Navigating Menopause Through Healing as a Personal Spiritual Experience with Alexandra Cousins

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi, and welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond, founder and CEO of the Integrative Women’s Health Institute. Today I have a wonderful guest for you. This is Alexandra Cousin. She has a very unique approach to healing. She is self trained, explored. She comes from the world of high end spas and has shifted to thinking about healing in a way that is less commercial and more messy.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:42 I want to put a little trigger warning on this episode. On this episode, Alex and I talk about the messiness of healing from complex chronic illness in terms of emotions and spirituality. These are things that sometimes in our healing journey, we’re not yet ready to delve deeply into. And we always have to consider the context of where we are in our healing journey. So Alex has helped me quite a bit to start asking some of the questions around why I’m driven to be so productive, why my identity is so high achieving, and how that can make it really challenging to rest, slow down, recover. Because in the context of healing a complex chronic illness, there are various aspects that we need to address over time. A lot of times we think about healing the system by giving it more nourishment or giving it a medication, or a supplement stack or even exercise. But there’s also the other side of the coin, the rest the deep restoration, fasting, autophagy, the deep healing that the system actually needs less to do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:03:09 So I encourage you to think about that. If you feel ready to listen to that as a person healing from your own chronic illness, feel free to join us. Turn it off any time and join us next week. If this is not where you are in your healing journey. And for those of you working with people recovering from complex chronic illness, it’s not always about what we add, what we do, but sometimes it’s the reimagining of space to rest, to recover, to give the body the time to regenerate, to do its cleanup mechanisms, things like autophagy. So enjoy this episode. It’s deep and wide and maybe a new perspective for you. And I’ll see you on the other side with one little bit of homework that whether you are healing or you’re supporting people to heal, I think will help guide where and how you frame this healing journey so that it’s your healing journey. It’s not someone else’s. See you then. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Hi everyone. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond, and I’m here with Alix Cousins.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:30 She has been a really wide thinking, broad thinking mentor for me. I’ve learned some really fascinating things from her about the capacity for physiologic regeneration. Now, we’ve always known, well, maybe not always, but in the last 20 years we’ve learned a lot more about, for example, neurologic regeneration, where we thought that the brain was much more static as recently as 20 years ago. We know much more about organ and tissue and even DNA regeneration, looking at the research in the world of telomeres. So Alex applies this very practically with complex cases, people that have had chronic illness for years. So welcome, Alex, and share with us what brought you to this work.

Alexandra Cousins 00:05:28 Thank you. Jessica, I’m honored to be here with you. And as you know, I deeply honor and appreciate the work that you do on your side. And so it’s wonderful to be speaking to people, an audience like your audience that obviously is open. And yeah, how did I get to do what I do? Well, you know, I like to say I was dragged by the hair.

Alexandra Cousins 00:05:50 Meaning? It’s not what I intended to do. In my early days, all I knew is that I wanted to help people heal. And I mean, in my 20s, I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded great. And then later, I kind of went into the health and wellness industry and I realized, hang on, that is not healing. That is tickling. It’s a nice tickle what happens there. And I worked in some prestigious spas around the world, and I was working in training their staff. But it wasn’t satisfying. It was like, what we’re doing here is just a complete waste of time, actually. And so I left that scene. But ultimately, what really brought me to the real work was, of course, drumroll my own healing journey.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:38 So common. Right? That happens for so many of us.

Alexandra Cousins 00:06:41 Yes, absolutely. And so I had to first completely break down. I thought I had enough issues that I was working on over the years, but then it had to come to complete, halt and break down to the point where, you know, the famous no doctor could help me, nothing was helping.

Alexandra Cousins 00:07:00 I was bedridden and thank goodness for my astrologer husband who, you know, recognize. And he’s like, Alex, I know you don’t want to hear this, but the next two years are a deep dive into the underworld. And, you know, this was like, just at the cusp of my 40s. And and he’s like, you know, this is your time to dive deep and to really discover who you came here to be. And in order for you to do that, you first have to go through your own healing journey. And yeah, and I was like, this is not what I want to hear. So that’s really yeah, through my own healing journey. And, you know, as always, I mean, it was spectacular. It was wild. It was intense. And then, you know, when we’re in it, we always think what the actual and, you know, this can’t be happening and it shouldn’t be happening. And it’s so unfair and, you know, all of that.

Alexandra Cousins 00:07:56 And then we come out the other side, we go, yeah, of course, of course, this was my initiation. And so yeah, that’s how I got here.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:08:07 Yeah. And you know, I think it’s really interesting that you interweave sort of a spiritual piece to that. And I think it makes the experience all that more universal. I was reading an article just yesterday about a couple who both have long Covid, which as we know, is a chronic kind of debilitating disease. And it’s wide ranging and it’s fatiguing and there’s chronic pain. Many of the aspects that are a part of lots of chronic illnesses like autoimmune disease and endometriosis and cancer. And it was interesting because what happened was this couple was both diagnosed the woman slightly before the man, and she was a writer. I think they may have both been writers. And apparently there’s a story from Greek mythology about sort of a couple navigating the underworld. And it’s like this sense of slow, you know, pushing through this depth of dark water.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:11 And so it’s interesting that there are stories about this from Greek mythology, from astrology, from millennia old spiritual practices that feel very applicable when someone is living with a chronic illness.

Alexandra Cousins 00:09:28 Absolutely. Yeah. And again, my husband was the one who taught me all of this in many ways, repeatedly, because I’ve come to realize when we are here to be Revolutionaries to be forerunners. You know, I mean, it sounds all maybe glamorous on the one hand or, you know, like, wow, powerhouse, you know, of a woman and so forth. It’s like, well, you know, it ain’t fun. And, you know, like, that’s so, so. But also there is no way that we can become these kind of forerunners, breaking ground and so forth, unless we go through these really dark nights of the souls and is real difficulties that we have to just break through and find a way through. And so as one of my first sort of spiritual teachers said to me, Alex, some of us are here for our and our rest and relaxation in this lifetime.

Alexandra Cousins 00:10:28 And he was like, and that’s not you. So that’s my message for I would say, especially those, you know, that are living with chronic health conditions or rather momentarily living with chronic health conditions. I really see them as initiations. I never see them as and also when I work with clients now, I don’t see the client. No matter how broken the client is, I don’t see the client as broken or sick. I see the client as undergoing a powerful initiation, and I see them as a powerhouse. And almost the more power you potentially have, the deeper will be the initiation. Because all I can do is look at my own story and the many moments where I really thought, okay, you know, I’m just a rotten apple in this lifetime. Kind of like drew the bad cards. Sorry. And coming through, coming through when I had so much stacked against. So, you know, I definitely know it’s possible and I just have a very different view on all diseases. Really.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:39 So let’s assume that in many cases, people who are living with, whether it’s diagnosed undiagnosed, a chronic illness, could fully heal or heal in many ways, or heal to a certain level can live better than they are currently living, which I know is a challenging statement even for the traditional medical community, even for the integrative medical community, and certainly for some individuals who are living there. I think many individuals living with chronic illness completely understand what you’re saying. Others may feel kind of offended by it, and I completely get that too, because they’re like, I didn’t choose this. This is because I was injured. I also understand that it’s a very challenging balance to try to get the care that you need. And also realizing that yes, there is something physiologically challenged in your body and how you view this could help you improve it, or even fully resolve it or change your life in some way. So when we get down to the practical physiologic, you had to completely change your life from what I understand and move to Bali and change how you are interacting with the world.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:07 And I think that’s where it can get really challenging for people, because a lot of chronic illness is actually driven by either physiologic or emotional stressors or both. And so talk about that big transition of where you decided to change how you are living in order to support your healing.

Alexandra Cousins 00:13:29 Great question. So first of all, I want to say that, you know, just because I came to the conclusion at some point that, oh, wow, this is an opportunity. This is not something that I need to live with. This is an opportunity. It doesn’t mean that I never or never again played victim.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:48 Yeah. Or felt that way, you know, rightfully so.

Alexandra Cousins 00:13:51 Absolutely, absolutely. And I want to say this because, you know, for those that might be listening and going like, okay, here we go again. You know, these people that, you know, just talk about like manifesting their reality. And like you said, it can be challenging. And so to those people I want to say I fully understand and it’s completely okay to feel like a victim at times.

Alexandra Cousins 00:14:16 Like there’s nothing wrong. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you spiritually unevolved as some people want to make us believe it’s perfectly human. And because I still have days where I feel like a victim for some reason, you know? Yeah, like we’re human. And in the moments that I do feel like a victim and act like a victim, I know exactly what I’m doing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:38 There’s an insight. Yeah.

Alexandra Cousins 00:14:40 Yeah. It’s like I know what I’m doing. And my husband goes like okay Alex. It’s like I know I don’t even want to hear it. You know like I’m just having a human moment. And then ten minutes later or half an hour later I can be again the one that goes, okay, let’s do this. Yeah. You know, I want to put that out there because it’s not either or. It’s we can be both. And that was in many ways also my shift where I realized, you know what, I am done with this idea of becoming a somebody.

Alexandra Cousins 00:15:15 Somebody that’s evolved, somebody that’s healed, somebody. I am human, I am I’m having a deeply human experience, and it’s all the things. So that was kind of like almost like step number one to go, you know what, I am done. Labeling myself or letting others label me and putting me into some kind of box. Right? The unhealed or then the healed box. No, I am having a deep human experience, and I love every single bit of it. Because every single bit. In fact, just this morning I was thinking, wow, every single one of my big challenges, which funny enough, you know, according to my astrology, blah blah blah, it’s always health challenges, whether it’s physical health, mental health, but it’s health has been my big struggle. But every single one of my challenges has made me wealthier, interesting, literally, in all ways. It’s made me richer on an emotional level, on a spiritual level, and even in a money level. Because the more that I have Alchemist, my staff, I’ve been able to help more people in a real, tangible way because I’ve been through the journey, right? So there’s that.

Alexandra Cousins 00:16:37 So that’s also something, you know, for the listeners to take away, to go hang on, your challenges can make you wealthy. You know, we can say even somebody who’s a builder and there’s struggled to build good quality homes. Well, you know, through those challenges you get to become a really good builder. So the same thing here. So you say, how did I go, you know, from the journey, I think the first step, you know, besides these realizations, sort of the tangible step to go, okay, I need to really feel my way through this. Of course, I also came from, you know, a childhood where there was a lot of emotional and psychological abuse and gaslighting and all of that. So really, the reality is I grew up Not being able to be in touch with my emotions and with my true self. Like at all. Every little attempt was gaslit, was shut down. So no wonder I had become so diseased. I twisted myself into a pretzel.

Alexandra Cousins 00:17:40 And so I realized, well, now I only have a chance to untwist myself. And I just had this realization of, okay, I need to go inside of myself and really start to feel, what do I need to do? What is my body, my soul? What is it asking? And, you know, coming from sort of like the high achiever, outwardly looking like an alpha female, right? Like looking like, you know, the high achieving woman, like, wow, she’s got it all together and oh my gosh, so clever. So this so that. Well, yeah. From the outside that’s what it looked like. I had to, but when it all crumbled I went, well if I could be powerful in a fake way because that was fake. I must be powerful in a real way too, right? Like there was this kind of like, deductive thinking of like, well, of course, if I could fake it, I’m sure I could also make it for real.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:37 Yeah.

Alexandra Cousins 00:18:38 So that was encouraging.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:40 And I think it’s really common that high achievement is a trauma response. And when women then hit perimenopause I’ve seen this probably hundreds of times in my practice at this point where there’s a little bit of shaky ground in the metabolic health and the hormone health and the stress resilience that achievement, trauma response begins to fall apart. And as you said then, it’s unsettling. It’s like, well, what am I supposed to do now? And the fact that you were able to pretty quickly see, well, I actually can be powerful in whatever way I want. Because I just made that up. Really?

Alexandra Cousins 00:19:25 Yeah. And, you know, I sometimes I do kind of think how I don’t know, like, I don’t know what allowed me to be so completely surrendered and almost like malleable. Because that is something like I do kind of take a step back and go yeah. Wow. You really were you know like you just gave it all up and allowed yourself to die to who you thought you were.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:19:53 And that’s very difficult. I think there has to be almost like a level of safety on all levels, like you were saying, emotional safety, financial safety, some degree of physical safety. You know, maybe your partner was very supportive. Maybe your community was very supportive. There has to be some level of place to fall. Otherwise, I think it’s really hard to give up that trauma response for sure.

Alexandra Cousins 00:20:19 And that’s where I would say I was and am very blessed. Yes. My partner, he completely gave me that security, which is the security that I never had before in my life. And I think also in some ways it was like, okay, finally I have that security. Let me fall apart and let me see what happens when I fall apart. And yes, that is where I really was able to meet myself. And I mean, I look back, you know, to when this journey began, basically 11 years ago and for a couple of years, I definitely from the outside and sort of to my old people that knew the old Alex, I know for sure, you know, behind closed doors, they were probably going like, okay, she is losing it.

Alexandra Cousins 00:21:02 This poor girl is actually completely losing a, you know, shame. She was actually like she had potential, but like, now she’s losing it. I know that that is what you know, was being said and I was completely okay with that and it felt so peaceful to go. You know what? Yeah, I know that to the outside world, you know, I mean, we took our kids out of school. We on school them, you know, they were in private German school in Cape Town and now they were unschooled. Oh my God. Like, you know who does that? Right? From such a radical private school to UN school. Like that was a radical decision. But I could feel in my body that was the right thing to do. And it was like, you know what, for heaven’s sakes, I’ve never trusted my raw instinct. I’m going to try and do that, you know? And if everything falls apart, including my family, including world, and so be freaking it.

Alexandra Cousins 00:22:00 But I need to do this for myself. So it really got to that point. And the next funny step that I took was I looked around in my home that was decorated all, you know, French antiques and chandeliers and everything, and I was like, I hate this stuff. This stuff isn’t even me. You know, this is for show. This is to show that I am, like, a distinguished person. And so I ripped all that stuff out, and I just put it on sale and basically, like, Craigslist, you know, I didn’t care where it went. And that also was part of my liberation, and it made no sense. It was like, how does that interact? How does that have anything to do with your healing of the body? Right. Like, one could ask that question, but every single piece that left I felt lighter. And of course while I was doing that was I fasting? Was I taking all the supplements? I was I was doing all the things.

Alexandra Cousins 00:22:54 But the point that I’m trying to make is that, like I bowed down to my life, to my truth, and it was like, okay, this is this is make or break, because I also understood either I’m going to make it and then my whole family makes it as well, because if I don’t make it and I stay broken and unwell. What kind of mother? What kind of partner? Right. If I am sick and untrue, I can only create more sickness and untruth.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:23:25 Yeah, and I think that’s so hard. Because the journey and you went through this, you know it right now. It sounds like a hero’s story, but you’re saying 11 years. So that can feel really hard because there is a period of time that could be years where things are looking and feeling very unstable and definitely to the outside world, but even to yourself, a little bit like we’re breaking it all down now, right? We’re selling it, we’re feeling more energy. And I think part of that is just not having to spend so much energy on what it looks like here and what I look like.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:24:08 And, you know, we started this conversation with just how low maintenance we are at this point, like, you know, both of us, I think are around 50 and or 50 and there’s nothing on this face, you know, there’s.

Alexandra Cousins 00:24:22 Lipstick for the show.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:24:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it’s I think the layers of what your home looks like, what you’re wearing, what you’re doing to your face and all this stuff like, is also takes energy, which takes away from the healing, the physical healing, but also the emotional healing, the trauma healing, the and your ability to be a wonderfully connected person to the other people in your life. So even while you’re sick, if you will. And I think you made a really important distinction earlier about there’s not a box for health and a box for, you know, unhealed, healed, unhealed. This is not a binary. This is much more of a flowing continuum back and forth. The other day, you know, you were feeling a little out of it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:25:11 Right. So this is very normal. And so as you’re breaking those things down, you’re seeing more and more what’s important to you, where to spend your energy. And that’s on your family, on your relationship with your partner, on knowing who you are. And that’s a different place to place all that energy, which was that, as it turns out, when you were focused on your external appearance and the right schools for your kids and all this stuff, it was draining you of the energy you needed to actually rebuild your health, but also your priorities. Does that sound true 100%?

Alexandra Cousins 00:25:49 And yes, you say, of course, there was a period of instability. And yet, I must say, the second that I decided and sort of the moment before the decision, you know, I was suffering from insomnia. So typically between 1 a.m. and five, 6 a.m., I would be in the bathroom. You know, the kids were all sleeping in our bed at the time. They were still little.

Alexandra Cousins 00:26:12 So I would spend crying and sort of, you know, just mulling everything over because it all just seemed so desperate. But the minute that I. So as I was sitting on the bathroom floor crying, you know, and I would go, okay, so what is it going to take like because it felt so overwhelming to heal. It’s like, oh my gosh. Because I also realized like, there is so much. Right? I mean, there was so much and the trauma and the physical and it was like, and I’m 40. My life is basically over. That’s what it looked like back then. And so it was kind of like, I mean, oh, do I where do I find the energy? The truth is, I couldn’t find the energy for my kids, for my husband. I had to find the energy for me. It was like, what does Alex what does on a soul level? What is it going to take to give me the energy to pull me out of this.

Alexandra Cousins 00:27:09 And that was, you know, as I said, they’re thinking, thinking, thinking even. She was like, well, I want to have a wild life. Like, I want to be wild. I’ve been so freaking neat and good and pleasing. Everybody was like, I’m tired of this. This just feels horrible and fake. And so it was really this thing that I want to be alive. I want to be fully alive, fully expressed. And and of course, the voice was like, well, you know, that’s dangerous. That is so dangerous. And I was like, you know what? If I’m going to die in the process and my whole family goes down with it, so freaking be it, because this ain’t life. So that was that really, you know, strong realization. And that was the beginning really of the healing. Because then once I decided that I was going to fully come alive. So it wasn’t even in that moment I realized it’s not about me fighting a disease, right, fighting the long list of autoimmune conditions.

Alexandra Cousins 00:28:08 And, you know, at the time, I was still in my eating disorder. I mean, I was a mess. I was a complete mess. So I was like, okay, am I going to fight those things or am I going to create health?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:19 Yeah. And what I love about this is the first step in health coaching is always what is the vision. And it took you a while to even be able to hear your own vision, feel your own vision because you had 40 years of other people’s visions on you. And then as soon as you were able to identify that, you could then move in that direction. So you made that decision. You started moving in that direction. What were some of the most impactful things that you did physically to get yourself moving in that direction?

Alexandra Cousins 00:28:55 I mean, by then I had never fasted a day in my life. You know, fasting hadn’t even entered my consciousness. To go without food was terrifying at the time, but I just again, I heard the call was like, you have to fast.

Alexandra Cousins 00:29:07 And I dove straight into a 40 day fast. So, you know, not even like dabbling in a few days. I was like, you know, high achiever, right? So like.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:16 Not recommended. By the way, this is not medical advice. So yeah. Okay.

Alexandra Cousins 00:29:22 No I was like that’s what I got to do. And I did and it was amazing. It was an amazing experience, you know. Sure. Yes. It was hard here and there. But ultimately it again brought me deeper in touch with myself. Of course, you know, allowed me to clean out my body, begin the process. And it was also very cute because at the time I thought, wow, I’m going to be this hero. I’m going to do a 40 day fast. You know, like that seemed heroic at the time. And in my mind I genuinely thought like, well, if I’m going to fast for 40 days and I’m going to do the daily enemas and drink all these herbs, I mean, it was an intense process if I’m going to be that strong and courageous, surely after 40 days of fasting, I’ll be completely fine.

Alexandra Cousins 00:30:07 You know, there was this fantasy.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:30:09 Yeah.

Alexandra Cousins 00:30:10 And I’ll do it once and I’ll never have to do it again. And then in the middle of the fast, I realized, I’m going to be at this for quite a while. You know, there’s a lot to clean out, there’s a lot to regenerate and so forth. But that was the beginning, and it was a strong beginning to. Yeah, put me in touch really like on a cellular level, deeply with my body and to also then face. Yeah. You know, there’s 40 years of stagnation that are sitting in the body, you know, emotional stagnation, physical stagnation, wrongful eating due to emotional connections and, you know, all of that or emotional disconnection. So that was really the beginning. And then basically I came out of the fast and for about five years I was pretty much 95% raw and, you know, just really completely yeah. Changed my life, took my family with, you know, was like, right, this is what we’re eating now.

Alexandra Cousins 00:31:07 Kids were small enough to not complain.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:31:11 Yeah, yeah. It’s hard to take the whole family along at certain different ages. But yeah. So for you, fasting raw foods kind of like nourishing herbs, you know, a lot of there’s a lot of like greens powders and the sense of herbal powders, vegetable powders, greens, you know, raw food eating was where your body felt led or was where you just tested first and it worked for you. Was there some reason that you chose that direction?

Alexandra Cousins 00:31:48 Well, yeah, it just resonated with me. And definitely like as I was doing it, it was like, wow, this feels really good. And, you know, up until then, we were living very much like what I call the romantic paleo lifestyle. We were living in South Africa. We had amazing access to the raw butter, the raw cheeses, the amazing meats. Like everything was completely grass fed, organic. So we definitely weren’t eating processed foods or any of that. But and I thought I was doing all the right things.

Alexandra Cousins 00:32:18 I was like, well, you know, I’m doing the right things. Why am I not getting better? So because of that, I decided, well, you know, let me take a 180 and just completely change things up. And of course, at the time I also started getting into, you know, like medical media and, you know, that was the time that he just kind of like started getting sort of famous and got into all of that. Yeah. And I mean, I’m not anymore living that lifestyle. And it’s not even because, oh my gosh, you know, actually I saw the light that didn’t work. There was a transition. And even that the teaching and as you know so well from the Academy, is at any given point in time, we need to listen to our body and we need to be able. The most important thing on the journey, I find, is don’t fall into dogma.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:07 Yeah. So absolutely. I think what you’re saying is that you were living in a way that looked good on paper, and yet there was a intuition that you needed to go in another direction.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:21 And I think that’s what’s so interesting about the dogma and even the research around nutrition is because I don’t think we’re ever going to find that, like for X group of people with X disease or whatever, this is the diet, because it’s actually not really about the disease. It’s more about the individual and the time that they’re in and how long, like someone else might have done, almost like a 30 day raw vegan cleanse and Fell fine and then gone back to their other, you know, work. Or maybe they had different work to do to relieve the stress in their body. So I think what you’re saying here is so important that there’s not like one dietary or dogmatic tool for quote unquote, healing, autoimmune disease. There is a range of healthy, nourishing options. And it’s so variable which one will be a part. And it’s never the whole thing. You know which one will be a part of that healing journey. So for a few years, doing a lot of fasting, raw vegan eating, and you felt like that was really key for kind of releasing stagnation.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:40 You know, all the things, all the autophagy that happens, the literal cellular cleanup. And then as you shifted out of that, what did you find that your body needed next?

Alexandra Cousins 00:34:53 Yeah. And then I realized, okay, so I’ve done a lot of cleansing, but now regeneration on a deeper level needed to happen. And I also realized, well, I’ve kind of touched the edges of my actual almost weaknesses, my just genetic and inherent and acquired weaknesses, which was a lot of endocrine weakness. And I think I’ve just on my whole journey, I’ve never stopped learning and researching and staying open to all the information. I mean, I think just by nature I’m incredibly curious. Like I love knowledge and I kind of would say, well, that saved me from, you know, maybe even like staying in sort of like the detox and fasting world, as many people do. Right? We love to stay in one, you know, we find something and then we become magical about it. And for me, it’s like I’m more interested in the interconnectedness of all things and how you know the right thing will have its rightful place in the right moment.

Alexandra Cousins 00:35:57 And so as I began to really understand the endocrine system, and I guess I have to sort of also point out that because I was doing such extensive fasting. So in about two and a half years, I did seven rounds of between 40 and 53 days of fasting. And when I say fasting, I did literally like every day 18 hours dry fasting, because I was very much into dry fasting at the time. So 18 hours dry, six hours only per day on juice and herbs. And I was doing daily enemas. I mean, I went deep and especially towards, I don’t know, the end of the middle, whatever, you know, hard to remember now, but I would spend a lot of time just sitting in nature and literally for hours at a time observing nature. And I started having this incredible experience where it was almost these like they looked like soap bubbles that would literally descend from the heavens, and then they would open in front of my eyes and it would contain information. I was like, wow, you know, they would just sort of like float down in front of my eyes open, and then it would be information.

Alexandra Cousins 00:37:07 It wasn’t even something to read. It would just kind of like pop into me. And it was those moments that really taught me about the nervous system, the endocrine system. And it in some ways propelled me to then look deeper into like, how do we actually regenerate the endocrine system? Because there’s not a lot of information out there like, I mean, there is, but we don’t talk a lot about the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, the pineal gland. You know, we talk about the adrenals and of course the thyroid and pancreas here and there. So I started looking deeper into endocrine system. We eventually found the Russian health system, which of course is, you know, at least a part of the Russian health system, is very deeply steeped in the endocrine system. And that just sort of like opened my mind to then peptide bio regulators and all the ways in which we can regenerate. And I went from being the sort of purist that, you know, was fasting so much and just fruits and juices and so forth to hang on, you know, again, we’re here.

Alexandra Cousins 00:38:10 We’re living in this time of life like we’re not here to be like the essence which I love and appreciate their teachings. But it’s like, well, we’re not the seeds, we are the people living in 2020 and so forth. We’re living now. So what is now inform and require. So where does our evolutionary process, what is necessary. And that really opened me to then peptide therapy and sort of, you know, venturing more into this world of regeneration and even appreciating once more after rejecting so much of the medical system and so forth, and going like, okay, how can we bring it together, right? Instead of going, all medicine is bad and all science is bad. Well, there’s good and bad in every system, right? There is light and shadow in every one of us and in every system. How can we utilize what is currently being developed for the good? And so that’s how, you know, eventually I found sort of really the path to what I’m doing now, which is very integrative.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:39:23 And yes, and I think so interesting coming from like obviously a very deep fasting, raw vegan commitment to that autophagy detoxification, then there’s the sense that you could almost get, as you said, you were kind of touching your vulnerabilities. You could almost get to the point of being excessively depleted by that. So now there’s a sense of needing to rebuild and re nourish literally at an organ, cellular and tissue level. And the peptide bio regulators are essentially encapsulated organ meats. And so you are then taking in animal products as a way to rebuild. So that’s where we start to see that there’s not just one or the other dogma. And you’ve really demonstrated this in your own body in a very many people would call an extreme way. But it shows us, I think, the flexibility and the potential pliability that we have and how some of these things work together. So, you know, as a normal woman Navigating perimenopause essentially through her entire 40s, trying to strip down the overlying expectations, traumas, your trauma response where you were living with your family and then stripping that all away but then realizing, okay, that actually could go too far.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:41:01 And even what you did is a lot for most people. And, you know, that’s not what most people would do, and that would be fine either way. But there’s also and sometimes you can do both of these things at the same time. There can be periods of autophagy and cleanup and, you know, rest and then periods of rebuilding. So you’ve talked about peptide bio regulators. What are some of your favorite tools for rebuilding and any other stories you’ve seen with your clients?

Alexandra Cousins 00:41:37 Well, definitely. Peptide bio regulators play a big role. I always say once again, it’s everything. And even the mental emotional shift that happened for me from, you know, wanting to be so pure, so connected to to nature and, you know, spirit and to realize, okay, wonderful, you’ve done it. You’ve gone deep. But are you meant to live on a mountaintop by yourself, you know, sitting and meditating and blessing out? No. So that was another part to then realize, well, what am I here for? Right? I’m here.

Alexandra Cousins 00:42:14 And then the next question was, are you here to teach people about raw food? Right? Are you here to be the raw food first? You know, that kind of like brings everybody to raw foods and was like, no, I am here to actually sort of come down from my spiritual mountain and to be with the people to connect because I had all these insights around, you know, why do we get sick in the first place? And that most of it, yes, there’s toxins and there’s all kinds of things, but our deepest vulnerabilities are in the wounds of our soul and the emotional wounds. Right. And some of us are more sensitive, not as you know. Then again, resilient. What does resilient mean? Because I know resilient people who simply are good at carrying on the mask.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:11 Yeah, yeah. No, I think that’s a really important point because more and more and more, I think the conversation in chronic health recovery, in autoimmune disease in particular, and certainly in my clinical experience, is that that recognition that trauma and emotional stress is really at the root of a lot of these disease states, if you will, and then it impacts people on a very measurable physiologic level.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:44 And so I think that’s so valuable because you’re realizing that you can look very resilient. But for a lot of people, what that just means is that they’re continuing to power through. And I feel that because we’re required to, on some level, just to live, you know, and, well.

Alexandra Cousins 00:44:07 We buy into that idea.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:08 Yes, exactly.

Alexandra Cousins 00:44:10 Yeah, we buy into that idea. And because, of course, I mean, initially, you know, I know people that knew me before, they wouldn’t recognize who I have become because it’s like, you know, I have become so like to some, you know, so soft, so sense. It’s like, oh my gosh, you know, But recognizing that for me, not keeping any more gates for myself or with the world like I’m finally breathing, you know, I don’t need to put on a show anymore. Not for me, not for others. To me, that is true resilience. When we can actually just, you know, really fully be okay with who we genuinely are and with the life that flows through us.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:58 Yeah, I think that’s a very powerful thing. I think I’d like to sort of leave with that, because what I would love people to think about, especially if you’re in a woman in this transitional midlife phase. My dad’s an executive coach, and at one point he was looking at reading this book and it was called. The title was something like What Got you here won’t get You there. And it has nothing to do with this, that book, so you don’t have to go read it. But that statement is exactly what you’re saying. You got to a certain level and you found it wasn’t serving you. And what most people would do would be like, oh, shoot, how do I keep preserving this and prop myself up, you know? And instead, what you allowed yourself to do was get really messy. Be willing to have everyone’s opinions, whatever that was going to be. And that, I think, is a very powerful thing and really difficult. And I think people do it on different levels.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:46:00 They don’t have to maybe go all the way. But I also think the more they do, the healthier. You know, we talked about this health and unhealthy being a continuum. The more you do also the easier it gets. Because there was a little point I wanted to circle back to. You said, you know, in raw foods, there’s this evangelicalism and paleo. There can be this evangelicalism, any nutrition dogma, any life dogma. And the problem with that even the disease name. Like if you connect with whatever the disease is and then you’re in that world like I’m a person who has blah, blah, blah. There’s an evangelical ness to all of those things. And the benefit of it, at least initially, is community. But that community can also be a trap, is something I’ve seen. So unless you’re willing to transition to a more flexible community, the community itself could actually keep you stuck. Does that make sense?

Alexandra Cousins 00:47:02 100%. 100%. It’s just like when we moved to Bali and I thought, okay, I’ve done my healing work.

Alexandra Cousins 00:47:11 And, you know, now I’m ready to live this dream life and to be in community with all these amazing spiritual people. And then I got here and it was like, oh, this spiritual community isn’t really what I thought it was going to be. There’s a lot of, you know, again, smoke and mirrors and, you know, I mean, the reality is, I would say most people the hardest thing to do and to be is to just be yourself in every moment, because we all right in the spiritual community. We want to be so spiritually evolved. We want to be so perfect and so, you know, non-judgmental and not basically. Yeah, non-human.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:47:53 Right, right. Yeah. And then there’s the other community of the perfect German private school. And the thing is, is like, all of these places are filled with humans. And so if you’re willing to just relax and do whatever your own body and your own family and your own intuition, it’s calling for and allowing that to change.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:48:15 And sometimes it’s rest and sometimes it’s nourishment, and sometimes it’s detox and sometimes it’s play and sometimes it’s work. I think that’s a really powerful message, because we try to identify so strongly with whatever community or passion or whatever disease, that any of these things can actually keep us stuck and are almost never what we think they’re going to be.

Alexandra Cousins 00:48:44 Absolutely. The fantasy is always better than the reality.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:48:48 Yes.

Alexandra Cousins 00:48:49 And yet, you know, I would say the biggest sort of life lesson for me in the last few years is can you love what’s real? And that it’s going to change all the time because ultimately, right, as much as we all want to have this like easy cruisy life that looks like Instagram pictures and so forth. The reality is, most of us are here for deep soul lessons. And then yes, we happen to have a body because we need to have a body to be able to be in, you know, this dimension and so forth. But it’s like we’re here. We’re here to learn some deep soul lessons.

Alexandra Cousins 00:49:28 And at the end of the day, do we learn deep soul lessons just by kind of like cruising and shopping and dining? No, we don’t, I wish, but we don’t. So we learn the deep stuff, the deep, significant stuff, through being under pressure, through, you know, being sometimes under incredible pressure where we think we’re going to burst into a million pieces and just, you know, disappear. Those are the moments by coming through those moments that we really we grow and we grasp for us because it’s only just ever our experience. What is life? What is life in a body for me, for this soul. And that’s all I know.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:50:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story, for sharing that really important perspective. And thank you. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your work?

Alexandra Cousins 00:50:29 Instagram Alexandra cousins. That’s probably the easiest way or a nightlife website.

Alexandra Cousins 00:50:35 But yeah, find me on Instagram. And yeah, I feel my vision sort of for the future is to grow a community of people where we can be much more real than what is happening currently, because I’m not satisfied with what’s currently happening. We simply need more people where we can be real communities, where we can be real. And so, as I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, you’re one of the people that I appreciate for just being real and for, you know, offering such beautiful like the sort of like a rigorous softness that I see in you that I really appreciate. And I feel, you know, that is healing, right? When we know we can completely just be who we are with all of our humanness, and we can be held in that, and also that our infinite potential is always held as well, because we all have that. You know, I don’t care how broken or sick you are, there’s infinite potential that is just waiting to just blossom forth. Yeah.

Alexandra Cousins 00:51:46 So when we know that all is well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:51:49 Absolutely. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you everyone for being here today. And we’ll see you next week. I love speaking with Alex because she has such a different perspective from those of us who are trained more conventionally, either within the conventional medical system or within the kind of alternative medical system. You know, for example, those of us who are acupuncturists or chiropractors or alternatively trained functional nutritionists, I have a lot of that step by step training, whether it’s with conventional tools or alternative tools. But Alex comes from a very different perspective around healing, and she has to really think about how she got here, what was driving her as a child, what was that whole perfectionism? What was the expectation in her home? What was her luxury high end spa career teaching her? And now that she’s stripped a lot of that away? And for me, navigating my chronic illness has really opened that door for me to begin to strip away and think about things in terms of rest deep.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:53:12 Autophagy, Fasting. Silence the negative space, if you will, of the healing journey. It’s not more nutrition, more supplements, more medications, more exercise. It’s enoughness. It’s less. It’s space. It’s silence. It’s nature. It’s quiet. It’s allowing the body to do its work. And as we transition into winter, I’m going to recommend two things you do for homework. I told you there would be one homework assignment, but I’m going to actually give you two. One, I strongly recommend reading or even better, listening to the audiobook Wintering by Catherine May. This book really has helped me in my journey to think about winter as a space and time for this restorative, regenerative types of practices. Sleep. Darkness. Silence. Fasting autophagy so that the body can do its work of regeneration in the quiet. And your second bit of homework is to think about wherever you are in your healing journey or wherever you are sitting with your next patient or client in their healing journey. What are their goals? What is enoughness? What is peace? What is calm centeredness? What does that look like and feel like for them? Because none of us are in the fully checked, healing, all healed box.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:54:51 You know, if we’re all still alive, we’re at some state of health. And how can we think of ourselves as healthier and on the path? And what is that path look like? Where would we like that path to next? Go and know that even when we get there, we’re not fully healed. We won’t be fully healed in this lifetime. And that’s okay. How can we feel complete and whole and then just present with the journey, no matter where we are on the path? I’ll see you right back here next week. Enjoy your week. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.