WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

75. Releasing the Guilt of Expectations & Reclaiming Joy: Asha's Story & Guidance

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 75

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Asha Wilkerson shares her powerful journey from law school and tenured teaching to ancestral healing work, exploring the courage it takes to follow your intuition rather than societal expectations.

• Breaking free from familial and societal expectations even when you've achieved the "dream job"
• Reconnecting with your intuition through creating quiet spaces and intentional practices
• Understanding the connection between food choices and mental clarity
• How breathwork can help access deeper states of consciousness and ancestral wisdom
• Reframing ancestral honoring from struggle and sacrifice to joy and freedom
• Finding the courage to trust yourself even when others question your choices
• Small, sustainable steps to begin connecting with your intuition and authentic self

Connect with Asha on Instagram @AshaWilkersonESQ or visit her website ashawilkerson.com/register to learn about her upcoming workshop "Meet Your Ancestral Guides" and her 12-week group program "Guided" starting April 17th.

Learn more about Asha

Asha Wilkerson is an intuitive healing guide, breathwork facilitator, and ancestral healing practitioner who helps high-achieving Black women and women of color break free from external expectations and reconnect with their inner wisdom. Through intuitive coaching, ancestral connection practices, and somatic healing tools like breathwork and Reiki, Asha helps her clients trust themselves again, find safety within, and embrace joy as an act of liberation and ancestral reverence.

A former attorney and educator, Asha blends her practical approach with deep spiritual insight, showing women how to honor both their lineage and their personal desires. Whether leading group healing journeys, facilitating ancestral healing ceremonies, or guiding clients 1:1, her work is rooted in the belief that joy, ease, and intuition are powerful tools for personal and collective healing.

Learn more at ashawilkerson.com

Instagram: @ashawilkersonesq
Newsletter: www.ashawilkerson.com/email

Thank you so much for listening!


Naihomy:

Hello friends, welcome back to Wealthy Generation Podcast. Today I have the dear, dear, dear Asha Wilkerson here. We met through a coaching program and then she coached me and she actually helped me through a very intense period of my life where I was just in shambles and she really helped me get to the other side with that and calm down and process my thoughts and all that. So just to show that we all need support in certain areas and we have this beautiful community of really talented people, beautiful community of really talented people. Asha is on here to talk with us. All things intuitive, all things breaking free and really showing up for who you are. And I am really excited for her to share her story because every time I hear it, I was, I'm always like dang, I admire you so much Like you did what, like you moved on to what. So I'm going to let her tell you Welcome, asha, to the podcast. Thank you.

Asha:

I'm excited to be here.

Naihomy:

I'm excited to have you, so please share with us who you are, what you do and a little bit about your story.

Asha:

Oh my goodness, this question always throws me for a loop Like what do I say?

Naihomy:

And who do I say it to and all that stuff, but uh, I want you to say it to oh, I'll help you with that, because I wish I was listening to this way way, way many years ago. I want you to say it to that woman who is checking off all boxes, that society has told her that she needs to check off and then she feels super unfulfilled and scared to follow her true passion.

Asha:

Is that how it goes?

Asha:

Yes, it is, and that's also the younger version of myself right To that person. The reason why you feel unfulfilled still after doing all the things is because you're living for everybody else and not for you. And when we come from communities of color, from immigrant families, from first gen and so many different senses of the word, we're not really given a chance to ask what we want, and so we do all the things that we're supposed to. To ask what we want, and so we do all the things that we're supposed to. And then sometimes for some of us along the way, we realize that the stuff that we're supposed to do just doesn't light us up, and so that's where I found myself.

Asha:

I went to law school, not because anybody told me to, but what parents are going to say, no, don't go to law school. My mom was also the first Black woman to integrate the University of Mississippi in the United States, and so I came from a line of civil rights leaders and barrier breakers, and the expectation was I was going to continue that legacy, and it was probably more unspoken pressure than explicit pressure. There was just an expectation of I was going to achieve, I was going to get good grades, I was going to make the family proud, even though good grades I was going to make the family proud, even though they didn't say you have to make the family proud. But it would show up in comments of criticizing so-and-so right, criticizing someone else. You kind of take that in and internalize it.

Asha:

And I went to law school, worked for a law firm, then started my own practice, got burned out on that and then started teaching full-time at a community college and that was my dream job at the time because I love teaching. And then after seven and a half years of doing that, through the pandemic also, it just wasn't aligned and it took me a long time to admit that I didn't want to do it anymore because it was the dream job for me at one point and I had tenure, which means that I couldn't be fired. My mom was a principal and worked for the same school district for 40 years. So she was like, yeah, you made it and I'm like I made it and I don't want it. And so it took a lot for me to give myself the permission to pivot and to do something different.

Naihomy:

Yeah, what was that different stuff that you did? Are you still a?

Asha:

lawyer now. Are you still teaching now? Yeah, technically I'm still a lawyer, still an attorney, so still licensed. I have it on the back burner just in case I ever want to go back. And actually it's funny because I went inactive on my license last year and then someone asked me to do a presentation. I was like, ok, let me activate it, so I'm in compliance. And then I deactivated it again or went inactive this year and now my best friend is like, hey, I need some help with some work. She's like make sure you go active, ok. And I'm like, oh man, do I really want to do that? So I still have a license, I still hold a license. Do that? So I still have a license, I still hold a license.

Asha:

But recently I have moved to Portugal and I have been focusing almost 100%, probably 85%, on doing healing work, helping women connect to their intuition and ancestors, ancestral connection, and I love it. And that started with my own journey in the pandemic. Actually, way before that, my mom was really intuitive and I remember being a kid and going to these psychic fairs in Portland Oregon and I remember have this vivid memory of having my aura photo taken and the aura photos when they take a picture and there's the different lights around you and they like the energy. The light of the energy means something and I remember being like five and be like, oh, that's so cool. So I always knew that my mom was intuitive and clairvoyant. She would see things and just kind of know things. But she never developed that in me, she never asked me about it, so I didn't know how to connect and I never thought that I was and I would have astrology readings. They're like it's in your chart, you're intuitive. I'm like I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know how to connect and who you're talking to, but it's there, I guess.

Asha:

So during the pandemic we finally I finally had enough time. I wasn't on the road all the time and I could take some classes to start to develop my intuition. The more I learned about the energy and about the spiritual world, the more I learned. It also complemented the scientific world and I was like, oh, we've been taught our whole lives that this stuff, that this witchy woo-woo stuff, is bad and we're going to hell and it's of the devil and it's not really. It's actually like part of the nature and circuitry of our bodies and so I have really loved being able to reconnect with that and I really love helping women of color reconnect with that, because it is a form of decolonization. We were told by Christianity, told by white people, that all of our black and brown practices were bad. They weren't. They were of earth, they were of ourselves, they were connected to the elements. We got told that they were bad so they could give us white Jesus to follow and rules from the church. Sorry if I'm offending anybody.

Asha:

Not sorry, not sorry and rules from the church. Sorry if I'm offending anybody.

Naihomy:

Sorry, not sorry. Go ahead, girl, Right, right, sorry, not sorry. I'm screaming into the mic. I am so sorry for your ears, but I'm excited Go ahead.

Asha:

Asha, quite, all right. So it's really a practice of coming home to yourself, coming home to the things that are familiar to your body, and you may not recognize it right away, but the more time you give it, your body will remember, because it is a part of you, it's a part of what you've inherited from your ancestors, it's a part of like being a human being that we can connect to energy that is beyond us. So, in a big nutshell, to energy that is beyond us.

Naihomy:

So, in a big nutshell, I want to drop something.

Asha:

What an intro. I'm dropping pens over here. Thanks for the setup. You gave me that softball question.

Naihomy:

I was like okay, I got something to say, now Let me run with it. Look, I know this is what everybody's thinking and I and I know some of your story. But I know people are like Asha what did your mother say about quitting your job and moving and doing all this? I think that we worry a lot about what people are going to say, quote unquote wasting time and money on this career, on this path, and just kind of throwing it all away to follow what happened. What did your mom say? How did you process it yourself internally to have the courage to follow what you actually wanted for yourself?

Asha:

have the courage to follow what you actually wanted for yourself.

Naihomy:

Yeah, my mom when she doesn't agree with something, but is trying not to tell you.

Asha:

She'll just go, she won't say anything. I'm like mom, I'm thinking about doing this.

Naihomy:

She's like I'm like okay, something because she's obviously saying something, right?

Asha:

So there was a lot of mm's in the beginning and my mom you know my mom grew up. She said she didn't realize that they were a poor family when she grew up because they were so rich in love and they had everything that they needed, but they didn't have a lot of money. So when she tells her story growing up, she says she knew she couldn't go back home to her parents. But what I know is that if she ever needed to go back home, they would open the doors to bring her in, even though she felt like they couldn't financially support her Right. So she has built her life and made decisions with the idea that she could never go back home, which is what a lot of us do. So she decided to forego the path of intuition and spiritual connections so that she could focus on using her intellectual mind and keeping her job for almost 40 years in the same school district. So her vision of safety for me, like most parents, for any child, is to get that job, get really good at it, work at it for 30 years even though that's like impossible nowadays People are no loyalty from the employers or the employees and put money away for retirement, buy a house and at the end you're going to have it to live in. That's the dream of the baby boomers. And so when I deviated from that path like I still don't think, she can actually reconcile in her mind that me going to school has put me in so much debt that I'm educated like educated poor, right, because there's so much debt, even though school debt has a different weight, of course, than like credit card debt or something like that. But I think, like in her mind, because that was the dream go to college, get the job, work. She doesn't understand that times are different. Intellectually she can get it, but it doesn't make sense to her, you know. And so when I first started talking about maybe I would do something different, it was like, well, how are you going to live? How are you going to survive? What are you going to do? Where are you going to live? I'm also an only child too. So there's a part of the financial security and safety that she was worried about. And then there's the part of where are you going? My only child, and she's not married, she's on the West Coast, and so I ended up moving further and further away.

Asha:

But I will say that the more confident I got in my decision, the more. She backed off and she would. She never told me don't do it. She never. She just said you know, she just asked some questions. She never told me. No, she was supportive in the way that she was able. But the last time that I went home, just a couple months ago, I was full of joy, I was just radiating joy. I look younger, my skin is clearer, I'm just happy, just so happy and fulfilled. And she looked at me and was like you made the right choice. So sometimes the people most of the time the people around us want what they think is best for us and that's their vision for what's best for us. But we may know that their vision is not in alignment, and so we have to develop the confidence and the support to do what we need to do.

Naihomy:

Yeah, wow, that's so good and you are looking good girl.

Asha:

You really are Thank you.

Naihomy:

Now you had a hunch and you knew that you wanted something different. How about those people who don't even give themselves the opportunity to figure out what they want for themselves, because they all they have seen is what their parents wanted for them checking off those boxes, showing up how their parents want them to show up, or it could be society, it doesn't have to be parents but they haven't even given themselves and I feel like I fall into this category to where you don't even give yourself the opportunity to figure out if you actually want something different and you don't even realize how unhappy you might be or how unfulfilled you might be. And the thought of even exploring that, not even making any changes, just exploring who you actually are and what you might want, is kind of terrifying. Right, how would somebody just start that process? Or start like peeling themselves off from everything that you just mentioned, like society, what parents might want for you, that safety that you created for yourself? Then you were like, oh, I'm just going to have to figure out another way.

Asha:

Yeah, it's hard to start asking the questions because if the answer means that a change needs to happen, then that means a change needs to happen. And so oftentimes we get on this path and it's like man, it's going to make me do something different. And so we don't ask because we don't want to know, because we don't actually want to do something different. But if we are curious the thing, my recommendation is to spend five minutes, maybe in the mornings or some quiet time, and just ask if I could do anything. What would I do If I didn't have any rules? What would I do If I didn't have to worry about money? What would I do? How would I show up? Where would I be? How would I be?

Asha:

And it's not going to come to you in the first journaling session, or you maybe you don't have to write, you can just think about it. But if you start to ask yourself that question over and over and over again, with curiosity not with judgment, not with saying this is never going to happen or I have to make x amount of money, but just with curiosity your brain will start to open up to the possibilities of oh, I would love to travel the world and teach? Oh, I would love to. You know, run a fitness company? I would love to, whatever it is for you. But you have to give yourself, your brain, the permission to even ask the question and you'll be surprised. It was hard for me to do that when I was teaching until a friend of mine said well, why don't you just quit? I said what Quitting had never occurred to me.

Asha:

Yeah, I don't think my mom, my uncle, my auntie, I don't think they had ever just quit, especially not with something else lined up. And so, my friend, that question opened up the door for me and I could go. What if I did quit the same thing? What if I could do something different? What would I do?

Naihomy:

And just be curious, yeah, so if you figured it out and we're going to get into intuition and food and all that in a little bit too but if you're, you figure that out, you thought about it and you're figured out one next action step to take, and then people start saying stuff, your parents start saying things. You're crazy. How are you going to do that? You're going to leave all this behind. That's stupid. That's reckless. How do you keep going? How do you trust yourself to be like, okay, there may be trying to protect me, maybe they're projecting, um, maybe it's a different mentality, like you mentioned, boomers versus us, different resources.

Naihomy:

How do you just trust yourself to move forward, even if you're feeling guilty, even if you're feeling afraid or I don't know. I don't know how I was feeling. Actually, by the time I started doing this, I was like fuck everybody, right, fucking shit Exactly.

Asha:

That's a possibility too.

Naihomy:

Yes, but what about if you're not there and you're like, oh my god, I? Don't know this feels so unsafe. How would somebody handle that?

Asha:

yeah, well, there's nothing that says that you have to make a move right away okay, and you can also do the next step. That feels comfortable, or you can wait until you're a pressure cooker and it's like fuck everybody like you feel like I'm done when I when I'm a pressure cooker yeah, you're right.

Asha:

When I got to the point I was like I just can't. I knew that I couldn't take it anymore because it was either going to be my mental health or it was going to be me, and not because the job was bad or wrong. That's something we look forward to. We justify it. It it's not that bad, it's not that hard. They pay me really well Fantastic. The question is is it in alignment with you? Does it make you feel good or are you fighting yourself? And I think anytime we start to justify we all know that girlfriend, that justifies the man that's in her life, like well he's really nice.

Asha:

You're like girl. You can think about your job like that and you're like well he's really nice. You're like girl, you can think about your job like that and you're like well it's really nice, be like give me bagels every Thursday, exactly.

Asha:

Right when we start to justify, that means we're not comfortable in the decision. But it's also important to find community. Find people who have done the thing that you're looking to do, like you're not going to go. If you're interested in changing your health, you're not going to go to the person who has never changed their health. If you are looking to move abroad, you're not going to go to the person who's never left their city. If you're looking to do something, you're going to get into community with the people who are going the way that you're going or who have been where you're trying to go.

Asha:

So the uncomfortable truth is that we all outgrow our communities in different levels, right, yeah, yeah, not everyone stays in touch with their elementary school friends or high school friends or their college friends elementary school friends or high school friends or their college friends. Sometimes we outgrow our parents. Sometimes we outgrow our siblings, and it doesn't mean that anything is wrong or bad. It just means that we have grown and it does take some mental fortitude to stick to a decision when everybody else around you is telling you hey, you're crazy, blah, blah blah, but when you know that it's right for you, you won't even hear them anymore.

Asha:

Like my uncle was like you don't need to go all the way over there to Portugal, you need to come home and take care of your mom. I was like what I'm? Like uh, you know, and I haven't lived in the same state as my mom for like 20 years since.

Asha:

I went to college, right, it just surprised me so much, not that he was really telling me not to go, but I was like, okay, whatever, you didn't go home, take care of your parents. You're, you're trained right away from my mom. You go check, that's your sister. You go check, you know, not to like lay down my daughterly duties, but also getting clear on, like what is the role that you really want to play in your family. Because that pressure comes up, because we somehow are conditioned, either socialized or like by actual explicit words, to feel like we owe our parents. We don't actually owe them. We didn't ask to be here and I get it because we've seen our parents sacrifice so much for us to be here.

Asha:

But I had a moment when I was in Ghana, looking out of one of the slave dungeons and looking out of the window at the door of no return, and it occurred to me like all my people have ever wanted was to be free. If I can get myself free, maybe I can help others be free and like free in every sense of the word. Our parents path to freedom was very specific Get a job. Maybe it means moving to the US, maybe it means being the first to go to a predominantly white institution, maybe it means the first to have a corporate job and to have that financial security.

Asha:

But freedom really is being who you want to be, where you want to be it, with whomever you want to be, where you want to be it, with whomever you want to be, with Right. And so now that you have a little bit more foundation than your parents and we send gratitude to them, thank, thank, thank you you can make another choice that really gets you to freedom. And when they see that you feel so good and you're happy and you're healthy because that's what they want you to be happy and healthy and whole and, you know, stable Then they'll be like oh, you were right, you know they might not see it, but they'll get on board eventually.

Naihomy:

Yeah, I've. I've definitely had those experiences where my mom thought I was like cuckoo and she's like what.

Naihomy:

I don't think this is a good idea, I don't know. And then when everything settled, she's like oh, maybe you were ready, Like I'm so proud of you. But it does take so much courage to just trust yourself and move forward with that. And it's really good to just show them right, Like, yeah, sometimes when we stay stuck in what they think is best for us, we're so miserable and that just doesn't help anybody and it builds a resentment and all that.

Asha:

So, good.

Naihomy:

So let's shift into intuition, right? I've been working a lot. I think that I'm a very intuitive person. I was born like that and I was really good at it as a kid, and then, as I got older, I just stuffed it away because I was checking boxes and I was just you know, like you start checking boxes, you start fulfilling other people's expectations, your intuition sounds a little crazy out of the box, so it just gets scary.

Naihomy:

I stuff it back in, right, right, and I feel like that, like my habit to a lot of people and now I'm working to reconnect with it and sometimes what my intuition tells me is scary af and I'm like what you're like? No, um, but it has taken work for me to even realize that specific voice versus the voice of maybe my ego or like the voices that are trying to protect me. So how does one start to explore, find that voice and how do you know it's your intuition versus your ego, or like the, your brain, trying to protect you from past experiences?

Asha:

Yeah, it's a really good question. So typically your intuition will speak to you quietly and it's not emotional. And also, let me back up, because we have like electric circuits in our body, like our heart system is on an electrical current, and we have other systems that respond to electricity and energy, really, right. So we put food into our body, there's an energetic process that happens to metabolize the food and to move the food through, and so we are a bundle or a like body of electricity, of current, of energy. Right, and also remember from our high school science classes that, like all matter, this water bottle that I have, this, I don't know the air you breathe. It's made up of energy and some of it is put together in a mass and some of it you can't see, like microwaves you can't see, or radiation waves you can't see, but it's all energy. Because we are also made up of energy, we have the ability to perceive, to witness, to feel other energy around us.

Naihomy:

When it's solid energy.

Asha:

We run into it, you know, and the bottle hits our hand and we're like, oh, okay, we can feel that If you've ever been in a room and someone has walked in, like your crush right has walked in, and the energy in the room changes they say that in books all the time I felt the energy in the room change that's because you were feeling the energy of that person. So we actually probably perceive and feel energy more than what we actually think that we do. We just have phrases that we don't really think about what it is right. So connecting to our intuition is turning on that perceiving switch. It's allowing us to perceive the energy around us and so when something comes into your energetic field or when there's some knowledge that you have, it'll usually drop in. It doesn't have any emotion. So and it's like very factual. It's not like, oh, I should do this, my intuition told me right. It's like very factual. And you may feel that intuition from clairvoyance, which is where you see things. Maybe you'll see an image or, like my mom has scenes play out in her mind like a movie screen. It could be clear audience. While you're where, you'll hear a whisper of something, or a phrase will come to mind or a song will come to mind, could be clear sentience, which is feeling. So when I do readings for people, I will feel stuff in my body and that gives me a message. Um, there's other like uh, forget the Claire, but for smelling, if you, you know you trying to connect with a grandfather and you smell like their cigar or something like that, or some perfume, and it reminds you of the person. So these are different ways that messages can come to us. And when you start to ask like, oh, I just want to feel a little bit more, I just want to see a little bit more, I think that the universe, the energy will meet you where you are. But it's not loud.

Asha:

So what I do on a regular basis is I get up in the mornings and I have my quiet time. It's very routine. I go and make a cup of coffee, I go and sit on my little couch and try and soak up some sun from the windows. I have my little writing pad and sometimes I light a candle and for at least 12 minutes I'm just going to sit there and sometimes, like lately, I've just been writing.

Asha:

Sometimes I will sit there quietly, sometimes I will pray and ask for things, but it's creating that space to even allow it to turn back on. And I needed help to do it because I didn't know what to do and I would say like, oh, my body's just so turned on, I can't feel anything in my body, asha, don't you feel something? Like well, there's something in my stomach, but I just ate, and they're like, asha, that's your itch, what does it mean? Like no, that's the brownie. You know, and I didn't know, I didn't recognize that that was actually a feeling that I was getting, and so sometimes you do need some help and some support to learn how to interpret what it is that you're seeing. But it is or feeling or perceiving. But it is a practice that if it's not turned on, that you have to intentionally create some space to turn on.

Naihomy:

The more you practice, the more quickly it will come yeah, I totally agree because in reconnecting I haven't been able to do it on my own. I go to an in-person wellness studio in my community where they've, like my healer has helped me with that and I love that it's in person because of the energy aspect of it right, and it has been very confusing to me to know what it is and to know which voice is talking? And that's the same thing my healer has told me. It's very direct. It's not emotional.

Naihomy:

When it starts to get emotional, is your ego, things like that um and I just want to give to the people who don't have time in the morning because I don't other spaces where you can listen. Um, I love that morning time so whenever I get to take advantage of that, I do. But you know, mom life taking kids to school. I don't want to wake up at i'm'm not a 5 am or 8 am, so I'm like, no, it's going to have to happen sometime else, but like in the shower right.

Naihomy:

It's time and I'm very like, connected to water. So sometimes I'll hear things in the shower or I'll connect in the shower and it's not even intentional, it's just a quiet space, the sound of the water, all of that. Washing dishes is another one, if I'm just zoned out or listening to music again that water, the flow. It's an activity, but it's kind of monotonous. You're just washing dishes you don't need your brain like that anymore. I say anymore because when you first start washing dishes, you know you have to pay attention.

Naihomy:

You're thinking about it, yeah, or you can go on walks, things like that so you can incorporate it in your day. It doesn't have to be a time where you sit and you're intentional, although those times are great and I love to take advantage of that. But you could also take advantage of other times in throughout your day, like maybe you drive with no music on um and you create that quietness for you.

Asha:

So yeah, even at the gym too. I mean, sometimes, if you're running or something or you're just kind of doing something where your mind can wander, oftentimes that can be a time to connect, um. And yeah, don't feel like you have to do like a 30 minute meditation in silence, you know just even sometimes I'll just pause and like put my hand on my heart and go, okay, what do I need to know? And sometimes something will drop in and it's just a, it's just a moment and it's like the intentionality of it, the intention and the intention and the attention.

Naihomy:

Yeah, I love that. Okay, so something that you told me like right before we started recording, and I totally agree with this. You're like oh, I want to talk about how food interferes with your mental clarity, because our body is super connected. So sometimes if you are suffering from a lot of digestive distress, if your hormones are just all over the place, not the ones that you don't have control over let's say, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, things like that, your sex hormones they kind of do their own thing, but something like insulin and cortisol we have a little bit more agency over how they're responding in our bodies. So, from your experience, can you share with us how the interconnectedness of, like physical wellness and how you are eating in your body can have a direct impact on your mental clarity and, like, trying to listen to your intuition?

Asha:

Yeah, absolutely the first thing is when you feel good, you feel good. And so if, if you are and I'm not trying to get on anybody about oh, you need to eat this, you need to eat that. But if you're, my friend told me I've been telling her for years I'm like you were lactose intolerant. She's like, no, I'm not, I just get a little gas but I eat ice cream. Right, then she's been eating lactose-free ice cream. And then she said the other day that she just bought some regular ice cream and she was like projectile vomiting and had diarrhea. I'm like I told you your ass was lactose intolerant, right, and like.

Asha:

That's an extreme example of like if you're putting something in your body. She could not think when that was happening. Right, she could not be focused on anything other than how bad she felt. And then it took her, it interrupted her sleep and then she had to try to recover the next day and then she was afraid to eat and it just took her away from being able to do the thing that she wanted to do.

Asha:

And again, maybe an extreme example, but maybe you eat something and your stomach's crampy and then you spend an hour or two hours thinking about how your stomach is crampy. Also, energy it's about the flow of energy, and if your body is using so much more energy to try to process something that doesn't align with it, then you have less energy for everything else. So, with the teacher that I'm working with to learn how to teach other people how to connect to their intuition, we do all kinds of movements and exercises that are not like gym type exercises but stretching to open up the meridians which correspond with organs in the body. And so, from the spiritual perspective or energetic perspective in Chinese medicine and in Asian philosophy, you know energy can get stuck in the body, and so food can also help energy stay trapped in the body, and other activities like even just like, lifting weights and then not stretching or, you know, doing something that just makes you not feel good, oftentimes with an energetic block in the body.

Naihomy:

Yeah, the body shifts resources. It doesn't have unlimited resources and it can't take care of multiple things at once. It just has its core of like I need to keep this person alive, like that's. That's all your body wants is to keep you alive, as its only responsibility. And when we are always stuck in digestion, our blood flow is always stuck in your digestive system. It cannot flow to other areas in your body, to your brain or to your like. It just is processing digestion. So your body will transfer the flow of your um, your blood flow, to the areas that are most in need at that time.

Naihomy:

So this is why the eating is so important what kinds of foods you're eating, how do you feel when you're eating them. And sometimes we don't even realize, like your friend, that a food we're just so used to feeling sick that we don't even realize, like your friend, that a food we're just so used to feeling sick that we don't know, where it is to feel well, and then we categorize that as normal instead of like optimal.

Naihomy:

Just because it's common, it's not normal. So a lot of people are just commonly feeling sick in their body and they don't know the difference. So is this whole healing process and they don't know the difference? So it's this whole healing process, and something that just came to mind in this conversation is just tapping into like religious, uh, I guess like rituals first for some people, for example, we're still in what's called Ramadan, right, and they fast?

Naihomy:

Why? Because it's supposed to give you a little bit more mental clarity. There is no food happening usually for Lent.

Naihomy:

Some people fast or things like that, like usually that like usually religions, have some sort of fasting incorporated at some season, um, and it doesn't mean like you need to do intermittent fasting or something like that, but there's ways to create clarity by the types of food you're eating, when you're eating it, how you're giving your body a break and it's this whole connection between how do you feel what you're eating it, how you're giving your body a break, and it's this whole connection between how do you feel what you're eating and what is it allowing you or not allowing you to do.

Asha:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's so true, and it's very Western to separate mind, body, soul, spirit, right. But in Eastern philosophy, and also a a lot of like traditional indigenous and African religions, it's not. The person is not necessarily separate from the body. So you feeding your body is also nourishing your soul in a sense, right. It's not that you could, you know, go ham over here and deplete your body physically and then still expect your brain to function. You know, we talk about what foods to eat for mental clarity so you can focus. It's the same kind of thing. When I do intuitive readings for people, I don't drink the night before, I certainly don't drink the day, because I want to be sure that I am clearly receiving the messages and I want the messages to come through clearly.

Asha:

So when we start to remove those things that are noise for lack of a better word then our perception and reception gets clearer.

Naihomy:

Yeah, that's so interesting that you mentioned that, because I went to an in-person spiritual workshop and part of the instructions were like no-transcript really, especially if you don't know where to start, it's really helpful to get a coach.

Asha:

And even when you do know where to start, it is really helpful to have a coach just for accountability and to complain when the cravings are starting to leave your body and you just want that piece of chocolate but you're trying to cut the addiction to sugar or whatever it is. But it's looking at yourself holistically and then starting to make small changes that are sustainable. So if you don't walk now, don't sign up for a marathon to run, unless it's like a year out and you really are committed and have a plan in place to be able to complete that marathon or that half marathon. But do something that is sustainable. So maybe you can walk for five minutes after work just around the building. Maybe you can take the dog and your kids out and, you know, play with them at the park, because now it's starting to get warmer and that's something that they want to do.

Asha:

They're going to hold you accountable and so it's smaller pieces like that. Start with five minutes of journaling and instead of thinking I have to do an hour and a half of meditation, join a group, go in person. Sometimes it's it's easier to hold ourselves accountable when we're meeting people in person. Um, I facilitate breath work. It is so hard for me to turn on a breath work track to do my own breath work that's already recorded I have to sign up for a time.

Asha:

Sometimes I have to pay to hold myself accountable, and I used to beat myself up over that. I'm like you know what? That's just what I need. I just need that accountability, and so I'm going to make sure that I have I don't want to say guard rails, but kind of guard rails in place, the support in place to help me get to where I want to go. But start small, make it digestible, make it doable, make it fun, do it with a friend.

Naihomy:

Absolutely. I know you mentioned breathwork. I had another question, but I forgot what it was, that it was tied to this. But then I was like, oh, I want to ask her about breathwork, because that is very interconnected to ourselves too and it can be a very useful tool. Now there's two parts. Right, like I love breath work, and then there are other times where I feel like I just have to move my body and I thought that I would like breath work was the only thing.

Naihomy:

And that's like to help us. Come actually, you us like why is breath work important? Um, why do we need it? And when should we do breath work versus maybe moving, moving around?

Asha:

Yeah, that was a really good question. So breath work and the way that I'm speaking of it is a little different than just breathing exercises. There can be breathing exercises to calm, uh, breathing exercises to help you focus. That's kind of one set. They're shorter in duration. The breath work that I'm talking about is usually about 90 minutes and it sort of takes you on a journey and it's amazing. It's incredible Because what happens when you breathe?

Asha:

You're breathing in and out through your mouth, so you're changing the carbon dioxide levels in your body, which allows you to have that feeling sometimes of like floating or like you are going someplace different. But the beauty of it is like unlike if someone were to take ayahuasca or do mushrooms or psilocybin, I should call it as soon as you go back to breathing normally, then your body, you come back into your body and you're just playing around with the CO2, with the carbon dioxide. So it's a natural thing that you can do for yourself. But what happens is you start to go to that meditative state, even though you're still very conscious, and in that meditative state your subconscious mind can begin to work and you're able to perceive more.

Asha:

So sometimes people will have a whole conversation with their ancestors, with their guides, they'll solve a problem. If that was their intention, they'll, you know, dream up of a new book idea. It really depends on what your intention is when you begin and what your focus is. I lead breathwork. Where I, it's always a guided breathwork situation, and so maybe I'm doing breathwork for ancestral connection, or I'm doing breathwork to connect to joy and I will talk people through the process and there's a climax of the music.

Asha:

It's kind of slow and then you breathe a little bit more intensely and there's a climax at the peak where there's usually a release of maybe some emotions or movement. And then we come back down and people feel, no matter what happens. They always feel more relaxed, they feel more grounded in their bodies, they feel like it was exactly what they needed at the right time, and everybody has a slightly different experience. In my breath work, I tell people if you need to move, move. You know, in some situations people will get up and they'll like shake energy off. Sometimes I get restless and I just want to move. It's all about moving energy as well, so it's okay.

Asha:

You don't have to be perfectly still, not like we think of when we think of meditation and how do you know what you need? I think it's a combination. Sometimes you know walking can be meditative and I just need to move the energy through my body. But it also comes down to are you listening, are you in touch with your body and are you listening to what it's telling you? Because your body will tell you. You'll know whether you need to lay down and do a breathwork session and be calm or if you need to go flip a tire because you've got some like energy that you need to get out, and none of it's wrong, it's all you know. It all goes together to help us be healthy, whole, happy people.

Naihomy:

Yeah, you mentioned something very interesting that I think it's important, especially in this worldly climates that we're in right now, and you said that you do breath work to connect to joy, and I feel like that's something that a lot of people are looking for and don't know exactly how to find it, or they think it only happens when they I mean like probably me only happened when I went on vacation and I was at the party Right. What do you mean by that?

Naihomy:

Like you're connecting to joy, and how could people do that for themselves?

Asha:

Yeah, so when did this happen for me? I don't remember when the turning point was. Probably in the last six or seven months or so, certainly since I've been here in Portugal and I was just thinking about ancestral connection, and it's it's often so heavy, like going to Ghana is heavy. There are beautiful moments but you know, people go because they want to understand the slave trade from that side, right, and we always talk about healing ancestral patterns and it's this like heaviness, this work that we have to do.

Naihomy:

Like you know what?

Asha:

I know that my ancestors had to have experienced some joy.

Naihomy:

Like it wasn't all suffering.

Asha:

Right, it couldn't have been all suffering. But modern day, that's what we connect to and we have built our cultures, our communities have really bought into the struggle and the sacrifice narrative, and it doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

Asha:

But we have really been taught, and probably colonized, to believe that we don't deserve certain things that are part of our range of emotion to be able to access. We think we have to earn joy, we think we have to earn rest, we think we have to earn happiness. Or if we are joyful, if we are resting, if we are happy, then we've somehow betrayed the sacrifices that our parents and grandparents and that our lineage has made for us. But it goes back to again what is that freedom? And it had to have come to me when I was intentionally connecting to the ancestors, or or just like really thinking about this, like joy is the ultimate, like I'm here f you and there's nothing you can do about it. Right, like let me, you cannot take my joy away. But we have allowed so many things to take our attention and to take that happiness inside of us that I want us to be able to tap into our ancestral connection to find more joy because and what has happened too is I have understood who I am through a different lens from connecting with my ancestors, because, again here in this world, my grandfather worked with Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and they were always afraid that they were gonna get a set. Like my grandfather saw Medgar Evers' killer, the man came into the office in Jackson Mississippi a day before he shot and killed Medgar Evers. Like my grandfather was in that mix right as a kid. My mom said they were always afraid that there was going to be a cross burned on their lawn because they were active in the civil rights movement. My mom, when she was at the University of Mississippi, had to be escorted off campus by the police a number of times because these white folks did not want her here. They wanted her dead right.

Asha:

And so when you are growing up with that, it is hard, can be hard to be joyful because you don't get out of survival mode, or it may be difficult to get out of survival mode. And so I, you know we're thinking I'm going to honor my ancestors, I'm going to go into court, I'm going to honor my ancestors, I'm going to get the biggest house on the block, I'm going to honor my ancestors and blah, blah, blah, blah. But when I connect with them I realized that this modern day dream is the modern day dream, but that ancient dream again is for that freedom. That ancient dream again is for that joy. And so the best way that I can honor my ancestors is not by staying tethered to the struggle, but is really being a joyful, happy, sovereign human being.

Asha:

Like let me go do the damn thing and let me be expressed in whatever way that I want. Like that's what they want for us. They don't really want us to keep slaving away at a job that we hate in the name of sacrifice and duty. I just I'm not buying into that. Like that's a dream that was planted in us, but like that's not it. But I was only able to see from that like sort of higher perspective, that older perspective. When I started to connect for myself to my ancestors, she dropped more pins, y'all another mic drop moment.

Naihomy:

I'm like I got chills while you were talking. I had to pitch it Dang. I think every single one of us needed to hear that and that is exactly why I wanted you on here, because I know we spoke about a lot of things. But I feel like in my community, when I'm coaching on food and wellness and all that, this is what I want to convey to them as well. And you said it so beautifully and it just went so deep of being well is resisting, and it just went so deep of being well is resisting. Taking care of yourself is honoring is not being selfish or needing too much Like. This whole mental clarity aspect is essential because we're so numbed out by stress and the hamster wheel and just giving up our power and autonomy and desires out to everybody else and not fulfilling our own dreams.

Naihomy:

How much better of communities and families and all that would we have if we had joy, if we felt that freedom and this. This week I spoke to a client and she was telling me about a video that she was watching about a woman ice skating and she goes. It made me cry because she looks so free, imagine. And she's like I should sign up for ice skating classes. I say you don't need ice skating classes. That's not what it is.

Asha:

That's not what I mean you can, if you want to, but that's not where you're going to.

Naihomy:

Not one, I mean it's not on your list. You want to, you can if you want to, but that's not where you're gonna find the feeling of freedom right, right it's all of this work. That, oh, that was so good. Asha, if you could tell yourself one thing back when you were struggling in your mind and you were questioning all your life decisions, what would you tell yourself? What did you need to hear to make the process a little smoother?

Asha:

You know, I I don't know exactly what that would be that would that's a really good question. But I think somewhere inside of me I just knew it had to get better. I knew that there was something worth working for, even when things didn't go right. And you know, when I was disappointed here and disappointed that you've witnessed some of the disappointment. When I think about maybe I should just quit, maybe I should just give up and do something different, there was a part of me that knew that there is something more and I just have to get there. And maybe this is the I don't want to say the cost, because I don't think you have to trade that for like joy and things like that but I do think it's a journey and it's a process.

Asha:

And as much as I hated hearing like, oh, it's about the journey, not the destination because I for damn sure wanted the destination it really it like how can you be in the moment on your journey? How can you make every period that you were in count? We spend so much time looking forward to the future, but the power that we have is in the now. So, even when you're up at 3am because your kids are crying and you're pregnant and you know your husband is just an idiot and pissed you off today, like how can you be intentional in that moment and make sure that you are consciously making a decision? And that's where I think that life passes most of us by, because we're not, we're just going through the motions and we're not actually aware. Being intentional about your food means that you have to be aware. You choose to be intentional, deciding to go work out means you have to be intentional.

Asha:

Deciding that you're going to connect to your ancestors means that you have made a decision and you're taking some of your power back. So I don't know if I answered the question at all, but, like keep going. And I also wrote on my wall, I think in high school. It said be willing to work like no one else will, so you can live like no one else can. And I'd always stuck to that and at first I used to think that it meant hard work and you know doing all the things that I could. But now I've taken hard work out of my vocabulary.

Asha:

It's about smart work and you know cause there's. There's effort that's required, right, but it's about looking at what is the effort that I'm willing to put in, where and how to get to the thing that I want. And if I do this now, if I focus on being physically healthy now, I'm going to be able to live like no one else can, because I've put in the fuel to get the result that I want. If I focus on doing my work and learning how to mind my thoughts and learning how to heal, then I won't be carrying those patterns into the future with me. So it's not that it's not that the stuff ever completely disappears, but it's like what are you willing to invest in yourself now so that you can live a life that you want in this moment?

Asha:

but, also in the future.

Naihomy:

Yeah, it definitely feels lighter when you. It feels extremely heavy at the beginning, but it does start to feel lighter. So definitely, asha. Thank you so much for coming. This has been like so empowering and enlightening, and I hope that whoever is listening just really feel seen and just encouraged to have time to think to, to be open to that, to have the courage to take some action. And if you really want to and you're too scared and you want support, asha, how can you support them? Tell us about your podcast your offerings, everything you got.

Asha:

Yes, yes, yes, okay. So I have a podcast that I publish infrequently now, called Because I've Healed, and that you can find on Spotify or Apple or on YouTube. You can also connect with me on Instagram at Asha Wilkerson ESQ, and, if you ever find yourself in Lisbon, this is one of those things that's happening because of intuition. I'm actually opening up a healing space in Lisbon that will be focused on creating safe and healthy spaces for black and brown folks, so I would love for you to come and visit me in Lisbon, but go to my.

Asha:

Instagram page and you will see the information for that there.

Naihomy:

Awesome. Are you doing? Are you doing your group coaching?

Asha:

I am. You're right, I forgot all about that, so.

Naihomy:

I have coming up. I remember, thank you.

Asha:

Thank you. The enrollment period is from April 17th to April 30th and it's a group program called Guided, which will help you connect to your intuition and to your ancestors. So it's a combination of teachings that I'm going to break it down for you and make it plain and simple so you can logically understand what you're doing. And then practice sessions and we meet three times a month and you have a week off and that'll be for 12 weeks and before that actually I have a webinar, a workshop, called Meet your Ancestral Guides. So if you're curious, you can come and join me for that and that'll be a little taste of what we'll do in the program. You'll get to meet your guides. We'll create a connection ritual for you so you can take it with you and then, if you come, you also get a discount on the group program. So that is April 17th, but you can go to my website, ashawilkersoncom, slash register and you will see it there.

Naihomy:

I'm going to that Yay, if I can't, I'm like I, I want more practice. I'm just curious and all this stuff I thought wasn't for me or I couldn't do it, but it's just the work that you said putting it in being patient and take your time, so go connect with Asha. All of this information is going to be on the show notes, so it's nice and easy for you to go click on it and connect with her, and thank you so much again for joining me today.

Asha:

That was so good, thank you.

Naihomy:

I loved it. Bye, everybody, see y'all next week.