Is the work you’re doing now going to have a generational impact?
Whether we realize it or not, our lives have been shaped by the generations that came before us. And as a woman of multiple heritages, I am intimately aware of the ways I will impact those who come after me.
In today’s episode, I’m meeting with Asha Ramakrishna, Spiritual Mentor and author of The Priestess Code.
Asha lives her life by a simple credo: feel good, be wealthy, give back. In connecting with her heritage–both in this life and her past lives–she’s realized the full scope of her own impact and devoted her life to empowering others.
Through her work in Human Design, and Spiritual Mentorship, she guides her clients to do the same.
Asha helps entrepreneurs and service-hearted people connect with their true selves while also building generational wealth for their descendants.
Join us in today’s episode as we discuss Asha’s experience as a multi-ethnic woman, how she learned to flow with the seasons of her life, and why she practices “sacred commerce” in her business and personal life.
Listen to episode 369 now!
In episode 369 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:
- [4:24] What ‘regenerative’ work is and how it became the focus of Asha’s work
- [9:12] How technology can be detrimental to our spirits, especially during the pandemic
- [12:52] Asha’s personal motto and how it’s carried her through these uncertain times
- [13:53] Accepting yourself as a seasonal being and learning to flow through the seasons
- [17:55] Giving back to the world as part of your own spiritual journey
- [23:29] Recognizing your privilege and learning to live your truth without guilt
- [30:35] How to appreciate your heritage and past lives while being sensitive to cultural appropriation
- [37:12] Coming back to your ancestral home as someone of multiple backgrounds
- [45:30] Connecting with your patroness and recognizing her confirmations
- [50:52] Practicing sacred commerce in your business and your personal life
Resources mentioned by Asha and Elizabeth in the episode:
- Visit Asha’s website
- Connect with Asha on Instagram
- Listen to my interview on Asha’s podcast, Women on Purpose
- Apply for my 2022 Embodied Specialist Training
- Join The Embodied Living Center.
- Email us with questions or feedback.
- Don’t miss an episode of The Embodied Podcast.
Quote from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:
- “When we are in ceremonial space with [our ancestors] and begin to build that relationship, things get shown to us. And when we are shown and we follow the breadcrumbs of what was shown, we find the magic.” – Asha
How was this episode for you?
Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!
About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto
Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.
If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.
Transcripts for Episode 369:
– Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number 369 of the podcast. Today I have my friend and colleague, Asha Ramakrishna with us, and I’m so excited to share Asha with you. If you listened to episode number 367 of the podcast, the solo episode I did two episodes ago where I talked about how I engage with money and money-mindset and prosperity and stuff like that, I mentioned this episode in that one, because the way Asha talks about prosperity and things that are regenerative and sacred commerce is just something I enjoy so much. I enjoy so much watching how she conducts her business as a mystic, as a priestess, as a healer. And though Asha is not technically old enough to be an elder, she has such incredible healing, wise, elder energy. And this is just such a great conversation. I can’t wait to hear how you love it. Everything we talked about, any lengths, anything you might need to reference are in the show notes at untameyourself.com/369. I hope you will go follow Asha everywhere, see what she has going on. And I hope you love this episode. Let’s get into it. Asha!
– Hello.
– Welcome to the show. So excited to have you. Everyone listening, so when I record these interviews, I schedule like way more time than we actually need, because I like to like hang out with guests. After years and years of running the podcast, this is what I realized. Like a lot of people who come on the show, I already know, or at least I’m acquainted with. Some people, I don’t know them at all, but I’m like, “Why would we not take some time to like “connect and hang out a little bit “and like build some energetic momentum before “we start the conversation?” So Asha and I have been orbiting each other’s worlds on, excuse me, for so many years. Finally got to meet in real life recently at like the freaking best birthday party ever, especially in COVID times, for our friend, Trudy LeBron. Do some singing, do some dancing. It was so freaking fun.
– It was life, it was life.
– We needed it.
– Yeah.
– We were like, who knew that was going to be like literal soul medicine? So amazing.
– It really was.
– So my opening question for people during this season. So anyway, I brought that up to say, I didn’t actually know what Asha did. Because like many of us who do, who work in like the mystical or the spiritual sacred realms, it’s kind of like, “I think I know what you do, “but what do you actually do?” I know you wrote a book like, but I was like, “What? “Tell me, tell me more.” So I’m so excited. There’s so many epic things that Asha does and ways that she serves people that we’re going to dig into and talk about. But the opening thing I’ve been asking everyone, this particular season of the show, how was your heart today?
– My heart?
– Yes.
– Oh my gosh, my heart. I thought you were going to ask me how’s my body. And I was like, well, there’s a little tension.
– That’s what I had been asking people. But during like ongoing, even though shifting COVID times I’ve been like, “Oh, I want to check in on people’s hearts.” Because I like for the opening question to also remind the people that are listening to ask themselves the opening question.
– Yeah.
– So it’s like.
– My heart is so full and so vibrant and so excited about life. And also like, you know, navigating like all the things that come my way, and like my heart is also like tender in that it wants me to make sure that I carve out the time, space and place for me.
– Yes.
– So that’s where I’m at.
– I love this. So when we were talking, before I hit the record button, one word that came up several times as you were talking about the variety of things that you do is the word regenerative.
– Yeah.
– So what does that mean to you? Why is it important? Like why is that such a thread in your work and how did that become such a central focal point for you? It’s a big question.
– Yeah, I mean, if I’m honest, I think that for a long time, my word was sustainable, you know? And it was like, “Yeah, sustainable, not enough, “but sustainable.” And then it’s like, “Well, yeah, “sustainable means maintaining at a certain place.” And I feel like what I want to be a part of in everything I do, relationships, business, anything creative or anything that I’m involved in, it’s like, I actually want it to be so that when I feed it, it feeds me and we’re not just feeding each other, but we’re feeding in magnitudes. So regenerative is like, “Okay, if I’m giving of myself “and you’re giving of yourself, “are we actually making things better?”
– Love that. Yeah, you’re giving me a moment, because I’ve been on a sustainable kick for quite a while. It’s my, it’s been two things though. And you said this too, not enough, but sustainable. I’ve been in the realm of sustainable and sufficient.
– Yeah.
– Because to me it felt really important to explore, what is actually enough? And that’s because coming from this like online marketing world, which I know you have been in and around and adjacent to as well, this overemphasis on like, “Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow!” Where it’s like, I don’t, what if I get to a point where I’m good? What if I don’t care if I grow? What if I don’t need more? And it’s not about more, so I’ve been in the realm, but you’re giving me, I’m actually really excited about this. Okay, if you give energy and I give energy, those two things coming together, is that making things better? And it sounds like also beyond us.
– Yeah, and I think that, that question of enough, is it, you got to start there too, right?
– Yeah, yeah.
– Like we have to kind of start, you know, sometimes we can’t jump from zero to 10.
– Yeah.
– Things like regenerative, let’s be regenerative. But wait, what’s regenerative? Like, what does it mean for me? Like how much is enough for me? What are my boundaries? What am I actually looking for, you know? So I think like those questions of enough and sustainable. Like those are important steps to go into. And then once you’re like, “Oh yeah, this is sustainable. “Okay, now that I know what’s sustainable, “now I know what enough is, “now that I know what sustainable is, “what is regenerative?” Like that’s the new exploration that I’m in, is like, what? So now it’s like I buy clothes and I’m like, “Okay, not only am I like paying attention “to all the other things that “I was paying attention to before, but like, “okay, where, who are they donating money to?” Right? Who, like who, yeah, beyond like what their day-to-day operations is, is like, well, what is the level of impact that they want to be a part of? And that in turn, I’m being a part of? And I’m not saying that, you know, I do this perfectly or whatever, but that’s like the inquiry and the curiosity that I’m in. Because like, I think we’ve all kind of seen that we have to go beyond the consciousness and the things that we’ve been paying attention to. We have to kind of evolve and go beyond that. And that horizon of what that is, is an unknown. Like we don’t, even like me. Like I love to look at models of people or civilizations who I feel like have done it well. And even when we look back to that, certain leaders that maybe we admire, it’s not quite there, like no one has really done it in this new frontier kind of way that we’re experimenting doing things, right? And so, it requires for us to like go beyond the healing, our mindset, our healing, you know, those things that affect us personally. It’s actually about our lineage and the very land that we live in.
– Yeah. Okay, so two things. It’s so funny, because I had literally written down, “Did you have to explore sustainability “before you could get to regenerative?” And you literally already answered that. I love talking to people like you. And then this piece that you just said, so it was so fascinating to me in the beginning of the pandemic, I remember people were grasping so hard to find some semblance of finding something that had happened in the past to compare this to, to find any kind of certainty about how it might go or what might work or what might help us. And my thing was, this is different than anything for a million reasons, but one of them also being technology, right? Like when people were like, “Well, during the Spanish flu.” I’m like, “That’s cool, “but how many less people were there on the planet “and they had none of the connectivity that we have now?” Which can be such a miracle, but also such a problem. And we’ve really seen what a problem it was and how detrimental technology has been, especially social media in a lot of ways, to the unfolding and unraveling and how the pandemic has panned out. So, first of all, do you want to say anything about that?
– I mean, I understand. I think I also, even though, you know, I mean, I had my shit together. Like I was doing fine, but I still didn’t have my shit together. Like I still was like, even though I was supporting other people, I was still like, “Holy crap, what does this actually mean?”
– Yeah.
– Like the level of stress on the body is very, was very, very real. Even though I was like with other people, like, “Okay, how do we make your business work? “What do we need to do? “Where do we need to pivot?” Like, even though I was in that, those dialogues and fully resourced through it, thank the universe, I was still going through that. So I understand that, like, when it’s so uncertain, so heightened the uncertainty, I mean, it’s always uncertain. Like we just think it is. We think it’s certain, but it really is uncertain.
– This is what, can we pause on this? Does everyone listen? Even when you think it’s certain, there’s like a level of uncertainty, you’re just not perceiving.
– Always.
– Always.
– But like, I mean, we do also have to keep ourselves like a little sane, right? Like, “Okay, tomorrow I will be doing this.” Like, you know, there’s some sanity in the rhythm that we enter into of like, “Okay, what do I need to do tomorrow?” And so on. And like, what’s, you know, and looking forward to things, right? Like looking forward to going places, looking forward to seeing things. Like there’s something that took, like there’s some level of that that’s like normal and beautiful and human, and then there’s the level where we put so much emphasis that we essentially direct our entire being towards that thing that we think is certain. And in fact it could miss us, or we could be off because we don’t have the answers. Like I mean, there’s some things that I feel certain of, and also like, I’m like, “Okay, I give myself space to be wrong about that. “And I give myself space to like “be in curiosity and then the mystery of life.” Right?
– Yeah, woo. Yeah. So fascinating. You, before we got on, as well, mentioned, and I think this kind of really relates to everything we were just saying, because I think if we lay these three things over all of that stuff, we actually can see, whether it’s with certainty or not, opportunity. So your like kind of three things are, feel good, be wealthy, give back. So I’m curious for you, however pandemic life has been overwhelming, ’cause it’s been overwhelming for every frigging body in some way, shape or form, or several. How has like laying those frameworks or themes over all of this, like how has integrating those things or like, ’cause I know you’re a person who deeply walks what you talk, practices what you preaches, whatever phrase you prefer, how has those things helped you navigate through the uncertain times?
– You know, sometimes we over-focus on one area, right? Because we have to. And it’s okay that all three aren’t equal. Right? Because we, I, so one of the principles from, that I wrote about in my book, The Priestess Code, is, you’re a seasonal being, accept it. And it was definitely something that I, you wouldn’t know, you wouldn’t believe this, but I actually had no clue what that meant for a long time. Like it came to me and I was like, “That’s really nice. “I don’t live that way, what does that mean?” Like, I’m the go, go, go, get more and more and more type person. And this thing of like paying attention to our seasons was a new concept for me. Now I live it, and also, I mean, I just practice it, right? So I think that depending on the season that we’re in, there’s going to be one that is going to be overemphasized or two that are going to be overemphasized. And then when we’re like, so wrapped up in the two and the one of it, whatever it may be, then it’s like, “Ooh yeah, “I’ve kind of forgotten that other one. “Let me like spend some time there.”
– Okay, I love this because where my brain is taking this is, so for like three or so years, I scaled my business back and I intentionally knew, I was like, “I’m going to make less money. “I’m going to have to accumulate a little debt “to keep this thing afloat. “And I’m cool with it, “because I know about seasons.” Right? Like I firmly believe in seasons and cycles. And I’m like, “And I need to do this, “’cause I need to reset my own foundations.” And so I knew, it’s not that I was making a sacrifice, but I knew I was just going to be in a season of not growing like outwardly. It’s kind of like, one of my favorite examples is like bamboo, how it like grows down for like five years or seven years or something like that before it ever even sprouts up. But then when it sprouts up, it’s like, explodes. And so what I’m looking at here in the feel good, be wealthy, give back is, like you’re saying, you know, certain seasons, one thing might have to take precedence, two things or whatever is the order of them. Like the flow of like, if we did like an order of operations type thing, that probably changes too in the seasons, right?
– Yes, and I do feel, I mean, okay, look, I’m an immigrant, oldest of five. I still like help my mom out financially. So for me, be wealthy, it just like, just cannot be forgotten, right? Like, that’s just like my reality, my priorities. And I don’t know, I feel like the order, there’s some, there’s something to the order of feel good as the very first thing. ‘Cause if you go with like, “Okay, be wealthy.” As the first thing. Yeah, sure, you can be wealthy, but not feel amazing and deplete yourself, you know, like be in burnout, right? You can do give back as your priority. And then we all know if we’ve been that person or we know those people who are just give, give, give, give, they forget what they want. They don’t, they can’t even pay their own bills, but they’re buying everyone else gifts. Like, you know? So, my sense is like, ensure that you know, it’s not just about what feels good like in my being in my pleasure. It’s like also like, are you healthy? Are we healthy? Are we living in, is our environment a sanctuary? Are the relationships that I’m in relationships that actually we feed each other?
– Yeah.
– You know? And then, then we have space to, “Okay, let me build my generational wealth.” Right? And then when you get to a place where you’re like, “Okay, I got things in a good place. “What if I, part of my wealth plan was, “also had a structure where I was giving “to the things that matter to me “that will make the world a better place “or the things that allow the world to be regenerative?” Right? So for me, I always have things that are related to, I mean, this was instilled in me, you know, growing up in Venezuela, Catholic mother, always things related to educating girls. Like, you know, that’s just like a thing, right? Like if you can educate young women from your country or from your, the places where you’re from, it just feeds my heart anyway. So that, and something that, and the other piece that is important to me is land back programs. Because, and now I want to talk about this, because there is so much tension in the very lands that we occupy energetically. Right? We live on stolen land, all of us. And so that in and of itself, it’s all the healing that we would each need to be spending time in, quite frankly. It’s like, “Can I ask permissions of “this very land that I live in? “Is it okay for me to be here? “And how can I repair what has been done?” You know?
– Yeah.
– So anyway, those are.
– All right, I’m always taking notes so I can come back to certain things, but I have to tell you something funny.
– What?
– The other day. So I think, you and I have talked about where we have some similar kind of like, whether you want to consider it a pet peeve or just things that we’re like, “Eh, that’s not really where I want to put my attention “in this whole spiritual world or whatever, this industry.” And I’m not really into, you know, people are talking about the new earth. I’m like, “That’s cool.” People talk about creating heaven on earth. I’m like, “I believe in that.” Honestly, I believe heaven is right here on earth. Hell is right here on earth. We’re either creating one or the other, every single damn day with all of our choices. What I’m not really into is this whole like ascension conversation. Especially when it has the flavor of like, “Let’s ascend somewhere else “so we could basically not have to deal with “what’s going on here.” Is what a lot of it feels like. And the other thing, I’m never into anything when the flavor of it is creating separation. And even people who are talking about unity are talking about like unifying in whatever way they’ve made themselves elite or superior. Right? Whether that’s, “We’re the ascending ones.” Or, “We’re the 144,000.” Or like, you know, there’s so many of these different like narratives that overlap and intersect or whatever. And I’m like, “That’s cool, but like, “you’re still creating separation.” Like you’re just separating your group from like the rest of us who are, you know, trying to be here on earth and figure out what the hell is going on. But the other day, and this is related to your land back thing. I saw some post that was like, “We should all go buy land “and create communes and whatever.” And I’m like, “Cool, so we should just “continue the cycle of colonization? “But from a more elevated perspective?”
– Right.
– It’s the same shit in a different package.
– Yeah, it can definitely feel that way. You know? And so, I don’t know. The place where I try to have compassion too is understanding that we are all at different developmental levels and the people who want to buy land to create a commune are definitely like thinking more, you know, more sweetly than our Wall Street friends.
– Of course.
– Okay? And so I think that what we don’t realize when we’re in that let’s build a commune place, is that there’s actually another level of development that includes all the other consciousness levels. So that it’s not about, “Let’s have us who are more evolved live together.” But it’s actually like, “Wait a second. “We all live here with each other, all kinds of people.” And it doesn’t mean like you can’t live in places that, you know, in communities that you love, like by all means do that. Like that’s super like nourishing, right? And we’re in it together. So if we are excluding people that don’t have the same level of access to that beautiful land that we have, we are not really solving the problem. We’re solving our own problem.
– Yes.
– And that’s good. And there may be an opportunity to actually open the scope a little bit more.
– Well, and as you’re saying that, I’m looking back at the note and I’m seeing the word regenerative.
– Yeah.
– And it’s actually not regenerative.
– That’s right. If it’s like, “Okay, it’s just us. “It’s only us, let’s close the door.” How much, it’s good for you, and maybe it’s not great for everybody else.
– Yeah, yeah. And then I think about, so for example, moving to Miami, you know, I was totally called here. At a certain point in the beginning of this year, it was like, first of all, what became clear was, “Get yourself out of California.” I wasn’t exactly sure why. I initially thought it might be, because I didn’t want to go through another fire season in the Bay Area. But it was just like, “Get out of California.” And I was like, “Okay, where could I possibly go?” And then it was like, “Miami, like go live in a crib, “like go be near like at least part of your lineage.” And I’m going to come back to this, because I want to talk with you about being like mixed race and multiethnic. So I came here and then the community here is like so amazing and so aligned. And you know, it’s not survivor’s guilt. I don’t feel guilty, but I have, and not even that I’m like a survivor, but like there’s some similar texture to the way I’ve been feeling here that is almost like some kind of like survivors grief. I feel like I escaped from something and got myself, which included hella privilege to be able to like, just up and move across the country and decide, and be able to do that in like four months, because there’s no one but me, you know? So like, I didn’t have to worry. I was like, it was stressful, but I was able to do it. But I’m like, to have that mobility to get myself out of a situation that I don’t want to be in that so many people don’t have. I’ve been having some, like, maybe we’ll call it mobility grief or guilt, I don’t know. But I mean, I’m hearing what you’re saying around, and I’m wondering, ’cause it was very, it was just very important, like from my own guidance to be like, “You gotta go. “You gotta go and you got to get your some, “get yourself someplace where the environment “could really support you.” I was like, “Okay, like, it feels very self-serving.” But I am, now that I’ve been here for a little while and I’m settled, I’m starting to see the ways in which it is regenerative. So thank you for kind of just reminding me how important that is. It kinda just helped me as I, ’cause I’ve been really feeling and thinking about this, I don’t know what to call it. Mobility, survivor’s guilt, grief, whatever. Lately I’ve been trying to reconcile that and your regenerative word helps.
– A lot of us who are immigrants. Like for me, you know, immigrating from Venezuela, I came here by myself, have threads of that, because especially with social media, right? Family members, I mean, and like, if you know anything about Venezuela, it’s like really bad right now, right? Maybe not when I first came to the US, but they all see the life that I lead. Right? The life that I have, the beauty that I’ve created in my life. And sometimes for sure, they call me, you know, out in it, right? Or there’s resentment. And you know, I’ve been in that place too, where it’s like, “Ooh, am I supposed to feel bad about “the incredible opportunity that I had in life “and that I’ve just like, took it in?” And there’s been moments where I feel guilty, but I also know, and I also know that if I wasn’t doing as well as I’m doing, I would not be able to have the same level of magnitude of impact in the world or in my little world than I can now. Right? Like this kind of way of a life. I’ve been able to raise two amazing daughters who are super sensitive and who like disseminate that kind of like kindness to the world also, you know? And when you live in a place where you’re having to figure out the basics, it’s really hard to be kind. It really is, it’s hard to be kind when you are like surviving, in survival mode.
– I love this point because so often, you know, I’m from Staten island. So you’re going to hear me out here sometimes being like, “This person’s an asshole.” Or, “This motherfucker.” Right? But I’m saying that sometimes to blow off some steam, but I’m also being like, “I wonder what’s going on with them, “that they are acting like an asshole.” Right, because I don’t believe anyone actually is an asshole or a motherfucker or like toxic. I don’t believe in toxic people. Like I believe that people are, that if that’s where they are, if that’s where their behavior is, there’s some stuff going on. Like I’m always going to come back to the compassion piece and I’m with you. Like I’ve worked with enough people. I’ve done enough work on myself to see like, that’s exactly it. No one is behaving that way. No one’s making those kinds of choices. No one’s showing up that way when everything’s okay.
– But it doesn’t mean we have to be in relationship with them.
– Listen, I say this all the time. Explains it, doesn’t excuse it.
– Yeah.
– Right? I can have compassion for it. Doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it. Quick break in the show, everybody, to let you know, the applications are open for my 2022 Embodiment Specialist Training. I am so excited about this training. It is like seven or eight years in the making. It is expanded beyond what was Wild Soul Movement Teacher Training since 2016. And this is really for anybody who feels the pull to graduate from doing basic level self-help personal development and spiritual work and truly embody self-love healing and wholeness so they can live soulful and soul centered lives that contribute to collective healing and liberation as well as people who are wanting to really integrate the light and the dark. Who place a high value on kindness, generosity, integrity, humility and reverence. Who know that while we receive all kinds of gifts and talents and genius, we are the instruments, not the players. This is for people who want to prioritize embodying their divine nature in order to serve the human experience as well for those who would like to incorporate embodiment work into their professional lives in some way, shape or form, or just deepen their own practice. So if you want to learn more about the training, which starts in February, 2022, head to untameyourself.com/specialist. There are some dates by which to apply. If you need an extended payment plans, we have a couple of different extended payment plans, and it’s just going to be an incredible alchemical transformative experience. It’s going to be a small intimate group, ’cause I will also be mentoring and working with everyone one-on-one throughout the 13 months of the training. So again, really deep, really beautiful, really incredible experience. If you are interested, go to untameyourself.com/specialist. And I will be so excited to receive your application if you decide to submit one. This also feels like it relates to something else you and I were talking about before we came online to record the interview, which I think about this so much. And it’s only something that I’ll have a conversation like this about. I will not post it on social media, because social media, like a blog or whatever, not nuanced enough and Instagram posts, not nuanced enough. But this thing about looking at the Akasha within all of us. And you said it, and I wrote it down, I hope I got it accurately. You can fine tune it, if you want me to. How whether or not in this incarnation we have a certain lineage. And you were speaking specifically about Egypt, because you’re taking people on a pilgrimage to Egypt next year, but we’ve interacted with the medicine at some point.
– Yeah.
– Because this is something for me. And I know you and I share a value around like anti-racism, social justice, all these things and integrating them into our businesses. From a, let’s call it a spiritual perspective, energetic perspective, for those who believe in reincarnation. You know, a lot of us are coming in with memories, with knowledge, with skills, with wisdom, from lineages that we weren’t born into in this lifetime. And because like cultural appropriation is a thing, like we want to be sensitive to the current climate without also negating or abandoning what’s also true. What we also hold from like our, not only ancestral lineages, but our like lifetime lineages.
– Yeah, it’s complex because we don’t have the answers. Right? It’s a mystery.
– Yeah.
– What my spiritual guides tell me, I’m pretty sure that people are going to be upset that I’m saying this, but what people, what my guides have said is that we actually incarnate within the same lineage.
– Oh, interesting.
– I don’t know. And you know, how can I defy someone who feels like they’ve lived some other thing, right? You know, I went to Egypt and people are like, “I’ve been here.” Okay, so we’ve been there, but does that mean that we were from there? Because we all go on pilgrimages.
– Exactly.
– And also, especially with Egypt, I feel, and in India, you know, these are places where people go to find their connection to divinity, right? So of course we would have, you know, remembrance of lifetimes where we’ve been in certain places. I don’t have an answer to that. What I do know is that our ultimate purpose is to pay attention to what’s in front of us.
– Yeah.
– Our skin, look at your skin, look at your hair, look at the way you are and that will tell you exactly what you need to focus on.
– Yeah. I love this point of, “I’ve been here before, “doesn’t mean I was born here in some other lifetime.” Who knows what we, where we could have traveled through, what significant experiences we may or we may not have had. What you’re reminding me of, so if we go with this, you incarnate into the same lineage. This segue is like literally so beautifully, I couldn’t have asked for a better segue into, those of us, like you and I who have multiple lineages. Right? Like half my family, my dad’s side of the family is Puerto Rican. There’s also Italian on my dad’s side, there’s Italian, German, and Irish on my mom’s side. And on the Puerto Rican lineage, everything passed through that little islands. The slave trade, the colonizers and the indigenous Tainos. And I have all of that in my blood. So even in just that one aspect of my own lineage, there’s like four lineage, you know? So it’s like, literally, I incarnated in this life with like eight lineages. So I’m like, “Damn, no wonder I feel connected to like, “to the world in such a way, you know?” And I know you have your own, so that’s fascinating. I don’t have a question there, I’m just saying that because.
– It is so fascinating, right? And I think everyone goes into the, getting their DNA tests to figure out, “Where am I from?” And you know, I don’t know, I’m a little apprehensive to do that, but I feel, and what I’ve witnessed for myself and my students is that when we show up in ceremony to build relationship with our ancestral council and for people who like want to do that, like make sure that you are calling in the whole healed benevolent ancestors. I just always have got to put that.
– Totally, yes.
– Yeah, let’s make sure they’re whole and healed and they are benevolent. I, my sense is that when we are in ceremonial space with them and begin to build that relationship, things get shown to us.
– Yeah.
– And when we are shown and we follow the breadcrumbs of what was shown, we find the magic. We find the magic that’s living in our bones. You know, we find the magic that has been running through our veins for lifetimes.
– Totally, I love this so much, whereas I kind of want us to be like, “Where’s your magic?” Two things, like, “Where’s your magic?” And then, “What feels like?” ‘Cause I notice I’ll go in seasons with cycles, since there’s like so many different lineages for me. Like, I’ll be like all about like, “Okay, let me connect with my Taino ancestors. “Let me connect with like the Celtic ancestors, “let me connect, you know, all these different things.” Spain has always like, from the first time I visited Spain in high school before I ever looked at any of this, or even, like, I was like, “What? “I’m Puerto Rican.” Like I had no awareness as like a 15-year-old that Puerto Rican in my lineage meant Spain and Portugal, West Africa, indigenous people of the Caribbean. I was like, I thought it was like its own thing. You know? So I’m curious for you, where’s your magic? And then also, is there any particular lineage that you’re like is really buoying or supporting you right now or that you’re totally drawn to?
– Oh, I mean for me, I mean, okay, look at me.
– Some people are listening, not watching.
– Okay, okay. So if you look at me, everyone, like nobody believes that my first language is Spanish. Like nobody. That when I start speaking Spanish, they’re like, “Wait, what? “I thought you were an Indian lady.” Right? So, but I look very Indian. So that tells me something, right? When you look in the mirror, that tells you something. The unity that lives within you tells you something. So for me, I mean the Hindu traditions are so rich and, you know, I certainly don’t know every layer and every aspect of it, it’s such a deep, deep mystery. And a couple of years ago, there’s a group here in Boston of two black women. One was of Hoodoo lineage and one was of like Haiti, I think her tradition was from. And they had this group for black and indigenous people of color in the Boston area. And we gathered for like five months, right? And they, it was basically what we were doing was like African healing and learning about all of that. And I really went in as, “Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” Like, I mean, it’s like I, my family says that I am, you know, that I have African blood, but obviously I don’t look that way nor do I have, you know, ties to it, and they were like, “Yes, come, the fact that you even asked means come.” Right?
– Right, right.
– Okay, so I go and I’m learning, you know, all these things that I know the first, they all love me now, they call me Mama Asha. But I know the first moment I walked in, they’re like, “You are not African.” Right? But I was like, “Okay.” I was just kind of coming in here. And after five months when we did the final ceremony and one of the young women went into a trance, she, after she came out of it, she says, “Okay, who is this with the blue skin and tongue out?” And I was like, “That’s my people.” And I thought, “Isn’t that something?” I came here to connect with something that I was curious about and like tiptoeing into, but even doing that, they showed me where I really need to be paying attention.
– I’m getting …
– Kali, obviously.
– Yes. Thank you for clarifying for anyone who wasn’t picking up on that. That gave me so many, like goosebumps, truth bumps. However you want to put it. I want to come back to this piece of, look at me, that tells me what I should be focusing on. Because for me, I’m so ethically ambiguous. So I mean, and literally this is my thing, my whole life of people being like, “What are you?” And what’s fascinating is that the people who are something that I am usually pull it out. They’re like, “Oh, you’re whatever.” When I’m salsa dancing, Latin people are always like, “Oh, are you Puerto Rican?” And I’m like, “How do you know?” And in salsa, this actually made me cry a couple of years ago when I was in LA, when I was dancing a lot, there was like this one week where maybe like three or four people were like, “Oh, are you Puerto Rican?” I was like, “Yes, how the hell do you know?” They were like, “It’s the way you dance.” And I just like started sobbing. I was like, you know? Like that’s really in me. And so thank you for this. And even like moving to Miami, this happens on the show sometimes where I’m like, I’m having my own whole moment, and I’m probably going to cry, I cry on my own show all the time. Moving to Miami and I’m like, “Okay, well, “if I’m all these things, I can’t live in, “near or on land of all my lineage, “but how can I, where is a place in “the United States of America “that I can get as close as humanly possible to like “at least some part of my own lineage?” And that’s what it was like, “Okay, Miami.” Because that’s going to put me at least around a lot of other Caribbean, Latin people, and at least on one body of water that for sure my ancestors communed, convened, traveled at some point.
– Yeah.
– You know?
– I’m so with you on that.
– Yeah, yeah. And I’ve, this is also something I have felt guilty about is being most drawn to my lineage on that side of my family and not emphasizing enough, like the other things that run through me. So what I’m hearing you say is there’s nothing wrong with that and I really need to be paying attention to that and not making myself like bad, ’cause I’m not looking more into like, well, where are we from in Italy? And what’s going on in Ireland and Germany for us?
– And your curiosity will open up when it needs to, you know?
– Yeah.
– I mean, I’m for sure consider myself more culturally Latina than I do feel Indian because of where I grew up. So like you, Miami to me is home for me.
– Yeah.
– I mean, it’s home. It’s like, my people are there. My Arepas are there.
– By the way, you probably already know, but I can’t, at some point when you come visit, the Arepa place in Miami. Oh no, it’s not Miami Shores. It’s the upper east side, it’s MIMO. So freaking good, we will go.
– Going, we will go, we will go. So yeah, I mean, that’s that thing of home. And then, you know, the ocean, right? Has so much, so much energy of bringing us back to ourselves.
– Yeah.
– I mean, the rituals that we can go just by going in the water, just by going in the water, as simple as that is coming home.
– In September, 2016, I went to a wedding in Barcelona and then the woman who, it was there, ’cause that’s where she was from. And her family lived, I forget what was the name of their town, but it was a beach town. And it was the first time I ever swam in the Mediterranean. And I was just, I was with my ex who we were like on our way out. We knew we were breaking up, but we went on this trip anyway, because we had planned this epic trip. We’re like, “Let’s go.” And I was with all these people that I wasn’t super close with. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience where you’re like, I just, I need to come back so I can have the experience I need to have, because I would have a full on life altering ceremony here in this ocean right now, and this is not the environment or the company in which for me to do it. But that’s been on my, I got to go back and get my body in that body of water again, because even just being, like putting my head under that water, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to have to come back.”
– You know, this is why my little, my little secret of the things I do is that if I go somewhere, even if I’m going with other people or whatever, I take myself and have my own little adventure, because I want to experience, like, you know, sometimes like I’m such a mom in that way. Like, you know, where I’m like, “Hey, is everyone okay?” Right? I want to have like a day where it’s just like about me and that land and asking permissions and like being able to be in like my magical, because I know wherever, I mean, this is like a thing for me, it’s like, honestly, I can go to Chicago and have a pilgrimage, like it’s who I am, it’s just what happens. So, I know, life is like …
– I’m just laughing, because, same.
– I mean, not that Chicago …
– Listen, my whole fucking life is a pilgrimage.
– Sometimes it feels that way. And especially when it’s just me solo, right?
– Yes.
– Well, life will take me to these places that I’m like, “Ah, oh, my God.”
– Yeah, yeah. So, and I’m looking right at her. So I’m excited to ask you this, if there are any, like, do you have a patroness or like a deity or? Because for me, it’s Mother Mary. Everywhere I go, it doesn’t matter where I am in the world. This makes me want to cry too. She pops right up.
– Yeah.
– And some like, very obvious, like, “I’m here with you and I never leave you.” Way. Literally, no matter where I am. And I’m just like, “Okay, I’m yours forever.” You know? And that like made me think of that when you said, because sometimes that’s when I know I’m on a pilgrimage, as soon as I see her and I’m like, “Oh, okay. “I came to the right place.” Like, it’s like, you know, I can have mundane travel experiences, but as soon as, once I get, when she’s there, like right up in my face in a very obvious way and this like, my tears of truth start rolling, I’m like, “And I’m on a pilgrimage.” Even though that wasn’t necessarily the plan.
– Yeah. I probably have a few. Mary was instrumental in my mothering. I really struggled in my mothering. And to me, her essence really carried me through times that were really, really tough. I mean, that’s really why, that’s why I got into human design. That’s why I got in, because I had this kid who is now an amazing marvelous human, but at the time was like, the nice word is like, she was spirited. That’s a very nice word for what she was.
– Now, am I remembering this correctly or am I making it up? Do you, is she triple Scorpio or triple Virgo? Don’t you have a child who’s like?
– She’s very Virgo, yeah.
– Okay.
– She’s not triple, but she is very Virgo.
– Because I know you’ve commented on some of my posts, and you’re like, “And this is my daughter.”
– Yeah, she is very, very Virgo.
– So Caroline, oh, she just had to step away from the computer for a second, so we’ll just edit out that little pause.
– Yes, she’s very Virgo and she’s also a reflector.
– Ooh.
– And yeah. So there was a lot in the early days where I was struggling and Mary would just hold me, you know? Because growing up in Venezuela, that Catholic Mother Mary, you know, iconic essence was, it was ingrained in me, right? So, and then later on, you know, Saraswati of compassion and Kwan Yin, Kwan Yin and Saraswati are similar. So the compassion and then Kali, Kali Ma came on, online for me about four years ago, I want to say. And then I have also Yogananda.
– Oh.
– He shows up when I’m like, “Am I supposed to be here?” And then there’ll be like a picture of him. And it’s like, “Oh, okay, thank you.”
– Oh, my goodness, I love that.
– “It’s safe.”
– That’s amazing. I always love asking people. For me, it’s so intimate. I feel like when I know who your people are, and I call that like your people, right? It’s like your divine support squad. I feel like now I know you better.
– Oh, yeah?
– Yeah, yeah. I had a monumental experience in 2013. Durga came for me to show me who I actually am and connect me to my feminine essence, which was not prissy or girly or anything that culture tells you is feminine. She was like, “No, there’s a warrior goddess option “and that’s what you are.” And I was like, “Oh, my whole life makes sense now, “thank you so much.”
– It would be really fascinating to see what her mirror aspect is in, maybe in the African or what, you know, Puerto Rican lineage, Taino, right?
– Yep.
– The lineage.
– I wonder if, I’m not going to think through this out loud on the show right now, but that is actually a super interesting question. And then of course, and I kind of, like you said, like being raised like very Catholic, you know, Jesus and Mary Magdalene are huge for me. And then also Isis. Isis came in 2014. And you know what was fascinating? I bought, my first tarot deck was called The Mythical Goddess Tarot. And Isis was on the cover before I knew who she was or what she looked like. And then it was just like thing after thing after thing after thing with Isis. And I was like, “Okay, I’m paying attention now.” And even just recently, actually I get craniosacral therapy from this amazing, amazing, brilliant, intuitive, very gifted woman. And apparently Isis walked right through my living room during my session. And she was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And meanwhile, like, literally the couple of days before in one of my archetype calls, we were working with the sovereign queen and somebody had had an Isis experience and I’m like, “Oh, she’s just hanging out in the neighborhood this week.”
– Confirmations.
– Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Okay. As we kind of start moving in the direction of winding up, winding down here, did we leave any loops open that you wanted to close?
– No.
– Okay. And I wanted to ask about sacred commerce, because I love, I love the way you talk about money. I love how you embody wealth and prosperity in such a beautiful, it just feels so integrated and reverend and humble. And also just like from a Virgo friend, fucking practical, which I love. So where does this term sacred commerce come from? Tell us about like, basically tell us whatever you want to tell us about that.
– Where do I begin?
– I know it’s big. I’m like, “Yeah, we’re wrapping up, “but I’m going to ask this huge question.” No big deal.
– You know, where I … It was a journey. And it was a journey of exploration of what does it mean? What would it mean for business to have those three ethos online? Feel good, be wealthy, give back. If that framework were alive in business, individual businesses. And for me, even as a like entity, like what would it look like, right? And so, like you said, it’s like, we pay attention to the things that are around us, right? And when I went to Bali, so I took a group of people to Bali on pilgrimage, and there was a temple that we went to and the way we got to that temple wasn’t even on the itinerary, of course, just like all magical things are never on the itinerary.
– Right.
– We landed at this, the guides were like, “Oh, no, you must go here, ’cause there’s dragon energy “and you need protection and blah, blah, blah.” Because, you know, I’m a sensitive soul and all this good stuff. And so we get there and the three altars essentially represented those three principles. And then I come down from the temple, there’s stairs going up, I come down and there is a honey bee station to buy honey. And if you don’t know this about me, I’m crazy about honey. I’m crazy about bees. I feel like the way they do community.
– Yes!
– The way they do like sourcing what they need.
– Totally.
– You know, utilizing what’s around them and all, I mean, I think like they are the teachers, right? Of how to be in community and, I don’t know, Dharma and generating food and all that. And so the fact that there was honey at the bottom of this temple was like confirmation again. Right? And so we come back to the US and then the pandemic happened and I was like, “Okay, I have this framework. “People are needing to pivot. “They’re needing to figure this out. “It’s time to bring this out. “It’s time to bring it out in a way that is like structured “and I can support people through it.” And that’s where I got to mega practice it with people. Like if I wasn’t already practicing it in my life, I definitely practiced it in 2020 and into 2021. It’s like, “How do we do this? “How do you want to restructure? “How do you want to pivot? “How do you want to do things? “What is it that you need to be thinking about? “What is it that you need to heal? “What is it that, what power within you is it “that you need to access? “Ooh, let’s look at your astrology. “Let’s look at your human design. “Let’s look at your Dharma type.” Like, what are all these archetypes that can help you expand who you are from a whole, healed, benevolent way? And then can we ensure that that last piece of the regeneration or the giving back comes online? So not only are you, like so that you can operate from a, my cup runneth over, but also so that whatever it is that you’re pouring out is feeding the very ground where you live in, you know? Or the ground of this world, right? And just not forgetting that part, because it’s so easy in this society to only be thinking of, “Do I feel good? “Am I building generational wealth?” And then we really forget that last piece of, you know, what is the impact that I have? Beyond like the impact for my one-on-one or my students or my clients or whatever. No, I’m talking about bigger impact. Where do you want to put your money in? Like, why are you, you know? Like, I had this friend who used to say, “You vote with your dollar.”
– Yeah.
– Right? And so like, where are we voting? How are we voting?
– I love that, I love that phrase.
– Where are we putting this money? And I, and the practicality piece for me has to be there just because of like who I am. Like, I have a family, I got a kid in college. Like, you know?
– Yeah.
– It has to be grounded.
– Yeah, yeah. I love that. I feel like for our audience that that’s going to give people a lot to consider. And I was smiling there because that’s literally what happened for me in 2020 and 2021 too. Like all those questions, all those inquiries, all those reevaluations and being like, “Okay, like, how do we want to do this for the long haul?” And there was also something coming through around, “Listen, the world is never going to be the same. “And we need to be welcoming people into “all that we’re going to have to go through as a human race, “to like adjust to that things will be different.” You know? Things will be, we’re not going back to anything. We, like, there will be semblances of what used to be, but like, there’s really the before times and the after times, that’s shit’s just real.
– Yeah, I think so. And I also believe that it’s an incredible opportunity for us to do that, like digging deeper into, “What am I about and what actually is that impact that, “you know, maybe some people call it legacy, “but what is that impact that “I want to leave the world with?”
– Yeah.
– That is real for me, that it’s like authentic, that it’s honest of who I am. Right? Like somebody the other day was like, “You’re a thought leader.” I’m like, “I don’t care if that’s a title.”
– I’m with you. You’re like, “Uh.”
– I mean, honestly, it’s like, am I going to like, am I going to make good money? And the thing that I’m making good money in, is it going to be like a positive thing for generations to come? Like, can we think about like 14 generations forward and is the things that I’m doing helping that or not?
– Yeah. I love that. Yeah, the word legacy never really resonates for me. I just, I love to think about the ripple effect. And I love to also think about like the generational healing, like seven generations ahead, seven generations behind. That whatever I’m doing is literally rippling through forwards and backwards in time. And that like that, I love to think about the impact in that perspective. Amazing, oh my God, we could do this. I think I was on your podcast and it was the same. As the interview was coming to an end we were like, “Well, we could keep doing this for 17 more hours, “but I guess we got to go now.” So we’ll put that. We’ll put, we’ll get the link to my interview on your show. We’ll put that in the show notes. Anything else that, you know, your book and all the things. Where, is there a place you like people to follow you on social media? Or that’s not really your thing?
– I like Instagram. Yeah, I like that format. Sometimes people probably get to know me a little more on Facebook, just because it’s sometimes easier to say random things. And so, yeah.
– Okay.
– Those two.
– So I know you’re at Ashaisnow on Instagram. And then what is your website?
– Ashaisnow.
– Ashaisnow.com is also your website? Great. And again, we’ll put all the things in the show notes. Thank you so much, I always love talking to you, connecting with you, being in the field of your wisdom. You know, you, I know you’re not like an elder-elder. You’re older than me, but not like at elder chronological age, but I always feel like I’m in the presence of an elder when I get to talk to you or be around you or interact with you. So just thank you so much for bringing that, the wisdom, the reverence, the breadth of experience and just all your, everything you do, love.
– Thank you.
– Thank you.
– Thank you.
– Of course.
– Thank you for having me for the conversation, the space, and I can’t wait to go dance with you in Miami.
– Oh my goodness, it’s going to be so good.
– And the Arepas.
– Oh my God, we’re going to eat and dance our way all over town, fantastic. And listen, I’ve been practicing my Spanish. I’m going to be real good by the time you come.
– Okay, okay.
– All right, everyone, go get more Asha in your life in all the places that we talked about, where you can find her. Share up the interview. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll talk to you later.