Understanding The Feminine and Masculine W/ HeatherAsh Amara

Author of the popular Warrior Goddess Series, HeatherAsh Amara, sat down with Cody and David at a live retreat to discuss how to master and navigate the feminine and masculine energies of the world, relationships, spirituality and more.

Transcript

Energy Matters listeners, I have a really great book here I want Cody to read. It's called The Seven Secrets to Healthy Happy Relationships. It is by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. And Heather Ash O'Mara. And Heather Ash is here to talk to us about it. Hi. Hello. Glad to be here. And full disclosure, We are in the middle of a retreat in Sedona, Arizona in the middle of the desert. God knows where we are. It takes an hour on a dirt road to get out here and you are teaching some really beautiful stuff. In fact, Tonight you're going to be having people break arrows on their throats. Let's start right there. So for everybody listening who can't be in the desert with us, Maybe you could just share a little bit about what it is that we're doing out here and what you're going to be doing with everyone tonight. Great intro. Let's bring them into this moment with us. Hi. Welcome Heather Ash. Tell us about the arrows. Yeah. Do it on Cody right now. It's so good. It's so good. So one of my loves is firewalking and teaching people how to walk over hot coals with their bare feet. And that's what we usually do here, But we're in drought. We're in fire. Ban. And so Randy is like, What else do you got? Arrow breaks. So part of what I love doing with people is helping people understand that their fear is not something that needs to stop them, But it's actually energy that they can use to go towards whatever their goal or their dreams and their purpose is. And that whenever we step towards something new, Whenever we break a pattern, Whenever we say yes to something that feels scary, We have to go through obstacles. There's discomfort. There's no way around that. And the discomfort is part of the gift, I think, Because it helps us to get steadier. And so the arrow break is you take something that is seen as a weapon that has a point that's used for whatever it's used for. We use killing. Yeah. And we use what are called practice arrows. So they have tips, Metal tips, But they're not super, Super sharp. And what we teach people to do, It sounds so crazy and it is, Is you take the most vulnerable part of your body, Which is your throat, That little soft part of your throat, And you put the arrow there and then somebody put the other end of the arrow on against a board that somebody's holding. You can do it up against a tree, But usually we do it in partner. So somebody's holding a board and then you breathe together and then you walk forward and break the arrow. There's a really specific technique that I teach people about how to do that. I love both of your faces right now. Don't try this at home. I'm going to try it on Cody in a minute. Yes. And what you learn is that there's always, When we make big changes, There's initial resistance. There's the fear. There's the like, I don't know if I can do this, But if you keep going, Something shifts drastically. And that's what the arrow break teaches you in your body. I love people getting things somatically rather than just my brain understands this, But when your body gets it, Everything changes. What was it like, What was the first time like when you did this? How did you learn it? Oh my God, It was terrifying. So I was studying with someone in the early 90s who randomly just said, Hey, You should go to a firewalk. My friend's teaching one tonight. And I had no idea what that meant. I was like, Okay. And I go to this event. There's about 40 women. It's in Southern California, No, It's in Northern California. And there's a woman who I'd never met before who starts talking about the fire and how long firewalking has, Humans have been fire, Which is thousands and thousands of years that we humans have been using firewalking. And I remember we went and raked the fire out and I'm thinking, This is wrong. This is not okay. This is hot. Like, What are we doing here? And I ended up walking, My body just knew, You can go now. Go. And I walked many times. It was just, It completely transformed my life. And the next month I got a notice in the mail that was like, Hey, We're doing a firewalk certification training. And my body was like, Yes, I'm doing this. I sold my computer. I raised money. I was 24 years old. So I had to make a lot of stuff happen. Where were you living? I was living in Davis, California. Okay. Is that where you grew up? That's no, I grew up in Southeast Asia. I grew up moving and traveling and yeah, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. I grew up in Woodland, California, By the way. You did, Neighbors. I went to UC Davis. Yes. Yeah. And that's where I taught firewalking for years was at UC Davis, Which is hilarious. Why have humans been walking on fire for thousands of years as ritual? As ritual, As ceremony and really for two things, One for healing, To bring healing energy in and like the kong in South Africa, One of the oldest firewalking tribes, The people will walk across the fire, The shamans, The healers of the community that walk on the fire and then they do hands on healing for whoever needs it. And in like Japan, Native Americans feed like all over the world. And the second is to raise energy, To do something difficult. So if there's a challenge that it's also a good way to bring in more energy and more strength and courage. Yes. I did a firewalk in the early nineties as well. I'd already been into meditation and energy work, So it was something kind of in that vein where we meditated beforehand. But my experience was before the firewalk and leading up to it, I got so sick in very many different ways. Like the energy was stirred up in ways that, You know, It felt like being sick like with a real intense cold and a fever. And then I got to the firewalk and I still did it even though I was feverish. But then when I went through, Right, She was about to snap her fingers because it was suddenly gone. And which makes me think you doing these have seen many, Many people go through that kind of a cycle. What, Give a name to that and how do we kind of validate ourselves along the way to get to something like a firewalk and trust that, Yes, There will be that breakthrough moment, Which, You know, You couldn't, I couldn't imagine it beforehand before it happening, Right? Even though I'd done energy work and I'd done meditating, To get that like intensely physically, Dramatically, Like unwell, You know, Four hours before the event and then to walk across the fire and then as that process within 10 minutes, Everything's gone. Like all of the symptoms. Have you seen that before? You're a sensitive dude. He's a sensitive guy. But that, That place of the fire, Cause the fire is an element of transformation. It's the element of change and it stirs things up in people. That's, It's a catalyst. That's what it's supposed to do. And so people have really different experiences around energy moving, Fear. And I've seen many people that the moment they walk their entire life is different in that moment. It's so fast. And that's why I love this tool because it's such a somatic boom. Reality is not what I thought it was. I can do, What am I limiting? How am I limiting myself? And the arrow breaks the same way. How am I limiting myself? This is scary. But with fire walking too, Like one of the first things that we learn is fire burns. And so it's in our every cell of our body. But the moment you watch somebody walk or the moment you walk, It breaks. So I can imagine that your body's like, No, This isn't like, We got to take ourselves out. But then when your body gets, Oh no, It's actually okay. Then everything opens into possibility. And the crazy thing then is once you go across, Once you come back, You go across the game. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's fun. Then you dance across and you walk across with your friends. Yeah. And the, And when we can't do the fire walk, I bring the arrow break in and I've seen like, I've done corporate fire walks where people are like, Oh, Not a big deal. We can do a fire walk. And then I'll bring the arrows out and like, Like a hundred corporate executives all go pale. And I'm like, Yes, We've got them. Yes. Yes. And it's the same principle in a way of how do we do hard things that appear incredibly unsafe, But are actually on the other side. You're like, Well, That was okay. And that's so often we limit ourselves. We stop ourselves because we feel that fear or that doubt or that unknown mystery and learning how to live in the mystery to be in relationship to the mystery. Every time I come to a fire, I fire walked thousands of times. I've broken thousands of arrows and every time I come to it, I'm like, Hi, Brand new mystery show up. And that's how we can all live our lives. And so it's a kind of an initiation, Right? Passing through some kind of danger, Some kind of fear, Some barrier of fear. And I guess it's symbolic for people too, Right? That there's this next phase of my life. I want to step through some fear that I've been stuck on. I think a lot of people like here at this retreat and probably a lot of you listening have that there's this thing I've been thinking about for years. I'm afraid of it. I'm stuck on it. How do I break through Heather Ash's like walk over some F and fire. Let's put some courage in your heart and then let's get through this other stuff, Right? So when students come to you and they have that fear around something maybe more tangible in their life, Like relationship or awakening their inner goddess or career thing, How do you help them cross over that symbolic fire that they've been so afraid of? Yeah, Because that's definitely the work. Yeah. Is that how do we in our lives make those steps that we wanted or we're craving or we're yearning and yet there's all that fear. So one of the things that I do is help people unpack where what is their head telling them? Because so often we have what I call disaster mind and disaster mind is oh my god let me worry about the thing that happened in the past and think about all the ways that it could happen in the present that might screw up my life and then let me have anxiety about all the things that could happen in the future and really worry about those and so we just stop ourselves because we're in the past or the future and so that place of come here sweetheart and teaching people how to rewire the brain the way that their brain talks to themselves and the self-dialogue and go towards stillness rather than towards the noise. And in terms of some of the techniques are you like using NLP? Are you doing energy work? What kind of techniques do you use with your students? The biggest one is a technique that I call stocking. It's called stocking. Oh, Cody used to do that. You got in trouble for it. Yeah, You got to be careful. Yeah, You got to be careful what you stock. Exactly. You got to give instructions. Yes, So stocking yourself, Not other people. Real quick, Is that a Carlos Castaneda term? It is. Because I read all of his books when I was younger and I remember that. Exactly, Exactly. So it's tracking or stocking and recapitulation. Two big tools. So those are energy tools, Awareness practices. So I love it when I first started studying the Toltec shamanism because I was raised in Asia, I was steeped in Buddhism and he started talking about awareness and I'm like, Hey, This is really similar to Buddhism and it is that foundational awareness practice. But in the tradition, If you think about a big cat that stalks its prey over days, It watches where does it prey sleep, Where does it feed, Where does it move and then it waits. Cats are incredibly patient and so that's what we're learning how to do as humans is to stock ourselves and to be incredibly patient with what am I thinking and where do those thoughts lead me, What's happening in my body, What's happening emotionally. And I see it as a form of self intimacy and that that awareness practice is not I'll do this for a couple weeks and then I'll have it figured out, It's lifetime. Every day learning to become more intimate with who we are and how our thoughts where our thoughts go, Where they take us and how to then gently start to recorrect, Course correct, Bring ourselves back into the present moment. So that is one technique and then recapitulation energy technique. It's a breathing of pulling your energy also from Carlos Castaneda. So if you've read the those books, The teachings of Don Juan in that series, Practice of pulling our energy back from the past. So all of us have left energy, Life force energy in situations where we had fear basically in the past and most of us have no idea how to be in a relationship with our energetic body. We spend a tremendous amount of time leaking energy, Giving it to other people. So that's one of the main things I teach people how to do is how do you hold your energy, How do you pull energy back from the past and how do you bring in more energy to your system and how do you direct it. That's why this podcast is called Energy Matters. I love it! Yes, That's the thing. Yeah, Because it works. That's what we teach as well. Did you read Carlos Castaneda books? It was so long ago. Yeah, You were so high, You don't remember. He was high throughout the 80s. Just kidding, Jordan, His daughter, If you're listening, He wasn't. . . Wasn't him. Did you ever go down that path of doing the psychedelics with all of this work? Because that's what Carlos Castaneda did, Right? Yeah, For the first three books, That is what he did before his teacher Don Juan was like, Well, It's actually not about the plants. I just needed to break your mind a little bit because you were so set in your ways. So definitely in the 80s, I did a lot of drugs, A lot of experimentation, Which was incredibly beneficial at that time of helping me open. And now I feel like, Okay, That was great and now I want to learn how to stabilize it, This place, This time. And I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, But Don Juan, He got a little. . . I mean, Carlos Castaneda, Excuse me, Got a little weird towards the end, Didn't he? Because I followed his work for a while and I'm like, Wait, What happened? He kind of got a little culty. Yeah. Why is that? What do you think? Why does that happen to spiritual teachers? You have this amazing legendary teacher who's been with these masters doing all this work for decades, Writing these incredible books. And then next thing you know, He's kind of got a cult of women and it's getting real weird. Yeah. And you know, There's always, And even in the teachings, In those teachings, He talks about there's all these gates that you go through. The gate of fear is the first one. The second one is the gate of clarity, Which is where most of us get stuck. Third one's gate of power. And it's really, Really difficult for people that are in positions of power to not then take it. And it's either sex, Money, Or. . . Rock and roll. Those two, Like the sex and the money thing is going to take almost everybody out at some point. I always say that every spiritual group eventually ends in a sex scandal or a money scandal. Yeah. It's unfortunate. And so to really, You know, I always like to separate out the human from the teachings and just understand the humans are going to get taken out possibly. And how do we honor like, We're all fallible. We're all going to make mistakes. I've made plenty of mistakes and the teachings are solid. And how do we learn as we're going along? So like, I learn from people that I see crash and burn. Because I'm friends with a lot of teachers that when they struggle, We now come together and go, Okay, How do we help course correct each other? How do we stay steady? Because it's hard. We do that too. Yeah. We need each other. And I think that's part of what happened with Carlos. With other teachers that get really insular, They don't have anybody else that they're referencing from and so their little dream gets weird. Yeah. Cody really liked that documentary Wild, Wild Country with Ocho. Didn't we talk about that? I haven't seen that one yet. I just watched the one that's called Seduced about NXIVM. Is that what they're called? Oh my god, It was so intense. Whoa. Because you're watching it and you're like, Well, Yeah, This is kind of everything I teach. Like the first, There's four I think or five episodes. And the first one I'm like, Yeah, That sounds normal. Yeah, That sounds normal. And then the second one you're like, Sex calls. Yeah, We're going. And then by the third one you're like, What is happening? But it's spooky because it is that same thing of like, Well, That is what we teach, But then it gets twisted. Right. Yeah. It seems like in the past, Chris, We had the picture of the guru, But in that picture or idea, There's the one. And so there can only be the one. And so we didn't have a community of teachers. Right. And I think that's the step we're in right now is we are expanding out in the world in a way where we are starting to have a community of teachers and an idea around what it is to be the teacher, Not the one, Not the savior, Not the guru. Right. Yeah, Absolutely. The thing that will support and in a way save the teacher. Yeah, Absolutely. And it's such a relief that we're moving away from the guru. Yes. That this is the infallible. They never make mistakes. Always a man. Yes. Always a man. Yes. But it's always a perfect picture on a pedestal. Yes. Yeah. And I love that now that we're getting to the place of like what I always train my teachers and myself is I am still a student. Just because I'm teaching doesn't mean I'm done. Like anytime I have any like, Oh good, I'm glad I'm done with that. I'm like, Stop it, Sweetheart. Because you know, It's going to come back bite you at some point. And that just that humility of like, I'm going to make mistakes. And being really transparent with my students around that and modeling for them. Like, I apologize to if I see I make a mistake. And this is what I've learned from watching other student, Other student teacher relationships, Is that sometimes what happens is the teachers are like, Well, I'm not allowed to make a mistake. So then I can't apologize. And if I make a mistake, That's going to, You know, My credibility is going to disappear. And that was true. That was true in the 70s and 80s. That was what the expectation was. But it's not that way any longer. The expectation now, Which is thank goddess, Right, Is be transparent, Be honest, Be present, Be humble. And that is so much more healthy and healing. And that's kind of what this retreat is like. There's a whole group of teachers. There's not just like one. And I think that is a nice energy. The other night, Last night, Don Miguel Ruiz, The author of the four agreements, He got up and spoke just for like 510 minutes, Straight from the heart. So sweet. So we're so blessed. We got to see him speak. It's my first time. But then he opened up to all the teachers and it was so cool. And I love seeing all of your students that are here. I could tell that all the warrior goddesses, You know which ones they are. They're cheering you on. I wanted to go there. So me and Cody are two dense males. And we need to be taught about this warrior goddess movement that you've created. So hugely popular books. And full disclosure, Me and Heather Ash have the same publisher now. So but can you come for our audience who doesn't know the warrior goddess books, And exactly what you do with that work can you give them a little synopsis on that movement that you've created? Absolutely. And that was such my intent when I started the book. And I said to Randy, I don't want to just write a book. I want to start a revolution. He's like, We're on. Let's go. So warrior goddess training was the first book. And it turns seven next month, Which is so exciting. And it's still selling like crazy. Like crazy. Yeah. It was number one on shamanism and new age goddesses for four years. Number one consistently. And now it's been going between like one and five. Did you have that sense when you wrote it that this is going to be big or I could feel this wave of energy coming through? I did not. Randy did. He did. I was going through a divorce. I was like in hell. And Randy came to me. I'd written one book with him already. And he came to me. He's like, All right, What's your next book? And I'm like, I don't have anything. And he's like, What have you written before? And so I gave him something I'd written and he's like, That's not it. And he said, What else do you got? And I said, Well, I have this women's program that I've written. It's called 13 moons and I have 13 different lessons with. And he's like, That's it. Get it to me. And just so people know, Randy is the owner of Hierophant publishing and he's very much a wizard at pulling the right thing out of out of you. And he helped me with that as well. He's very he's a very good course corrector. He's like, You're going on a tangent. That's too much. That's not for this book. That's for the next one. He's really good at that. He's really good at that. So he took those 13 lessons and he's like, We're bringing them to 10. I need you to rewrite this part. I need you to write exercises. And that became where I got us training. And the day it launched that we launched it, We did a huge party and it bumped up to number one on Amazon. And I think Barnes and Noble and just stayed. And what people told me afterwards is I saw the book cover and I knew I had to buy it or I saw the title and I don't even know what a warrior goddess is. I want it because there was that craving that I think that we all have and a lot of men have read that book and had because it's the teachings of the teachings. I do work towards women for sure because there's a particular domestication we're undoing. And I also the teachings are the teachings are for everybody. So one of the things with warrior goddess training is that it's these two energies, Warrior energy, Which is around clarity, Courage, Commitment. It's the unbreak in the arrow. There's nothing going to get in my way. And we need that energy – it's really important – but it's also been out of balance. And a lot of women experience this that they realize they're out of balance of too much warrior because we're very much in a warrior culture right now of push, Force, Make it happen, Of overriding the body. And so I teach people how like pull back, Let's find balanced warrior, Which is centered, Still patient, Deeply patient and committed. And then the goddess energy, Which is around creativity, Openness, Receptivity, Curiosity, And that place of flow. And again, A lot of women have come of like, I've lost that energy. I need to get it back. I don't know where it's gone or I've never had it. I've never had a model for this. What does this look like? And so one of the things about the warrior goddess teaching that I really love is it's not let's get 50% warrior and 50% goddess and then we can check it off the list. It's that we're working to get really honest about what's my blend of these two energies. And each of us I believe has an essence. Some people come in more warrior. That's their essence. That's their energetic. Some people come in more goddess. And when we understand that there's this flow and this continuum rather than black, White, Or 50-50, And that we can also be flexible with those energies of learning. I might be super goddessy in the world, Which I'm not, But let's say I was, That but I need to know how to use warrior because there's going to be people that can only hear I'm here, This is what I'm doing of a more warrior communication. And same thing with the warrior. If I'm very warrior but I'm dealing with someone who's much more goddessy, I would know how to pull that energy in for communication for a particular situation. Well, I haven't thought that I will just put out there because I don't, It's not fully formed, I don't know that makes sense, But as I listen to you speak about that, And it goes back to something David said about the firewalk being an initiation, And we're here at a shamanic gathering where I think one of the beautiful things in many of the, Probably all of the shamanic and cultures of old, Is we had very clear initiations growing up and throughout our life, And it, As you were just speaking, That made me think that okay that's the thing we've lost in our culture. And if our culture is in the warrior energy more than, And if we don't have a clear initiation, That you made it as the warrior, That you found your power, Then every day is a trial and a fight until you get that affirmation. And we're stuck in the warrior energy because no one stopped and said you did it, You made it, You are now a warrior. Which means now you could be the goddess. Yeah, Yeah, That's beautiful. Whatever the male version of that would be for a man, You could be the wise one or whatever. I don't even know the words for a man, It's not the god really, It's something else. It's something else, Yeah. So you're the initiator. Yes, Catalyst slash initiator. Yeah, I think that's really, Really true that we are so yearning for that ceremony and that the warrior is the line. And if we're in a very individualistic, Especially in the United States now, It's like do it on your own, You've got to do it, You know, You do everything yourself. I don't need a partner. I have to prove myself, Right? And there is that, Then I have to prove myself over and over again. And it's so true, When you, In initiatory ceremonies, You land, You get to rest and you get to mark. And that's something that I love about the teachings, It's an earth-based teachings that are about cycles and the circle and community. And that, When we come back into harmony with the cycles, And instead of there's a beginning and an end and I have to figure out how to do it right to get to the end, But that there's this constant cycle that we get to birth things and learn and grow and things die. And that place of, Am I putting energy into something or am I pulling energy out of something? And that happens in all different ways throughout our life. Yeah, And it feels like we're often fighting the same battles if we don't have that point of, You made it to this, Doesn't mean you're done being the warrior necessarily, It means you take a step and it's a new battle. And new growth comes from a new battle. Exactly. And like Miguel shared last night, One of the things that I learned from him, Because the warrior goddess teachings are, The goddess is, I studied Wicca, Witchcraft, European shamanism for decades, And then knew I was missing something and found Miguel. And that's the warrior. And bringing those two traditions together, That there is a beauty of instead of the war being outside, That we realize, Oh, The war is actually with myself. And we become warriors of love, We become warriors of peace, We become warriors of courage. And so instead of battling the outside world or pushing that we're like, Okay, What am I actually bringing my attention to? And I found when I first started working with Miguel, I needed that, Like warrior, I'm going to fix myself, Like I needed that in the beginning. And then I was like, Oh, Wait, No, I don't. I don't need to fix anything. And it just changed. And there's a way that I think when we start a path, We need more of the warrior being redirected. And then when the initiation happens, When the awareness happens, We surrender into something different. No. Can I share something I've been hearing from a lot of the students this weekend? I've been having dinner with them and chatting with them, And it's definitely a majority of females here. And I keep hearing from them, God, I wish there were more men that did this work, That understood what we were going through, What we're working on. What is it that we – I mean, I understand Cody doesn't get it. So what is it that we as men are not getting that there's this huge movement of warrior goddesses? And I see this on Instagram, I see with all my friends, There's all of these women's groups popping up, So many female transformation clubs and groups and retreats. And the men are lacking a little. Not that we're not doing some work, But I'm hearing all these complaints, Especially this weekend. Do you address that with your students? What's going on? What's going on? Where's the warrior gods? Yeah. Where are they? Yes. There's very few things for men, Unfortunately, That are solid, I would say. And I'm hoping that that's going to start to change. And in a way, What I feel like is happening is that women are leading, And we're figuring out how do we get stable and do our work, And then let the men figure out how to do their work. And I feel like there's – we're coming close to a time when there's going to be – you know, I'm starting to hear people – women that are like, I'm going to go start working with men. They need support and help, And the men aren't – there's not that many male-led groups, And I think that needs to happen more. But it's interesting, Because I think there may be a way that the women are cleaning things up and are going to go back and say, Okay, You guys, Let us show you what we're learning and what's the next steps. So it's an interesting time. It is. I hear this. I heard it last night at dinner. I've worked so much on myself, And then my partner didn't match me anymore, So I left. Or I can't find – that happen to you? Not necessarily something else happened to me, But I hear that from women all the time. All the time. All the time. Yeah. And so actually, We're working on building a dating app for people like this, And one of the main issues that we're trying to solve is how to bring enough men in that equal capacity and commitment to growth as the women, Which is like solving that is quite a thing. That's a puzzle. That's quite the puzzle. That is. So we're going to have to start teaching more and more men, Cody. Definitely. Please. Yeah, Because that's what needs to happen, Is that the men have a safe place where they can unpack their domestication. Because we've been – and when you use the word domestication, It's the way Don Miguel uses it right – like a kind of societal programming from our family, Our parents' society. And so men have been domesticated in the sense that we have to be masculine and strong and hard and stiff and warriors in a certain way, And so we can't unpack our stuff. And so to do the kind of work you're doing, If I'm going to step into a goddess circle, Oh, I'm a wimp. I grew up playing ice hockey. I can't do that. I'm missing teeth over here. I can't unpack my feelings. How do we coax them along, Heather Ash? Come on, Sweethearts. I mean, Well, First of all, Look at all these beautiful goddesses who are like, Hey, Come on this amazing journey, You guys. Absolutely. And that's, I think, The – what's shifting now is women are getting to the point that we're like, Come to my level. Like, I'm not – I'm going to stop going to your level. And I think that's what we've done for so many years is that I know so many women that are like, Well, It's not – it doesn't feel like a match, But it's a relationship. They date down. They date down. And so I think that women now are getting enough confidence to go, You know what, I'd rather just be alone. And that will then eventually – the men will be like, Okay, If I want a woman that really will light me up and that will be in a good partnership, I'm going to have to up level because they're not coming to me. And so what do I need to do to create those changes so that I can meet her, You know, Match her? Just to go a little bit deeper into that, So there's some guys listening or some women who are going to try to fix their guys after they listen. If you were to take a guy and say, Hey, Let's start unpacking, How is it different with men when it comes to some of this unpacking or deconstructing the domestication that maybe women do it one way? Do men do it a different way? Do they need to approach it differently? Are there different pitfalls for them? What I've seen with men is that what helps men to get vulnerable, Because that's really what we're working towards, Is to help humans get vulnerable so they can find out what's there that needs to be cleaned up to start to let the armor go and to feel safe. Women what helps women feel safe is you put them in a circle and you get them all talking and like they're like, Oh my god, I had an abortion too. And all the shame of like, I'm the only one that had this experience just starts melting off. And in that connection of whatever it is, There's this recognition, It's not just me, I'm not broken. And that's what women are struggling with. I'm broken. There's something wrong with me. And so that's the vulnerability for women is that it doesn't work for men. What works for men is we're going to go in the woods and we're going to chop trees down, We're going to move these rocks, We're going to do sweat lodge, We're going to activity together. And that sense of the men working together in a physical way to do something, Yoga, It doesn't have to be outside, But just something that there's, We're doing something together. That's what allows the armoring start to break down. And then the talking can happen. So where you have to get to is the same place, But how you enter it is different, I found. Yeah, As you talk about that, I mean, That makes total sense. The thing that kind of comes up is when you use the word vulnerable in a man's mind, That just means weak. I have to just show up weak. And I don't think that's what you mean by vulnerable. How would you describe or talk about what it is to be vulnerable as a woman or a man? It doesn't matter. It's just, What does that word mean? Because as a man, That just means show up defenseless and weak without something else, You know, There to make it safe. Like what makes it safe? Yeah, Exactly. And that's part of the creating a container where, And the understanding that actually your vulnerability is your strength, But especially as men. Men have been taught, Do not let your guard down. If you let your guard down, Somebody else is going to come in and kill you or take over. Like there's. . . And they used to. And they used to. Yeah, That's true. And there's also biology. A piece of this is the biology as well. That's how Rome was built. Yes. So the unpacking is to, You know, I maybe wouldn't use the word vulnerable with in a men's circle. That's where we're getting to, But it's that place of being honest. What's actually going on? Where are the places that you've armored? Where are the places that you feel? Because a lot of things, I think just from talking with a lot of men, There's this feeling like I have to do it all. I can't show any emotion. And there's that place of I just should know how to do this. And then the conflict of like, But I don't know how to do this. That then gets really intense inside of the body. And so the part of the unpacking is like, You don't, You're not supposed to do everything. You can't. And that's a form of vulnerability. Like you actually can't. How do we start unpacking that? And it's slow and gentle. Yeah. I think we isolated ourselves. I don't know when, You know, Years ago where really part of the shamanic ideas was we really were in groups, Right? Tribes. And so you would have a group of men that, You know, Of old you hunted with. So you had to trust them right with your life and with the life of the tribe and you had to trust each other. So that kind of bonding, It seems like then being vulnerable is just being honest because everybody else counts on that, Right? Then counts on the group. And I don't think we have that. I mean, I think we're finding it, But I don't think we have it. I think our sports are like a shallow version of what that used to be. They aren't the real experience of it. Although I do play ice hockey a couple of times a week and it feels so good to be with a group of men. I have to say aggressive, But that's the doing of it. The shallow would be the personification of that watching it on TV, But I'm not doing it right. So it fulfills the idea in the mind, But not the somatic part, The physical part. Because when I did martial arts, The doing it in the group, You can't help but be vulnerable because every new thing you try to do, You fail at a thousand times before you can do it. And you fail with a partner often. And so there's some real just honest things that then happen amongst those people. So anyway, I wanted to ask what's the most common thing that you're hearing from your students recently? Like what is one of those one or two burdens that they're really struggling with where they're coming to you for help? Like this is it. Are you seeing a common thread at the moment? There's a couple common threads. One is obviously because we've been navigating the pandemic of just anxiety. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going next. So that just general I think is in all of us right now is we're having to learn how to be super flexible and a lot of anxiety, A lot of anxiety and also around boundaries, Around communication. Around how do I know, You know, A lot of women are saying like, I know there's something more for me, But I don't know how to say no to people in my life or situation. I have to, I feel like I have to care take and say yes to everything. And so that's been always a place with women that there's such a deep, I have to take care of everybody else and put everybody else first. And how, How do I not do that? Because that's where they're getting their value. That's where they've learned to get their value from. And then so where do men get their value in that same vein? Is it going out and making the money? Is it where, Where, Where are we trapped? Partially in I'm steady, I'm unemotional. I will always be the same and I will take care of things like I will make the money or I will you know, Like be steady. And there's a particular way that I think men are trained that you're not allowed to have emotions, To be confused around things, To be uncertain that that's just built into the domestication of that's not okay. Cause it's vulnerable because it's weak. And so that always having to be strong and, And also with, With men, Just like we were talking about before, There's just such this confusion of either I'm strong or I'm weak instead of sometimes it's okay to be weak and that's going to be the strength and to learn, You know, We're both having to rewire both men and women because women have also been trained. Men are supposed to be strong. And so there's a lot of wounding for men around women taking them out. It's not just the men, Right? It's the women taking them out because you weren't strong. You didn't show up for me the way you were supposed to. So that has to get unwound. So it's not one or the other. It's this dynamic that we've created. And they're, So they're wounding each other. Yes. Yes. There's a lot of wounding going on Cody. That's why I stay home. That's right. Yay for the pandemic. I was like introverts love the pandemic. I've never gotten, I wrote a book. I've never gotten so much work done in my life. Exactly. And my life's so easy cause there's no conflict cause there's no people. There's no people and we need each other. And we want love. Yeah, We want love and we want to evolve and we're being invited to evolve in a really beautiful way right now to figure out how do we communicate with each other in different ways? How do we learn to be in relationship with conflict where we're not just burying it, But we're letting the conflict help us grow and become more intimate with each other. And so, And speaking of books, Writing books during a pandemic. So I have it in front of me. It's by the way, Gorgeous cover. If you want to check it out, The seven secrets to healthy, Happy relationships, Really beautiful book. Um, Why did you guys decide to write this and how did you end up partnering with Don Miguel Ruiz Jr? Such a fun story. So Don Miguel Jr and I, We've known each other since he was 15 and I don't know how old I, Yeah, I've known him for a really long time. Yeah. Yeah. We were both kind of raised in the same family in a way because I have been working with Miguel since 1992. So in that journey we didn't see each other for like 10 years cause I dropped out of the group and went and did my own thing and then Miguel and I saw each other at some thing and we just started talking. I think I had published the first book with Randy and Randy took Miguel Jr on as his next author basically. And so Miguel Jr and I looked at each other one day and we're like, Let's write best selling books and travel. Wouldn't that be fun? And we high fived each other and we called each other, You know, I'm the ink sister and he's the ink brother. So we high fived and five years later we would, We still laugh at each other, But like not too many years later we looked at each other and we're like, We asked for this. Just remember we asked for this cause we're both on tour constantly and it's been great. And so this just deep friendship developed from both of us writing and touring and the ways that our lives have continually crossed paths. And one day I was working with Sounds True and I wanted to do something and I was pitching some different things and they're like, Well we really need a relationship. We don't have anything on relationship. And I was like, Give me a minute. And I called Mikey, Miguel Jr. And I was like, What do you think about doing this audio project with Sounds True on relationships? He's like, I'm in. So I write Randy and I'm like, I'm so excited. Miguel and I and Randy's like, I want the book rights. I'm like, Okay, There we go. So the Sounds True audio is called the art of showing up and it was Miguel and I in the studio talking about relationships and what we had learned. I love that. That makes sense why yesterday he said, Hey ink brother to me. I didn't get it. I mean, I kind of got it, But now it makes more, There's more context. And so you guys got together, You wrote this and can we jump into it a little bit? So the seven secrets, Can you tell us the seven secrets or do we have to read the book for them? You have to read the book because they're secrets. Since I'm going to have a book with seven energies in the title, I get it. Excellent. Seven's a thing. What I'll say about the book that I love is that Randy, Miguel and I did a couple workshops together on the topics of the book as we were figuring out what do we want to do and what is this around? Which was really, Really fun and beautiful. And then we both wrote and then we gave our manuscripts to Randy and Randy the magician. He calls me, He called both of us. He's like, Okay, I'm going to merge your voice. We're like, What? He's like, She needs to have one voice. Cause I always thought it would be like Heather Ash says and then Miguel says. So what he did with his wisdom and brilliance is he wove both of our voices together into one teaching. So it's a cohesive, What? So we have different teachings, But they got brought under one voice. And what that does is allows when you're reading the book to feel both the coherence of our teachings together and also there's this, This movement through it, Through the seven different lessons we can say that are really powerful and that both of our stories are talked about in there. And we're also really different. And that's just the other thing that I love about this book is that Miguel Jr. He's been married for however many, You know, 20 plus years. I think at this point they have two kids, They have a super solid relationship. I'm divorced, I'm bisexual, I'm polyamorous. I've had so many great relationships. So we come from these really different perspectives with a great deal of respect. And so it allowed us to also not just cover heterosexual male, Female relationships, But to say there's a lot of different ways to be in relationship. And the most important relationship that you have is with yourself. And that's where we start. Like really this book is about how do you be in relationship with yourself? Because that has to be the beginning. And from there, And it really is for all relationships. I mean a lot of it is geared towards intimate relationships, But you can read it around how do I improve my communication with my boss? How do I improve my communication with my sister? How do I improve my communication with myself? So that's woven in as well. So now we've got a lot to talk about. I just opened up a whole other door, Right? Actually, Can we start with divorce? It sounds like from the little bits that we've heard that that was a very pivotal experience for you. It was. So my husband and I were teaching partners, Business partner. Like our life was completely enmeshed in all the things. And it was great. We were married for a long time. We traveled together. We did everything together. And we had an open relationship which we navigated beautifully. It was like very easy and beautiful until he fell in love with my teaching partner. So it got super messy and super public and really painful. And I did not do it well. I was like, I'm not letting go. We were married. I mean, It was bad. I was not the poster child for letting go. That's what I've always been afraid of with open relationships and that always I never could understand because I always see that happen. How do you avoid that? Oh, Clearly you didn't. You can't. But I was thinking about this the other day because people always say they're so like, Well, You know, Open relationships are so challenging. I'm like, Relationships are challenging. All of them. They're all challenging. And it really is about I think the thing with you when you have an open relationship is you have to have more communication. And our communication broke down at a certain point. You know, When I look back now, I'm like, Oh, Our communication broke down. Our agreements broke down. And so you have to have extra clarity in a way. And so you were sounds like you were a mess at a certain point. I was a yeah, Hot mess. Yeah. A goddess mess. Yeah. And it was so incredible what happened. Like I it Phoenix out of the fire for sure. And what happened is I'm a spiritual teacher. I have a huge community. My husband leaves and I still have the community. And I had this moment where I was like, Okay, I just have to pretend I'm fine. Like, I don't know how else to do this because I have all these kids that just lost their dad in a way. Right. And and I felt into them. I'm like, That would be the biggest disservice to myself and to them. If I just gloss over this and be like, Well, He's gone. Let's move on. And so I made the commitment to myself and I was like, This is going to be messy. And I'm going in. And it took two years. And I knew it wasn't just about the end of relationship with my husband. I knew it wasn't. It was all the trauma and grief and all the things I hadn't processed. I gave myself permission to just be in it. And it was incredibly difficult. And it was it changed everything. It totally changed everything. And that's when you wrote the warrior goddess. So did you have to tap into the warrior? Oh, Like, I trust the warrior. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And share the story of this is what I'm going through and and that there was also this moment of realizing how much I had abandoned myself and that there is again, This I just saw this fork in the road of like, You can keep abandoning yourself or you can decide to ally with yourself. And that became such a fundamental part of my teachings is the places where we get to choose. Are you going to abandon yourself again or are you going to actually become an ally and a best friend to yourself? And it doesn't look like what you think it's going to look like necessarily. How did you come out of it? So good. So happy and grateful and loving because I got I had tons of challenges. It wasn't like the relationship ended and I never talked to these people again. There were so many opportunities for me to go into hell for me to feel bad. It's a long story but I'll just say this. I got to practice unconditional love in such a radical way and forgiveness in such a radical way because I had all the reasons to feel betrayed like I couldn't trust people and that was another choice but I'm like, Well, I can hold this story of like people aren't trustworthy. You're going to get hurt or I can go. I want to love. I want to figure out how to love no matter what. And so as thing after thing would pop up I'd be like, All right, How do I walk my talk around this? Was there someone who helped you through that at the time? Did you have a teacher, Guides, Healers? I had so many friends. I had a lot of people holding my hand and having to pass me around because I was such a mess. They were like, Okay, We're full. Can we pass you? So I'm like, Go ahead, Pass me. I went through a couple of heartbreaks in my life and there were moments just laying in bed just sobbing. I can't do it. I can't do it again. I'm never doing this again. No one will ever love me. And then Cody's got to shovel me off the floor. When you said how do I walk my walk, In my head I heard how do I walk this fire? Like that comes from metaphor to take into life when you do that. Sounds better than how do I break this arrow, But that could work. It could work. Arrow at the throat. But it is. It's true. How do I walk this fire? Here's a fire and they're all different. And how do I be brave and courageous and present? And that part of the thing that I've also seen is that what we're learning how to do is ripen our stories. This also is a huge teaching that came out of this, My experience with my ex-husband is that, And navigating everything is that there's stories that we have that I call ripe stories. So you realize you have a story about something like I'm not smart or I'm never going to do it right. And there's some of those stories that the moment you just see that you have that agreement it dissolves. It's ripe. It's easy to undo. So one of my big stories of my life was I was raised in Southeast Asia. We moved every time. I was a new kid on the block and then we would I would get to know people and I would feel settled and then we'd move again and then I'd be a new kid on the block. So by the time I came to college I was really insecure and I didn't know how to meet people and I was afraid I'd never have. So that was my story. And one day I was like, I'm so bored of that story. I'm just bored of it. Like it just doesn't, I'd outgrown it in a way. And so I was like, Well, What's actually true? And what was true and what I started telling people is I was raised in Southeast Asia. I was so blessed to get to see all different people around the world and travel and see different cultures and I'm incredibly flexible now and I love humans dearly and I love diversity. And I was like, That feels better. So it was a ripe story where one day I just realized this isn't who I am anymore and I was able to rewrite that story. But there's other stories that are unripe that are still, We're attached. There's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of healing that still needs to happen. And that's what I got through my, Through ending my relationship was that I had a lot of unripe stories and instead of beating myself up, Why isn't this unripe? What's wrong with you to just be like, Hi, What do I need to do? And how do we ripen fruit? You put it in the sun. And for me, Sunshine is telling your story to somebody who's going to be like sunshine. That's going to be loving and neutral because when we bring our story up and tell it to someone who's neutral, The shame that's usually holding it down dissolves and that's what can release it. So sunshine, It's ripens those stories. The second is you put it in a brown bag, Brown paper bag. So if you have unripe fruit, You can put a bunch of it in a bag. And what's happening is the fruit is ripening itself because it's off-gassing and there's no place for the gas to go and so it ripens the fruit faster. Sometimes what you need to ripen a story is to stop telling the story. So first you're telling the story and then you're not telling the story anymore. Yes. And different stories need different things. Okay? If you just keep telling the story over and over and over again, You're not healing it. Sometimes there is. There's a point where you're like, Stop telling the story. Let it ripen. I love that picture of putting it in a brown paper bag. So, You know, It's there. You're not telling it, But you can always get at it because you can get in the brown bag. Yeah. And see, How's it doing? And I had such a beautiful brown paper bag moment when I was 50. I made a decision to like leave my life and I went to Bali in India for a couple months and it was a big deal because I had never like not taught. It was the first time I took a pretty serious break with nothing else attached to it. And I was in Bali. I was in a little cabin in a rice field and I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm laughing in my sleep. I mean, I wake up and in my body I was like, Why did I ever think I was going to get abandoned? Like, That's so funny because I had merged with everything. Like I felt this incredible connection to life and how I was part of it. And it was because I brown paper bagged, I removed myself from my life and just sat and something ripened inside of me completely spontaneously. So it's really beautiful. And then the third way, Which is one of my favorites, Is be around other ripe fruit. So if you have an avocado that's not ripe and you put it next to a ripe banana, The banana will help ripen the unripe avocado or whatever the fruit is. And so we need each other. So when we are around somebody who's ripe in the area we want to ripe, So if I want to be more loving, If I hang out with people that have like got the loving thing down, Just by being around them, It'll help ripen me. If I want to improve my finances, If I find somebody who's like rocking on the finances and watch their videos, Read their books, Hang out with them physically, It'll help ripen that inside of me because it opens the possibility. And just because somebody's like great with finances but their relationship's terrible, You don't need their relationship to be great if you're ripening your finances. I have a friend who's got a lovely family, Beautiful twins, And I hang out with them a lot. And I'm like, That's what I want. I want those little babies, Nice wife, Nice partner. I just love this energy. Perfect. Yeah, You're ripening that part inside of you. To rewind a little bit, Cody's making fun of me about breakups. So I went through one difficult one, Breakup once, And then a friend of mine that night invited me out to dinner. It was really rough. It was a rough evening. And there was a very, Very famous celebrity there with us at dinner. They didn't tell me that was going to happen. And I was not in a great space. And I'll just change the name, But my buddy says to the guy, Hey, David just broke up with his girlfriend and he's a mess. And he goes, What's her name? I'll change the name. Let's say her name was Amanda. And the guy stands up in the Four Seasons restaurant in Beverly Hills, Which is right where I was. Not a place I hang out, By the way, Everyone listening. It was a one night invitation. OK. Not that cool at all. It was just a one night thing. And the guy just starts yelling her name like like this is a super famous dude and just yelling her name. And then he sits down and he looks at me and goes, See, It's fine. And it was like this huge thing of melt ice just melted off me of pain. I was like, Whoa, He's so neutral. He was like, This is what it's like to be neutral. It's fine. And he just looked at me in the eyes. And then, You know what he said to me? He said, Watch out all these people. They're going to try to pick the fruit off the tree before it's ripe. Because anyone that tries to represent you or help you through a career only choose someone that it's going to help you ripen. That's what he said. No joke. The next day I get a call from a publisher, Hey, Based on our algorithm, We want to write a book with you. It's going to be called this. I was like, Algorithm? Oh, He said, Don't do that kind of thing. Day after that, My buddy introduced me to I ended up talking to Randy and I was like, Oh, This is right. And it all literally he said, Don't choose someone's going to pull you off the tree before you're ripe. That is beautiful. That's kind of bringing it all around. Yeah. And then he now here we are in this room together. Yes. Oh, Cause I was like, Go with the person's going to help you ripen in the right way. And it's okay. Exactly. And my prayer before I found Randy was I need a champion. I need a champion that gets me. I need a champion. And Randy showed up. That's beautiful. Yeah. We're all ripening. What are you Cody? I'm a banana today. You're an avocado. What are you? What are you going to be today? I want to be an apple today. I love that. And so a banana, An avocado, An apple are hanging out. Talking about relationships. Well, We have a moment left. So just for the audience listening, Where can they find you? Best place, Your goddess. Com. So website, Which is getting revised. I'm so excited. And then all the social media. Well, I shouldn't say all Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Yeah. I'm, I'm towing into Tik TOK. I don't know. I tried. Yeah. I'm like, I think I'm too old for this. All the kids love it. Yeah. And so this is your newest book. Actually my newest, This is my newest book with Randy. I have one more book called warrior heart practice. Beautiful. So warrior heart practice. We've got the seven secrets to healthy, Happy relationships. We have the whole warrior goddess series. There's workbooks and all sorts of cool stuff. I've been watching all weekend. Women walking out with 10 copies under their arms. I'm like, I don't even have that many friends. Who are you buying for? I've never seen someone buy one copy. So blessings for you on that note. Beautiful. And I guess last thing, Just any last wisdom you'd like to impart for our audience. I think that people that listen to me and Cody are into meditating energy work, Personal growth, Definitely a bit of a spiritual lean in their lives after all these years, Trials, Tribulations, Fire walks. What would you like to leave people with after all of this experience for you to just drop a little nugget of wisdom on them? Like that guy said to me, Hey, Go with somebody that's going to help you ripen. It's like, Okay, I'll do that. I would say that fear never has to stop us. Fear is energy and that to be willing to be messy, Creative, Courageous, Try again, And listen to get still and listen and that that wisdom within each of us is waiting for us to reconnect. So you can grow into really ripe fruit, Whatever you are. And take your time ripen in baby. Don't rush it. Heather Ashamari, Thank you so much for hanging out with me and Cody in the flesh, The warrior goddess herself. And thanks all of you for listening to us. It's good to be back. It's been a while. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Reviews

Wow, what a great conversation!