The Neuroscience of Intuition: Reading Energy, Subconscious Blocks & Opening Your Gifts | Ashley Phillips

What if intuition isn't a rare gift — it's a skill everyone has, and most people were just programmed to stop using it?

In this episode, Heather Zimmerman sits down with Ashley Phillips — intuitive, subconscious reprogramming specialist, and teacher of the neuroscience of intuition — for a conversation about how energy reading actually works, what's blocking most people's gifts, and what it looks like to finally build a life that fits at the soul level.

Ashley shares:

• Why she doesn't consider herself naturally gifted — and why that's exactly what makes her such a clear teacher
• The neuroscience of intuition in plain language: everything is made of light, light carries information, and intuition is simply translating that light into the language we speak
• How the energetic body works — why it extends outside the physical body, why that explains so much about how we read rooms and people, and how to consciously work with it
• Why 90% of communication is already happening energetically — and what most people are missing because they don't know it
• The subconscious programming that blocks intuitive access — and what stripping it away actually looks like
• Her own awakening: twelve years in retail management reading energy without knowing it, the "American dream" moment that broke everything open, and the seven months that rebuilt her life from the inside out
• Aura management and energetic protection for empaths and sensitives — including the simple practice of consciously pulling in your aura
• Her free weekly webinars, one-on-one sessions, and nine-week intuition program for people who want to actively develop and use their gifts in every area of life
• Her closing piece of advice for anyone who is feeling stuck right now

Ashley helps women tap into their intuition on a scientific level so they can move past their subconscious blocks and live a life they desire!! 

Find Ashley Phillips:

• Website: itsashleyphillips.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Everything You Need to Know About the Ascension of Humanity, the podcast where ancient wisdom meets modern science and spiritual evolution gets real. I'm Heather, an energy healer, channel, and spiritual coach with Divine Ascension Company. Each week, we're diving deep into the mysteries of human consciousness, spiritual awakening, and the profound transformation happening within us and around us. But here's the thing: we're not doing this with our heads in the clouds. We're bringing neuroscience, psychology, quantum physics, and cutting-edge research to the table alongside meditation, energy work, and timeless spiritual teachings. Because the truth is, the attention of humanity isn't some far-off cosmic event. It's happening right now in the choices we make, the awareness we cultivate, and the healing we do within ourselves. Whether you're curious about how mindfulness literally rewires your brain, why shadow work is backed by depth psychology, or what coherence between your heart and mind actually means scientifically, you're in the right place. We'll explore practices like breath work, meditation, and devotional alchemy, not as abstract concepts, but as tangible tools grounded in both spiritual wisdom and scientific understanding. And here's where it gets even better. In our bonus episodes, you'll hear from real people sharing real stories. These are the warriors, the healers, the everyday seekers who've walked through their own darkness and found their light. They'll share their breakthroughs, their struggles, and the resources that actually help them along the way. Because personal growth isn't a solo journey, and you deserve to know you're not alone. So whether you're just beginning to question the nature of reality, or you're deep in your spiritual practice, this podcast is your companion on the path. It's time to expand, to awaken, and to rise together.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Let's begin.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Today's guest will tell you that she's not naturally gifted. But she's an intuitive who spent twelve years in retail management, reading the energy in every room she walked into, sensing her team's emotional state before anyone said a word, without any framework for what she was doing. She just knew things. She felt things, and she had no idea what she was actually doing on the floor of Victoria's Secret, was translating light into information. Ashley Phillips is an intuitive, subconscious, reprogramming specialist, and one of the clearest teachers I've heard on the neuroscience of intuition. She didn't come to this work because she was always the woo-one. She came to it because her brain needed to understand the why. The actual mechanism behind what she and so many of us have been doing our whole lives without language for it. Her story is one I think a lot of people in this community will recognize. She had the house, the car, the relationship, the job. She had everything on the list. And one night, about to walk out of the door for a girl's night, she realized she wasn't happy. What followed was one of those seven-month transformations that pulls your whole life apart and puts it back together as something that actually fits. And now she teaches others how to do the same. In this episode, we talk about what intuition actually is from a neuroscience standpoint and why almost everyone has it, even if they've been programmed to ignore it. We talk about how the energetic body works, why ninety percent of communication is happening at an energetic level, and what it looks like to consciously learn to read that. We talk about subconscious programming, what's blocking most people's gifts, and what it looks like to strip that away. And we talk about listening internally when the outside noise gets too loud. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

I am doing well. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Absolutely. So why don't you get us started and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Yeah, thank you. So I'm an intuitive. I what I do is I focus a lot. I can do a lot of different things, but really what I focus on is intuition, energy work, subconscious reprogramming, and really how it all comes together. So I talk a lot about the neuroscience of intuition because growing up, I wasn't someone that really like, I don't know how deep we'll go into this, but that like saw spirits or, you know, like I would say, like naturally gifted. So I didn't really, you know, I was able to read energy. You know, I worked in retail for 12 years and a lot of my associates were like, you always know how I'm feeling, or blah, blah, blah. And I didn't really understand at that point. But, you know, a couple of years ago, I started diving into this work. And what my brain needed, what my like conscious brain needed, was to kind of understand the why and the science behind this work. So I feel like that's why it's so important for you know me to share the neuroscience of intuition and really what it means when we're, you know, channeling or when we're reading energy and what that looks like. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Awesome. Yeah. It's amazing because I I kind of have a similar history where, you know, even as a little kid, like you walk into a room and you're like, okay, I can tell someone was just fighting, or like everyone was happy. And I remember I worked for a catering company and there was just this massive shift in the room. And I went up to this one girl that I work with and I was like, Are you okay? Like you that you could clearly tell, I could clearly tell that there was a huge shift in her mood. Nobody else knew, but I she was like, Wait, how did you know? And it's like, well, I read the energy, and it's not like I was doing it on purpose, it's just something that you notice and you can feel it. And it's it's interesting to me that other people can't do that because I've been doing that my whole life. And so it's it's sometimes a little, you know, humbling because you're like, oh, right, yeah, not everybody can do this or knows how to do this, because we all have the capability, right? So that's awesome. But let's get into more of the neuroscience because I've talked about it a little bit on the show in different perspectives. So I'm I'm interested to hear your perspective on the neuroscience behind intuition and how that actually works.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's interesting too. I wanted to add and then I'll go into that, but I just wanted to say because something, you know, when you were talking about how like, you know, not everyone can feel what we're feeling. And I've what from what I've seen in helping my clients with is like most people can't like feel what we're feeling, is because there's so many, I don't want to say like blocks, but like they were programmed to do the opposite of that growing up. So I just wanted to add that too, because like everyone has this intuitive skill, you know. Obviously, we caught on earlier than than a lot of people, although sometimes I'm like, why didn't I realize it's sooner? But it's just one of those things where like there was like programming, you know, there's programming in the way of everyone's abilities. And really it's just about learning how to strip that away. So I wanted to add that too, because I was like, that would be good for people to hear because I don't know about you, but some people are like, I think I'm gifted. And I'm like, oh, well, no, like we're all gifted. We and you know, yeah, yeah. And we all have different gifts, right? We're all really good at some things. But one thing when it comes to intuition, we all have intuitive abilities and the way we read it might be a little bit different, but we're all intuitive. Like, if you, you know, if someone came up to me on the street and wanted to talk to someone who, a soul who's crossed over, like I could do that and they could do that as well. It's just learning how to read the energy. So to kind of trans, like to move into the neuroscience of or like the neuroscience of intuition, the most basic way to explain it is everything in the universe is made up of light, right? It's made up of matter, whether it be a book, whether it be the grass, whether it be me, whether it be an animal, it's everything's made up of light. And light carries information. Okay. And then now being in intuition, you know, reading that, all we're doing is translating that light into the language that we speak. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Absolutely. That's what I teach as well. It's like everything is energy, whether it be through light, sound, frequency, it's all energy. And as a channel or an intuitive or a medium or whatever, we all have that capability to bring that energy in and like you said, translate it into the English language.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Yeah, yeah. And I I think it's, you know, it took me a long time to understand it. Even when I was learning about it, reading books about it, like listening to podcasts, all the things. I was like, I'm just not getting it. But then it kind of clicked because I think there was one time where I was learning and I was reading, and I was like, oh, your energetic body is actually, and I don't know if you've heard this, you probably have since you're, you know, so immersed in where it seems like we're very streamlined in the same processes. But, you know, our energetic body is outside of the physical body. So out of, have you heard that before?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah, yeah. There's different layers, and the energetic body is most of them are on the outside, actually.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah, yeah. And that, and so that when I learned that, I was like, oh, that makes sense. Cause like our our soul self, our energetic body is reading people in the physical because it's out there. Whereas like a lot of people think that, you know, it's our soul is like inside and it you know, vice versa. But it that just made it click for me when I was like, oh, that makes sense. Like that's why when we walk into a room, we're reading the energy, like our you know, this the person's aura is like 20 feet out, and we're reading their aura because you know, maybe at the time we didn't know how to like protect ourselves or something like that. So yeah, that that's what I that's what I have to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, no, absolutely. And there's so many different layers to our entire system. You you know, you have the aura, the energetic body, the there's so many, and they really do, like, and and that brighter of an aura you have, it goes out even farther than some people if you're really guarded, if you have all those blocks and those like layers around your heart and all this trauma and beings like it makes your aura a lot smaller. But that's part of the energy field, right? So your energy field is like if you think about an atom, right? And you have that center part, the nucleus, and then you have the electrons and the neutrons and the protons rotating around it. Think of yourself as the nucleus, and that energy field are all of those particles going around you. And so it's outside of you, and it's actually, I call them my feelers, but they're it's a receptive state. It's it things go in and things come, you know, go out and come in, but that's why protection is so important, not only from others, but also what you're projecting out to others as well. And so you're these feelers, this energetic field is really reading, you know, the other energies in that room. And that's how you kind of interact and communicate with your environment and with other people at an energetic level.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it's so crazy too, because you know, I didn't, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but it's more so like when I was learning about all this and like even intuitively checking this information, you know, with source with higher self, we read about like 90% of the information that's coming through with light anyway. Like we're reading light, we just don't know it, which is like crazy. We think we're and you know, communicating through through whatever language we speak, right? The English language, whatever that is, like we think that's how we're communicating, but like 90% of it is like we're communicating with our like feelers, is what you call it. And I love, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

So yeah, and and there's even I'm I mean, there's multiple layers to everything. That's just how the universe works, but but you also have not just the spoken words or the written words, but you also have body language, you have the energy behind it, you have the aura, you have the energetic field, you have, you know, the context, the emotion, the mental state, like there's so many different layers to that communication. And you're right, 90 90% of I don't know if that number is 100% accurate, but it is a very large portion of it, is all done at an energetic level. Yeah, yeah, you're so right. Yeah. So, what's been one experience at any point in your life where you had that, your feelers out, and you were reading a room or you were doing something and you received information that really kind of caught you off guard.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah, I mean, I would say I feel like there's a lot of like situations that I gave the example earlier of like when I was in retail. I just like always remember, you know, getting to work and like I was a manager and I worked for Victoria's Secret. And it was a very oh, did you?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, when I was 18, I worked at Victoria's Secret and Lady Foot Locker both part-time when I first got out of the Navy. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Wow, that is so funny. Wait, that is so cool. I love that. Yeah. So, and you know, you working at Victoria's Secret too, you know, it's a very high pressure environment. And I worked at a couple different stores, but the one I before I left, you know, for this work, I worked at a district home store. So like the CEOs and everyone always came in all the time. So it was a very, very high pressure store. And everyone was always like on their tippy toes. And I think just like every single time I came into work, and I was like, okay, so like I can't live in this energy. So like, what can I do to start moving through it? And it was really just, you know, learning to read people's like energy by myself and like seeing what I can do to make things better, make things easier, not take life so seriously, because I knew that it was a very stressful environment. So I think like a lot of my experience pre-this work that I that I'm doing now, it was just every single time I came into work, there was something different. And, you know, the more I look back on it, I was just like training myself to read energy in different ways and then kind of I guess navigating that.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah. Do you find that like when you like so I was a bartender for like 20 years? And that was a good way for me to learn protection, first of all, but also like it's interesting when you are in and retail is the same way because you always like especially at Victoria's Secret, there's always so many people around. And it's how did you kind of navigate through that learning to protect yourself and not absorbing all of the energy of all of these people that you were around all the time?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Yeah, I mean, there there's a couple of practices that I still do to this day. It's just like, you know, making sure I'm very grounded and making sure I'm pulling in my aura all the time. I think that's something that worked really well for me, just saying, like, I choose to pull in my aura to two and a half feet, because like even with the clients I work with, like now, like the their aura is out like 25, 30 feet. So, like, and it could, if if you don't have like a neuropathway in your brain to consciously tell your energy field or subconsciously, then your aura is always gonna go out when you're in public. So I did that a lot. And then also something that's coming through now is just making sure I really prioritized myself and doing what's best for me. I experienced like a ton of burnout in retail, but then I always found balance like outside of work, like with my kids or going on vacation or winding down and really just doing what was best for me. So I would, yeah, I would say the biggest thing is learning to pull in my aura that helps, and then also finding balance like outside of work, because you know, when your energy is out there and you have so many people's energy, your brain can feel scattered and not really know what to do. But, you know, just finding the balance between everything really helped.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a I have a quick side note question for you. So I know for me, because I have a really big aura and I've you know, I carry a lot of energy. When I drive down the street a lot, I turn off street lamps when I drive under them. Do you have anything like that happen to you?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

No, I actually don't. I make sure though that you know, honestly, that's really cool though. I'd like I'd like to see that. But also, you know, I mean, I do, yeah, I've just been really protective on, and I'm not saying you're not like you absolutely are, like, you know, we can see that, but I've just felt like I've always pulled in my aura and I've not really had the opportunity to kind of let it go out because so you know, maybe maybe I'll try that. I'll get back to you if I can turn off these street lamps and turn them on.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

My whole life. And I I didn't really like understand what was happening, but I noticed it, you know, when I was younger. And then once I started getting into this work, and it's it's a common thing for people who have big auras to affect technology. And even like I was laying in bed the other night, and there's someone across the street, like a block away, but I can see them out my window. They always have Christmas lights out for whatever holiday, they're green right now for St. Patrick's Day, and I was just looking out the window and half of their lights went out, and I was like, okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

That is so cool. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, so well, it's annoying sometimes because when you're trying to do like channeled messages and and record stuff and like your headphones keep popping and you get these high, like frequency tones and stuff. But I've gotten better equipment, high like whatever, it's it's a thing, but but yeah, so back to the topic at hand. You mentioned that you had a point in your life where you had everything that you thought you ever wanted the house, the baby, the car, the dream job, but you still didn't feel fulfilled. So tell me a little bit more about that and how that kind of shifted your life.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, so I think for the longest time, you know, just like you had said, like I thought I wanted everything that I had in that moment because I was really taking on, you know, the American dream. And I know that's not really talked about anymore, but I feel like growing up, everyone was like, what's the American dream? The American dream is having a family, you know, or getting a job, you know, going to college or what, you know, buying a house, having a car, all those things. And so I did all that. And then I was like, wait, this sucks. Not that it sucks because I was like, but like basically I just remember and I still can envision myself in my old house, about to go out with my friends, you know, having a girl's night. And I'm like, wow, I am not happy. And then I think over the next like seven months, I was like very aggressive with my transformation, my awakening. At the time, I did, I drank a lot of alcohol. So I wouldn't say I was an alcoholic, but it was something that I used to decompress. I don't anymore. But I will say, you know, I went through like this phase of like, you know, I separated with my fiance, I moved out of the house, I got a new job. Like it was like the craziest awakening ever. And I realized in that moment that I needed to find, like in that moment that I was like, I don't know what to do, kind of thing, that I needed to find fulfillment. I thought all these external things were gonna give me fulfillment. The house, the car, the job, the money, whatever. But that's not it. It was all internal. Like what I was searching for, and I even see this now with people I talk to every day, is like what they're saying they want isn't truly what they want. You know what I mean? Like I, on a soul level, I wanted, you know, fulfillment, happiness. I wanted to impact, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. And although I was like around people at work all the time and I had a lot of friends and all those things, like, but I was like, but that there's a block here because I can only do so much. Like I was like, uh, I don't, I can't think of the word right now, but yeah. So yeah, I felt kind of blocked. But that was kind of the transformation moment of like, I'm meant to do more. It's okay that I meant to do more. I can get rid of my old, not get rid of, but like let my old life collapse to live the life that I'm actually meant for, and that's fulfilling for me.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, absolutely. And I hear that a lot. I talk about this a lot. A lot of people on the show have have mentioned, even in their own journeys, like I had all the things, everything looks good on paper, but it wasn't right. I wasn't satisfied, I didn't feel fulfilled. And go through that people go through these crazy transformations at you know, various points of their life. And I think that's amazing because I mean, and and to go back to what you said, I I totally get like I was in my 20s, I was drunk probably four or five nights a week. That was how I coped, that was how I numbed everything, the emotions, the energy, because I didn't know that I was an empath to the extent that I am at that point. And I I was tired of surface level friendships and relationships. I was tired of being hurt by people, and I I kind of turned all my emotions off. I went down this huge downward spiral, self medicating, doing all the things, and eventually reached a Point where I was like, okay, I'm turning into someone that I don't want to be, like, I can't do this anymore, and completely changed my life. So I'm not there anymore either. But I mean, it is a part of the story, and there's nothing wrong with that. So, how did you get into the work that you do now?

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yeah, so I would say I I think one of the transform or transformative, I can't speak moments for me was I actually stepped into network marketing. And I didn't believe, like I was very money driven growing up. Like I didn't grow up in poverty or anything. Not that that's bad at all. Like my parents were, I would say, well off, not like super wealthy, but we had what we were like food and everything and all that. Right. And but my mom had a lot of like negative money beliefs, and not that it's her fault, right? Like there's generations on generations and all that. So, you know, I was very money driven and external things driven. And so really just kind of stripping those layers away and going into that, starting network marketing made me realize that okay, I can make more than $100,000 a year. Like I know that might sound like crazy on how this led to my spiritual journey and helping others, but like I was very money driven. Like I saw someone had like a $60,000 cash month, and I was like, wait, that's like real, you know? And so that was like a very big turning point for me. And I'm like, okay, so I was money driven for a long time until until I got to a place where I was like, okay, I'm, you know, I was in network marketing. I felt fulfilled to an extent, but I wasn't making the impact that I wanted on a soul level. So then I went to social media marketing because I was like kind of like drained energetically from, you know, being in the network marketing world. And then I was very like lonely in social media. And but while I was doing social media management, I was like learning how to do intuitive reads and, you know, building my intuition skill set, learning how to use over 10 different forms of intuition at once, you know, reading all the books, upleveling my skills, you know, learning how to master my emotions. And then that kind of led me to launching my spiritual business and helping others. And it's so crazy because I was so money driven for so long. And then it kind of similar to like the house, the money, all those things. I I felt like I'm glad that it got me to where it was, where I am now. But like there was a point, probably about a year and a half and ago. Yeah, it was probably a year and a half ago. I was like, wait, I don't even want the money anymore. I just want I want to help others raise their consciousness and not really feel stuck in their current reality because so many of us out there are just so stuck, right? And they're not really sure the next route to take. And that's kind of like when my mission flipped, and I'm like, I don't even care about the money. Like, let's change lives. So that's that's a little bit about the transformation.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

So why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about your website and your webinars and and your program?

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I actually do weekly webinars every Sunday. They're even, they're either 11 a.m. Central Standard Time or 12 p.m. Sometimes I go back and forth, just depends on what intuition says, you know? And I talk about different topics every week. So, you know, I've had a lot of different clients come to me with different situations. So I've been able to master those. So like we talk about relationships, we talk about intuition, money, self-love, and the dark energy of the world, because that's a whole nother thing. And so yeah, we talk a little bit about that. And, you know, it's completely complimentary. I I love, you know, like I said, raising the consciousness of others. It's like open dialogue slash slash teaching. And there's no like, I've been on a lot of webinars and they like pitch, but there's like, there's no pitch in my webinars. It's just here for, you know, others to ask questions about this work and all that. I also have one-on-one sessions. So I work one-on-one. And then I have an intuition program. It's getting kind of revamped right now, but it's a nine-week intuition, not revamped, it's upgraded actually, getting an upgrade. Uh, but it's a nine-week intuition program where I teach you the science of intuition. So if you're someone that wants to open up their gifts, you know, out there you're listening to this and you want to learn how to actively use your intuition, not just like with helping others, but like in your own life, with you, whether you're it's eating, it's you know, business, making more money, healing your body, your relationships, whatever that is, you can use intuition for that. And then I teach that in my program. So that is a little bit about what I have going on. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Awesome. Well, I'll put your all your information in the description notes too, so people will be able to find you. So that's amazing. All right. So there's one one last question before we wrap up that I always like to ask people who are intuitive. So, what's one thing, uh one piece of advice that you would share with the collective?

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Oh, I actually knew you were gonna ask this. I'm like, there's this is gonna be a question that is gonna stop me. No, I'm just kidding. I would say, you know, if you are feeling stuck right now and you're not really sure what direction to take, I would just start listening internally because there's a lot of outside outside noise, and you have complete control to change your entire reality.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Oh my god, I love my message. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It was awesome to talk to you. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

If you're feeling called to go deeper, to actually sit in your own records and hear what your soul has been trying to tell you, that's what Akashic Records readings are for. I would love to hold that space for you. You can find everything at Divine Ascension Co.com. Your answers already exist. Let's go find them together.