Gut Health, Burnout & the Body: How Stress Shapes the Way You Move and Connect

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[00:00:34] Lauren Dry: Even after years of chaos and even if only one person is doing the work. On my podcast, I'll share all the real and the raw moments of my own marriage from the tough breakdown to the relief of the breakthrough, and share with [00:00:45] you the science, simplicity, and soul that brought us and so many other couples into connection and contentment too, so that you can discover and use the tools that you need to have a home that's filled with calm, contentment, and play 'cause we all deserve a blueprint for finally having it all at [00:01:00] home.

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[00:01:20] Lauren Dry: And Alex has been invited on the podcast today to discuss something that I'm so fascinated with at the moment in my own life [00:01:30] and in the lives of my clients.

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[00:02:10] Lauren Dry: So I'd love to welcome you, Alex. Thank you so much for joining me here on The [00:02:15] Connection Podcast and I'd love to hear a little bit more about you and the work that you do and why this is a passion for you and thank you so much for joining us here today.

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[00:02:48] Alex Long: So I think this is going to be awesome. But yeah, I mean, I would, where do you want me to start?

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[00:02:59] Lauren Dry: Love a good [00:03:00] elevator pitch. Well, I wanna introduce the audience, first of all, to how we connected originally I was a guest on Alex's amazing podcast and since then we've been talking all things, movement, exercise, health, and [00:03:15] something that I really wanted to explore with Alex and something that has been a, big reflection in my own life is the relationship that I have between stress, dissociation and exercise.

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[00:03:40] Lauren Dry: Now I've been touching on the freeze response quite a lot in my content, [00:03:45] in some of the resources that I've been releasing to my audience and something that I have really related to recently.

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[00:04:23] Lauren Dry: I've so much work to do. I've got so many other balls in the air. Everything else is more [00:04:30] important than movement and exercise. I'm really dropping into my somatics. I'm really challenging myself to exercise, but the temptation of my body is very much dissociation. So dissociation. [00:04:45] Okay. I'm so overwhelmed.

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[00:05:12] Lauren Dry: Making sure we've got strong bone density, [00:05:15] strong muscles so that, you know, that increases our physical health and our mental health. So there's the logical understanding of all of that, but I'm really, really interested in how, that understanding, that logical understanding [00:05:30] can really be hijacked by the stress response that says.

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[00:05:55] Lauren Dry: Um, but in the past, and this is what I wanna touch on with you, the flip side of the coin [00:06:00] is very much, okay, I'm going to use exercise as a dissociated tool, and I'm so interested in this because they can, these two stress responses, the way it is portrayed, the way the dissociative stress response [00:06:15] can be portrayed and, and can come out in your body.

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[00:07:01] Lauren Dry: I know that you've been on such a journey with your own health, mental and physical, and I think that you, your experience around this is such a powerful and important reflection on how we can come back into our body [00:07:15] repair our relationship with self, reset our gut, which really, and I share this with my audience quite a bit, 80% of our parasympathetic nervous system lives in our gut.

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[00:07:40] Lauren Dry: And I feel like the exploration of both sides of the coin is something [00:07:45] that is so important for us all to have an understanding of, to make sure that we pull ourself back from that temptation, that unconscious temptation of stuck in unhealthy patterns, whether it's stuck in [00:08:00] dissociation of a freeze response or a flight response when it comes to exercise and having a healthy relationship with our bodies and our gut.

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[00:08:23] Alex Long: I love this. I want to touch on so many things that you said, but I'll try to rein it in and [00:08:30] keep this in chronological order. I, I wanna start by saying I have always been a really high energy, really athletic kid ever since I was super young. So I was in sports probably from age [00:08:45] six through college, and exercise has always been a really, really important part of my life.

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[00:09:24] Alex Long: I was a competitive swimmer and a long distance runner, so it was very [00:09:30] advantageous to be long lean. That was kind of the ideal body, if you will. Again, especially in the States, and I remember, I think I was maybe 12 or 13, you know, you start going through puberty, everything [00:09:45] starts changing. You start comparing yourself to others.

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[00:10:11] Alex Long: Even as early as you know, before aged [00:10:15] what, two, three, like those unconscious years. I was raised in a pretty dysfunctional home and I didn't realise until recently how much that actually impacted my nervous system, my ability to cope, my [00:10:30] ability to process my emotions, and my ability to connect with my body and myself.

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[00:11:03] Alex Long: And as I got older, as even as I was getting help from my eating disorder, I was going to therapy as I was going through grad school and I was actually studying to become a registered dietician because I had this [00:11:15] wake up moment, this aha moment. Right. As I was applying for colleges in high school, I was like, I know that I have a problem.

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[00:12:07] Alex Long: So I was probably around 23 ish, 24, I was so chronically. Anxious [00:12:15] all the time. Just so go, go, go. High stress, constantly feeling like I needed to be productive, constantly feeling antsy in my body. It was like this electric energy running through me. And I wasn't into somatic [00:12:30] work at this time, so I could not have articulated this to you back then.

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[00:12:53] Alex Long: And I remember almost every night I would feel so antsy and the [00:13:00] only thing that I could think about doing was going for a run and on one hand, exercise is such a beautiful thing. You hear a lot of people say that they clear their mind when they exercise. They go to the gym to clear their head.

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[00:13:37] Alex Long: And I recognise now that especially at that point in my life, I [00:13:45] literally was. I was probably drinking a thousand milligrams of caffeine a day. I was so high strung. I was writing my thesis, doing my dietetic internship, trying to navigate life after a really toxic relationship and entering [00:14:00] into a new one very, very quickly.

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[00:14:26] Alex Long: I was just suppressing it for a period of time [00:14:30] with my intense runs and in the long run, ha ha, pun intended. I was, I was

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[00:14:41] Alex Long: I, I do too. I,

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[00:14:44] Alex Long: That was [00:14:45] not, that was not planned at all.

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[00:14:52] Alex Long: it's okay. I'm so, I'm so happy to hear that. I love a good pun too. I really was adding so much [00:15:00] more stress onto my body. My cortisol was already through the roof and by doing that high intensity activity, I was sending my cortisol even higher through the roof. And in the long run, [00:15:15] again, that creates a negative feedback loop in the body where the body says, Hey, she's stuck in this sympathetic overdrive.

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[00:15:39] Alex Long: And eventually I hit rock bottom. I was chronically exhausted. No matter [00:15:45] how much sleep I got, I started having really, really wonky gut issues, like fluctuating between constipation, diarrhea, nothing helped at all. Acne started flaring up even though I was on hormonal birth control at the time [00:16:00] for quote unquote, preventing my acne, which is just a bandaid approach, and I can get into that too if you wanna.

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[00:16:06] Alex Long: But my body really just started shutting down in every capacity. [00:16:15] And even though I was again, doing all the right things on paper, and even though I was beating myself up constantly because I thought that I should know better, I was literally getting my master's degree in exercise physiology. I was doing my dietetic [00:16:30] internship, right?

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[00:16:33] Alex Long: So it was hard to say the least, but I knew that it was going to be a part of my story, and that's honestly what propelled me to [00:16:45] enter the functional health space and the hormone space and the gut health space, and actually figure out how to help women address these deeper rooted issues for good.

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[00:17:32] Alex Long: Mm-hmm.

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[00:17:50] Lauren Dry: So many clients come to me after having been in therapy for eight years, for, you know, counseling they've done, uh, [00:18:00] psychological experience. They've done, you know, they've done the retreats under the moon and they hit this point in their life of, you know, I'm so saturated in information and I've done so much to get myself back to [00:18:15] where I need to be.

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[00:18:35] Lauren Dry: You've got, on the flip side, a ton of caffeine, not eating healthy or not eating enough and over exercising as a way to discharge that nervous [00:18:45] energy. and then for others you've got, okay, well, how about I just overwhelm with myself, with work, even more sleep, even less, and almost create an unconscious excuse of, well, I'm too busy.

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[00:19:22] Lauren Dry: They have awareness of the goal and awareness of the tools that they wanna use, whether it's a conscious mind tool, so a communication tool for example, you know, [00:19:30] this is how I'm meant to speak to my partner in order to get my needs met a somatic tool. I'm meant to be using my somatics, but I don't even wanna like tap my own fingers together.

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[00:20:05] Lauren Dry: And I wanna kind of explore that a little bit because I know my audience will really relate to that. That point that you hit of understanding and awareness [00:20:15] of I should know better. But now what? What did that look like for you and where did that key turning point come into place for you that allowed you to move from stuck from, [00:20:30] oh my gosh.

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[00:21:02] Alex Long: Yeah. Oh, that's a really great question. And it's true. I look back at my entire career now subconsciously, I think that I [00:21:15] was pursuing these higher level degrees again, this, this career as a registered dietician, because I was, I was looking for answers, and of course, I wanted to help women and men. I do work with men [00:21:30] as well, but I wanted to help people.

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[00:21:43] Lauren Dry: Right. [00:21:45] Yeah.

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[00:21:50] Alex Long: Because for a long time, again, in grad school, waking up at 5:00 AM to go to the lab, to go to class, to do my internship, to write my thesis, not coming home until nine or 10. [00:22:00] Again, the caffeine, the not sleeping enough, the self abandonment, the self abandonment that I would experience, oh, I'm hungry, but I just need to read one more chapter.

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[00:22:31] Lauren Dry: Mm-hmm.

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[00:22:43] Alex Long: That the thing that got me out of that was burnout, and it was hitting that absolutely rock bottom where I physically could not function anymore. And I let myself stay there for a while,

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[00:22:59] Alex Long: and [00:23:00] I realised that I grew up again my entire life exercise when I was younger, it was about enjoyment.

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[00:23:34] Alex Long: And I never actually gave myself a chance to just rest. And so. I let myself rest for an [00:23:45] entire year. I took an entire year off of intentional exercise entirely, and for me, on one hand, it was very intentional. It was, I physically cannot do this anymore. [00:24:00] I do not have the energy. And it wasn't even that I didn't have the time.

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[00:24:34] Alex Long: and I started to realise that I actually don't like super high intensity workouts. I just thought that that's what I had to do in order to, you know, [00:24:45] burn the most calories and be the fittest, be the smallest, et cetera, et cetera. And that's when I started falling into yoga because I started noticing what it felt like in my body to [00:25:00] crave movement.

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[00:26:10] Alex Long: This is what makes me feel like myself again, and. I gave [00:26:15] myself that permission to let it be enough and to let it be genuinely just for fun, not for the sake of competing, not for the sake of trying to change my body or trying to burn calories or anything like that. It was just [00:26:30] because I wanted to move and that was really healing.

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[00:26:56] Alex Long: Hmm.

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[00:27:29] Lauren Dry: And then [00:27:30] your rest looked like association, you know. The opposite of dissociation is how do I associate, how do I have curiosity about my environment again, what does it look like to take a breath? What does it look like to look around at my [00:27:45] environment and have awareness 'cause when we're in a dissociation, we're, when we are in a deep state of stress, what happens is we, narrow our, our world down to a pinpoint.

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[00:28:15] Lauren Dry: Splitting means, okay, how can I quickly determine whether you are a threat, whether you are my enemy or whether you are safe and you are my friend. And so micro arguments become these massive,[00:28:30] Invitations and, and fuel points into disconnection because every single moment of miscommunication is like a red flag to a bull. Are you with me or are you against me? And when we're talking about the body and we're talking about [00:28:45] exercise that looks like, okay, am I stressed? Am I okay? Even the tiniest bit of stress, it's too much for my nervous system. I need to dissociate, I need to cope, I need to, you know, paper it over with some kind of, coping tool, which is [00:29:00] exercise.

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[00:29:24] Lauren Dry: The association looked so small on the outside at first, you know, observing the [00:29:30] trees, going for a walk, trying to discover, oh my gosh, I like this part of yoga. I like this Shiva, I'm not gonna say that right? The lying down at the end. Um, I went to do it and I was like, Nope, we're not gonna do that [00:29:45] today.

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[00:30:04] Lauren Dry: am I reacting and responding from a place of protection? Or do we even know who I am underneath the surface and what my values are and, and who really I am at my core and how I'm supposed to show up in [00:30:15] relationships so that I know where the lines are between me and other people. And as such, when I know where the lines are, I know how to create strong and safe connection without needing to dissociate or drop into protective patterns that really only result [00:30:30] in disconnection from others and ourself.

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[00:31:02] Lauren Dry: And I wanna touch on,as well, you mentioned that you moved from a toxic relationship, you jumped into a new relationship, and, this was playing a role in [00:31:15] your stress levels at the time. And, you know, your relationship with how you were coping and how you were looking to move, what, and feel free to share, to your, your level around this, but I'm really, really [00:31:30] curious to hear a little bit more about how your relationships were, a part of this puzzle at the time and after you had your aha moment and after you finally learn how to [00:31:45] rest and associate and, and find that healthy balance again. talk me through your experience with how that, how you feel that translates to your relationships.

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[00:32:04] Alex Long: I think it was really clear because I wanna talk about my relationships with others, my relationship with my partner at the time, but I also wanna come back to this relationship we have with ourselves and this relationship we have with our body, right?

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[00:32:43] Alex Long: And I [00:32:45] realised that fighting against my body, trying to run off my anxiety, trying to like put this bandaid on, it clearly wasn't working for me anymore. I needed to take a different approach and I needed to come back home to myself. [00:33:00] And when I had that aha moment of, oh, I am on my side, I can come back into my body, I can work with myself here, that's when my relationship dynamic really started to [00:33:15] change. So, little bit of a backstory again, because I was really struggling with my relationship with food, my relationship with my body, my relationship with exercise from probably age 13 through 25 or 26, if I'm being honest with [00:33:30] you. And I'm almost 30 now, so. I went through a couple different relationships throughout that time right.

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[00:34:11] Alex Long: I tend to attract people who avoid their emotions, and I was avoiding my [00:34:15] emotions at the time too, but I knew that we weren't going to work long-term. He really didn't make any kind of effort. You know, in, in terms of hearing me, understanding what I was going through, supporting what I was going through, or supporting me in what I was going through.

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[00:34:45] Alex Long: I, I ended up marrying him. And so at the time of this awakening, oh my gosh, everything I've done for my whole life has been for other people.

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[00:35:06] Alex Long: I had no idea what my values were, and here I was in a very committed relationship with this man who [00:35:15] we had never even discussed our core values. We had never discussed our life goals, and we were already married at this point because he was in the military and we needed the money and we wanted to live together.

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[00:35:34] Alex Long: But I really think that in leaning into all of this, in getting really [00:35:45] curious about myself, about what I wanted in life, about who I was, what I valued, how those values played out in my life, reconnecting with my own intuition, and actually again, giving [00:36:00] myself permission to reestablish safety in my body because I have had my autonomy taken away from me in terms of again, my own relationship with my body, my own self. I know what that feels like to feel [00:36:15] incredibly disconnected from your body and and incredibly scared to connect with someone on an intimate level in terms of relationships. But doing this somatic work and really going there and allowing myself to go there, [00:36:30] it made me realise that the person I was with was yet another person who was afraid of his own emotions.

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[00:37:03] Alex Long: And I know that your story is one of which where you guys heal from betrayal and you come back together and you reestablish that safety and connection. And I want [00:37:15] to reiterate that I do think that I did, that. I did reestablish that sense of safety and connection with myself and with my own body. And in doing so, that called out another really toxic relationship that I had in [00:37:30] my life. And so just recently actually, I made the decision to leave and I've never felt lighter.

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[00:38:02] Lauren Dry: You know, betrayal of, who are we? how did we come into this relationship? What did we really bring to the table? and how did we really betray each other every day by trying to force and [00:38:15] manipulate each other to be people that we thought that we needed because we were abandoning ourselves daily and we were looking for that fix by trying to force the other person to do the work on our [00:38:30] behalf.

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[00:38:58] Lauren Dry: What is so [00:39:00] important for us all to realise is that we're not avoiding and escaping and, removing ourselves from the stress and the anxiety and the toxic patterns. What we're actually doing is offloading that [00:39:15] onto the people around us, and it might seem like that we're not, and something that is really interesting for people who are in a people pleasing pattern is they believe that through dissociation, by avoiding the work that they need to do [00:39:30] internally.

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[00:40:04] Lauren Dry: Because what's happening is people, the peoplearound them are picking up, okay. I'm hearing that you're telling me that you want me to be happy. I'm [00:40:15] seeing that you're doing these things and, and, and I'm observing these behaviors that seem to be a reflection on the surface of your love and your care for me, but something I'm picking up on something.

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[00:40:51] Lauren Dry: I'm fine, everything's fine. But you can't reach them. You can't touch them. You can't connect with them on a deep level. And your nervous system is firing an [00:41:00] alarm saying Alert, alert, alert. This person isn't giving you their authentic self, their safe self, they don't feel safe with you. There's, an alarm system going off saying this relationship is not right.

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[00:41:51] Lauren Dry: And if we are not dropped into our deep authentic associated self, and we don't have an understanding [00:42:00] of who we are, if we're treating our body like it's our enemy. If we are using others as an, as a dissociation tool so that we don't, we can avoid the work. That means coming into our own body and having a deep understanding of what our values are.[00:42:15]

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[00:42:29] Alex Long: [00:42:30] Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because I look back on that relationship that I mentioned in undergrad again, we were together for three years. We were long distance. I say that it was a toxic relationship. It wasn't the right relationship [00:42:45] for me. I can't really say anything too negative about him, but I jumped from that relationship into what I am now realizing was another even more toxic relationship.

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[00:43:29] Lauren Dry: Right.

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[00:43:53] Alex Long: It forced me to really tap back into my own intuition and to address my own toxic traits [00:44:00] and how I was showing up in the relationship and my own patterns and all of that. And it was so funny to me, again, looking back on it all, because I went through this whole journey of recovering from my eating disorder, really healing my relationship with food and exercise only to dive [00:44:15] even deeper into somatics and value work and my relationships with the world.

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[00:44:35] Lauren Dry: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's just such a powerful moment of reflection for all of us when it comes to how we move our body. [00:44:45] It's, it's a really good mirror point of where is that translating?

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[00:44:51] Lauren Dry: And where is that translating into our lives, into, you know, the foundation that we need to be strongest is the most.

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[00:45:03] Lauren Dry: And I'd really love to kind of explore for you, what that looks like and how that translates to our relationship with our gut. Why is this such an important piece of the puzzle [00:45:15] and how does movement, relate to having a good relationship with our gut?

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[00:46:20] Alex Long: Yeah, I love this.

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[00:46:40] Alex Long: I can't say any blanket statements. There's always gonna be an oddball out, [00:46:45] right? But we know that the parasympathetic nervous system, right? It's our rest and digest system. So if we are stuck in that sympathetic overdrive, our gut is [00:47:00] not going to function the way that it should. Our gut is not going to digest food properly.

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[00:47:26] Alex Long: I have to keep up, I have to do more. Their cortisol [00:47:30] typically, like mine, was absolutely through the roof, and they're going to have a lot of diarrhea Also, they're going to be more susceptible to gut infection, gut dysbiosis. We know that that's going to affect our [00:47:45] brain health, our mental health, our mood, everything in the same vein.

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[00:48:16] Alex Long: I was actually doing a podcast with one of my friends, and she was telling me about how after her grandfather passed away, she started experiencing a lot of bloat, a lot of constipation, a lot of really uncomfortable gas, [00:48:30] lot of really sharp stomach pain out of nowhere. And she did all of the things, tried all of the different diets, all of the cleanses, nothing was working until she went back far enough and realised, wait, this happened [00:48:45] right after I lost somebody who was really important to me and I haven't actually processed that grief.

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[00:49:04] Lauren Dry: even something I see a lot in my own clients, I actually have this woman, she just graduated from working with me. We've been working together for a year.

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[00:49:35] Alex Long: Lots of bloating, lots of fatigue, tried everything had gone to different naturopaths, et cetera, et cetera. And I told her, okay, let's just get back to basics. [00:49:45] And as we continued our time together, I realised, and I helped her realise the more she let herself experience freedom, because she comes from this background of really severe restriction, kind of living in this not enoughness, the [00:50:00] more she allowed herself to experience freedom in food, in exercise, she started dialing it back a little.

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[00:50:23] Alex Long: Like I think a lot of people in the functional health industry tend to tend to go down that route, right? And I started [00:50:30] seeing that pattern and pointing it out to her, Hey, the more you let yourself just sort of slow down and experience life and find freedom in food, find freedom in exercise, find, find freedom in yourself.

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[00:51:30] Lauren Dry: Yeah, and I think it's, it's so vital that it, it, it is a part of the equation.

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[00:51:39] Lauren Dry: Because we can logically understand, oh yeah, my mind and body is connected. Oh [00:51:45] yeah. You know, my relationships can be a reflection of my, relationship with myself. But then we really havea strong accountability check with how that is actually being presented in our [00:52:00] life.

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[00:52:32] Lauren Dry: We're in a survival response, fight, flight, fawn or freeze, that we're in dissociation. It will be in a process of suppression. Suppression of, so the three [00:52:45] primary tenets of our body that are suppressed when we're in a state of stress are healing. So if you're in a state of stress and, and you're under, a lot of emotional pressure 'cause our body doesn't know the difference between emotional and physical, danger, then it's [00:53:00] not safe to be healing right now.

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[00:53:23] Lauren Dry: So, and that means that the second thing that slows down or, the health of, of it stops completely [00:53:30] in terms of, you know, like you said, for anxiety and stress, diarrhea, it'll just go straight through. You don't have time to digest, or slow down. Um, so digestion is the second thing. And the third thing that gets switched off is learning. So again, when you're in that splitting state where [00:53:45] you're just constantly trying to assess, are you my friend or my foe, are you with me? Are you against me? It's because we don't have the ability and the time to learn to take in new information.

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[00:54:14] Lauren Dry: And [00:54:15] so what happens learning digestion and our ability to be able to connect on a level. So learning, digestion and healing, they [00:54:30] all really slow down stop or disconnect completely when we're in that state of disconnection from ourselves. So of course our gut is affected and then it's a feedback loop.

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[00:55:09] Lauren Dry: For me to connect back in with myself and to reset actually for other [00:55:15] people, because we think it's selfish to take care of ourselves until we realise that the people around us are actually counting on us to have a strong relationship with ourselves so that the work is not offloaded onto them.

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[00:55:50] Lauren Dry: What is something that a person perhaps listening to this, who may be at one end of the extreme really struggling to begin to exercise. Or [00:56:00] really in that dissociated response of like, oh my gosh, I have to really push myself physically, or I'm not gonna be okay. I'm not gonna be able to discharge that energy.

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[00:56:27] Lauren Dry: And, you know, it doesn't have to be [00:56:30] perfect. sometimes I put on my favorite show, it doesn't have to be like a workout video, you know, and I'll jump on my trampoline and, and I stop when I'm sweating and my, my muscles are sore 'cause I'll use my weights. It doesn't have to look perfect. And sometimes for me, [00:56:45] the resolution of dealing with that stress response really absolutely means.

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[00:57:06] Lauren Dry: Well no, actually I have this window and I'm, I'm dressed in like my house clothes and, I haven't finished watching this TV [00:57:15] show yet, and I was gonna save it for tonight at like, way too late at night when I'm finished work. But I'm gonna do it now and I'm gonna make the time to do it, and it's gonna be an enjoyable experience and I know I'm gonna enjoy it afterwards, but as long as I'm applying [00:57:30] that, that abandonment of perfection, suddenly possibility happens.

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[00:57:49] Alex Long: Yes. Great question. Great question. I love all of the tips and tricks that you've just shared, especially in regards to. This concept of getting [00:58:00] unstuck, going from sedentary to abandon the idea of perfectionism, because this is where I think a lot of people get stuck. They go from zero and they think they need to go all the way to 100.

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[00:58:30] Alex Long: So set your timer for 10 minutes, and that could look like you are doing squats, pushups, random movement, whatever speaks to you. You're doing a 10 minute YouTube video, you're doing 10 minute stretching, you're [00:58:45] doing 10 minutes of whatever workout you had set out to do that day. Again, if you have a workout program, great.

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[00:59:11] Alex Long: Do another 10 minutes. Do another set of your next [00:59:15] exercise. Walk a little longer, whatever that looks like for you. And you might find that awesome. I just completed a 20 minute workout that feels really good for me. Or maybe you go to that full hour, maybe you don't. [00:59:30] Or maybe you do your 10 minutes and you're like, actually, I feel worse.

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[01:00:11] Alex Long: And it feels so freaking good. [01:00:15] And not only is that so freeing and so enjoyable, but it gets me in the mood to move. It makes me want to put on my workout clothes and maybe do something else. It makes me wanna go outside. It makes me wanna keep moving, keep dancing, 'cause I love music and I just, [01:00:30] I love the way it makes me feel.

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[01:01:03] Alex Long: And it's funny because at least for me, and I think a lot of us, we use exercise to quote unquote clear our minds to get back into our bodies. And for me, actually, the [01:01:15] answer to addressing that particular issue is the opposite. We have to get back into our minds for a second and ask yourself, especially while you're in the middle of the exercise, if you can, or even before you go to initiate that exercise, that workout that you just feel like [01:01:30] you have to do. Ask yourself, why am I really doing this?

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[01:01:36] Alex Long: is this serving me and why is this important to me? And an exercise that I like to take clients through, especially in regards to [01:01:45] why am I really doing this and why this is, why is this important to me? They might say, well, I feel like I need to do this high intensity workout because I wanna burn the most amount of calories and I wanna lose weight.

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[01:02:06] Lauren Dry: Mm-hmm.

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[01:02:34] Lauren Dry: Yes.

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[01:02:39] Lauren Dry: I love that so much.

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[01:03:05] Lauren Dry: The opposite of disconnection is not connection, it is curiosity. You know, find out why that desire is there [01:03:15] in the first place to dissociate and disconnect. What are we trying to protect ourselves from and how can we take that desire and that understanding that we discover through curiosity and create a [01:03:30] new healthy pattern that actually increases connection in a safe way, not only with our own selves, but with the people around us so that we can end the cycle of [01:03:45] offloading our own healing, our own awareness, our own care for self onto others. That creates that unhealthy cycle and pattern in the first place.

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[01:04:36] Lauren Dry: Alex, thank you so much for being here. It's honestly been such a pleasure. I could, I could talk to you for hours and I feel like this is going to be the first [01:04:45] of many conversations. So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your love with the audience. Thank you for sharing your journey, and I really appreciate you being here.

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[01:05:06] Alex Long: absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Lauren. It has truly been an honor. I hope this helps your listeners. You can find me on Instagram. [01:05:15] My handle is alex dot undefined. I actually, if anybody listening, really resonated with this conversation or is more interested in the gut and hormone health aspect to all of this, I do have a free masterclass.

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[01:05:47] Lauren Dry: All right. Go ahead and follow Alex and, and learn more about her journey. And, join me in, in thanking Alex for being here. I, really appreciate you for coming on this journey with us [01:06:00] and learning more about, getting out of that dissociation start cycle. Whether it means, getting out of the freeze response and, and not feeling like you're ready to move your body, or, downregulating that response that really drives us sometimes to [01:06:15] overdo it.

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