Josh (03:39.206) What she's sharing with us today doesn't just come from theory and textbooks, she lived it. Now, despite being told by her doctors that she wouldn't live past her teenage years, she refused to give up and discovered the secret to rewiring the mind-body connection. She uses these same methods to conquer chronic pain and become an elite athlete. She's a TV and Broadway star, entrepreneur, mind coach, and keynote speaker.
You may have seen her on So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and even the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Ashley DeLello, welcome to Reversible.
Ashleigh Di Lello (04:12.994) Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Josh (04:15.922) I'm so glad you're here. You know, truthfully, I can't really think of a better fit for a show called reversible than someone who's literally gone against what medicine said was possible and reversed her own illness. This is a great place for you to be. I'm really excited to hear more of your story. So, twice. Well, let's start there. For our listeners who aren't familiar with your story, can you take us through what happened to you and how you got through it?
Ashleigh Di Lello (04:30.542) Thank you. Yeah, not just once, but twice. Twice.
Ashleigh Di Lello (04:41.354) Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a long journey. So we'll, we'll do the cliff notes, but it began at 13 and I was the epitome of health started dancing five hours a day when I was seven. In fact, my nickname was the energizer bunny. My body was this incredible machine, right? That supported me to do what I loved. And then overnight, everything changed. And I went from that epitome of health to fighting for my life. And
This was, you know, it's important in context. This was 27 years ago. So all of this information, including this podcast that we have access to today, didn't exist. There was no social media, no podcasts, no YouTube or Google or anything. And in fact, like functional medicine, alternative holistic, that was nothing like what we know today or accessible. It was like very seen through this kind of.
voodoo eyes, right, of some lady with dreadlocks burning incense and so forth. So if we even just go back to the context of the times that I lived in, right, it was like yellow pages or referrals. There was nothing like, you know, thankfully we are able to access today. And so that was really important just in context. I went to doctors all over the country for over two years. I was tested for everything known to man.
I got so sick I could barely lift a finger some days, barely speak. It's a really scary place to know how much energy it takes to speak when it's something that of course we do so effortlessly, you know, the mass majority of time. I had pain in like every joint and muscle. My gut felt like there were knives going through it. It was I lost a mass majority of my hair. My skin was yellow from my liver shutting down.
And essentially, I was told there was nothing they could do. They said, you know, the best we can surmise is you have some rare viral infection that your body's not able to fight, and we can't diagnose it, and we can't treat it. And so essentially, I was told I needed to accept I wasn't going to live past my teenagers. Told that flat out. I was told, you're never gonna dance again.
Ashleigh Di Lello (06:55.01) You're never, and it's really crazy when I think the doctor actually went further than that in telling me you've got to accept, you're not going to dance again. You're not going to get married. You're not going to have kids. If you by some chance do survive, you're going to be sick the rest of your life. I'm 13 years old and I'm literally in this moment of shock of like, what happened to my life? Like, how is this my life? And the doctor's telling me I need to accept this.
And I can't even begin to tell you the amount of emotions I felt in one moment. And I remember looking down and just trying to even take in what I'm being told at 13, but deep in my soul, I just felt I wasn't created to just end and die. Here. And before we even knew so much about neuroscience and the brain and beliefs, I just had this deep belief inside that.
I was created for more. My body was created for more. There was a capacity and I didn't know what I had. I didn't even know how we were going to heal it, but I knew that I wasn't just going to accept that this was it. And so I actually looked up at the doctor. I remember squaring my shoulder and probably taking the biggest deep breath of my life and saying, I don't accept this. I had no idea how we were going to get to the other side, but that was the first of a very long journey of
Then diving into how do we support my immune system, right? To fight this viral infection. If we can't diagnose it and therefore directly treat it, how do I give my body all the tools, right? To allow it to better fight this off and to heal from it. And this is when I intricately started to experience the mind body connection.
Because there were, there were periods during this time that I was so sick. I was literally afraid to go to sleep at night. I could feel my body was so sick, so exhausted that if I surrendered that conscious will to live, I really was terrified that I wouldn't wake up. And my body would just be like, I'm, I'm done. Like I love you, but this is too much. And so I would will myself to stay awake.
Ashleigh Di Lello (09:09.29) And I would will my body to keep fighting. And this is when I really started to feel and experience that no system in our body works alone. They're all so intricately connected. They're always communicating. And if they don't work alone, you can't heal alone. So I took control of all that I could, which in some moments, aside from my nutrition and supplementation, it was my mind. And it was that communication with my body.
And I know that that's a huge reason. You know, I survived that first illness because people still ask me today, well, what did you have? I don't know. And one day, I believe me and God are gonna have a conversation. I'm gonna be like, let's talk about this. But what is important about that is because we've also been conditioned to think we have to have a very specific diagnosis in order to treat it, in order to heal from it. And we know that
Josh (09:53.57) Hehehe
Ashleigh Di Lello (10:07.454) Most people are somewhere in the grace of, well, it could be this, it could also be this, because it's usually more than one thing. And opening ourselves up to that, our body was designed to heal if we support it in the capacities which we can, even if we don't have all the quote clear answers, it can do what it was designed to do, which is to repair and to heal. And so this was my first experience of Defying the Odds. It took...
I fought between life and death for over four years. And then it took six for me to feel healthy again and made my way back to dance and more to life full time. It was a long journey. And I thought that was it, right? I'm like, I did my thing. I defied the odds. I climbed to the top of the mountain.
I had an amazing professional dance career, um, as you mentioned, which was just miraculous in and of itself from someone who at one time couldn't even stand on my own two feet. And so it was like the top of the mountain. I was a speaker in terms of like, um, motivating and inspiring people, but I didn't really understand the intricacies of the brain yet until I went through my second life altering health experience, which
was in all truthfulness harder than the first. So I had this amazing career. I was at the top of my professional career. I had a two-year-old daughter, which I was also told I'd never have children. And so it just felt like life is here at this peak. And then I went into a second hip surgery and it completely failed. And in, again, a moment, I was a chronic pain patient.
And I lost my career. I'm now struggling to walk. I have pain spreading throughout my whole body. Therefore I'm not sleeping. Therefore I start to have breakdown in other areas of body, including my gut, um, and my thyroid and my hormones and all of the things. And now I'm again in mystery land where doctors are telling me, you know, the best we can surmise is your nervous system flip to switch into pain. And that can happen sometimes in surgery. So you're a chronic pain patient now.
Ashleigh Di Lello (12:25.494) Right? This is your life. I was told it's only downhill from here. And so here's the thing. I'm like, this isn't my first rodeo. I'm going to do all the things. I'm supporting my body with nutrition, everything anti-inflammatory. I'm doing all the holistic treatments. I'm doing over 200 types of injections, like stem cell PRP, whatever you can think about, like I am doing it and I'm still not getting better. And.
It literally pushed me to the depths of my very soul. I'm sleeping maybe three hours a night in unrelenting pain, which is a hell I wouldn't wish upon anyone. And I got to one night and I looked at my husband and I'm like, there's nothing left to try. And you know, at this point, we're nearly losing our home because we're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on all these treatments to get me well, to get me well. And I remember just sitting in the depths of like, what does this mean for my family, our future?
And I just had this thought, well, they're telling me my nervous system flipped a switch into pain. So if it can flip into pain, I'm going to figure out how to flip it back. And that's where I dove deep into neuroscience and pain science and the mind body connection from that neuroscience perspective and created a process called bi-emotional healing. First to save my own life and rewire my nervous system. And then I realized, gosh, this is
This is the missing route for so many people who are treating the body, but they might have because of experiences in their life that has compounded to altering their nervous system into this dysregulation, this hypersensitivity, and their nervous system is driving these physical symptoms, these emotional mental stress responses. And they too have to figure out how to rewire it back.
And so it saved my life. And now I've been coaching clients through it for the last four and a half years.
Josh (14:22.87) That's wild. That is wild. Your entire story, you know, there's a lot of people who teach from experience. A lot of people teach from theory and textbooks, but you've done it and you did it twice. And what you dove into here really is becoming more trending now. But at the time it was absolutely cutting edge, unheard of, unfamiliar. It was brand new. Nobody knew what we were talking about. What is neuroscience? What does the mind and the body have anything to do with each other?
And that's something that I think is very detrimental, especially in the Western world, is we look at each system of the body as if it's in a container by itself. You know, we have hypothyroid, your thyroid's underactive, so here's a thyroid pill. We're not addressing the liver or the gut, where up to 40% of your inactive and active are converted. We're not addressing stress, we're not addressing nutrition, like nutrient deficiencies, just, well, here's a drug. And that's very detrimental. What you've done is you are living proof.
Ashleigh Di Lello (15:02.305) Mm-hmm.
Josh (15:21.442) that there is so much more. I mean, shit, 500 years ago, this was witchcraft. They probably just burned you at a stake. You know what I mean? Like, it was magic then.
Ashleigh Di Lello (15:26.858) Right, I know. So true, they would be like some witchcraft had to be done on me to survive, you know? Super grateful I didn't live then.
Josh (15:33.738) Yeah, for sure. And now we go well that science. Well, welcome to science in the modern era, we understand things more. So obviously, the mind is so amazing and so connected, you unlock that. Walk me through that process. And I want to get into talking about how trauma and thoughts and emotions and how it actually affects the gut. But walk us through the process of what it was like to tap into the power of the mind.
Ashleigh Di Lello (15:43.027) Yes.
Josh (16:03.702) Was it textbook? Was it study? Was it experience? Did you have a teacher? What was that like?
Ashleigh Di Lello (16:09.086) Yeah, it's interesting because it's, it's been quite a different journey. The one through my chronic pain is where I really did seek a lot of neuroscience and, and thankfully neuroscience has been on the cutting edge. The last 10 years we can map the brain now. And, but when I first started studying it six years ago, it still wasn't. What it is today. Right. So I had to dive even deeper and I was reading studies and really understanding how the brain.
you know, creates different stress hormones in the body or healing, right? And how it communicates with the cells. And so in the, in the more recent discovery, it was merging all the science.
with my life experience. And that is where I was able to make some connections that I otherwise wouldn't have been able. Cause I'm reading science and I'm reading different studies and I'm going, oh my gosh, that is this. That's what, when I went through this, it impacted this. This is what happened to my nervous system. You know, here's the PTSD around my body. Here is...
what pain does and how it actually, you know, changes those pain receptors and they get more hyperactive and they get larger. And I experienced that because the pain spread and it became more volatile. And that was really the key was being able to merge them both together, because unless you've lived it and experienced it and the truly profound impact of going through significant health challenges on every aspect of who you are, I wouldn't have been able to make those connections that I did.
And I've even lectured in front of doctors and neuroscientists and they're like, how did you make that correlation? I'm like, cause I lived it. And so the science allowed me to make sense of some of the things that I lived and connect the pieces together of like, okay, now what do we do to, to fix that, to change that, to heal that. But before I had access to all of that, when I was a teenager, again, 27, 25 years ago, I would have had to go.
Ashleigh Di Lello (18:08.182) to a library and check out a neuroscience journal, you know, to get any access to this information. There was no internet yet, you know? And so what's really interesting, and I wanna emphasize this aspect, I had no idea what I was doing, okay? You know, I had really no idea. Like I'm utilizing my brain to heal, but what's really interesting is that as I started studying it 20 years later, I realized...
that I was actually harnessing my brain's capacity. And one of the really powerful ways is that we now know the brain is wired to validate beliefs, right? So whatever we believe, the brain goes to work to find evidence to support. And that's why beliefs are so powerful and they create this lens that our brain will see through and block out contrasting information, right? So I'm being told at that time,
you're not going to live, but for sure you need to accept you'll never dance again. Now this was the love of my life that I had felt born and created to do. Now the brain is the love of my life, but then it dance was the love of my life. And so I'm grateful for that because I thought I'm going to do this again. I'm going to do this again. So con contrary to all the experts and even the real evidence of my life where I can barely lift a finger.
How do you ever think you're gonna be able to endure the physical execution of five hours of dance a day, right? Like I once did. But I had a belief that was so strong that I would do it again. That that belief did what beliefs do. It directed my brain to find evidence. So there was no evidence in my life. And so without anybody telling me, I just had this thought in my brain.
Well, while I'm going through all my MRIs and scans and tests, I'm going to dance in my mind. And so I would sit there and I would see myself dancing. I would see myself in class, on stage, at competitions. I would go through movement patterns. And it would be so real that I remember sometimes laying in an MRI machine with tears just streaming down my face.
Ashleigh Di Lello (20:23.99) And not from sadness, although I definitely had those moments of sadness, cause I lost something I loved. But in those moments when I was seeing myself dancing, it was joy, it was gratitude and it felt so real. And I did that for six years. And why this matters is after six years, I walked back into the dance studio. I'm now almost 20 years old. I left.
between 13 and 14. So I'm a kid, now I'm a woman. Not only have I not danced, I haven't been active. So it took a lot of courage to walk into that studio, right? And I worked really hard, but all of a sudden I start surpassing everyone who's been dancing for six years. I start beating ballroom is a competitive sport. So I'm now...
beating people that have been active for six years. I am now ranked in the top 12 in the United States and people are like, wait, who's this girl I've never seen her before? And here's the truth at the time, people are like, wait, how did this happen? And I am truthfully like, I don't know. God's blessing me, here I am. But as I study the brain later, and we now know the brain doesn't know the difference between something
that's actually happening and something you're vividly creating and imagining, I was harnessing this capacity, this neuroplastic capacity in my brain to create neural pathways as if I had been dancing for six years. And so when I went back to that studio, even though I was executing it physically for the first time, those neural connections had been established. And that is why.
my capacity seemed to come out of nowhere. And the reason why I love that is we all have that capacity. So it's not just something inherent to me, like look at what I was able to do and as we all do, well, that's her and I am me. It's like, no, I just harnessed this amazing capacity that we now know everyone has. And that's why I love the brain so much because
Ashleigh Di Lello (22:42.654) It's the greatest equalizer to our potential.
Josh (22:47.106) The brain is a really fascinating organ. There are a lot of organs in your body. You could lose half of it or one of them or whatever. And you can kind of figure things out. You cut your stomach out. It'll just reroute your esophagus to your small intestine. You cut out half your liver like a lizard. It'll grow right back. Don't need a kidney. You're okay. Few organs you just need. Get a hysterectomy. No problem. Like whatever. You just cut stuff out. But the brain, you lose half of that. You're a vegetable. You know what I mean?
It is connected to everything. And it's interesting that you mentioned that it's a center of everything that we experience in the body, but it's the last thing to be addressed. Why do you think that is? Is it a lack of research? Is it missing data? Is it not tangible data like these surgeons and these neurosurgeons you've lectured in front of? Is it that we don't know it because we don't have the studies? What's the mystery behind the brain?
Ashleigh Di Lello (23:35.638) Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's multifold. I think for a long time and there still is, there was this separation where psychologists, psychiatrists treated the brain as the separate entity. And then you have doctors who treated the body as a separate entity and we didn't connect them. Right. And so we just have that general conditioning where if it's in your mind, you go here. If it's in the body, you go here. And because we don't communicate as experts,
and I don't understand this arena. I don't understand this arena. We're just gonna tell you that they're not connected, right? Which is interesting because when I've lectured in front of doctors, I tell them, you know what's so interesting is so much of your data is rooted in the placebo effect. Which tells you the power of beliefs in outcome. So you have the scientific proof of why beliefs matter.
Josh (24:09.346) Hmm.
Ashleigh Di Lello (24:32.746) And literally someone can get the same result as someone else from a sugar pill or a sugar injection because they believe the outcome it's going to create. And so therefore it creates that in the body, right? So I'm telling them, you can't tell me that the mind doesn't matter when the proof is there. You just have to see the other side of it. But.
Josh (24:52.718) Yeah. All of your studies take the brain and the mind into consideration, but you're telling me it makes no difference.
Ashleigh Di Lello (24:59.267) Right? Yet that's why the placebo effect is there, right? But then I think that is the part why they don't want to talk about it because here's the aspect. They have no control over it because it's someone's sole responsibility within their own mind and body to choose. Right? So if I can prescribe someone a treatment plan or
Josh (25:12.91) Hmm.
Ashleigh Di Lello (25:26.546) You know pills to take or whether it's drugs or supplements or go do these treatments or go do this therapy or have this surgery Here's the plan execute on it It's such gray area to be like listen What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What is the emotional state that you're dwelling in each day? Like what are your thoughts are they in fear? Are they all in?
scarcity and limitation and my body can't do this, or is it in possibility? And like my body was designed to heal. Like, are you living in stress all day, every day? Like, because though we have medications for that, like that. Solely comes down to the individual to choose day in, day out, and they, you can help them and you can coach them, but there's no control over it. It's not black and white.
It's an internal choice that, you know, our practitioners can't control. Right? So it's easier in that way to be like, you just need to do this. That's something totally separate than to, to really be like, guess what? The mind and body are so intricately connected that let's talk about what's going on in your life. Let's talk about that internal dialogue, or let's talk about maybe what's happened in your past.
that was traumatizing that influenced and altered your nervous system, right? And now it's just showing up because it compounded and it got pushed over the edge. Like that's such a different area. And I'm not saying that doctors or practitioners need to be experts in it. Like we all have our different roles, but there needs to be a more open dialogue of, like you've got to address this. And I have no doubt, cause I've seen it.
That is one of the main missing roots because people in a lot of ways are quote healthier than ever, right? With food and supplementation and all of the different modalities, but yet we're sicker than ever. We have more gut issues than ever. We have more mental and emotional stress than ever more autoimmune. So the brain is usually the last piece, yet it is the command center of everything we experience in our mind and our body, but it's so complex.
Ashleigh Di Lello (27:44.15) that I also think people go away from it. And us as the patients have been conditioned to someone needs to have the answer and fix it for me. And this is, I'm gonna show you how to change and shift and heal things within yourself. And that also makes people have to believe that they actually can do that, right? So I think all of those are part of why the brain is left out.
of the equation, you know, even though it's clearly very, very important. Like I tell my clients, have you ever said or heard someone say, I feel sick to my stomach? And everyone's like, yeah. I'm like, well then tell me that what is happening in the brain doesn't register in the body, right? Like right there, there's proof, right?
Josh (28:34.891) Right.
It's such easy, tangible proof too. Well, so Ashley, we've very clearly established the power of the mind, the power of the brain, that again, often goes unrecognized, we'll say. Not ignored, we understand the brain's important, we know it's important, but it often goes unrecognized in conventional speaker treatments of any kind. So let's explore the gut-brain connection, right? How that nervous system connects. Tell me a bit about that and...
Ashleigh Di Lello (28:40.724) Isn't it?
Josh (29:07.547) why they're so important that they're wired together.
Ashleigh Di Lello (29:10.418) Yeah. So we talk about the automatic nervous system a lot, and especially in today's age, people have heard about the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. They, I'm sure you've talked about with other people you've had here on the podcast, we, people are familiar with the parasympathetic nervous system, right? Our rest and digest, but we don't talk a lot about the enteric nervous system, which is a part of the autonomic nervous system, but really directly connects the brain to the gut.
And there's a constant feedback loop between the two. The gut's communicating to the brain, the brain's communicating to the gut, and a lot of this is emotional, right? Because we also know, I mean, there's, we know that like 95% of the serotonin, right, is there produced in the gut. And serotonin helps regulate our mood, social behavior, our sex drive, right? Then we also know that more than 50% of dopamine is synthesized in the gut.
We know dopamine as a reward neurochemical, but we know now it's so much more than that. It's also a huge motivation chemical. So when you have these neurochemicals being produced and synthesized in the gut, you can't tell me there's not a really strong connection, because by its nature, you would think, well, a neurochemical has to come from the brain. But yet the gut lining has...
all these nerve cells, it's incredible. So there's a constant feedback loop and the enteric nervous system really does speak emotionally. Again, going to that point of, I feel sick to my stomach, right? The gut registers that, but also look at ulcers. They're 100% created by stress that erodes the gut, right? So we see that connection really strongly. We just have been...
separating it. So we know that what we think and feel influences the gut. And we know that the gut and the gut health influences how we think and feel. And that's why, again, we can't heal them separately. So we have all these amazing things to heal the gut now from a physical standpoint. And I'm a huge proponent of all of that. We've got to address the body. We've got to address our microbiome. We've got to address all those aspects, right? Because if we're constantly eroding
Ashleigh Di Lello (31:36.202) our guts lining and healthy microbiome, then we're gonna have challenges. But if you're living in stress all the time, or if you've had trauma in your life that has altered your nervous system to even subconsciously be operating in stress, and you're getting that constant flow of stress chemicals, and that's also being communicated to the gut, you're gonna have a hard time healing your gut fully.
because at the end of the day, we also cannot overcome our nervous system by physical practices alone.
And that's the piece where I see a lot of people missing. They're like, I'm doing all the things I'm doing the diet, right? I'm eating a certain way. I'm doing all the probiotics. I've even done the SIBO procedure. Like, you know, people have done all the things and they're like, why isn't it there? It should. And that gets frustrating. Right. And then that gets really hard. And it's like, but the brain, we've got to talk about the brain and we've got to talk about the emotions. And I've seen my clients.
finally heal their gut just by doing that very thing.
Josh (32:50.762) Let's talk about some of that. Let's talk about trauma and emotions. It's trauma, a lot of people don't register trauma the same way, maybe we misunderstand the word. We think, well, I was kidnapped and that's trauma, or I watched my parents die in a car accident and that's trauma. And those are traumas, there are micro traumas and macro traumas, but all in all, they create this really low grade underlying stressor where you're in a bit more of a heightened fight or flight response, you're more reactive.
This is where we see like PTSD outbursts is that high reactivity. It's like a hair trigger on a gun, right? It could pop off any time. And so what is the connection between thoughts and emotions and trauma and all these stressors on our gut? And what are the steps that you take with some of your clients to begin reversing some of this longstanding damage?
Ashleigh Di Lello (33:42.099) The first is kind of that perspective. First, none of it's possible unless people shift that paradigm of this is more than physical.
right, or more is going on that is impacting physical. So first we have to even just get to that paradigm shift of we've got to treat the body from more than just a physical standpoint. And it's, it doesn't mean that it's your fault, right? It's the brain, it's the nervous system, it's the data bank of everything you've experienced in your life. And to that point, um, anything that alters it,
is traumatic to it, right? And that's where it's so personal. It could literally be someone has told something and it's impactful enough to their brain that from that moment, they start to see life differently, right, maybe now through a more pessimistic or limited, or they start to see themselves differently, where they believed in themselves, but they had an instance where...
maybe they did mess up and the person they respected said something to them so profoundly that now they've lost that confidence, right? That anything that alters the nervous system, right? And that's where it's completely individual, right? So for me that recognization was not easy, okay? So when I had the failed tip surgery and dove into neuroscience, I realized it wasn't just this surgery.
But the way my body was reacting to it was because of that data bank of my illness. And my brain was cross-referencing the two experiences of a threat to my body and going to survival mode on overdrive. And with that, I had to sit in the truth that I had essentially been living in survival my whole life.
Ashleigh Di Lello (35:41.91) Right? Which was hard because I was a fighter. I never gave up. I had an incredible career and an academic, um, journey. Like no one would look at me and say, man, that girl is like surviving. But my system was, and I had to say in the truth that I myself had trauma around my body. I had, I was so.
Set on fighting that I didn't register how traumatized I had been fighting for my life, afraid to go to bed. So a lot of times it takes just for a better, not a better choice of words, our ego just to go, Oh my gosh, like this is more than physical. Like I, as a person have been impacted by my life and by my choices to create this stress response in my body, or I've got unprocessed.
emotions from something that I went through that is holding in my system. Right. And I didn't really want to go back there. And I think that's where a lot of people, we want to just keep going. And here's an important part, anything you've gone through in your life, there's times where we do have to survive. Like we have limited resources and we're like, I got to keep showing up for my kids, my family, for work. And we, we just survive it, but the impact of it stays in our body.
It stays in ourselves. And a lot of times it stays in the gut because that solar plexus is there. And that's like the seat of emotions. And because we're just exposed to so many things in our life now that also. Erode our gut. It just becomes a more volatile place to manifest that breakdown. Right? So that's the first thing is to just give ourselves some compassion and grace and recognize, guess what? You're a human.
This doesn't mean you're, it's your fault. It doesn't mean you're somehow not strong enough. It means you've lived a life and you've had some significant challenges that have impacted you and therefore they've impacted your nervous system and how your brain operates and communicates to your body. So we've got to face that instead of fight it, but that means we can heal it. Right. So if we don't even just get to that paradigm shift,
Ashleigh Di Lello (38:01.374) nothing else is possible, right? So once we get to there and we're like, okay, I'm going to approach my gut or any area in your body from beyond just a physical standpoint, then let's talk about, and most people know right off the cuff, some of the things in their life that have impacted them, right? A lot of times connected to that impact or that trauma,
is a lot of unprocessed emotions, right? Because we did survive it, and we didn't wanna be the quote, victim of it. So we didn't allow ourselves to feel the challenging emotions connected to it. And I am guilty of that myself. If I wanted to cry when I was sick, I'd be like, no, Ashley, you've gotta be tough. You gotta keep fighting if you're gonna beat this. And so I didn't allow myself like to feel the depths of that sorrow, nor like the anger.
of like spending my whole teenage years fighting for my life. Like that wasn't super fun. And so with every client I've ever worked through and especially, I mean, every single one, but for sure with the gut, there's some emotional component of something in their life that still needs to be processed. Okay. And it's just doing the work to figure out what that was, or usually there's more than one thing.
And it's not that we have to go back and rehash every detail of it, but it's more important, especially in terms of the gut, what were the emotions connected to it that maybe you didn't allow yourself to sit with, to process in a compassionate way versus a judgmental critical way. What might you still need to say whether to someone or just get it out on paper, right? Because we suppress how we feel too, not just from an emotional standpoint, but
the things we want to say that either we can't or don't feel like we can, none of that goes away just because we don't look at it. I mean, the body speaks emotionally and we know that because every strong emotion is felt in the body. It's not just, I'm angry, we feel it. Anxiety is a physical experience. Depression is a physical experience, right? All emotions are felt physically. So not feeling strong emotions,
Ashleigh Di Lello (40:25.426) is going to be held physically as well. The brain has the memory of it, the details of it, but the emotion of it is stored in the body. And the body just keeps holding on to that and it impacts us until we face it and process it. So although there's many different aspects of my whole process, this is one of the most important ones.
Josh (40:55.346) That is wildly profound to just understand on this level that there's so much more going on in the background at all times that we don't even realize we're holding on to some emotions from 20, 30, 40 years ago that are still so deep seated, they're creating these disease processes. You know, it's interesting when I get stressed out, I find I'm pretty much a modern hippie. I don't really stress out. I get stuck in traffic. I'm like, great. Here's a time to turn on a podcast.
Ashleigh Di Lello (41:22.223) Ha ha
Josh (41:23.326) You know, something horrible happens like, all right, well, here's the opportunity from this. Like I'm just trying to blindly fool myself and just never having stress, which I'm sure I need to see a psychologist about. But when we look at these stresses, these deep seeded, it really brings me back to like Louise Hay, who I'm sure you're familiar with, right? You can heal yourself. We're always getting to these root manifestations of disease. And a lot of this unwinding that you're talking about, a lot of this going back and revisiting really sounds like neuroplasticity.
Ashleigh Di Lello (41:34.135) Yeah.
Ashleigh Di Lello (41:39.594) Sure.
Josh (41:51.894) right, the basic process of rewiring the brain. Can you talk a bit about neuroplasticity? And as a little side twist, this will be like our lemon in the water, a little zing for you, is what is the role of having a healthy gut in having healthy neuroplasticity?
Ashleigh Di Lello (41:52.231) Hmm.
Ashleigh Di Lello (42:09.206) Mm-hmm, absolutely. So let's start, neuroplasticity is really the ability of the brain to change itself in response to experiences. Okay, so we're using that all the time. That's how we learn new skills, right? That's how we get better at the things that we practice.
but it's also how we get stuck in cycles we don't like because the brain learns it, right? So we can have experiences that alter it and then we keep practicing that stress, whether whatever the role it comes in, where it's self-criticism or self-defeat or anxiety or fear or sadness or overwhelm, like all of those different components, the more we practice them, think them, feel them,
the more our brain learns them, because it learns through experience. And so that's why things get worse with time, because the brain has learned them, those neural connections get larger, which means it's activated easier. They become the default pathway, right, in which we function. And...
So we always talk about neuroplasticity in that terms to learn. And what I realized in that same way, well, if we can learn, we can unlearn, right? And yes, that means rewire, but it's also helping our brain unlearn a pattern that has become so established and familiar and the brain wants to do whatever is familiar.
to learn that it can operate in a different way. Right, and that's the beautiful thing about us as humans, we adapt, but we can therefore adapt to something new. And so when we go back. So, when we go back,
Ashleigh Di Lello (44:06.602) We can't change what happened, right? All of us in our lives, we can't even change what happened an hour ago, right? There's no power to change the past and the things that have altered us and have impacted us. So in the most simplistic way, what I want people to understand is, while we can't go back and change what happened, and I'm not saying we have to look at horrible things and think, oh, that was great, because some things aren't, they're unfair, they're horrible, they'll never be right. I'm not saying that, but.
we can go back and change the meaning because it's not just the event. It's the meaning people extracted. I'm not worthy. My body can never heal. I'm broken. All right. I'm not good enough. No one will love me. I'm not smart enough. You know, it's those meanings that now our brain has attached to that experience and us. So it's going back and not only processing, maybe some of the emotions and thoughts, but saying, look at, what was the meaning that I took that now is
holding me stuck, right? Or even the meanings we use to help us survive that now are hurting us. How can I change this meaning? So let me just give an example. For myself, when I went through my illness and then my second journey, I was told all the time, your body just heals slowly. Your connections are off. Even my dentist told me my roots were weird in my teeth. Right?
So I have this meaning that my body is just less than it's broken. Like it's, it's broken, right? I didn't get the best body, right? I, I used to like joke that God fell asleep in my creation and the wires just didn't get connected. And I'm stuck with this body, right? That's broken. And I have a lot of evidence to support that. Look at what I've gone through in my short life with all the way of, as I've supported it. So my body's the short end of the stick.
Versus that is that felt true. But the meaning that I extracted mostly now from my experiences. Look how incredible my body is. Look at what it's healed from. Look at what it has repaired from. Look at its capacity to overcome even insurmountable odds. Like I have the most amazing resilient body that I now through a lot of internal healing, I trust.
Ashleigh Di Lello (46:33.022) and I live my life with confidence that it's gonna support me and I'm gonna support it. Different meanings doesn't change what I went through, but the meaning now empowers me. Instead of me walking around each day with fear, what's next, what's gonna happen to my body? Will it get sick again? What if pain comes back? You know, and all those things, because even when people healing and healing the gut, it's not just that they heal it, there's a fear of it coming back.
Right? And that fear creates those stress hormones that can even create pain in the gut or bloating or whatever, because of the thought around it. And that's where you can see it's not just about healing it, but how you think about it to change its capacity to move forward. So to answer your question, how does the gut
Influence the brain. Well again all of all of those neurochemicals created in the gut are Allow us to think more clearly to have a better mood right to be able to more access those that Motivation like I can heal this I can do this and that's why you have to address both
because if you're just addressing the brain, but you don't have good microbiome, your gut lining is destroyed, you're not nourishing it or rebuilding it, then you're going to continue to face some challenges. And that's why when we do it together, mind and body, like that's when the real magic happens, right? But with that, I will tell everyone.
you have to change your brain's threat response to your gut because now you have fear around it. How's it going to feel today? What if I eat this? Oh my gosh, I'm going on vacation. What's my gut going to do? What if I go out to eat and that fear creates a threat and wherever there's a threat response, the brain sends stress hormones.
Ashleigh Di Lello (48:37.566) which is going to more be apt to aggravate the very symptoms you don't want to happen. And so there is also a journey of reestablishing that trust between your brain and your gut to where you actually trust it to work for you instead of fear it causing you pain and discomfort because whatever you focus on your brain can create and we know that.
So that's another part that just naturally happens when you go through significant challenges, right? Of course, you don't trust your gut and now it doesn't really trust you and so now we have to start repairing that on both ends
Josh (49:20.934) Hmm. It's interesting. So I specialize in inflammatory bowel disease. So that's your Crohn's and colitis. And there's a lot of that. I mean, you get some people who are having 30, 40 plus bowel movements a day. Everything just shakes them loose or in and out of flares. It really is a horrible disease. It is life altering and debilitating and it ruins people's jobs and sex life and personal life and relationships and friendships and everything. It really is one of the greatest robbers we have. It is a growing.
growing pandemic we're seeing or epidemic rather, where these gut diseases happen. And it's interesting that you mentioned the cycle because you have all these issues in your gut which create issues in the brain, which creates anxiety. Then you have higher anxiety. So a higher stress response to the gut because it's been letting you go, which creates more inflammation in the gut, which worsens the issues, which worsens the anxiety. And it becomes this like perpetual energy machine. Now,
What is the process here would you say? Obviously, you know, there's two senses to the gut. We look at the physical, biological, chemical side. We also got to of course look at the emotional side, the mental side of things. Now it can't possibly be as simple unless maybe it is, well, I'm not sick. And it's just these I am statements, I am healthy, which helps, but there's so much more nuance to it. What is your approach to someone who's going through this process?
I'll add some context here. For example, as a holistic nutritionist, I address the gut from many different ways. We do GI mapping. We do assessments of the microbiome. We look at food and lifestyle and medication and supplementation. And we look at environmental toxins like mold and heavy metals and stressors and food and all these different things. But something that I don't address because it's not in my wheelhouse really is emotions. So what is the role that you would say that's hypothetically you and I are working together and we are both.
teaching in this gut program, what would you do with these clients that I'm seeing to help them heal their gut in conjunction with all these other steps?
Ashleigh Di Lello (51:23.106) Well, we would, we would start first by just looking at their life. Like, and this is where we treat the person, not just the symptoms. Right. So, and I know you're doing that from a stress standpoint, but just getting like a life history and, and again, people know like, what were those moments, some of those challenges in your life that you remember, right. And it's easy people are like, Oh, when this happened and some have some really significant ones, others.
grew up in a, in a house that was volatile, right? Whether with mom or dad and their nervous system has been operating kind of in this hyper vigilant state. But as a kid, they couldn't express that they couldn't change it. So they, they store it, right? There's, there's all these different components and that's where it's really important. It's not just when you were a child, it's anything.
Cause I think people sometimes can get locked into inner child and people are like, I had a great childhood, but it's, it's anything at any time in your life. And so we would first kind of talk about what those are. Let's talk about.
what you felt during that, what you didn't feel, because most people suppress, most people suppress what you didn't allow to feel or what you felt and then judged and criticized and got mad at yourself for feeling because we know that self-criticism and judge activates the brain's alarm bells, send stress hormones. So even if we're feeling, but we're judging, we're actually not processing, we're just amplifying the stress response. So most people don't,
allow themselves to maybe feel those challenging emotions, anger, frustration, sad, hopelessness, abandonment, without judging themselves as being weak for feeling them. Right. So with that, I always tell my clients, you're not your emotions, you're a human being having emotions.
Ashleigh Di Lello (53:19.806) And you're not a robot. So if you've gone through a life and gone through some things that have been hard, you're going to have challenging emotions. So let's just look and see which ones maybe still haven't been processed or felt or experienced. What do we need to, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to start writing about it. Um, and not in a traditional journal writing, but in a way of writing that we're actually going to get rid of.
because if we talk about traditional journal writing, no one's really honest if we think one day someone's gonna read it, right? I mean, not really, right? We all have some barriers of wanting to put forth a certain light if someone's gonna read it one day, right? And that's all of us. So this writing is like, let's talk about that experience. What did you wanna say? Who do you wanna say that to? Like just really the most ugly forthright, the things you couldn't say, but they're how you felt. Let's start.
just getting that out on paper. And then you're gonna tear it up, burn it up, throw it away. And it's amazing what starts coming up when people and their brain knows it has that permission because I'm not gonna keep this. And the important part of that is not only does it allow you to try and tap into that deeper subconscious holding of those thoughts and emotions, but because we're letting it go, we're not attached to it. And that's the key, right? Well, I'm not.
I'm not a victim or I'm not an angry person or I'm not, I'm tougher than them. I won't let them hurt me. And it's like, no, that's not who you are, but it is part of your experience. And until we face it, we're gonna keep carrying it with us. So aside from the in-depth nine week process we go through, I can tell that people, that is one of the most effective things you can do to start facing and therefore,
Ashleigh Di Lello (55:21.042) And it's, and it also starts to rebuild that communication and trust because like you just said, I mean, people don't trust their gut. And of course they don't, right? Because look at what it's put them through. But the gut is the body's always trying to communicate to us. And that doesn't mean there's not physiological, biological, environmental aspects.
but our body also speaks emotionally, but we haven't been taught to listen to it from that standpoint. Like, what is it trying to tell me? It's just shut it down, make it go away. And as you start to allow yourself space to feel these things and ride them out and release them, you also start to establish this trust where your body's like, oh, you're listening to me. You're not gonna make me carry all of this anymore. And that establishment of trust also helps you heal.
Josh (56:14.19) Hmm, that is very powerful. One thing that's really interesting, I don't know if our listeners can maybe hear it in your voice, but actually being here on the call with you, I can see as you're sharing these stories, going back to right from the beginning of the call, talking about...
your story and what happened as a teenager and all these things you've overcome. I can see your passion. I can see tears welling up in your eyes. I can see you pushing through to share this story. And I just wanna thank you, Ashley, for being here on the show today, for sharing all of this information, for really this, like, for lack of a better word, putting your heart on your sleeve, really coming out here and just sharing such a rich, deep, authentic detail that is something we often miss. And truthfully, as a man,
I ignore emotions most of the time. And so to be exposed to them is very important as my wife keeps telling me. And so I just want to thank you for being here. Now, before I let you go, I have one last question. Is there anything we haven't talked about or addressed or anything you'd like to say to our listeners before we wrap up?
Ashleigh Di Lello (57:07.797) Yeah.
Ashleigh Di Lello (57:18.982) Yeah. Well, just to an overview and wrap up, I know you're listening and you're still saying, yeah, you know, that's her or that's them.
Or even like you said, I don't really, I don't know. I don't know. Has my life impacted me or altered me or can I change that? Or can I really impact my gut by my brain and neuroscience and facing my emotions? And I just want to affirm. I felt that way. Every client I've ever worked with has felt that way because also when you've gone through what you've gone through for an extended period of time, you erode your belief in yourself, right? Because when you don't heal,
It's like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I heal? And even if you're not even thinking it, it starts to erode our belief in ourself. And that's where what I'm talking about can be hard to get your brain around because I'm telling you that you have this incredible capacity.
within yourself. It's just no one has taught you how to access it. And I want you to know, and yes, I'm standing fully straight up now because I have seen this for four and a half years. I've had 84 year old clients. I have had 15 year old clients. You're never too old. You're never too broken. You're never too stuck. Like beyond repair. We all have the same wiring.
in our brain and how it communicates to our body, which means we do all have the capacity to access it. And that's what I want you to know. I know I have just this long journey and story, but I want you to know I am not the exception to being able to heal. Like you do have that capacity and that
Ashleigh Di Lello (59:08.63) is my most passionate, heartfelt statement, because I want people to at least leave here with that hope that they are powerful, and they do have that same capacity within them, and we're never beyond being able to start to use that.
Josh (59:27.618) Thank you. Thank you for bringing your authentic self, your past, your experience, your knowledge, and just everything you have to this show. I'm sure our listeners are going to have to bookmark and favorite this one, because I think it's something we all need more work on. So Ashley DeLello, thank you so much for joining us today.
Ashleigh Di Lello (59:46.326) You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Josh (59:48.626) It's been an absolute pleasure and hopefully we'll have you back in the future.
Ashleigh Di Lello (59:52.011) I'd love to.