Ep 16: In conversation with Alex Fraysse

Foreign. Welcome to the All Is Wellness Podcast with me, Emma Naylor. Join us in open and honest conversations with wellness professionals and industry experts. Welcome back to the All Is Wellness Podcast. This week's guest is Alex Frase, founder of Healthy Pillars. Alex started his career in finance before finding his calling and qualifying in the world of alternative medicine. Alex sees the world from an interconnected mind, body, and spirit perspective, allowing him to truly get to the root cause of the issues at hand for his clients and provide them with care, awareness, and presence that they deserve. Alex, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast this week.

Thank you, Emma, for having me. It's an absolute joy and pleasure to be with you.

I would love to hear a little bit more about what Healthy Pillars is. What are you doing? And a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are.

All right, okay. So I think let's probably start with how I got there, and then it'll probably make more sense as to what Healthy Fillers is. So I used to work in banking for about three to four years, working in equity research, working in corporate finance, and, you know, kind of enjoying it mostly having my soul sucked from me. And, you know, walking into work, my soul being like, all right, mate, I'm gonna wait for you at the door. You go and do your thing, and then when you're done, come pick me back, come pick me up, and we'll go back home.

I'm like, okay.

My friend. So that was me for about four years, and within my time in corporate finance, towards the last. What was it, let's call it, the last eight months, I was. I was in it. I ended up doing my work at. At work for myself so quickly that I had a lot of free time. So I started researching about health and natural ways to heal the body. And I was. Looked at so many different documentaries about how to heal the body naturally. And a natural affinity just literally just grew inside of me. And I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who got back from Burning man, and he, in essence, that I literally learned nothing from the experience. I just, you know, it was sex, drugs, and partying. I'm like, okay, well, I can't do this anymore. You know, like, he worked in finance and all of that. And I was like, it was that moment where I had a big eureka of, oh, I need to not do this anymore. And then I started researching courses and which. Where to study. And then I found my college, which is the College of Naturopathic Medicine based in. Well, they're based in London, but they have sites in Brighton, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin, I believe. Oh, and I think Bristol. I think Bristol as well. I can't remember, but I was actually in Edinburgh working in finance. So I did my first year there and then I moved back down to London after I quit my job. Well, we decided to part ways by mutual consent because we both realized that A, I was unhappy and B, I had much more enthusiasm for the healthy life and living and everything. And then when I moved down to London, I was studying full time, but I was studying herbal medicine and nutrition at the same time. And then I decided to do also iridology and naturopathy at the same time as well. So that in essence should have taken me about seven, eight years to finish. But I decided to do it in four and a half because I still had my banker mentality of all right, let's just boss it out, let's just do it. And it was actually, to be honest, a fantastic experience because I got to apply what I learned very, very quickly from both sides of it. And within the midst of this, I was going through a massive spiritual awakening. And actually my spiritual awakening kind of led me to my decision to actually study in the first place, all the way back in 2013. So from there I started to see the, the mind, the body and the spirit being interconnected as one and nothing really being separated. How different parts of the body have different energies and have different actually emotions tied behind them. So, you know, simple ones like the colon is, you know, are you able to let go of your. Or are you holding on to your literally kind of vibe? Your liver, you know, is anger, your lungs is grief, but also your. Your ability or inability to breathe in life. So with healthy Pillars, I help my clients to see the interconnectedness of everything, of where they are at in their life and where their state of their organs is, but the state of their spiritual mental health is as well. So I, in essence, help facilitate them to a deeper understanding of themselves whilst providing the medicine for them through mostly herbs and some supplements when. When needed. But a lot of it's through herbal medicine and deeper. More. Yeah, deeper, gentle inside practices is what I would call them.

How so interesting. I mean, thank you first of all for sharing your story. I think that it's such an interesting story going from kind of finance to something completely different because quite frankly, the two couldn't be more polar opposite. What, what point was it that you kind of went on that spiritual journey and can you sort of talk us through? Because I think a lot of the time people don't. People sometimes don't know that they've been on that kind of spiritual journey or they've had that awakening. How did that kind of show up in your everyday life?

Okay, so I kind of. I say kind of. I've always been a very open person, energetically so, feeding people's energies, being able to, you know, it was weird. When I was younger, I'd give my dad massages or friends massages, and their back issues would just simply disappear. And they were like, you got magic hands. I'm like, okay, thanks, I guess, you know, I don't really understand it. And then I remember going to see my mom's. Actually, my mom's masseuse when I was, I think early 20s. I think I was 22, 23, maybe 23, 24. And he worked with the. The hugging guru, Ama. And he was giving me a massage and when he came to my fingers, he just goes in his very thick Russian accent. I'm not going to do a Russian accent. But he was like, I'm not going to do it. He was like, how very interesting. You have healing fingers, Alexandre. I'm like, I'm half asleep. What the hell are you telling me? And he basically told me to start researching about if I was interested about Reiki, Reiki or Prana energy. And that kind of opened the doors. And then in 2012, I went to a festival in Portugal called Boom Festival. And my whole life literally just went boom. And that's what happens at the Boom Festival. I. I am the typical stereotypical person who took a psychedelic and it changed my life. I'm not even gonna lie at all. So I took DMT as my first ever psychedelic. It changed my life. I saw, you know, the beginning of time to where we are now. I had a guide who just held my hand essentially through it. I was like, look, this is what, what happened then and this is where we are now and many, many other insights. And that's when everything clicked. And I was like, oh, this is why I felt different my whole life. Like, like, you know, massive eureka moment. And then from there, the journey just kind of, you know, extrapolated onwards and upwards, to be honest. Not in a linear fashion by any means, because no journey ever, but. But it's certainly been an upper onwards.

And upwards journey that's so interesting to talk about using those kind of psychedelic drugs, because obviously me, you know, being sober, it's, it's, you know, those kind of things are very much not in my life and will never be part of my life anymore. But there's a lot of time where I've heard about, you know, I don't know how much you know about this or how much you've kind of researched into sort of ayahuasca and those sort of. Those sort of drugs. It's. It's really interesting to see them being used in such a good way for people's health and benefit. I mean, I. I can't put my hand up and say that I used to drink and use drugs and if for a beneficial way. So unfortunately, I don't fall into that category. But how do you kind of feel those sort of drugs can help people if done correctly, kind of help them get to that next level?

Right. Okay. I mean, the first thing for me is these things aren't drugs if you do them from the plant version, because they're plants, they're from nature. For me, that's. That's the first thing, because when you come to a plant and you come at it with the tremendous amount of respect and humility and gratitude, you're in a much better position to benefit from it. If you're coming at it from much more veneguristical perspective, I always say good luck. And, you know, it always depends with whom and where and why you do the. Why you do the medicine. So, you know, set. Setting an intention is very, very important within all of this. And it's. It can be beneficial to, you know, to anyone. But again, it depends on the circumstances of your life. You know, are you in a good mental state or you're not in a good mental state? Are you, you know, are you fragile? Are you strong? Because these things can really open up. The worms, you know, the worm, the can of worms really gets opened up. And if you're not in a good position to handle it, especially afterwards and you don't have the community around you, the support, it can be very, very difficult. So I always say with these things, make sure that you have the right support network and support group, you know, or you. You have a, a therapist with whom you can. We can talk about these things with. And you go from there. But you always go in with, you know, the right intention and a lot of humility and a lot of gratitude from it.

To be honest, it's so interesting to hear that. And obviously great to hear that because as I said before, I think my view on those kind of, you know, medical drugs, natural drugs, whatever, obviously that's. That they're sort of called, was very different to the experience that I had. And I think it's kind of just when you said it then that penny dropped with. I was going out, drinking, using drugs in a very. In, not in, not in a good way. It was to escape reality. It was to run away from everything. But I think exactly as you said, I think if it's used in the right way, it can be very, very powerful. How have you found the sort of being very, very involved in this kind of world and working closely with, with clients and understanding these, this medicine more? How do you feel that it's impacted your life and obviously the work that you've been able to do on yourself? Where are you kind of at in your journey and your kind of growth journey?

I feel with this type of stuff, it's a case of you do it if and when you need it. What I will say about these medicines are they are a shortcut to get to the root cause, the root issue, whatever it is, they are not going to heal you. I think too many people go in with the, with the thinking, oh, if I do magic mushrooms, or if I do ayahuasca, if I do boga, you know, peyote, San Pedro, whatever the medicine is, it's going to heal me. No, it's bloody not. You know, I'm sorry, it's not. And it's. It's a simple, cold, hard truth that it's not going to heal you like you heal yourself. Like you have to do the work with it. But the most important part of the work is the integration of it afterwards. So you can have an incredible experience and be like, oh, my God, I'm healed. But, you know, two weeks later, you're. You're back to doing the, the same shit you were doing beforehand. You're not integrating what you have learned. And integration takes time. It takes presence. It takes a lot of dedication and determination too. So I'm these days very careful with when I decide to ever do these things, because it has to be for the right reasons. And mostly I realize you don't need it. It's a great thing if you need to break through. If you're struggling to break through, you can take it. Just make sure that you have the fundamentals down first. When you have those fundamentals down, such as self care, your practices, you know how to look after yourself, you have the right tools around you, you know, all good. That's the most important part of any healing journey, is that it's not the taking an abundance of medicine because then you kind of just become A junkie. Yeah, you. You do the medicine to get high, to feel connected with source and. Or whatever. Or whatever you want to call it, you have that innately within you. You are that connection. Anyways, you've just forgotten it and you just have to come back to a state of, okay, now I remember why and how.

Yeah. And I think exactly as you sort of said, you know, having a therapist or having someone to guide you is definitely so, so important in any kind of journey that you're going on. How do you, how do you work with your clients and what's your sort of way in that? You, you know, you look at mind, body, spirit, connection with nature. How do you work directly with your clients to kind of get them to where they need to be or kind of get the results that they want?

So every client is. So this is the tricky question. So it. Every client is different in the way that I approach them because they all need something slightly different. As a general rule, what I will do is I will see where they are at and I'll see where they want to be and I will see what needs to be done for them in order to get to where they want to get to at the end of the day. So I will provide them what I feel is the best template for them to get there. And I, and I, in essence, help facilitate their journey to get to getting there. I don't, I mean, I'm not going to be there the whole time. I think that's actually kind of codependent. And I know certain people who, who feel that they need to be there for their clients the whole time, support them and be them on the phone and. Da, da, da, da, da. What you need is to. What I like to do instead is to build foundations for them so that they can learn how to feel stable and safe within their own body, their mind, and their spirit. It's kind of the process of, you know, if you, if you bought a piece of land, then it's a boggy marsh. You're not going to build on top of the boggy marsh. You need to drain the land first and then build on top of it. So that's in essence how I kind of work with my clients. I help them to see that it's a boggy marsh first, and then, all right, we need to kind of drain this in order to build the foundations.

I think that's so interesting to sort of talk about that because I think there are. There's definitely this kind of whole. There's this whole movement around kind of toxic positivity and that analogy that you kind of just gave. I think there's a lot of the time where it's sort of, oh, just ignore the past and just be positive and everything will be great. But I think what I've realized, you know, especially for myself, going through, you know, my own personal development, my own spiritual have to go back and do the work, because as you said, you're trying to build that house on the foundation that isn't. That can't take it. At some point it's going to crumble. What would be your sort of really important advice or kind of guidance for anyone who, you know, I feel like I'm ready to engage in some kind of personal development. I feel like I'm ready to go on, you know, a kind of spiritual awakening journey, but I'm a little bit stuck and don't really know where to start. What would be your advice for someone who's in that position and how to start?

Start surrounding yourself with people who have been on the journey before you or find people who have been on the journey before you, whether it's on Instagram, YouTube, whether it's your friend circle, or maybe there's that one person you met and you're like, I kind of want to talk to them a little bit more, but I haven't. But I feel as if they would be useful to my journey. Go and contact that person. You know, start surrounding yourself with people who have experienced. You can then share their experience so you don't have to find stuff out the hard way. You know, if someone has done the exact same thing that you've done and can share their insights and make your life easier, dude, go for it. Like, no brainer. To me, that would probably be one of the first things I would do. One of the second things and third things I would do is go into nature as much as you can. You know, try. If you live in London, if we live in a city, get out of the city and go into a forest, you know, or green patch or whatever it is out of town. Put your phone on airplane mode or silence or, you know, turn it off, which is the best, and just go walk in nature and, you know, forest bathe, nature bathe, and allow yourself to absorb the healing frequencies of nature. And that will allow you to start gently connecting back to yourself. And then the third is, simply put, meditation. One of the greatest, easiest tools that we have on a spiritual journey is meditation.

Meditation is such an interesting one. And I think, well, first of all, I think those Three points are amazing. And I definitely, I definitely do two out of the three. And the first one is I do hang out with people who have been on this journey. I do go out in nature and I say I do the third and I do. But I often find when I'm meditating and I guess it's probably because I don't do this enough, my brain very to shut down and fully concentrate or not concentrate or I'm not really sure. And there's often that feeling of am I doing this right? Am I not doing it right? So I guess in terms of meditation, I sometimes try and do it in the morning, but I fall back asleep and I try and do it in the evening sometimes before I go to bed. But often my brain is very kind of overactive in the evening and I often think of new kind of things that I'm gonna do. How did you find starting meditation? Did you start it while you were in your corporate job? How did you find it? And is it something that's kind of in your daily routine? And it's a kind of non negotiable now?

So I started meditation in 2012 anyways, a while ago now and it was great, honestly. I started when I was in corporate and it honestly changed my stress response at work. And I would do 10, 15 minutes really simply. I would listen to a guided meditation at first just to get into it. So for those of you who aren't used to meditation, guided meditations are the best ones to begin with because then you can easily get into the flow of it. It allows you not to think as much as when you are trying to just quieten your thoughts and just be present. That was a great benefit to me. And there were times where I'd be sitting on a chair and I would almost fall off the church. I would start falling asleep and I'd have to catch myself. And I didn't really. I was like, okay, cool. Well this is happening. I can see my body literally turn, turning off. I'm like, wow, I am quite wired right now. And I would say if you are falling asleep during meditation, that's probably for a good reason because your body's absolutely exhausted. Like you're probably just so highly strung and wired that when you meditate you tap into your parasympathetic nervous system. It just turns off and you're like, oh, wow, okay. And then out cold, you know, and, but, and now meditation. I used to, I used to be very, very strict. They do it every day and there are times where it feels If I would be, like, traveling to other dimensions and seeing all these geometric patterns and mantras, and I would hear all these sounds, and I later realized there were sounds of creation and. And other stuff, and it's beautiful. I now meditate. I wouldn't say every day, which is my own. My own fault, but I probably meditate five out of seven days. But on the days that I don't meditate, I try to actually use practices such as cooking as a form of meditation. So now I'm preparing my food. I make sure there's no music. I make sure there's, you know, there's nothing to distract me. And I'm present with my food as a form of meditation. Meditation doesn't have to be. I'm sitting down with my eyes closed, my palms upwards, and, you know, I'm. I'm meditating. Meditating can be a simple practice of just being present in the moment. Cooking. It could be going for a walk and just walking very slowly. Those things are also acts of meditation, which I do on a daily basis. So I would say I do the traditional form of meditation five times a week. And I would say I probably meditate through other practices every day of the week.

I love the idea that I don't just have to sit there in complete silence. I think that's probably going to change the game for a lot of people who cannot sit still, like myself, for more than about two minutes. So it's great to know that I can do it while cooking and walking, because I think that. I also think there's a lot of. Kind of. There's a lot of fear around doing it wrong. And I know that there's no way you can do meditation wrong. But I often think that I feel I should be able to stay still and I should be able to do this. And I know that it comes with practice. Like everything in life, I have to just keep practicing it. So I will definitely try your tips on doing that while I'm making my dinner this evening. So, Alex, look, I've loved hearing all about the amazing things that you're doing. I love kind of having these conversations around things that maybe aren't so traditional, things that are a little bit different that really tap into kind of how we are as humans as a whole throughout your kind of whole journey. And this is the question I said I wasn't going to tell you about. That would throw you. What's your one piece of advice that you'd give to our listeners?

I mean, there's so many pieces of advice okay, so the one piece of advice I would give is learn how to use your body as it as your greatest tool in life. Your body will tell you everything. Whether some things a yes, whether something's a no, whether something's a hell yes, whether something's a no. Like your, your body will tell you. And it's about you understanding the different reactions and how you feel and the way your body is letting you know through different responses what the answer is. So that's probably the main thing I would tell people because then you are literally what I call your in the bodying process. And then you can literally become far more present far more quickly and you get your answers far more easily and far more quickly too.

I love that one piece of advice. I think that is something that I try to do but definitely need to do more often. Alex, thank you so much for being on this week's podcast. It seems to have gone so quickly. How can people find you if they want to work with you or find out more information about what you do?

So people can find me at from on my website healthypillas.com or you can find me on Instagram at Healthy Underscore Pillars. And I'm also on TikTok. I will be start starting to do videos on TikTok again. So that'll be, that's I believe at Healthy Pillars as well.

Great. Alex, thank you again so much for being such a wonderful guest. I've loved talking to you and I'm so excited to see you know all the amazing things that you are going to do for the rest of the year and beyond. Thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast and we will see you again next week. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please leave us a review if you did, head over to our Instagram page alliswellnesspodcast and let us know what you think. We look forward to welcoming you next week for more open and honest conversations.