it. “Barre3 started that conversation for me,” she says, “and now it has become a foundation of how I think about health.”
Why barre3—and Why It Matters for Fertility
Dr. Rashid has tried decades’ worth of fitness modalities. So when she sat down to design a fertility program, her personal experience and clinical context all pointed to barre3.
The reasoning is specific: the research shows that the sweet spot for reproductive health is moderate-intensity aerobic work combined with resistance training. Barre3 meets that standard by design.
“The way the classes sequence strength, cardio, isometric work, larger movements, breathwork—it checks every evidence-based box,” she explains. “But here’s what the data can’t fully capture: the way it actually gets you into your body. The mind-body cueing, the way instructors guide you toward presence rather than just performance. I haven’t found that combination anywhere else.”
Women in her program who practice barre3 online 3-4 times a week are moving in the specific way the evidence supports for reproductive health. But what Dr. Rashid sees in her clinic tells a fuller story.
“Women come in feeling like their bodies are something that’s failing them, something to be managed or monitored,” she says. “After a few weeks of consistent barre3, I hear something different: ‘I feel stronger. I feel like myself again.'”
That shift matters clinically. Stress physiology is deeply connected to reproductive function. A woman who feels capable and at home in her body is one whose nervous system is better prepared for the demands of conception and pregnancy. Dr. Rashid has seen that shift in her own practice, and it starts with showing up for a movement practice that supports you best.
What Women Aren’t Being Told
There’s something Dr. Rashid wants every woman to hear: your body is not the problem.
“So much of the messaging women receive—implicitly or explicitly—frames their body as something working against them,” she says. “In reality, your body is responding to signals, and one of the most powerful signals you send it is through how you move.”
And there’s a nuance here that tends to hit the most dedicated women hardest. “There is such a thing as overexercising, and it is dramatically under-recognized in high-achieving, health-conscious women who are, by every measure, doing everything ‘right,'” she says. “Your body requires significant energy just to ovulate. When that energy isn’t there—because of intense training, chronic under-fueling, or both—ovulation simply doesn’t happen.”
These women aren’t unhealthy. They’re often the most committed to their health of anyone in her practice. But the hormonal toll of high-intensity exercise on the reproductive system is real—and it’s a conversation that matters deeply, especially in a fitness culture that still rewards pushing harder.
This is part of why Dr. Rashid’s work and barre3’s philosophy align so naturally. Barre3 has always been rooted in the belief that your body is worth listening to—that strength and care aren’t opposites, and that showing up for yourself doesn’t require punishing yourself in the process. For women preparing for conception, that distinction can be the difference between a practice that supports their fertility and one that quietly undermines it.
The Science of the Mind-Body Connection
As an osteopathic physician, Dr. Rashid brings a clinical understanding to something barre3 members experience every class: the relationship between how you move and how you feel.
“The mind-body connection is now physiologically understood,” she says. “The nervous system, the endocrine system, and the reproductive system are in constant conversation. Chronic stress suppresses the hormonal signaling required for ovulation. Anxiety dysregulates the immune environment of the uterus. A body that lives in a state of perceived threat is not a body that feels safe enough to sustain a pregnancy.”
The osteopathic philosophy holds that the body is a unit: you cannot separate the structural from the hormonal from the emotional. “When I help a woman feel into her body, to be genuinely present with it rather than fighting it or fearing it,” she says, “she has just done something profoundly therapeutic. Not just for her fertility journey, but for the mother, partner, and woman she is becoming.”
An Ever-Evolving Practice
These days, Dr. Rashid’s own barre3 practice looks different from what it did in medical school.
The noon weekday classes at her San Diego studio have become a ritual. She exercises between her morning and afternoon patients, and it resets something essential. “I walk into the afternoon clinic present in a way that allows me to fully serve my patients the best I can,” she says. “And then I go home to my two extraordinary little girls. They see their mama moving, getting stronger, taking care of herself—and I want that to be one of the most ordinary things they grow up watching.”
Postpartum has humbled her in the best way. She’s had to modify and learn to get comfortable with rest. “And doing that—really doing it, not just advising it—has made me a far more compassionate physician.”
It’s a reminder that the practice works because it meets you in whatever season you’re in. The woman who carved out time for movement during medical school and the mother of two who modifies between patient appointments are the same person—just at different points in her life. And her barre3 practice held space for both.
You Are Not Behind
For anyone in our community thinking about starting her conception journey, Dr. Rashid has one thing she wants you to know: you are not behind. And you are not alone.
“I think so many women arrive at the beginning of their fertility journey carrying this weight of wondering whether they’ve waited too long, done something wrong, or missed some window they didn’t know existed,” she says. “The fact that you’re thinking about this now—before a positive test, before a diagnosis, before things get complicated—is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and for your future pregnancy.”
The preconception window is not a waiting room. It is the most fertile ground for the kind of whole-body preparation that genuinely changes outcomes. “You have more agency here than medicine typically tells you,” she says. “That’s what Conceive with Confidence is built to give you—the knowledge, the framework, and the support to walk into this season of your life feeling prepared, not afraid.”
Inspired by Dr. Rashid’s story? Start barre3 online today for free or find a studio near you—and discover a complete, guided fitness practice that supports your whole body, and entire person.
Dr. Samar Rashid is a board-certified family medicine physician and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) in San Diego, California, with over ten years of experience. Passionate about whole-person-centered care, Dr. Rashid combines evidence-based family medicine to address each patient’s unique needs. She is a longtime member of barre3 San Diego. Learn more about her physician-designed fertility program, Conceive With Confidence.
Dr. Samar Rashid was in medical school the first time she took a barre3 class. She was deep in the kind of academic demand that compresses your world into textbooks and patient rotations, but every time she stepped into the studio, she stepped out feeling different.
“Clearer and stronger,” she says. “And not just physically stronger, but in a way that made me more resilient as a medical student and that helped me feel in greater service to my patients, like I was able to fully bring my whole self to them.”
That hour changed the trajectory of her career. Today, Dr. Rashid is a board-certified family medicine physician, osteopathic doctor, and the founder of Inherent Health—a San Diego-based, whole-person osteopathic practice. She’s also the creator of Conceive with Confidence, a fertility course built around five evidence-based pillars: menstrual cycle health, sleep, nutrition, movement, and nervous system regulation. When it came time to choose the fitness foundation for the program—the practice she’d ask women to build their bodies around during the most important window of their reproductive lives—it’s no coincidence that she chose the practice she’d been showing up to for years: barre3.
Movement as Medicine
“On this subconscious level, I think my body always understood that movement was medicine,” Dr. Rashid says. “What I didn’t always have was the right movement practice to serve my needs in my current season of life.”
Most of her career has been spent helping women find that practice. In her clinic, she sees women at every stage—preconception, prenatal, postpartum—and she kept noticing a gap between what women were told about exercise and what the research actually showed. Women arriving overwhelmed, carrying the weight of wondering whether they’d waited too long or done something wrong. And women who were moving intensely and consistently and still struggling.
Barre3, for her, filled a space that nothing else had. Movement stopped being something she did to her body and became something she did with it. “Barre3 started that conversation for me,” she says, “and now it has become a foundation of how I think about health.”
Why barre3—and Why It Matters for Fertility
Dr. Rashid has tried decades’ worth of fitness modalities. So when she sat down to design a fertility program, her personal experience and clinical context all pointed to barre3.
The reasoning is specific: the research shows that the sweet spot for reproductive health is moderate-intensity aerobic work combined with resistance training. Barre3 meets that standard by design.
“The way the classes sequence strength, cardio, isometric work, larger movements, breathwork—it checks every evidence-based box,” she explains. “But here’s what the data can’t fully capture: the way it actually gets you into your body. The mind-body cueing, the way instructors guide you toward presence rather than just performance. I haven’t found that combination anywhere else.”
Women in her program who practice barre3 online 3-4 times a week are moving in the specific way the evidence supports for reproductive health. But what Dr. Rashid sees in her clinic tells a fuller story.
“Women come in feeling like their bodies are something that’s failing them, something to be managed or monitored,” she says. “After a few weeks of consistent barre3, I hear something different: ‘I feel stronger. I feel like myself again.'”
That shift matters clinically. Stress physiology is deeply connected to reproductive function. A woman who feels capable and at home in her body is one whose nervous system is better prepared for the demands of conception and pregnancy. Dr. Rashid has seen that shift in her own practice, and it starts with showing up for a movement practice that supports you best.
What Women Aren’t Being Told
There’s something Dr. Rashid wants every woman to hear: your body is not the problem.
“So much of the messaging women receive—implicitly or explicitly—frames their body as something working against them,” she says. “In reality, your body is responding to signals, and one of the most powerful signals you send it is through how you move.”
And there’s a nuance here that tends to hit the most dedicated women hardest. “There is such a thing as overexercising, and it is dramatically under-recognized in high-achieving, health-conscious women who are, by every measure, doing everything ‘right,'” she says. “Your body requires significant energy just to ovulate. When that energy isn’t there—because of intense training, chronic under-fueling, or both—ovulation simply doesn’t happen.”
These women aren’t unhealthy. They’re often the most committed to their health of anyone in her practice. But the hormonal toll of high-intensity exercise on the reproductive system is real—and it’s a conversation that matters deeply, especially in a fitness culture that still rewards pushing harder.
This is part of why Dr. Rashid’s work and barre3’s philosophy align so naturally. Barre3 has always been rooted in the belief that your body is worth listening to—that strength and care aren’t opposites, and that showing up for yourself doesn’t require punishing yourself in the process. For women preparing for conception, that distinction can be the difference between a practice that supports their fertility and one that quietly undermines it.
The Science of the Mind-Body Connection
As an osteopathic physician, Dr. Rashid brings a clinical understanding to something barre3 members experience every class: the relationship between how you move and how you feel.
“The mind-body connection is now physiologically understood,” she says. “The nervous system, the endocrine system, and the reproductive system are in constant conversation. Chronic stress suppresses the hormonal signaling required for ovulation. Anxiety dysregulates the immune environment of the uterus. A body that lives in a state of perceived threat is not a body that feels safe enough to sustain a pregnancy.”
The osteopathic philosophy holds that the body is a unit: you cannot separate the structural from the hormonal from the emotional. “When I help a woman feel into her body, to be genuinely present with it rather than fighting it or fearing it,” she says, “she has just done something profoundly therapeutic. Not just for her fertility journey, but for the mother, partner, and woman she is becoming.”
An Ever-Evolving Practice
These days, Dr. Rashid’s own barre3 practice looks different from what it did in medical school.
The noon weekday classes at her San Diego studio have become a ritual. She exercises between her morning and afternoon patients, and it resets something essential. “I walk into the afternoon clinic present in a way that allows me to fully serve my patients the best I can,” she says. “And then I go home to my two extraordinary little girls. They see their mama moving, getting stronger, taking care of herself—and I want that to be one of the most ordinary things they grow up watching.”
Postpartum has humbled her in the best way. She’s had to modify and learn to get comfortable with rest. “And doing that—really doing it, not just advising it—has made me a far more compassionate physician.”
It’s a reminder that the practice works because it meets you in whatever season you’re in. The woman who carved out time for movement during medical school and the mother of two who modifies between patient appointments are the same person—just at different points in her life. And her barre3 practice held space for both.
You Are Not Behind
For anyone in our community thinking about starting her conception journey, Dr. Rashid has one thing she wants you to know: you are not behind. And you are not alone.
“I think so many women arrive at the beginning of their fertility journey carrying this weight of wondering whether they’ve waited too long, done something wrong, or missed some window they didn’t know existed,” she says. “The fact that you’re thinking about this now—before a positive test, before a diagnosis, before things get complicated—is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and for your future pregnancy.”
The preconception window is not a waiting room. It is the most fertile ground for the kind of whole-body preparation that genuinely changes outcomes. “You have more agency here than medicine typically tells you,” she says. “That’s what Conceive with Confidence is built to give you—the knowledge, the framework, and the support to walk into this season of your life feeling prepared, not afraid.”
Inspired by Dr. Rashid’s story? Start barre3 online today for free or find a studio near you—and discover a complete, guided fitness practice that supports your whole body, and entire person.
Dr. Samar Rashid is a board-certified family medicine physician and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) in San Diego, California, with over ten years of experience. Passionate about whole-person-centered care, Dr. Rashid combines evidence-based family medicine to address each patient’s unique needs. She is a longtime member of barre3 San Diego. Learn more about her physician-designed fertility program, Conceive With Confidence.
