Welcome to finding your way home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell. Movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean, how to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in. Dear ones, I cannot wait to offer you this episode featuring none other than the immense magic maker that is Ash Bonds. Ash was my first return to yoga teacher eight years ago. She is since then. A writer, teacher, student, and currently studying for her PhD, focusing on the relationship between mythology and landscape at the University of Bristol, where she also, in her not quite so spare time, lectures in creative writing and classics. Her debut middle grade mythological series, Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm, has been acquired by Piccadilly Press, among two other books in the series. And it's due to be released in Harbach in spring 2024. When not reading or writing about myth, Ash is also in her part time life. Still a yoga teacher, loves to move, loves to dive into open spaces of water, is often found on weekends in some sort of country, escape stomping around the field in big muddy boots. She insists that she gets her best ideas in these kind of environments. I'm going to make sure that you have all of the details to get in contact with Ash, because I know that you're going to want to, but for now, welcome and dive into this very special episode. I'm going to set the scene for the first time that I encountered Ash. So we're in. The top floor, or one of the top floors of an archaic old crumbling building in Bristol. I am fresh to the city. I've only been there for about six, seven months, and it was a move that I was not in any way anticipating doing. It was a total act of life surrender, having encountered some challenges in the life that I was forcing myself to live previously. I hadn't been to yoga class in 15 years ish. And I get into this room and it is packed, thronging with people of all different shapes and sizes, and they're laying out their mats with great enthusiasm and they're chatting to each other and they're smiling and there are blocks going everywhere. And there's this pixie like person milling around the room, smiling at people, giggling at the appropriate moments with real genuine enthusiasm. And she sits, taking up her space in front of the windows, and she has a little shell. And in the shell is a half burned core of incense. And she sits down, and instinctively everyone goes quiet. I hadn't experienced that before. That people knew the teacher well enough that all she had to do was sit. And they would come together. It wasn't a coming to here, that was a coming together. And this pixie, Ash, begins to tell a story. And I've been to so many of her classes that I couldn't tell you exactly what the story was. But it would have started with a quote, and it will have continued with Ash sharing her reflections on what that quote has meant to her over the course of the week. And as this happens, this welcoming, this settling, over the course of about five minutes, you start to see everybody's bodies dropping. They go deep into the pelvic bowl underneath them, their breath starts to slow, they're smiling much more gently now, none of the, the manic of meeting and greeting. And you start to see that yoga is philosophy and that yoga is real life. And that yoga is people and connection. And so immediately I knew that it was where I was meant to be. Nothing else about Bristol made sense, but that very much did. I knew that I would go there every single weekend. There were some elements to the class that I was not expecting, like the sound of Tina Turner when I dropped into a deep squat. But the other thing that Ash did, which was extremely generous, and again I had never experienced, was I was at the time coming out of 10 years of chronic back pain and that had become an experience whereby I was feeling almost traumatized on a daily basis about moving within my body. And I went up to her, I was terribly nervous about doing yoga because I'd heard so many things during my other movement trainings about how dangerous it was to people with back pain and all of those things. And I went up to Ash at the beginning and I, in my very derogative way at the time, because I was terribly shy, said, I'm so sorry to trouble you. Totally British. So sorry to trouble you, I just wanted to let you know I've got this thing going on, I can monitor it, but if I do anything slightly strange and eccentric at the corner of the class, please, uh, ignore me and don't feel any need to change anything in your flow. And she smiled at me, glowing, totally unfazed and she said, You know, that's really great. It's really, really great, because I need someone in the class that can give everyone else the permission not to have to go into Deep back bend, foot behind ear, awful abdominal crunches. I need someone to let everyone know that they can rest and that they can personalize. And that just by virtue of being here, they're doing something for their body. I have never forgotten that was seven years ago. And I've never not shared that with clients, that they have full permission to do exactly what they need to do. And that that is generative in the rest of their lives for the people that they demonstrate that to who then learn they have permission. So without further ado. Hopefully that gives you a sense of how I see this human and what she has to share with the world in all of the ways that she now shares. Ash Bond, welcome to Finding Your Way Home. I am so happy to be here. I was quite enjoying that ado. I could have sat here and listened to that ado for a very long time. And I think I have two things, I have many things to note, but I think two things to note from that introduction. The first thing is that she giggled at all of the appropriate moments. I won on my race day. She giggled at all of the appropriate moments. My goodness, I really hope that is true. I know it hasn't been true in the past. Um, and the idea that anybody could ignore Anthea, it's just completely absurd, it's like, it's golden light in the corner of the class, but thank you so much for inviting me on your beautiful podcast. I cannot wait to listen to all of the other episodes. When they're birthed, which actually takes us right into a framework for understanding the multiplicity of you, because my sense is you've always been a storyteller. You've always been a teller of stories and you've always understood the power of the voice and the power of narrative. Tell me about that. I think when I heard you say you've always been a storyteller, the image that first popped into my mind was me as a child. I was a really good liar. I just remember being a really good liar and like having the power of, of story from quite early. Early on, I think there is a very thin line between lying and storytelling. And now, you know, as a fantasy writer, I think I have a very interesting relationship with truth. So I think that, that happened from a very early age. And I've always been excited. By story, by story. I was a great reader for a while, but I was a great writer in that I wrote prolifically. I remember very particularly my primary school teacher always giving me two book, like notebooks that we'd have in English class, because I have one for stories that I, that I would write. And I think given the nature of this podcast, that in our relationship and how much I learned from you I, and that so often in in life, you need just one person. Just one person to see something in you and to offer you the tools to move towards that part of yourself. As a child, I honestly, I don't even remember the teacher's name, which is terrible. I'm sure I could pull it out, but to remember her as a guide and a tool was this extra book, which is like, Oh, I see that you write a lot. And I'm going to give you this space to do that. And I'm going to show you that this is. okay to do that. It wasn't somebody going, I just, I see that you're a brilliant writer. I see that. I see you. It's like, yeah, here's a book. Put words in it. That's really wonderful because when people use words. especially when they use words that are complementary, that's not necessarily what's needed. I've been reflecting on that in reference to the Nava system. Slight tangent, but it relates that what we need is felt experiences of being safe, not to discount that someone that we love saying, darling, you're safe. is not really deeply impactful, but more potentially for me and in the work that I do is that the person feels the atmosphere of safety and it takes me back to this setting the scene with the story in your classes and having in your way of being a very safe atmosphere for how you hold space for others. That that is perhaps more important than saying to any one particular person, you can do this. I wonder about that. I think that really stings, the nature of story. When we tell a story and say we begin with once upon a time. When you begin a story with once upon a time, you set up the story, like, oh, once upon a time. And you can immediately feel your body, you know, like moving into the sense, I have an idea. And what this world is going to be, it's not necessarily going to be a cozy world, once upon a time, fairytory, the notoriously dark places, no, there are woods and wolves and witches, all of the kinds of witches. So I think you're saying there about, um, setting up a framework, maybe if we add another word into that, which is a gateway, uh, used to be a secondary school feature, you know, Um, setting up an expectation for how you move into a space is a little bit like setting up the first line of a story. With my secondary school class, the expectation was that you would line up outside of the door, you wouldn't kick anyone, you know, you, and you can do whatever you like outside the room. But as soon as you go in the room, it's quiet, you know, that's, that's, that's the rule. Um, we talked about the yoga class that I miss in my very soul. You come in, you put your mats down, and this is the time where you can laugh, you can play, you can chat, you can genuinely do whatever you wish to do with your body. And that is the, is the framework that's created, but it'll be a different tool. And then with Doris, I think about that a lot in terms of First line, first paragraph, what world you are inviting the reader into and how you set that expectation with your wording. It's like, okay, there are going to be woods and wolves. and witches, but I'm also here, like once upon a time, I'm the authorial voice and I will guide you and I will not leave you in the woods with the wolves and the witches. I will, I will be there with you and we will experience this together and maybe we'll come all the way out again. It's a totally wonderful answer. I was just thinking about how much trust that implies, whatever framework you're talking about, whether you're talking about yoga as a teacher to a student, or let's say a teacher to an entire class. So it's a skill that develops over time, the same as editing and re editing. Ash shared with me before we came on onto the recording that she is in the stages of drafting the second of this initially three part book series that she's writing which she's secured funding for and is extremely exciting and I'm going to get her to dive into for the benefit of your ears but She's mentioned that she was a teacher and then obviously transitioned into being a yoga teacher as well, and it takes time, presumably, Ash, to cultivate the comfort in yourself, the comfort in the role, the understanding of the material, whichever discipline we're talking about, to be able to create that environment of trust. I wonder, actually, what it would have been like had I met you. Right when you first discovered yoga or discovered the desire within you to begin to teach us, could you take us back? Where even were you geographically? Because you did quite a lot of your training overseas, didn't you? I did, yeah. I had an idea that I wanted to be a yoga teacher, just the first years into practicing. And that was when I was at university. And I had the most wonderful yoga teacher, my first and greatest yoga teacher, her name is Sarah Perry. She still teaches, she teaches in Oxford, and I would go to a couple of classes of hers a week. And I have so many stories about Sarah as we all do about our favourite teachers. But I remember going up to her once and saying, this is when I was like 19, I would like to be a yoga teacher, um, but I can't do headstands, so I am going to wait. Until I can do a headstand, and then I'm going to become a yoga teacher. And she looked at me in the way that Sarah looked at me sometimes, and they're kind of looking me up and down and seeing my whole self. And And she said, huh, so if you didn't have arms, would that mean that you couldn't be a yoga teacher then? And I said, uh, well, I, I'm sure I, I could. And she's like, well, why? Why are we putting this arbitrary pose? Onto whether or not you can be a yoga teacher. So that was sort of my first inkling, I suppose, as to what being a yoga teacher might be. Then skip forward into another life when I was teaching English literature and art in Malaysia. And then I would practice every morning. And the gym that I would practice, which was in the boarding school, had Glass windows and the girls would walk past on the way to breakfast and catch the end of my practice. Um, and, and then slowly, slowly started coming in, you know, they'd get up a little bit earlier and they'd come and join me. And because of that, I turned down my practice a little bit from doing a kind of hour and a half Ashtanga practice to doing an hour Ashtanga practice. You know, when the girls came in for half an hour of gentle yoga. The more and more I practiced with them, I saw impact on them, but I also saw an impact on me. I mean, there are lots of things people can say about all girls boarding schools and, you know, quite a lot of them are true. I imagine the heightened stress that was there. And so after a while, I realized I needed to go and do some actual teaching and teaching practice and do a teacher training. Or five. Yeah, that was that. I think that was the beginning of my yoga teaching journey. And so we wouldn't have met each other for quite a long time unless you were 14. And then coming back to Bristol, yeah, it's like a total kind of mad power yoga. for quite a long time. When you were talking earlier you were referencing, you used the word play. I love that. I love that you use the word play because we can get very overly serious in our studies and in our desire to do well and to be of service to people and we can lose, even in ourselves as teachers, the permission to play. And when I think about Acro, A, I think, my Lord, that looks challenging. And B, I think, well, it harkens back to exactly what we would have done when we were kids. You've had me teach you things like rolling like a ball. And when that's taught by, by people that lead Pilates organizations across the world, you know, Brent Anderson, Shelley Power, all of these amazing people who have been teaching for three or four decades, they're saying things like, just roll back and forwards like you did when you were a kid. It's not actually as. hard as it seems to be in people's minds when they come towards quote unquote exercise or even quote unquote yoga practice. Wonder how important you feel play is in movement. Important. So important. I think it's, it's, it's so interesting talking about our relationships with our bodies, right? As if we're separate from our bodies, but if we were going to set up this kind of false binary of Us and our body and our relationship with our body, you know, like think of your favorite friends that you hang out with and, you know, that you don't have to try with. These are friendships, I would imagine, have an element of play in there, because sometimes when we don't have to try with people, there is a looseness that comes with that. As to how important play is. With movement, I think it harks back again to this idea of permission and acro is a really interesting example of that because a lot of acrobatics require you to be very static and very tight and you hold everything, you know, and you think of the body of an acrobat, it's very But then pairing that with a permission to break your form, like, you learn all of the rules and then you have this permission to break out of them. And the permission is not real because there was never a rule anyway, you know? It's just that permission slip to play, to move out of the form. Um, which It's also a great tool for working with the nervous system, right? Having this permission to not hold everything all of the time and then let it go. You know, we both climb sometimes, right? To hold things and then to let it go. To, um, to walk like a bear. Is this how you bear walk? You know, is this how you walk like an elephant? Have you looked at the side of somebody and somebody's walking like an elephant slightly differently to you now? Um, because then you realise there is so many opportunities there to move in varied and exciting ways. Um, so yeah, I think, I think play is incredibly important to life and movement and body practice, sex, like, you know, like all of the interesting things in life, you know, like why, why would you not? No, I mean, I guess, why would you not? The answer that immediately pops into my mind is that people are very afraid of falling. And if you apply that in life as an analogy, You could just add an I in place of the first L. They're very afraid of failing. But I do think about this in physicality. So I was the same as you. I qualified as a yoga teacher without being able to do necessarily all of the moves. My God. Look at how they gave you the certificate. Dan Pepiat, you can blame him. Yoga like water. He said that yoga wasn't about the movement. Outrageous. But Dan, like you, gave me complete permission to qualify. still in a normal human body that hadn't quite mastered. Mastered, what a silly word, mastered every move. And so the other day I was in a hot class and I went to do a forearm stand and I jumped. I bounced with both legs, which is the first time I tried to do that. And I, I fell over. I just did a gentle roll to the side, plop, there I was on my mat. And I realized it was the first time since falling off a bouldering wall that I had let myself fall. And that would have been a span of five years, the last time that I fell off a bouldering wall. And at the time I fractured three ribs and it set up this deep hesitation in me and this image of my body being fragile, which I now know of course that it's not at all. It is hardwired for healing. It's hardwired for growth. And I need to look after it. And so I'm now going on a tangent, but. It does bring up this question of why do we get nervous about play? And it makes me reflect on the fact that you have gone into this wonderful world of writing, having also done a very impressive qualification to Get there. And I'm reflecting on this combination of I, I gather some of the framework like you were referencing, and then I allow myself to be a unique individual and to roam. Now that I have the foundations and whether the foundations are actually critical to the creative product is debatable, but are they critical to the person being able to give themselves permission, like you say, to create possibly. Yeah, all of the yes. I mean, you want a fear of failure, you should definitely do. a degree in classics from Oxford University. Yeah, that's, that's definitely a thing you should do. It will instill that in you. Um, but then I think, you know, this idea of having permission slips, I mean, some, I mean, people like me, I, I, I need a permission slip, like a, like a literal, actual piece of paper permission slip to play Ogden. And things like Acroyoga, Canstan, I know that the moment in the class where someone says, go to the wall and just try shh, am I allowed to swear? Try shh it. You know, like just go to the wall and like do it on do crow and they give you a silly amount of time, which no one could ever do this pose unless they've done it 500 times before. So everyone pulls over and then it just, you just. We'll move on to the next thing, you know, so me, my permission to, to play creatively with deciding to do a master's in writing for young people. And this is like this, I need this permission slip for time to take out of my job, my adult serious job, being a yoga teacher, to take that time. To go and play creatively, and I think like Sunday morning classes were like hour and a half, where it's like, this is your permission to let a shiny 10 note to play, you know, you have invested in this playtime for your better play. So doing that master's course in writing for young people was for me, my, my creative, Permission to play and to write and to write all kinds of things, you know, so yeah, I think it's, it's seeking out those permissions slips. If like me, you actually need them, you know, I can pretend I'm a completely free spirit and I have the three separate passports to prove it. But really all I do is I go around and I seek permission slips to do things and I demand people give them to me. You're asking for what you need, which is a good skill to learn, and it's that we learn hard by not doing it for decades. I'm asking, I'm also, I mean, to be quite real about it, I'm also paying for permissions. And I think, you know, we're talking about privilege, you know. I mean, I'm lucky I've got a scholarship for the PhD, but a lot of the time, these classes, these opportunities, we're handing over money that we earn. In order to have these opportunities to play or for the sense of freedom within these classes, we are trying to explore this idea of being free with our bodies and moving our bodies and re embodying. people have found us as teachers and invested time and finances and energy into these blocks of time. It's a real privilege to have that space. It's an enormous privilege and it makes me wonder how important you feel the Student's financial investment is I'm doing a course at the moment on money because I recognize that I have had some interesting passive schooling around what money means. And my approach to money historically was similar to my approach with the body and with my feelings and with who I was enormous shame. And so I. The same as you have sought permission to redefine how I view this thing and how that manifests in my business practice. Because I have such a huge focus on ethical values, it makes marketing and business really interesting because you come up against a lot of your belief systems every time you try to launch a new product or market or recruit or whatever it is. So. As part of that course, I've been hearing a lot of interesting messages around the spending of money, not just the feeling of shame that happens for me whenever I spend money on anything related to myself. It doesn't come up at all when I spend money on other people, but it does come up when I spend money on myself. I've had two very significant themes. One is the amount of money that you charge for your services is in no way a reflection of your core intrinsic value. Tick. Believe that to be the case. Part two of that statement, And yet there is. a balance between undercharging because you believe that there's no relationship with your value versus charging an appropriate amount for the life that you want to live or for the financial investment that you've made in your trainings, let's say. And then the second point, which I hadn't considered previously, was the emotional commitment oriented importance of the student paying a fee to allow themselves permission to receive and to invest in the time. I'm really curious as to whether you have any views on that, because you and I have both offered free things. very often, actually, not just to redress privilege issues, but because it's a very different emotional thing to give a gift without asking for anything in return. So selfishly, I really enjoy doing that. And it's a balance. And I'm curious about your perspective on that. I think I'll answer that from the perspective of myself as a student. So when I was at university with my amazing Yoga teacher, Sarah, I'm having a hard time, you know, that confrontation of failure when perhaps I hadn't come up against it very much in my incredibly privileged life before. Um, academically, for a bit, I don't know. So, Friday evenings, after my ancient history tutorial, I would walk to Trinity College, and Sarah was teaching a yin class, and the lights were low, and she'd put fairy lights out, and she would have saved me one chair, because lots of props, you know, chair and blanket, and I had a little bit late because I was rushing. And I would lay myself down on this chair, she would lay a blanket over me, and I would be there for 55 minutes. I would cry sometimes, but I would be there and I would not move. People would be moving around me, instructions were happening, yoga was happening. And I paid the exact amount of money for that class that everyone else did. And it was so worth it. It's the best time. I needed that time. I needed to pay. I mean, this was back when, so it was probably around six pounds. Yeah, I know. And then, after four years, I finished university, and I was still in Oxford, and it was 2009, so nobody was getting any jobs. I had a job. I was a fantastic waitress, but I had a mediocre painter upon toilets. So, I was doing that. I was still trying to do the same amount of yoga as I'd done before and I couldn't afford it and I stopped coming so often and, and Sarah noticed. And one day I came out of Shavasana and I found a class card underneath my mat, an empty class card. Which, you know, gave me six classes and I went up to her at the end and I said, um, Sarah, I didn't say thank you. I was like, what is this? What is this? What is this permission to take something I need or to take the gift that you have offered me? And she said, Oh yeah, Ash, you need to give me a hand rolling at the mats. That'd be great. So before this concept of maybe karma yoga was. somebody noticing what somebody needed and was able to give it to them and did. Um, and I think about that, or I did when I was teaching full time, and I've done that a number of times with retreats or with, with classes. And it's one of the skills of a teacher that you can refine, right? It's just. see a need in a student and then ask yourself whether or not you can meet that need. Oftentimes, the answer is no, because you have a narrow remit. Ever as a teacher, it's a big remit, but it's narrow. But within that remit, I think there are times where you can offer what that student needs. And how brilliant that a need can be met with palm sized piece of blue card. What an amazing story. It's so beautiful. And it brings us to this idea that you matter in that space. Sarah noticed that you weren't there and whether or not you've had a close relationship at that stage. Your presence mattered to her. There was a degree of duty of care or just a degree of guardianship where your unique presence within that space was important. And that's beautiful and it's a lesson for life again of perhaps some of the things we have not believed to be the case until we encounter someone that demonstrates it through leaving a tiny blue card underneath our yoga mat. I was about to ask you about how it is for you to receive. whether that's something that you've had to learn or whether you intrinsically are able to do that. And it's come up in my mind that part of your transition to doing this master's involved not just saying goodbye to your regular teaching practice and your students who are diehards, but in leaving all of that, you dove yourself into academia and dove yourself into quite a challenging academic environment and you moved back home. I have also done the same. You're getting me recording from my stepmother's beautiful flat in London. I talk about privilege and I had been given permission to not be in Bristol, which I needed because my alignment showed that I was meant to be transitioning away from that eight year life. What has it been like to go back in time as a different version of yourself? What's it been like to receive the gift of that? Yeah, I think without getting into the granular grit that lots of things Um, changed during the pandemic. And when you, when you end a relationship, there are lots of different things that happen at the same time, especially when you end a relationship in a very dramatic fashion. Um, and things fall apart. And one of those things can be your mental health. And I'm incredibly lucky in that I have very, very supportive parents who noticed the breaking of things. And caught the pieces just before they hit the floor. So then they could help me put them back together. And that took a solid year, you know, like I, I left Bristol, my parents live about an hour outside and, uh, I started working at a bookshop in a village. Um, again, brilliant, you know, and I would drive home from the bookshop to my parents and I would swim in a river every day. Yeah, and I, I think about lots of stories of journeys when, um, you go journey A to B, you know, and you go through all of these adventures and trials and you go one thing, one thing, one thing, and you get to the end. And then there are the other stories, often stories of women, where we start off on one adventure. That we think is the adventure. This is the way that life is supposed to go. Because this is what we have been told. And these are the stories that we have ingested. And then, that story ends. That you're still there. So, okay. Well, that, that, that story is ended. So, um, okay. So, then I go into the woods. Or I go and sit in a cave. And that time to really go into yourself and just a really extended meditation session with all of the difficulties that meditation comes with as well. And lots of people went through that reflection time in the pandemic, enforced reflection time. So like I chased it, I could pretend I could make and that it was, I had a degree of agency there, but really that's just how it turned out. And. That extended period of reflection meant that I could press reset on my entire life, because pretty much every single aspect of my life had, um, you know, been set fire to. And then I got given a permission slip in the form of a scholarship to do a PhD at Bristol University. And that I felt like an invitation to come back to Bristol, and I wasn't entirely happy with the idea, to be honest. I didn't know whether I wanted to come back to the city that held so many memories and held an imprint of who I used to be. I came back, I came back, and now I, now I live in Bristol with my landlady, who's incredible. Do you have this dog? Um, has a very bohemian artist lifestyle of living in an attic. Um, which is one of my desks, it looks absolutely amazing, incredible streets of Bristol. And it, it does feel like a different life built on the foundations of my previous lives. I've always seen life in sections. I never really think one person has one life. I think we have lots of births and deaths in our life. And I think this is just another one for me, but I'm enjoying this one. So I really hope it lasts a long time, quite enjoying it. I hope that for you too. It seems a very fruitful, fruitful, generative, joyful, unpredictable period of time for you. I was hearing your words and was so naturally thinking about my equivalent, which was actually London. And then I escaped to Bristol and now I'm back in London and my breakdown was eight years ago rather than yours during the pandemic. Although the pandemic was definitely challenging for my mental health. Not just mental health, you know, we use that phrase in such a specific way. It's become so sort of generalized and yet limiting in some ways. I think these periods of time you're encountering not just your internal mental challenge but the way that that ripples out into every aspect of your life. The way that you socialize or don't socialize as the case may be, the way that you look after your body or don't as the case may be, the decisions that you make from A feeling that they're necessary as opposed to ever giving yourself the choice. I loved that you were bringing up this reality, which is the deep surrender that breakdown both requires and facilitates. And it isn't a gift that everyone receives, and I do genuinely see it as a gift because having a reckoning that gives you permission, mine really did give me complete permission to, as you say, rest and then remould, which in a sense is what we do in the body, you know, from a Rehabilitative perspective, when we're looking at someone with chronic pain, we allow them to rest in movement, slow, soft movement, focused on breath, and then we remould their neuromuscular pathways. That's exactly what we're doing on the foundations of what went before, but allowing the client to strip away the fodder in the middle that really became very distorted. And if I think about my breakdown and my surrender, it led to beautiful abundance, not all at the same moment. But do I see the linking between letting go and welcoming in a new dawn? Absolutely. And do I hear that in your story? Absolutely. Which is so beautiful. And I think it's really brave that you've come back. I'm really so pleased for you that you are having this same same but different experience of this city that you adore. Because I have that with London. I adore it. And it broke me. I broke myself in it. And then we get a chance to do it again. We get a retake. It's just magic. Do you see yourself as having a retake in your career, now that you're a writer, not a yogi? If we go back to the idea of labels. Was it difficult to leave the yogi label? Have you left it? Or do you consider yourself still to be a yogi? What even is that? I'm absolutely not qualified to, to say what a yogi is, though I think it's a lovely word. Do I feel I'm having a retake now? I do feel that I'm getting a bit of a retake. So I'm talking to you from the PGR offices, so the postgraduate research offices at the University of Bristol, where I'm doing my PhD. So in a very real sense, I've gone back to school. I've gone back to school. Every morning, I wake up. I have my folders and my books and, you know, so I'm, I'm learning all of the time. I'm learning something new. In terms of the writing, I mean, that's just really fucking lucky. Like, I've worked really hard, and that's important to say as well, but I have been writing for a very long time, and I have been very lucky in that this story that I wrote, Herobrine, Queen and the Cosmic Realm, out April 2024, has come to me at a time where other people are also interested in this story. And so because of those two things, the commercial aspect of it has offered me a publishing contract. And with that, the label of author and you know, there's a degree of validation, but I don't know whether that is, um, something that I am overly keen to confess in that that is really where the luck comes in, you know, there are insanely talented writers out there that are working incredibly hard that don't have book contracts and doesn't make them any less It doesn't mean they're any less good. It's like less lucky, you know, um, you don't earn luck. No, you really don't. You really don't. But there is a serendipity that's very beautiful to witness rather than assuming that it should come to you. It's a gift again. Luck is a gift. It does feel like a gift. It feels like a great gift. I've been gifted just so many things, not least them is a book. And it's very real, money's a really real thing. And being paid to write is absurd in how glorious it is. It's such precious, beautiful, wild gift that really sings to my very bones. All I've wanted to do since I was five is write stories. And someone said, Oh yeah, yeah, cool. We'll pay you for that. You're like, what? Do you believe, Ash, in alignment? If I land that word with you, do you believe that there is a relationship between finding greater personal authenticity and the way that manifests in your life? Alignment. And you also used the word voice player as well. Maybe I'll speak to the voice first and then maybe alignment will find its way into the conversation. So I get asked about the voice a lot. And when I was teaching teacher trainings, more frequently than I am now, that was usually the workshop that I came, and I think I have to do it with you Anthea, that I taught a weekend workshop on voice. And I think For me, exploring voice has been one of the most important journeys in my life, in both my teaching and my writing. And the more I learn about my voice, the more my voice is the same in any situation. So I, in the past and a lot now, you know, I'm sure this might resonate with listeners as well. You turn yourself up, you turn yourself down, you pull it down here, you pull it down there. You put on a yoga boy, you put on a yoga teaching voice, everybody breathe, you know, and yeah, you put on this voice or you go into. Going to an academic environment or a meeting and I'm like, right, okay, yes, absolutely, absolutely, yes, absolutely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, but the more I blow out my voice. The more I don't have to change myself, and the less tired I get. Especially when we're changing ourselves and chameleoning our way into a lot of different situations. As a survival technique, you know, it's not there for no reason. I should be honoured. It's something that we've learned to do. The more we are able to spend time with, um, the voice that, We would naturally go to, and our relationships, they do come back into alignment, there's the word, they come back into alignment because we are not having to shift ourselves and turn these dials up and down, um, depending on what situation we are in. And again, there's such a degree of privilege there, also a confidence. I used to think that, uh, a yoga teacher sounded like this, um, or like this, um, much like I used to think that a yoga teacher looked like, much like I used to think that a yoga teacher had to do this, or be able to do this, and that is such bullshit. Of course it is. It's ableist. all of the things. But yeah, I think that's been the work for the last couple of years. And obviously now I'm writing in different genres. So I write literary fiction, children's fiction, and poetry. It's interesting to explore different voices in those as well. I would love if you could tell us about this incredible story that your voice has created. Tell us about Peregrine. Oh, Peregrine. I think I just wrote. who I wanted to be or who I want to be. Um, so the story Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm begins in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where Peregrine, 12 at the time, is attempting to break in to the Bodleian Library with her godfather, Daedalus. Really important to start a children's book with a degree of criminal activity, I think you'll agree. Um, and Don't worry, they have a really good excuse for breaking into the Bodleian, in that the portals between the Terran realm, which is Earth, and the Cosmic realm, which is Olympus, have broken down. And Daedalus is the only one who can fix them, which is all well and good, until he gets kidnapped within the next few pages. So now it's up to Peregrine, with the help of a couple of, um, Wonderful characters. We've got Hal, who's a faun, stress eating faun, and Rowan, who is a dryad librarian. So it's up to them to fix the portals, save data lists, and race to the ancient library of Alexandria before an ancient chaos goddess. It's just amazing. All of my childhood loves, Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter, all of those are coming, Philip Pullman deep into the forefront of my mind, having a little moment here. And when Sweet One is the first book out, I think you mentioned next year. The hardback's coming out in April 2024. You can pre order now though, and um, as a little author plea, I didn't realise how important pre orders are. So you can pre order at Walsh Stain, W Smith, your local independent bookshop. If you can pre order, that's especially extra, especially wonderful. I will be doing that and I will make sure everyone that you can do the same will include the details in the show notes. My love, we're winding down to get you to your next appointment, and I'm wondering if there's anything that you feel called to leave us with. You've given so much over the course of this talk, I'm so grateful. But let us know, is there anything that's popping into your mind that you'd like to share? Oh, she's opened a book, people. I have opened a book, I have opened a book. And this is a book that was lent to me by a really dear friend yesterday. And you always know whether friends are ones to keep when they, when they lend you good reading material. Um, and this is, uh, Letters to a Young Poet by Reina Maria Rilke. Ooh, got some hands up going on, my aunt, you know. I didn't want to interrupt Ash's audio, but that is one of the books of my life. I mean, I can't even speak to how much wisdom is lodged in those pages. And it's so short, which I really appreciate. For those who are, um, you know, who are busy, which is every single person on the planet. So, I'll leave you with a couple lines. Rilke, in a letter, on 17th of February, 1903, says, This above all, ask yourself in your night's quietest hour. Must, I write. Dig down into yourself for a deep answer, and if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to the serious question with a loud and simple. I must and construct your life according to this necessity. Your life, right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour, must become a sign and witness of this edge. Then, approach nature. Ugh, I'm into that. You wonderful, effervescent human, thank you for being with us. It is so wonderful to see you and be part of this incredible Gorgeous listeners. Thank you so much for your ears. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To find out more about our featured guests, have a look in the show notes. And for any questions on upcoming speakers, or any events that we're hosting as part of the Finding Your Way Home community, just drop an email to To Ab Mind, body Coach at gmail com, I cannot wait to spend more time with you, and I wish you blessings wherever you find yourself today.