#413 When the Solution Isn't in Your Body: Healing Chronic Pain with Alexis Joseph, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life, Alexis Joseph joins me to share her journey of chronic back pain that wouldn’t go away until she uncovered its emotional root. After trying physical therapy, massage, injections, and more, Alexis discovered the mind-body connection and how repressed emotions were fueling her pain. This conversation dives into the work of Dr. John Sarno and Nicole Sachs, the concept of TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome), and the healing power of emotional honesty.

If you’ve ever dealt with chronic pain, nagging health symptoms, or the feeling that your body is betraying you, this episode might completely shift how you see healing.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Why emotions can trigger very real physical pain
• The role of unconscious stress in chronic symptoms
• What TMS is and how to know if it applies to you
• How journaling and nervous system work helped Alexis heal
• Why curiosity and self-compassion are more powerful than fear

ABOUT GUEST:
Alexis Joseph is the dietitian, blogger, and mama behind Hummusapien, the food blog she created in 2011 in order to inspire others to eat happy, healthy and balanced. She's also Co-Founder of Columbus-based restaurant group, Alchemy. She uses her passion for cooking and wellness as fuel to help others ignite a more joyful relationship with food. Through years of experience coaching individual clients, consulting with food brands, and conceptualizing restaurants, she combines approachable recipes with nutrition education to bring peace and joy back to the table.

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.hummusapien.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hummusapien/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY OF LESS STRESSED LIFE:
🍽️ Over restriction is dead
🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
❤️ Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:
Thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Looking for a clean, tasty way to stay hydrated this summer? Their Electrolyte Supreme is a go-to for energy, minerals, and daily hydration support. Use code LESSSTRESSED10 at JigsawHealth.com for 10% off—unlimited use!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Alexis Joseph, RD: but i'm in charge, like you can look within yourself and look what's going on emotionally before just putting the power in someone else's hand and being like, numb my pain with an injection, or give me something that'll make this go away.

It's like it's never gonna go away if you don't deal with the root cause,

[00:00:19] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

Today, I'm the less stressed life I have Alexis Joseph, who is a dietician blogger, and the mama behind Ian. I just asked how to say it properly and like it just, my brain doesn't wanna say it right. The food blog, which you've probably read, you've probably landed on, I know I have for yours, the food blog she created in 2011 in order to inspire others to eat happy, healthy, and balanced.

She's also the co-founder of a Columbus based restaurant group, alchemy. She uses her passion for cooking and wellness to help. As fuel to help others ignite a more joyful relationship with food. Through years of experience coaching individual clients, consulting with food brands and conceptualizing restaurants, she combines approachable recipes with nutrition education to bring peace and joy back to the table.

But speaking of peace and joy, I ran into Alexis. In person for the first time a couple of months ago at an event, and she was talking about having a passion for the nervous system because of her own personal story. I thought it would be fun to have her come. I am also nerding out on this topic in general for years, and so I thought her story would be fun to come on and talk about.

I think you'll see why very shortly. So welcome to the show, Alexis.

[00:02:13] Alexis Joseph, RD: Thank you so 

much 

for having me. Happy to chat. Yeah.

[00:02:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Alright, so when I was standing behind you in the buffet line in April, you were talking about having. Back pain and how you resolved it, and this takes me back, we're 400 some, I don't know what episode we're on now, but we're 400 some episodes in 2025.

This podcast started in 2017 and the very second episode was about debilitating. Discs and back pain. And it was really interesting. It was a little different perspective, but I think it's just cool how we all come full spectrum. And I remember the conversation there was like reducing inflammation from other modalities.

But I wanna talk about I wanna just hear that origin story a little bit. You're living your life. You're being a mom, you're blogging, you're doing all the things, and then suddenly life happens. So will you tell us a little bit about what happened and the pain that you were experiencing?

[00:03:08] Alexis Joseph, RD: Yeah, for sure. So just to preface it, like I had some interesting back pain, just like ever since college. Like I remember I sat down on a floor and a lecture in college. Had like intense sciatica that I never had in my life. So like looking back, I'm like this is all starting to make sense. But anyway, I'd been feeling good for a while.

I had the previous summer, like crazy hip pain, like we landed in San Diego and I could barely walk. I'm like, what is wrong with my body? Is it, 'cause I had kids, you know what's happening? So I was like in physical therapy. I was having tailbone pain, just really random stuff. And then. I started feeling this like back pain that was just growing in intensity to the point where I looked in the mirror one day and my gait was like so crooked.

I looked like someone completely shifted my hips like six inches in the wrong direction. And my mom's in town and I was like, look at my like body, like something is seriously wrong with me. And I was doing all these different things and. I got to a point where one day I was like, in such excruciating pain, I couldn't even get up, I couldn't do anything.

And I ended up getting like a same day MRI. And the results were you have an extruded disc, which is like the most intense kind of there's like a level of herniated disc. They're like even have exter disc, you have a herniated disc, you have, this like wearing on your face. You have all these done things and I went from nine outta 10 pain to 12 outta 10 pain.

Obviously fear, just exacerbating everything I was already feeling and just found myself doing, everything known to man to cure my back pain. That's like how it started

[00:04:41] Christa Biegler, RD: and I think sometimes we work through our toolbox that we know, and I actually use back pain as an example to educate about what I think of as the health triad, which is like we have these different lenses.

We can look through each symptom, we can look through the nutritional chemical component, like an inflammatory diet. The structural component. There's pro and naturally with back pain, usually you're gonna go structural, right? And then sometimes people might come over to the nutrition side and say, oh, what could I do with nutrition?

And then the other angle is emotional and energetic. And so I'd love to hear, yeah, what you were throwing at first. And also I can imagine that this, just was very like jarring for your life because I think you know it, it said somewhere in my notes like you were, usually when you have a herniated disc or a really extreme one, you're debilitated, like you might be crawling around on the floor.

So I'm not sure what that was like for you and how long that was going on. And then what did you throw at it? 

[00:05:33] Alexis Joseph, RD: Yeah, so at my worst I was literally on the floor. I remember crying on the ground laying on my stomach 'cause it was like the most comfortable position. And just like saying to my mom who was just visiting, I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna lift my 1-year-old.

I don't know how, like I had to figure out people like driving to get my son from school. It was like a nightmare. And I didn't know. I'm like, why is this happening to me? Like, why am I suddenly unable to move? So I got this MRI and they immediately wanna do an injection, and I'm like whoa, let me like digest, let me try physical therapy.

I don't just wanna immediately numb the pain let me just figure out what's going on. I started doing physical therapy with this McKenzie method that, I'm on Instagram, I'm like, I have these terrible disc issues. Send me all your recommendations. Everyone's do the McKenzie method and pt do acupuncture.

Do you know these certain supplements? So I'm going to attend a pt. I'm doing this like really intense neuromuscular massage that I thought was helping, it would help fix my shift. And then it would like immediately go back. I was like reading books on back pain, which is how I stumbled upon Dr.

Sarno's book about back pain, which changed my life. But yeah, I was doing all the like, traditional methods and then, I think a few months passed and I looked at my physical therapist and I'm like, I'm just like, not getting better. I would get better and then I would regress and I'm like, I'm in PC three times a week.

I'm doing massage, I'm doing all these things. I'm doing ice. I'm doing. Everything heating pads. And I just felt like super discouraged. And at that point I scheduled an injection and did that whole thing felt, I think I might've felt better for a tiny bit, but then like back to square one and I'm like, literally nothing is working.

I'm gonna live my life. Then someone messages me on Instagram and she says, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but. I think this is TMS, you need to read the book. She was like, didn't your brother die last year? Haven't you been going through all this stuff? I think you need to read this book, mind Your Body.

And at that point I was so like, so sick of nothing working. I'm like, sure, I'll read a book. What do I have to lose? Read the book. And that just changed everything. I think I actually read, I'm sorry I didn't read mind first. I read Dr. Sarno's book. Mind Body Prescription. I read Mind Body Prescription.

I also read his other book on Back Pain. He has another, and then I read Mind Your Body. It's like I already knew all of it at that point. So when I read the MINDBODY prescription, you're not supposed to talk about timelines and all that. So I hesitate to use the word immediately, but I read that book and I felt astronomically better just after I read the book.

It was like it was the most a shocking recovery I've ever experienced in my life. And this was, months in, it was like my last, the last thing I tried. So yeah I read it and I remember, 'cause he talks so much about how the pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in your body.

And not that if you're just throwing things at these physical symptoms when it's not a physical problem, it's like a normal abnormality, it's not gonna work. So I was like. Canceled all my pt, canceled every massage, canceled every single physical appointment I had. And I went on a run. And the first time it was like a little scary and I did it again.

And I remember crying and just literally saying out loud I'm in charge. I can feel my feelings, I'm in charge. And it was like just emotional, you can't even describe how emotional it felt to be able to move in that way when I had been like crunched up, stuck in fight or flight. Literally locked up for several months.

And I know people go through, so people go through decades of, being in pain. So I feel lucky that, Nicole Sachs always says your physical pain will become the biggest littlest problem, I think is what she says, and you'll be grateful for it. And at the time I was like, oh, I spent all this money, I'm on all this pain.

But like now looking back, it's changed my life. It changed how I look at literally everything in my life. Love versus fear. And I'm honestly so glad it happened to me because I'm a different person. 

[00:09:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I wanna talk about this. So often it can be, I suppose if you were feeling debilitated, because I always am intrigued that you got through three books really quickly as well.

Right.

[00:09:45] Alexis Joseph, RD: 1.5 speed on Audible.

[00:09:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Nice. I love it. So let's talk a little bit about this concept. I talk about this, so I told you right before we started recording that about last month, Nicole Sachs's episode came out about Mind Your Body, and we talked a little bit about this as well. But one thing she talks a lot about is that, in which you just said it's not in your head, but you can't heal the pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in your body, which is like a kind of a cool way to encompass it in one word.

But she spends a lot of time talking in her book about. It's not in your head because if you think that you will dismiss that immediately. And so I think part of the conversation that I wanna get to is we tend to be in desperation sometimes before we consider something like this. So I'm curious if you were at all skeptical before you started listening to his stuff.

You said you felt immediately better through what? Like the education just made you seem, feel seen, validated. Because I think sometimes we're very unconscious to what's going on for ourselves. And that's the thing, like now I'm literally looking through the world through this lens a lot when people are talking about pain and I'm just thinking about it a little bit.

I'm sure you are too. But I think that something that has. Concerned me that it's been on my mind for months, if not a year at this point, is the concept of unconscious stress. The stress we don't realize we're carrying. And so I wanna just hear a little bit about your initial skepticism.

Maybe you had none, maybe you were like, it's no big deal if I try this book. It's just interesting that you never know. 'cause so often people just want to be helpful and sometimes we, imagine when we were bright eyed, brushy, tailed dieticians, maybe we wanted to be. You change your life with whatever health journey you go on, and then you wanna share it with other people.

I see it all the time, right? Yeah. Sometimes people aren't there to receive it. And so think

[00:11:29] Alexis Joseph, RD: a hundred percent

[00:11:30] Christa Biegler, RD: how thankful you are for this person who sent you this random message because it could have just Yeah. Landed wrong as well. So anyway, I'm just curious.

[00:11:37] Alexis Joseph, RD: And I sent it to 

people and it's landed wrong and I have friends who are now on the other side of healing.

I have a friend who couldn't eat broccoli for 10 years without taking Bino and now can eat broccoli because of this. And she was like, when you first sent it to me. I was like, it's annoying. It's oh yeah, I'm gonna read a book. Oh yeah. This is in my head. Oh yeah. It's emotional. It feels annoying. It feels yeah, it feels dismissive of real pain.

Yeah. Even 

though I was someone who experienced that like intense pain. And I think we identify so much with our ailments and we, it's so easy to become like, obsessed with your pain. It like becomes your identity. It's like I have back pain. Who I am, I have anxiety and all these things.

And I have so much to say, like on, the question you said, but, and I also wanna point out, it wasn't like I read this book, I'm cured, everything's fine. That can sometimes happen to people. And Sarno talks about this because it's like when you, when I read the book for my brain, it was like the gig is up because, my brain, the whole thing is my brain's trying to protect me from feeling my feelings.

'cause they're a greater predator than my physical pain. So let me give Alexis physical pain so she doesn't have to deal with all this stuff in her head. And I'm someone who my whole life I have coped with being a busy perfectionist. Like I'm not gonna, grieve my brother 'cause I have a baby and I'm too busy.

I'm not going to deal with the stress of my inner child stuff. I'm just gonna work all the time. So I never have to think about it. So it's like I've had a life of unknowingly not completing the stress cycle. I think even though I'm someone who like so believes in feeling my feelings. So I think when I read the book and it was like, oh, this has really come with people pleasers and type A people and high achievers.

I was like, I saw myself on every page, every story he told, I was like, it's me. And so it just felt, so obviously the initial concept is like, what are you talking about? But I love to learn and I was so curious and what did I have to lose at that point? Like we go to all these appointments, but we can't spend 20 minutes a day listening to a book that could change our life.

You know what I mean? But. I listened to it and it just made so much sense for me. And I think my brain was like, oh she gets it. She and I, you know how Nicole talks about belief being like a huge, one of the three necessary components and for me, belief was like 110%. I was like, this is me. This is exactly why I have back pain.

So I think that helped turn off the pain signals. But then I had a huge relapse. So a few months later, and this was recently, I started having like really bad back pain again. And then everything Nicole talks about came back. I was like, was this all not real? Is this like all a lie? And I listened to one of her episodes on Relapse.

It was like a high achieving woman who's a therapist herself, who had all of her pain come back and she felt like a fraud. And I realized that like with the journal speak that Nicole talks about, where, I write down like my cringes truths. I was just like doing it to get better. I wasn't like really doing it.

The first time when my back pain was terrible reading the book, like helped get rid of it. The second time my back pain came back. I like had to really go deep into the journal, speak again, and like you're talking about, like subconscious stress. I'm like, what is the cringes truth in the back of my like deepest?

And for me it was like, I'm terrible mom. I'm so overstimulated by all my friends. I shouldn't have married my husband like that. That's not like a literal truth. I'm just trying to express the depth I had to go to fish out what do you need to get on paper? I love my husband to death.

I love being a mom. Those things, but it was like I had to really dig deep. And so that worked, it took like weeks of journal speak, but the back pain went away. Then I got crazy. IB crazy like IBS symptoms that I've never had in my life. So bloated, couldn't stop burping. Then I had heel pain, which is so documented on how much that's related to stress.

Then I had like crazy things in my fingers that I've had for years that I never associated with TMS. So it's a symptom imperative. Like my brain was like, oh, she knows what's going on in her back. Let me give her crazy bloating. Let me give her, anything. So she doesn't feel her feelings.

So this year has felt like, so everything that happens to me now, I'm like, it's obviously I'm a healthy person. I don't have a tumor. Like nothing is wrong with me. I've gotten checked out. So it's so insane now because when I feel pain or discomfort, my first thought, instead of thinking let me Google, I had a terrible rash on my leg.

That was another thing that came up. Just stuff that I've something and you can't make this up. So I feel like this year was just the most gigantic lesson in like surrendering. And now when I get a crazy symptom, I'm like, I wear it loosely. I'm like up my back hurts or up. I have a crazy rash.

Like what do I need to feel today? It's crazy 'cause even my husband, like he's, he took N VM for a decade for crazy stomach pain. He read Mind Your Body, we've been talking about this a lot. And he's off N vm. I mean my dad crazy. Sadica no longer it's just so powerful and so many, everyone that's close to me in my life, I'm like.

You need to read this book. 

[00:16:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Read this book? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm just gonna underline some things that I heard and share some pieces. 'cause I like to type ferociously when people talk. So you talked about belief being a big deal and belief shapes our identity. And sometimes it is our identity that we are operating out of, as you said before, right?

I am a person that has this thing. And so that's the tricky thing for me. I always, I kinda have a rule that I try not to tell people they have a problem that they don't think that they have. 'cause it's how, i'm not gonna be able to do anything with someone. And education started to shape your belief because you were really identifying yourself through those things.

You also, I would guess that the first time your back pain relapsed or the first time you were seeing something else, you might freak out because a common sentiment I see with clients, it's just really interesting 'cause. I don't know. I just have worked really closely with my clients for years and so you see patterns of how we are as humans.

And so something people do is they want to close. They want this chapter to be over, they wanna deal with a thing and then never deal with it again. And I think that. Is impossible that if it happened once, it could happen again. So there is skills that we can learn to help ourselves work through and resolve the thing.

And like you said. You know when you got the diagnosis, your pain went from nine out 10 to 12 out of 10. Sometimes that little literal freak out of whatever the symptom is when you think you shouldn't have it, is actually the worst part. It's the most inflammatory part of it. I really identified with you talking about, and I wanna let's, we'll go back and define TMS and we'll talk about what journal speak is and we'll talk about.

Some of the tools that came up, right? And how maybe Sarno's stuff is different from Nicole Sachs's stuff. She's really advancing his work. But something I really identified with in your story is that we all have this stuff, like these ugly things that we don't wanna say. And one of mine was like this terrible lie, this terrible belief I had for years was that I'm not a good mother.

And I just thought I wouldn't like literally from forever. I just thought, oh, I'm not gonna be a good mother. I'm gonna have to marry someone who's better at parenting than I am because it's like I didn't have X, Y, Z. We all have our reasons that we create, but it's ugly. And I had gotten to the point where I wasn't.

Afraid to say it all the time, like it didn't make me cry to say it anymore. 'cause I'd been in enough, I'd gone through enough healing, but it really didn't resolve until I'd gone through some like next level inner healing this year. But guess what? Just like you, I went through this stuff and I was like, wow.

I feel completely different and my stuff wasn't pain, but I was like, it was how I was showing up in my day. I was no longer angry about things. Oh yeah. That I didn't know. I was angry about I hate folding clo. I hate cleaning up after everybody like historically. And I like all of a sudden it was just gone.

I was like literally testing myself. Oh my gosh, what happened to this anger that I would have when I was rage cleaning? But when I wasn't doing that work, it just started to slowly creep back in. The old me just would reemerge, right? Like how it would show up in different places on you. And the takeaway is oh, this work is actually, it's not a chapter, it's a process.

It's a skill. And I think it's really interesting the way you shared, you were just going through the motions and sometimes you have to dig in a little bit and unlayer. And we tend to fear like we don't wanna go, we don't wanna do. Uncomfortable things, right? And sometimes just excavating it or speaking.

This stuff can be so uncomfortable. And I think that's the resistance initially. The skepticism might just be resistance to being like, I don't wanna deal with this stuff, I don't wanna deal with, 

[00:20:01] Alexis Joseph, RD: yeah it's it's harder. I think a lot of people will choose the pain, the migraine, the IBS, whatever, over.

The feeling, 'cause it's not easy to feel it. But my biggest thing that helped me was when Nicole said, you don't have to fix it. And Sarno said this too, you don't have to solve your problems, you just have to open the door. And it's like you don't realize the truths you're not that are still like buried until you start doing this work.

Like even this morning. And this is a journey, like you said I'm gonna fall again. I'm gonna stub my toe, I'm gonna get a headache. But I look at it completely differently now and I wear it loosely and I don't obsess over it. And I think, like today I had a really difficult morning with my son and I like really struggled with guilt over feeling like I'm a bad mom, just like you said.

And I know that's been a huge part of like my pain as well. And this morning I had this thought and it was like, I don't like myself, which that sounds really dramatic 'cause I'm like a confident person. I love myself. But like this morning. I didn't like myself. And normally I think I would've shoved that down, but I just let myself in the moment feel I don't like myself, and it's okay.

It's a ugly feeling. I feel like I'm a bad person. I feel like I'm a bad mom. And I just had a feeling in that moment and like I was ragey and reactive and I didn't like myself, but I didn't shove it away. I just was like, I just need to let myself feel this uncomfortable feeling of that I suck.

And I've moved past it. I don't suck, but I did need to feel that I sucked in that moment or I probably would've had a migraine, so I think even like with my husband like his version of TMS get a vasectomy and he's had this like post vasectomy pain that comes up when he is like really stressed.

And it's so interesting 'cause now when he has that, and he had pain recently and he was like, if I didn't have this journey, I would've been in the er. This whole TMS thing, and recently he was having the pain and I was having a little back pain. We were both like, we're like, I feel good. What's going on?

I can't think of anything that's wrong. But that curiosity to me is like the biggest sign of progress because old US would've been like, Advil, go to the doctor, which again, I take Advil, I go to the doctor. I'm not saying those are bad things, but i'm in charge, like there is, you can look within yourself and look what's going on emotionally before just putting the power in someone else's hand and being like, numb my pain with an injection, or give me something that'll make this go away.

It's like it's never gonna go away if you don't deal with the root cause, which is so wild that it's like, could be emotional, yeah, 

[00:22:40] Christa Biegler, RD: but it's not in your head. It's real pain. Which is what TMS technically stands for. So I'll just acknowledge that 'cause I can never remember what TMS stands for.

'cause you use it and it's, wordy. TMS is Tension myositis syndrome, which is just something coined by Dr. John Zno, who is now passed. But he was a, I think psychiatrist maybe. But it was just a condition where physical pain. Would present or stem from unconscious emotional stuff.

And maybe this is like why I would just, and it's

[00:23:07] Alexis Joseph, RD: literally like 

a, yeah, I was gonna say it's actually like an oxygen debt in certain parts of your body that leads to pain. So I think a lot of people in the hear about this, they struggle 'cause it sounds very like woo and not scientific. 

But 

obviously mind body medicine has so much research, but I thought it was interesting that there's actually this lack of oxygen that happens in certain parts of the body when there's this pain.

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[00:24:35] Alexis Joseph, RD: it's so funny about that.

[00:24:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, go for it. 

[00:24:37] Alexis Joseph, RD: I was just gonna say it's funny you're saying that because obviously Nicole. can't remember if Sarno said this too, but like the treatment is the journal speak 20 minutes, which I never actually did. 20 minutes, a little shorter, but, and then like 10 minutes of meditation and when I don't do this every day anymore.

I haven't done journal speak in a while, but like when I'm in acute, terrible pain, I'm doing it every day. And I know at some point I'll probably have to go back to it, but I looked so forward to, it was so crazy. It became like my safe place. I'm like, when I would get in an argument with my mom.

Instead of freaking out on her, I'm like, later I'm just gonna have the best journaling session. And if that was a message of safety for my brain and with the breath work piece, when I would meditate, which I admittedly had not done in a while, I remember thinking, this is the only time of day I take a deep breath.

If I don't meditate, I am not taking one deep breath.

Even talking to you, I was like. 

[00:25:24] Christa Biegler, RD: Not so different from you. When I started doing nervous system work and coaching, one of the most profound changes, I hope that some people can laugh when they hear me say this, but some people will agree, they'll say, oh, I see that difference on you.

'cause I had colleagues say, oh, I see this. My rate of speech slowed down and I stopped talking so fast. I later realized that actually was just, if you met any of the women in my family, they all speak quickly so I would speak really quickly. Sometimes I would feel like I would not even catch a breath, but that was really communicating stress and I would do that all day long with clients.

I was excited. I didn't think it was stress. But that was a really, I didn't have a chance to get curious about it because I totally didn't realize it until I just slowed down. And guess what? It's all fine. Like I get the same things done. I don't have to talk that fast. But what I appreciate what you said, because I think there's a couple of main themes that were just from what you just talked about, and one was.

The cur, how you saw yourself shifting out of maybe like this desperation and fear, but instead into curiosity. And that's what I see sometimes. I can't verbalize it on someone where I see them, like intelligent people go straight to action. They're like this happened, so I did this. And I'm like, oh, okay, actually, that's fine, but let's like stop and assess how we're like thinking, feeling, et cetera about it.

'cause that's gonna create the type of action you take, but it's gonna just build to the overwhelm. So I just appreciate, I just wanna underline the curiosity as a sign of progress, and I think that this overall process, why I. Maybe one of the many reasons I appreciate it so much is it's putting you back in charge.

It's giving you a seat at empowerment instead of disempowerment. Because unfortunately, most of our stuff with medical, with health kind of stems out of disempowerment, right? It's relying on someone else to tell you what's wrong, and I think that there's a place for all of that, but it's, I think that the real beauty, the real freedom.

Is the curiosity of self learning yourself and coming from a place of empowerment, which is was more of an underlying theme that I heard you talking about right there. 

[00:27:33] Alexis Joseph, RD: Yeah. I'm glad you said that because it's been the most empowering thing I've ever done. I feel like I told you when I was running, saying I'm in charge.

I talk to my brain now, like if I'm getting a headache or if I'm getting back pain, i'm like, I know what you're doing. Don't even go there, don't you even, I'm like, I will feel what's in my head. You just pause right there. And I just go deep and it's not always immediate, but even the other night in bed, I was laying there and my heel started hurting and I was like, I I laughed. I'm like, are serious. Come on. And I just like it, it's just, it's it's funny. It's not obviously like pain is horrible and it can ruin your life. But it, I think for me it's gotten to a point where. Like I laugh at it even if it really hurts, all these things.

But I think what Nicole, I mean that she stuck with that, stuck with me is her saying and continue. So it's okay, your back hurts. This hurts. And I obviously that's coming. That sounds like it's coming from a place of privilege. 'cause it's like, what do you mean I can't even move? How can I continue?

But I really had to practice like teaching my brain like, I'm not gonna obsess over this pain. I know what it is. I'm gonna do my best to forget about it because likely in a few hours it will be gone. I'm not just gonna let this stop my day 'cause I'm in charge and

not this crazy thing.

[00:28:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah that's the empowered Alexis version that was coming through for sure. All right, so I wanna go back to you starting this process and I appreciated that you said oh, I never really did 20 minutes. Yeah. And I don't do the meditation out 'cause that, it's just very nice to hear the honesty and I think.

Something that's a little bit tricky to navigate is a lot of times there's some overwhelm at play sometimes. Sometimes there's capacity as limited. As limited. The plate is full, the days are full. It's like I can't do another thing for myself. And I just wanna know what this looked like at the beginning, and maybe I think since you listened to Dr. Johns, Dr. Siren knows work first. Maybe there's room to say did you start doing some practice from Dr. Sarno and then change it as you got to Nicole or Nicole Sachs, or did you start in the same way? So I just wanna hear how this started to unravel for you.

And this wasn't really not long ago, right? It was last fall. It was last fall, 

[00:29:40] Alexis Joseph, RD: yeah. But it's not over. It's a journey, like you said. I think so. It's a little hard for me to remember because I read Sarno and then I read. Mind your body. I was so excited to read it when it came out, but I think that Nicole dives a lot more into I think treatment with her journal speak.

I like, can't really remember. I know the last third of Sarno's book is about treatment, but I honestly don't remember what it was. But with him, again, his book helped me so much open this giant door of oh my God, I'm in charge. I can do this. So when it came back and I had to do journal speak 'cause I was like, okay, it's not working, what's next?

Like in my daily life, what it looks like was I had to get up at five and I had to, I'm not saying you have to get up at five, but for me, I had to get up early and do journal speak or I would do it at night. And

[00:30:27] Christa Biegler, RD: did you have to overcome some of your own bologna to do this? Were you trying to do it?

Yeah. But you were like, oh my gosh, I didn't do it. 

[00:30:34] Alexis Joseph, RD: It's a lot of sitting down and being like, am I doing this right? I'm just writing random stuff is this even doing anything? I'm wasting my time. I'm so tired. The meditation was harder for me than the journaling.

Just like anything, you gotta sit down and just do it. The hardest part of getting there. I would sit down and do it. I would, oftentimes, things would come up that I never thought it would, and I just told myself, the only wrong way to do it is to not do it. Just go, it doesn't have to be 20 minutes.

This isn't about perfection. Just write until you feel like you've written some stuff. And I would write things and I'd be like, oh wow. I just wrote that. I just wrote the thing that I felt subconsciously for 10 years and never wanted to write. And for me writing, it felt like saying it out loud and it was like, boom, I just wrote a cringey truth.

I feel, it helped me. And then the meditation I dunno it's hard for me to sit for 10 minutes and meditate, which makes sense for my personality. It was really good for me. But that was like, oh my God, I'm breathing like what you said about talking fast. I talked at like a million miles an hour.

So that really resonated. But again, I didn't have to do it like all the time. It's not every day I'm doing 20 minutes of journal speak and 10 minutes of meditation. I think it would've been wonderful if I kept with it, but for me it was like. It just wasn't something I kept up with. But if I'm ever in a ton of pain, I'm like, oh man, I gotta journal.

Like recently when I was having the horrible IBS symptoms, Jeff was like, when are you journaling my husband? And I'm like, Ugh, lemme do it before we watch this show. And I just laid down and I'm like, you gotta get it out. So it's like this really amazing tool that I have in my back pocket and I really try to go about it, not with a perfectionistic mindset, if that 

makes sense.

[00:32:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, it makes perfect sense. I always think that, I'll just comment on this meditation 'cause I always used to be like, I can't meditate. And that's what I found. Breath work. I thought it was really beautiful 'cause it was distracting. It was like there's cues, there's music. It does something in my brain.

But I get the same benefits. And I also think it's such a powerful assessment to ask yourself, how do I feel when I sit here? Without anything for three minutes. What kind of discomfort comes up? I'm just saying three minutes, five minutes, whatever. It's like very telling about us, right? That, yeah.

Like what does that feeling and it's like doing. 

[00:32:42] Alexis Joseph, RD: Yeah, for sure. And I think, when I was meditating, it's okay, let the thoughts just flow through you. It's like I really had to surrender. It was like I was at rock bottom and I just had to like, like just surrender. And so I would just sit there.

And it was like the epitome of feeling my feelings because I would like, feel a thought and I'd just be like, cool, continue. I just, it was like the most, they really go together, yeah. I think it's also like you just wrote down some really horrible things. Now go do something calming, yeah. And I think ultimately it's like such a metaphor. It's like permission. It journal speak really gives you permission to feel things that maybe previously felt like. You weren't even aware that you didn't feel like you had permission to say it out loud or to write it down. 

[00:33:29] Christa Biegler, RD: I know it's hard.

It's almost interesting for you to say that out loud, but there's so much that we seek permission for. It's just one of those traits that we see a lot come up with humans, right? It's oh, I can't say that I feel like a bad mother out loud, because then it makes. It feels true, right? It's like I'll just keep thinking it for my entire life. That'll be totally different. 

[00:33:50] Alexis Joseph, RD: Exactly. Yeah. And so much like inner child stuff it's, it's wild. Yeah. 

[00:33:55] Christa Biegler, RD: So when I talk a little bit about. When you got started, you started journaling, and I'll just share also, like I'd gone through a lot of inner healing work recently.

I, I mentioned this and I was no longer rage clean, and I was literally observing myself like, oh, I used to get frustrated with my family about this. Thing. If I asked them to download the dishwasher 12 times and I just let it roll off, I was like, what is going on with me? I knew what was going on.

'cause I'd been doing like specific things very similar to this. And there was some times where I woke up and that old version of me showed up. And so I would go out and I would just like ugly. For a few minutes. And it was like this freeing thing. And I just only share that because it's. It's just a helpful, it's, it didn't have to be perfect.

It wasn't, and I think that there is always more to do. That's what I'm really taking away from it, is oh, there's more that just keeps coming up. I wanna hear about, she talks a lot about no timelines, but I wanna understand how you knew you were on the right. Maybe you were already invested 'cause you believed, right?

That's what you said. I believed, and so I'm curious. How long you were in practice before you started to see some things shift for you? 

[00:35:08] Alexis Joseph, RD: For me, I feel really lucky because I read Sarno's book and I like immediately felt a dramatic decrease in pain, which I know that sounds wild.

But for me it was like literally I read it and I was just dumbfounded about how much better my body felt. I also started. I remember the first time I do reform a Pilates and I just remember the first time, you're so scared to do anything physical when you're in so much pain. And, his whole thing is you not doing what you're doing is you're not in charge.

It's like you're, that's just, you think as a physical problem. And I was like, okay, let me go take this one step further. I'm going to go to a Pilates class and my back first started hurting in a Pilates class also. Mind you. So this was like a very, this felt like a very dangerous place. And I went back into the class and I didn't have pain and it was the most remarkable thing. And I used to have a lot of back pain doing Pilates also, and now I don't. So I think also, so like that again, that was really fast. I felt really lucky. But then life happened. Life got lifey as Nicole says, and like months later, my back was in a really bad place again.

And that's when, again, that took. I would've to do journaling. I would've back pain for a couple weeks at a time. It was never the severity of the initial like attack where my, where I was like, so incredibly shifted, but it, it was bad and I thought, it brings up a lot of dread and a lot of doubt.

But I just kept telling myself like, is the human condition, if feel pain in your mind, in your body, and how can I deal with this? And then, yeah, like feeling even other symptoms that I'd never had before in my life. Like this crazy rash on my leg and this crazy finger pain and everything it wanted at me.

It was hard. So it's like weird because they, because I had this very quick release the first time and then I had this, , my brain just being like, I'm gonna keep moving this around, which was extremely humbling. I'm honestly currently dealing with, like my back's been feeling a little bad, so I don't want that to sound discouraging oh, it's just never gonna go away.

But it's also like life is life and I don't look at it. I don't let it ruin my life. I still work out. It's like in the background. It honestly, as I'm hearing you talk, I think I need to get back to journal speaking meditation, because even just I felt so much rage in motherhood lately that. Just like even having this conversation, I'm like, it really makes sense why my back is hurting, because I'm having a lot of, I need the ugly write.

I love how you said ugly, right? I think that's the best way to describe it. So yeah, even it's like we're always learning something, because I haven't been doing journal speaking as I'm saying this. Hello. It's probably time.

[00:37:45] Christa Biegler, RD: I think 

one of the reasons I appreciate this modality is because.

I integrated nerve, like live nervous system work with clients a minimum of two years ago. So there's breath work, there's these other, there's other coaching to just help process through the overwhelm stuff, all of that stuff without over describing it. But the challenge is what about in between that?

What are we doing for our stuff in between And in this is. So it's funny, I think I was, I asked you about your openness to this. I think for me it just made sense because I've done other writing exercises, but really my original writing and exercises started in seventh grade when I thought my world was upside down and all these things.

And I just remember it being so healing at that time, and here I am, like a bajillion decades later, years later, and it's I'm coming back to this thing. What can I do every day? Where it's like I give something to myself if I want to, which is why I appreciated you just talking, saying I don't do it all the time and I'm still navigating some things, but when I'm not debilitated, I think the inconvenient truth is like, isn't, it doesn't, isn't it interesting how things come up at very inconvenient times or when it's rain and you know it's pouring, right?

Like unfortunately. This, the sucky thing is like we're motivated to change in our desperation. I talk about, I say this all the time on the podcast, right? We are motivated to change by inspiration or desperation, and Sarno's book was inspiring to you, but really like you were moved to read the book through.

Desperation. And you, it landed right when someone recommended it to you. So it's just, it's tricky. It's almost it reminds me of there's physiological rea, like you said about the TMS. It's like there's physiological changes with the oxygen starvation essentially, or like the oxygen debt.

And when I think about having stress. I always give people this example that everyone's experienced like cramming for a test in college, right? And staying up late and then getting sick the next day, haven't they? Or like a lot of people are where you have this stressful event and then you get sick. The stress is just suppressing your immune system.

It's protecting, like it's doing all these other things. It's reprioritizing other things. So natural, something my coach has said recently is, of course that would happen, right? Like of course it would happen. It's not like a, why is this happening to me? It's just Oh, that makes sense. Of course that would happen.

Why wouldn't your body do something else with a thing that it didn't get processed? Even though it feels a little weird. 'Cause it's intangible and this life that we lead now. We're just like looking to shove things. I've resonated with a lot of things you said as well. And I see it with my own high achieving clients like constantly. Move so smart, they just move to action. I was like, oh, I don't know how to describe this. There's some unconscious stuff here yet, right? And it's gonna keep showing up in different places. And when we stop resisting it and get curious about it and be open to the fact of what am I to learn here?

'cause the first time it's totally cool, like to be pissed about learning from the thing. And as you start to unravel yourself, it's wow. I'm really glad I forgave that person. I didn't know I needed to forgive. Those have been my journey more recently where it's damn. It's been very interesting.

If someone's listening to this and, I heard you say that your husband read the book, and I immediately thought of the people who were like, oh. My husband wouldn't do that, or I don't feel supported. What's your advice to someone who might be skeptical about the MINDBODY connection or someone who's tried everything or someone that doesn't feel supported?

Any one of those things because you've been recommending this wholeheartedly to others, right? Because your experience is now helping others, right? Hurt people. Hurt people, heal people. Heal people. And so you're spreading that. And what would you wanna share with the listener if they're feeling like, wow, what she's talking about feels a little resonant with me, but I'm a little skeptical or I don't feel supported or whatnot.

They're running it to emotional blocks. Yeah. 

[00:41:33] Alexis Joseph, RD: I think, like what I always say is, what do you have to lose? It's reading a book. It's not like I'm saying. Go do these seven things. It's not like I'm saying, go to PT three times a week, go get this injection. That's all so much harder. So I think that, I do think, like you said, you have to come to a point of either you have intense curiosity or desperation.

When someone actually sent me this, the girl on Instagram, I had no idea what it was at all. She's just I think this is what you have. You should read the book. And I was like, okay, I'll do anything at this point. The other part I think is looking at it like if you just stand back and you're really objective and you look at being super resistant to this, like that's just a tactic of your brain to keep you safe in pain.

Your brain doesn't want you to figure it out. Like it all just if you think about it, like your brain thinks you're safer being in physical play and then feeling your feelings. So of course there's gonna be resistance and our brain wants us to do what's comfortable and that's what we're used to.

This for most people is like very far off the spectrum of what we're used to. So you really have to work against how you're wired to do the different thing. Same thing with like getting up earlier than you want, it's uncomfortable. This is all uncomfortable, but it's way more comfortable than doubling over in pain, yeah, I think it's my husband saw my transformation and he was like. Oh my God. Of course I'll read it like that was miraculous. Same with my dad. He is I've never seen anything like this. I gotta read it to fix my own stuff. So I think some people are more excited about the potential and some people are like, it's, it feels a little like almost offensive to be like, how dare you assume that my insane chronic pain can be cured by feeling my feelings?

It sounds, it's insulting the thought of it, right? When you don't understand what it is, but you don't know what you don't know. I don't think any of us can necessarily convince someone else to do this work. I think that's really like an in inside job. But I think if you're feeling your own skepticism, if any part of this relates, like what's the worst that could happen?

You read it and you throw all the knowledge out the window, but it's it's a short read. It's an interesting read. And it takes the same time as going to a doctor appointment or whatever. Why are we so much more willing to go to,

[00:43:48] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah. So one thing, one really great thing about our own growth is that it often informs how we're presenting, showing up in our work and in the world.

And I know you said that this work has really somehow even helped with your, and that's what happened to me. Was, oh my gosh, like what we're doing nutritionally, chemically, it does matter, but like you will still be stuck in certain places if we don't deal with some of this other piece where it's like this roadblock or it's, it limits the speed of healing or the rate of healing.

And so I know that this has also influenced your current work, and so you share how it has influenced your current work working with families. And whatnot with whatever you do at this time. 

[00:44:29] Alexis Joseph, RD: Yeah. So I work with mostly women and mostly women with young kids, but all kinds of people on like planning healthy meals for their family, nourishing their family, making healthy recipes, making it feel more doable and practical.

My blog, is all healthy recipes, so it's an extension of that, but I see so often it's almost like jumping the gun to to just say oh. You're, you can't eat these 10 different things and you're dealing with all this discomfort in your stomach and let's plan next Tuesday's dinner.

It's no rewind. I just find so much, I spend a lot of my calls talking about mindset and just like getting curious. Because obviously the psychology of how we eat, Nicole talks so much about food, like food intelligence too, which is fascinating to me. I think in today's political, I don't wanna say political climate, just in today's climate, food fear is like really taken off. I feel like more than ever. Everyone's so afraid of different foods and then people saying, oh, I can't eat the TenUp and things, it makes me feel bad. And it's of course it does. You're so afraid of it. You're just like eating fear.

Long story short, the work it's I see it so much now. It's like that syndrome of once you see, like you get a blue car, all is blue cars. So now when I work with women it's just this like really powerful like depth that gets added, like unexpected. You go in just wanting to feed your family healthy food and it's wait, let's rewind because you are actually going there's a lot here that we can also work on that will make you know your life a lot healthier besides just like planning and meals for your family.

[00:45:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

Yeah, totally. Alexis, where can people find you online? 

[00:46:03] Alexis Joseph, RD: My blog is sapian.com. Instagram's homosapian. 

Yeah, it's all there. It's all there. 

[00:46:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Nourished Family Meal Plan or prepped Meal Planning guide I think is on their website. So if people are my meal plan guys on that. I know it's a little random 'cause we're talking about other stuff, but I just appreciate you coming and sharing your story.

I think that this is testimony of Hey, here's what's possible. And the whole goal of this podcast is to share things that are possible, right? Sometimes things we haven't thought about yet that haven't really entered our sphere. That's how I always think of this particular work is my goal is to show you what is possible. And so your testimony just supports that, not just from It is interesting, right? 'cause we just had Nicole on the podcast, but her testimony is different as someone who's like truly advancing the work. And then here you are a human with stuff. Yeah. And and here you are as a product of doing the work.

And it's also imperfect. And so I appreciate you share sharing like the positives and the negatives because life is 50 50, right? It's not just easy rainbows and butterflies all the time. So thank you for being so honest and for sharing your story with us today. 

[00:47:07] Alexis Joseph, RD: Exactly. I'm glad to get the word out.

Thank you so much.