Finding Freedom Beyond Alcohol with Ash Butterss

In this episode, I sit down with holistic transformation coach, TEDx speaker, retreat facilitator, and podcast host Ash Butterss to explore the deeper healing that begins after sobriety.

After entering rehab in 2020, Ash realized that removing alcohol was only the first step. The real journey was learning to heal the anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and feelings of not being enough that had been driving her addiction all along.

Together we explore:

• Why nothing external can fill an internal void
• The connection between addiction, nervous system dysregulation, and self-worth
• How yoga, spirituality, and breathwork became powerful tools for healing
• Removing the "armour" we build to survive
• What authenticity really looks like after recovery
• Creating a life you no longer need to escape from

Whether you're sober, sober curious, or simply longing to feel more at home in yourself, this conversation is a reminder that true transformation isn't about becoming someone new—it's about remembering who you were before the world told you who you had to be.

I am excited to be leading Kirtan on Ash's upcoming retreat here in Bali next month! You can learn more about Ash's work here. https://www.ashbutterss.com/ 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome back to Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. My name is Alexandra McRobert, and I am a sober woman, an international yoga teacher, and a yoga teacher training. I'm originally from Canada, but right now I live in Bali, Indonesia. I study Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and I facilitate kirtans here in Bali. And I identify as a goddess worshiper, which is a really fancy way to say that I'm now a lesbian. This podcast covers the intersection of yoga philosophy, sobriety, recovery, mental health, and my later in life career journey. And I'm so happy that you're here. If you're interested in getting involved in my work, I teach yoga online, I lead sober women's circles and lead kirtons at www.themindfullifepractice.com. And I have a yoga shala here at my home in Bali. It's called Mindful Bali. And I'm so happy you're here. So let's dive into it. All right, hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. I'm really excited to be sitting here today with Ash Butters. And Ash is another yoga teacher, a podcaster, a transformational coach, and she's also been sober for six and a half years. And we were able to meet last month when she was here in Bali. And I'm super excited to have her on the show and hear more about her story and her work. So welcome, Ash. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

I am so good.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Thank you so much for having me, Alexandra.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

I feel like this is such a full circle moment. Remember, I sent you, I'd messaged you like three years ago being like, hey, I love what you're doing online. I think you're awesome. Let's connect. And I think it got lost in the vortex of the message request DM. So when I saw you in person in Bali, I had no idea I was going to see you standing right there. I couldn't help but go up and say hi. So it just, yeah, so cool to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

I'm so happy to have you here. And yeah, such a beautiful connection. I was thinking um this morning before we got on the call of how you know you came out with your partner to the recovery dharma and got to come to a yoga class. And so I actually feel like I got to see you a few times in your time in Bali, which was great.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

I know, and your space is just so beautiful from the moment I had no idea what to expect. From the moment we arrived, I just felt my whole nervous system just like land completely. And oh, walking up the stairs and then oh, being in the beautiful nature and the birds and everything about your home and your the space you've created with your yoga studio is just oh divine. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Thank you for coming. So I met you just last month, and so one of the interesting things about meeting people in long-term sobriety is like I feel like I can't even imagine like a time before they were sober. And so I'm just curious, like, if you can take us back to like what was your life like before sobriety and what happened that eventually led you to recovery.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I was thinking this just the other day because I've been around, like you said, six and a half years now, and I have a lot of sober friends, and even my partner doesn't drink, and I can't, and I've only ever known him as a sober person, and I just can't even imagine what he would have been like. But when I think about my own life before I got sober, it is really chalk and cheese to the life that I'm living today. My drinking was never functional. I've never been somebody who could have one or two drinks and moderate and enjoy their drinking. From the very first time I took a drink at the age of 12, I was I was off. I drank to blackout that very first night, and that was pretty much how I continued to drink for the next two decades. So 20 years of drinking that led me up until the age of 32 when I finally hit that rock bottom and decided to check myself into treatment to get sober because I had tried to stop on my own. I'd probably the last 10 years of my drinking in particular were pretty crazy. What was really interesting though was that I was still managing to keep everything on the outside looking nice and sparkly. So, you know, the corporate job, uh, the husband, the the house, I was sort of ticking all of these life boxes. And what would happen is every time I would tick one of those boxes, a big major life event, I would wonder why I felt so empty inside. It was like the external thing that I was searching for to fill the void, it was never enough. And yet alcohol for a long time seemed to kind of scratch that itch until it stopped working. So I continued to drink alcoholically pretty much from the first drink, but I was also doing all of the things on the outside so that people wouldn't really think that there was much going on. And then things really started to get out of control in about 2018. That's when I was drinking every single day. I had gone through a pretty traumatic experience where I had lost my brother-in-law to suicide a week before our wedding. So it was a very tumultuous time, and I really leaned on alcohol as a crutch throughout that period. It just so happened that due to the timing of it all, I wasn't having to go to work. So I was pretty much waking up and I just started drinking at the at the start of the day, and it it that sort of behaviour, then I think it really set the addiction off. You know, I'd always thought that I was just somebody who was a bit of a party girl, who loved to have a good time, who really enjoyed drinking. I never actually considered myself to be say addicted to alcohol. But then once though that last two-year period, that's when I was really stuck in that hamster wheel where I'd wake up in the morning, promise myself I wasn't gonna drink that day, swear black and blue that I wasn't gonna drink that day. And then sure enough, by five o'clock I would be finishing work and I would be going past the bottle shop on the way home to pick up that bottle of wine, telling myself I'd only have one or two glasses and then stop. But of course, once the jar, you know, once the once the bottle was open, I couldn't stop until it was finished or I was passed out. So it was quite a chaotic time those last two years. But it did lead me to my rock bottom, and I'm forever grateful for that because that was the turning point. That was, you know, I finally got into enough pain that I was, I was like, I have to do something to change my life here. I cannot keep going this way. And that's when I decided, yeah, that I needed help. I asked for help, I got myself into treatment, and that's pretty much where my sober journey started.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. And did you do rehab in Australia? Did you come to Bali? What did you do?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Oh no, I did. I did I did rehab in Australia. So I was living in Sydney at the time. I I live in Melbourne now. I was born and raised in Melbourne, but I did a geographical when I was in my mid-20s, and I left my life in Melbourne, burnt to smithereens, and I ran away to Sydney and ended up marrying somebody up there. And um, so I went to treatment in Sydney, a place called South Pacific Private, uh, and I was there for a three-week inpatient stay. And then when I got out, I was meant to start a transitions program of sorts as I went back into work. But of course, seven days later, we went into our first lockdown. So COVID-19 was just starting. So I didn't do a face-to-face meeting for my first 12 months of my sobriety.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Everything was on Zoom.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

It was it was crazy to think about now. But um, you know, it worked.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Yeah, oh my gosh, and thank goodness that you got into the program when you did because of the way that that aligned.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

For sure, because what was really crazy as well was one of one of my biggest triggers, and I think maybe people can relate to this, is it was actually my husband, and he's now my ex-husband, and and I have permission to share this part of his story, so I'll caveat that. Um, that he was very heavily addicted to weed, and we very much enabled each other's behavior. So I was the drinker, he was the weed smoker, but we were both using our addictions to disassociate and disconnect from one another. And I would often say to him, if you would just stop smoking weed, then I would stop drinking. And you know, I was constantly blaming him, and of course, that wasn't the case. It was up to me, my responsibility to get me sober. But when I left rehab, I went back into that apartment living with him in lockdown for 12 months. So it just goes to show I think by that stage I was so desperate to get it right, and I was so unwilling to go back to day one to start again that I just, you know, I did for a period there I was holding on for dear life. But for me, 12-step fellowship is a part of my recovery story and being able to plug in, I would wake up every morning, I'd get on a meeting at 8 a.m., then I'd be sitting in front of my desk for the 9 a.m. to tick over, and then I'd start my work day, and it just became a routine. And I think routine was really important for me in the early days because my mind was trying to figure out how to do life sober, and that can be so overwhelming in the beginning. It's like, what do I like to drink? Is it coffee? Is it tea? Like, what food do I like? How do I want to move my body? It's almost like I kind of like so it's like a baby giraffe learning to walk all over again in so many ways. And so to have that routine at the start of the day, it really set me up, and you know, I feel very grateful that that resource was there and available to me at the time.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Yeah, wow. Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. And so then you described sobriety as like the first domino. So, what surprised you about what came after you stopped drinking?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Wow, it's so crazy to think about now. I think if I had known what life was going to be like once I got sober, I would have gotten sober so much younger. I think it's my only my one regret in life. I was so scared to get sober. I so didn't want to be an alcoholic. I so didn't want to have to stop drinking forever because it really was my identity. It was part of who I was and what I did, and everything revolved around drinking and partying and getting dressed up and makeup and all that kind of stuff. I just loved it. I loved the party, and I just was so terrified of who I would be if you took that away from me. And so I really held on. I held on way past my use by date. You know, I should have stopped drinking in in my early 20s, and I didn't, obviously, you know, another 10 years passed. But had I known that sobriety was simply the first domino to fall, and then all of a sudden this entire world would open up to me, you know. I feel like it's so hard for people to really understand until you've walked the path yourself. And what's been so cool about this process for me is that it's really been an unraveling. The more that I've let go of the need to control my life, the more that I've allowed my life to move into this state of flow where things just happen. You know, I've in in that first two years, the first the first 12 months was absolutely just don't pick up a drink, no matter what, one day at a time. And then I remember my my sponsor at the time saying to me, don't make any big decisions in your first 12 months. And I was, I also have like chronic perfectionism, which I've worked on over the last six and a half years, Alex. But when somebody told me what to do, because I was so desperate for them to love me, I was like, sure, okay, a grade student, don't do anything you, you know, don't make any big decisions in your first 12 months. So then I got to one year and one day, and I made all the decisions. I left my marriage, I moved back to Melbourne, and then 12 months after that, I left my corporate job. I was working for a Fortune 500 company, had a big identity tied up in that. I'd been in the beauty industry for 15 years, and I left all of it. I walked away. And at the time I didn't really know what I was walking into. I'd done my yoga teacher training not to become a teacher at all. In fact, I just wanted to deepen my practice at the time. But it just so happened that when I was getting quiet and listening for that charm, like where I was being led, that's where it was taking me. And so when it came to the time to leave my corporate job, I had this yoga teacher training under my belt. And I thought, well, maybe I could just start teaching a couple of classes a week. And slowly things just started to unravel from there. You know, starting the podcast. Again, I had no idea that was going to happen before getting sober, that I would create a podcast that spoke about this kind of stuff. Like, what do you mean? How is that even accessible? And that's kind of just been how things have happened. Rather than forcing my life, which I think I spent, you know, a good 20 years really trying to force my life into this teeny tiny little box. And if I could only just make it fit, then everything would be okay. Constantly pushing up against resistance and not feeling free in any way to now being where I am today. And and literally, and it sounds like such a cliche, but I promise you it's not living a life beyond my wildest dreams in a in a relationship, married to a man who is just my absolute soulmate, a beautiful, beautiful human being, my friends, everything, every part of my life is infinitely better because I got sober. And it's, you know, it was that one decision that allowed everything else to evolve from there.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

That's incredible. It's so incredible to hear about and just kind of be transported back as well and think about like how much my life has shifted in sobriety too. And I think sometimes, I don't know if you'll agree with this, but the longer you go, the more it just becomes your normal. Like being sober is normal, you know. And so whenever you drop back into the way the past, it's like a really good reminder of like, no, this was like a huge, a huge transformer.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Oh, I couldn't agree more. I think it's so important to remember not to sit in self-pity or to wallow in the past, but to to have a healthy fear around where alcohol took me. Because the further away from a drink I become, the more I forget what it used to be like. And so, you know, I will I'll sit in a meeting and I'll hear someone share a story and I'll think to myself, oh my god, oh my goodness, I was exactly the same. You know, I did that, that's exactly the way I drank. Because I do think, you know, there's a book by William Porter called Alcohol Explained, and he talks about the fading effect bias, you know, the the further away you get from that drink, the more you start to you forget all the bad stuff, and you only start to remember the good stuff. And I'd be lying if I said that, you know, on a hot summer's day, if I'm driving down St Kilda here in Melbourne and I see a couple of girls sitting outside with their Aperol spritz, there's still a part of my brain that thinks, gosh, that'd be nice. But I remember, you know, I have enough evidence stored in the bank to remember that that would not be the reality of the way that I would drink those drinks, you know, and I'd end up two days later in a gutter somewhere having blown up my life again, and I'm just not here for that. My life is too good now to want to blow it up in any way.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Oh, I love that. And so you often say that nothing external can fill an internal void. So, what were you searching through alcohol? And what have you found that actually fills that space today?

unknown 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

I remember the first time somebody described to me the hole in the soul, and I was just blown away by that description because I think that's how I have felt my entire life. I think I was born feeling like that. And the first thing that I discovered that filled that hole would have been sugar when I was about maybe three or four years old. My brother played a lot of sport, and we would go down to the sporting oval every weekend, and my parents were heavily involved in the club with my brother, and I remember my parents would give me like a five-dollar note, or maybe even just some change at the time, and I'd go to what's called a canteen with a little hole in the wall, and I'd hand the money over, and they'd give me a bag of lollies, and I would just gorge on these lollies, and I remember it felt like a warm hug. And it was that sense of just for a fleeting moment feeling okay in my body, okay in my skin. And so that was the first, that was the first experience of that, and then it became alcohol, but then I also searched for other things. External validation became a huge one. You know, I often talk about my need for external validation, it was like my need for oxygen, like I couldn't breathe without it. Uh, and that then drove a really strong perfectionistic streak. So I tried to be perfect because if I was perfect, then I would be lovable, I would be worthy, all of these things that I didn't think I was. I had very damaging core beliefs about myself. And so I was constantly on this search throughout my entire life to find the thing that would would fill me up. But the problem was that the goalpost continued to move. So I'd achieve the thing and then I'd be like, okay, so what's next? And I think all the while, unconsciously, unaware that it was it was this desire to fill this hole, which can only be thought filled, I believe, now with a spiritual solution, with my own higher power, with my own inner work and self-work. And it's been through this process of healing those core wounds that I have managed to start to fill the hole internally, therefore getting to a point where I just don't need the external stuff anymore. And that's continuing to fall away. Like it's been really interesting at six and a half years sober, and this is probably something that's only really happened in the last probably 12 months. I've noticed that even you know, when I was younger, I used to like love having a designer handbag or, you know, a beautiful piece of jewelry. And I'm not saying that that's like if people are into that stuff, that's great, each to their own. But all of a sudden I found myself recently just being like, I just it's just fallen away. It's just not I just don't hold value to anything really that's outside of myself anymore because I know that the thing that I'm actually looking for through the purchase of that bag or that piece of jewelry is actually it's an inner fulfillment that when I access from the inside, it's it's it's a lot more pure, it's a lot more authentic, and it's a lot more sustainable as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Yeah, yeah, wow. That's so I love that the hole in the soul. I wrote that down because I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. I so connect to it.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I feel like if you have it, you're like, that's it, that's the thing that I've been feeling this whole time, you know, or like we call it the God-shaped hole, right? You fill it with a spiritual solution, like where whatever that means to you. It doesn't have to be religious, it can be yoga, it can be meditation, it can be breath work, it doesn't matter. Just very home.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Yeah, I love it. So recovery isn't just about removing alcohol, it's learning to feel. And so, what did that look like for you? Like to begin to just sit with emotions that you had spent years avoiding.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Oh, it was so uncomfortable, Alex. Oh my goodness, I hated it.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

I had not sat with myself ever, constantly avoiding my own, my own, my own energy. My I could not be with myself, and part of that was because of the deep lack of of self-esteem. You know, I didn't like the person I was, so why would I want to spend time with myself? This didn't really start to change until I was in my second year of sobriety, and I moved back to Melbourne, and I actually moved into an apartment on my own with my little dog Frank. And it was the second year of COVID. Melbourne was one of the most locked down cities in the world, so I kind of just like moved into lockdown, a further lockdown. And it was the most painful year of my recovery, even harder than year one, because this was the year that I learned to sit with self. I didn't, I stopped escaping my feelings. Trust me, I did try. There were periods there, whether it was through food or people or sometimes even my yoga practice, like I was, you know, doing everything 110%. But what I learned through sitting in that was that I could get through anything. And it really, I really learned how to feel my emotions. And I've since understood that to feel is to heal. I was I wasn't ever going to heal these core wounds and these traumas if I kept running away from them, if I kept distracting and if I kept avoiding. And so just allowing myself to sit and to cry, I hadn't cried in years. I was so afraid of crying. And I would sit and I would cry, or I'd put on the notebook or the Titanic. They're like two movies that I know I will bore my eyes out watching. And I would take a pillow, and my therapist at the time said, Grab a teddy or something that feels really nurturing and just let yourself cry. You have got years and years of tears that are bottled up inside of you, Ash. And so I did. I just let myself feel it, and through feeling, it became healing. And then I started to realize that most importantly, no emotion was worth drinking over, and that this too shall pass. You know, really learnt that I could sit through anything and that I would be able to, if I could sit through it and really feel it, then I would learn from it in some way. So to let let it be a teachable lesson. And the practice that I found most helpful to support that became yin yoga. So I remember when I first came to yoga, I did not come for a spiritual practice. I had no idea that that was part of the deal. I just thought that it was a style, you know, it's another way that I could burn calories and get that body that I was looking for back in my drinking days because I was abusing my body so much with alcohol and then shitty food the following day that. You know, I would also be doing crazy workouts and trying to counter counteract that with the green juice. Clearly not working. And so yin was like, absolutely not. Why would I do that? That is a waste of time. I'm not even burning calories in yin. Like, forget it. And then I started to really deepen my experience. I started to do the practice first and foremost. And then through that, my experience with the practice deepened. And now I have come to be utterly obsessed with the practice of yin yoga. For me, it's like a moving meditation, but it's also this time where I just I call it, I sit in my shit and I just allow whatever the sensation, the thought, the feeling, just let it arise and then let it simmer away. And it's just been so beautiful to just really be witness to all of those subtle body expressions that I had drowned out or numbed and avoided for so, so long.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

And that's such a huge, I think that's like a huge thing that our yen practice offers us in comparison to like vinyasa or something more. I mean, every style is a little bit different, but the modern flow styles are a lot of fun, but sometimes they can almost be like so busy with music and movement and all these things happening, whatever, where it's like a really true yin practice where there's like limited distraction, you know, limited lyrics in the music, and it's just like you're forced to be in stillness. It's it's a real opportunity to meet whatever arises.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah. I find that some like the things that I've been avoiding, you like I love when I am in a yin practice and all of a sudden I just feel tears streaming down my face. And it may not even be connected to a specific memory or thought, but it's my body releasing something, you know, that it feels it feels so intuitive, and it's almost like it's a much deeper surrender for me than say a vinyasa practice, which I absolutely love. Don't get me wrong, but yin just seems to be, you know. I often say to people, like, what is the one that you avoid? What is the one that you run away from? That's the practice you should be doing. And it's been, yeah, it's been great. I think it's been my greatest teacher out of all the different styles of yoga that I've come across for now, you know, and that'll probably change again in another year.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Yes, yeah. Love that. So I want to hear about breath work because I know that's also a huge part of your work. So for someone who's never experienced transformational breath work, what happens during a session that makes it so different than just like talking about our problems?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Great question. So, firstly, I want to caveat that when I'm talking about breath work, I'm not talking about pranayama, which is you know our yogic breath. The different styles of pranayama, they're phenomenal and they are absolutely part of the breathwork family. But just like when we talk about yoga, we could be talking about yin or vinyasa or ha, breath work is the same. And so the style of breath work that I facilitate is transformational breath work. We use a technique called conscious connected breathing, which is basically it's it's a breath that doesn't stop. There's really no pause at the top or the bottom of the breath. You just keep going and you breathe for about an hour. Now, you can have breath counts and holds and different textures and colours and flavors to the breath flow, and that's all part of the practice as well. But really, what we're looking to do here is to create a physiological shift within the brain where we switch off the prefrontal cortex. Now, the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain at the very front of the brain. It was the last part of the brain to be developed. And I kind of call him, he's like the bouncer that stands at the nightclub doorway, deciding what is let in and what's not allowed. And what happens is when we're moving through life, our prefrontal cortex is scanning the environment 24-7, and it decides what it's going to let in and what it's not going to let in. And sometimes what can happen, more often than not, is you might experience something, and a lot of the time this has happened in earlier life, where you'll experience something that your brain has deemed as traumatic, and that trauma then gets put into the back of the brain where we have our limbic system and then the reptilian brain, which is our final flight response. But the limbic system is where our emotions are stored. So it just puts all of this stuff up the back. You know, I'll deal with this later. But of course, tomorrow never comes. We get on with life, and then we w wonder why we're feeling so disconnected, so weighed down, so energetically blocked, or why we can't cry, why we can't process our emotions, why we're so reactive, all of these different ways that it might manifest within the body. So through this conscious connected breathing, we create an altered state. We switch off the prefrontal cortex so that we can start to access the limbic system. And that's where you'll start to feel all of these different experiences within your body. So that might look like an emotional release where you might have a big cry. Sometimes people might scream, which is again, it's not a bad thing. It's just a release, a big scream. Sometimes your hands will start to like freeze up. They become like little T-Rex hands, like claws, and they'll freeze there for what will feel like it feels like they're never going to release, but they absolutely do. Or you might shake. So your body might be releasing the energy by you know this subtle shaking movement. Lots of different ways that energy is moving through the body. What I love about the practice is you is you know something's happening because you can feel it. You know, you might get really hot, you might get really cold. And you'll be guided through this for, like I said, up to an hour. When I tell people it's an hour, they look at me, they're like, Ash, what do you mean we're going to be breathing for an hour? And I always say, trust me, it'll feel like five minutes. And it really does. Something happens when you get into that altered state where you just kind of lose track of time. But what happens after the session over? Firstly, you move into this bliss state, which feels like almost like a summer-dy kind of experience where you're just sort of floating there thinking, oh my god, this is amazing. Part of the practice, you actually do secrete DMT. So we say it's getting high on your own supply. It's like a safe way to get high, which is why a lot of people in recovery love this style of breath work so much. But you know, like everything, all in moderation. But then what I came to find through my own experience with this practice is I would finish a session and I would feel lighter. I will, I would have released something. And again, I I often wouldn't, most times I won't be able to tell you what it was that I released. It's not like I have a vivid memory and then I'm like, okay, I'm processing this today. It kind of doesn't work that way. It's more about the intuitive wisdom of your own physical body and your own internal system. It will choose what to release when it's ready to release. And that's been my experience. Every single time I've done a breakthrough breath work session, it's been different. And every single time, more is revealed. So for me, it's been fantastic for healing in particular. I had a, I didn't realize until I had a massive panic attack about this, but I had an ex who I just had done so much therapy over. I had I had I felt like I'd talked about him until I was blue in the face. There were no words left. And yet when I went on to, when I came to breath work after this panic attack, and I and I and I intentionally went into the session and wanting to release this, I found that after the session, I I wasn't thinking about him as much. I was, I was, it was such a healing process to be able to be like, okay, all this energy that I'm carrying, all of this stuff that's keeping me blocked and weighed down, I'm releasing it. And so it's just, it's one of those practices that until you experience it, it was really, really hard to describe just how transformational it is. But like I said, I did it, I did it as a student. And then from the very first time, I was like, I have to learn how to do this. I have to be able to share this with the world. Because I think it's just it's incredible for anyone who's open to that kind of experience.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Wow, as you're speaking, it makes me want to experience breath work again. I've done one, I did one breath work session years ago. I'll tell I'll tell the story, even though it's like something that I like this will be the first time I've publicly shared this, but I shared it with the women on my India retreat because we did do a breath work session. We had a breath work teacher come uh as a guest and offered a session. It was just amazing. And I said to her that I was thinking of not coming because of what happened to me before, which is a few years ago, and it was a great session. Let me profit by it was incredible. Um, but uh I had an orgasm while in the breathwork class. It was crazy. It was so crazy. And then I was like so ashamed of it because my students were there. Like I had brought along like my like one of my yoga teacher training groups, and I was just so embarrassed that I was like, I can never do this again. And so even though I did go back, but I had myself so restricted that I couldn't actually like I haven't actually been able to enjoy it again because I'm like so afraid and like self-conscious.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

So anyway, but so that's my testimonial that it worked.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

I can definitely do it again. Like I said, every time I've done it, it's been different. So maybe next time you'll have a different experience.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

Maybe, maybe, or maybe I need to like a different setting. I did it in like a 70-person class at the Pyramids of Chi, where there was like no like aftercare, you know what I mean? It was like mixed gender. And so I'm like, I feel like if I did it in a different setting and maybe not like on my NBA retreat, it was great, but I was also still the facilitator. And so I think in a setting that felt like smaller and safer and probably where I could share with the people, you know, I think I would have a different experience because once I would feel held in it, then um hopefully I could allow something else to move through me.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Absolutely. You'll have to let me know how you go.

SPEAKER_03 32:07

I will, I will. So I want to um talk a little bit about you mentioned one of your favorite yoga teachings is Apri Graha. That's one of the yamas, non-attachment. And so I'm just wondering like, how has loosening your grip on control and perfectionism and needing life to unfold in a certain way changed your peace of mind?

SPEAKER_02 32:30

It has been probably the most freeing lesson that I have learned. Because once I started to understand the why behind my drinking, the why behind my perfectionism, it all came back to this desperate need to control. And when I think about little Ash and the environment she grew up in, my parents were heavy drinkers, my dad is an alcoholic, is in recovery now. And I didn't feel safe a lot of the time. You know, there were times where I would be left at school and my parents would forget about me, or you know, there'd be a lot of people at the house, and I would just, you know, I never felt really safe, and I never felt as though I was being protected. I felt like I had to be the adult in a lot of situations. And so for a little person who feels like they've got to be the adult, of course, part of those the maladapted coping strategy is going to be I'm gonna control every area of my life. And if you think about trying to, you know, hold water in your hand, if you're holding them really tightly, the water's just gonna run straight through your hands, right? Whereas if you gently bring your palms together and you, you know, you create like a cup, a bowl, then the water will will be in there. It's kind of the same with life, right? Like if you're squeezing onto life, you're strangling the oxygen out of life. That's how I felt. One of the most beautiful uh sayings in in 12-step recovery is to wear life like a loose garment. And again, that really hit me between the eyes because I realized I'd been living life in a straitjacket up until getting sober. I was so desperate to control every area of my life that number one, I wasn't enjoying any of my life because I was just holding on so tightly, there was so much pressure that I was putting on myself. And the other thing that happened was that I it's almost like I was the train driver and I had driven myself off the tracks and I had gone in the wrong direction for 20 years. And that's how I see my life since getting sober is there was this course correction that happened because I took my hands off the wheels and the universe was able to go, all right, Ash, we're just gonna pop you back on the track now that you had always been on. This was your soul's purpose, this was your dharma. But you know, through fear and through control and a need for safety, you just drove yourself off the track for a period of time. And I think that that happens to a lot of people because to live life letting go of control requires a deep state of surrender, and that can feel really terrifying if you haven't grown up in a safe environment, if you've needed to be the strong one, the controlled one, whatever it is in your life, to say, well, I'm just gonna let go of control and let the universe decide. It's like, absolutely not. Like that sounds like a terrible idea. And it doesn't happen overnight. Like, I didn't get sober, and then the next day I'm like, yes, you know, let's just allow things to happen. You know, I I had it was a gentle unraveling, and I've I'm still learning to take my hands off the wheel when it comes to controlling my life. It feels the neural pathways that set me up to live that way, they're they're deeply ingrained, right? And so it is a daily practice of actually handing it over. And I think for me, that's where prayer and meditation has become become so important in my life. And I start every day with meditation and prayer, gratitude, and some journaling because it's that daily reminder to hand over control. Because otherwise, I will take the reins back, I will think that my way is better. But evidence now shows I've been doing this for six and a half years. The evidence shows me that every single time I have let go of control and I have practiced a parigraha and I've actually just allowed the universe to guide me, it's so much better than I ever could have imagined. Like I was saying earlier, like the life that I'm living today, my work, every part of my life has been created, co-created with the universe rather than it just being Ash's idea of what is meant to be right. So I feel like I can't question it now. Like the evidence is so clear that when I let go of control, my life gets better. I remember someone saying to me once, you know, if I'd gotten what I wanted, then I would have sold myself short, you know, like the universe god, whatever you call it, has a far greater plan than we could ever imagine for ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

Oh, I love that. Love that. And so I have a question about like, so in your work, you help women distinguish between um who they are, who they really are, and who they've become to protect themselves. And so I'm wondering, like, what does that work look like?

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Hmm. So a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to do a TED talk, and that was really amazing because I spoke on this idea of the of removing the armor. So, you know, as human beings, we we don't like to feel pain. And so, you know, and we even have pain receptors in our fingertips, right? So that if you touch a hot stove, you pull away quickly and you're like, ow, that hurt, I won't do that again. But we don't have those receptors for emotional pain. So, what do we do instead? We build up this invisible armor over years and years and years. And you can imagine that if you've been moving around through life carrying this heavy plated armor, think about like medieval armor all over you, energetically, of course. You've been carrying this around for years and years and years. What's really sad about that is you're not only disconnected from the world around you, but you're also disconnected from yourself because this armor is over your heart. Your true you, your true essence, your dharma, it's it's an internal journey. The answers, you know, I couldn't believe it when I finally realized the answers that I'd been searching for my whole life were always there. They were inside me. The problem was I was so stuck in the busyness of life. I was so so kept caught up with escaping myself that I could never hear the answers. I could never really see the truth of what was really lying there within. So that's what I help women do now. It's like, okay, you've created all of these different identities. You have believed up until this point that your life had to look a certain way. What if I told you that that's not the case? You know, what if I told you that by removing your own invisible armor, you can actually start your journey home to self and figure out who you truly are. A lot of the time, especially when I'm working with women in retreats or doing one-on-one intensive coaching, a lot of the time women have these spiritual awakenings and they go, Oh my goodness, I've been living my life this way this whole time, with all of these different achievements and successes, wondering why I feel so friggin' empty, whole in the soul kind of vibes. And then we do this work and all of a sudden they start to realize, well, they it's not even a realization, it's like a full inner body knowing of where they're meant to be. And all of a sudden, the need to chase the external just doesn't exist anymore because that like I said, it's that journey home to self has been completed. And then what's just about learning how to stay there because life will continue to try and rip you out and put you back on the hamster wheel. So it's that for me, it's a constant practice and a daily reminder.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

I love that. So I'm super excited next month that I'm gonna be um it is next month, right? Yeah, in August, I'm gonna be facilitating a kirtan on Ash's retreat here in Bali. And so I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your retreat. Like, what do you have planned? Um, and yeah, who is it for?

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Oh my goodness, I'm so excited. So I'm running my final retreat for 2026 over in Bali. Bali is like my favorite place in the world. I'm manifesting a world in which I can come and live over there with you at some stage. It's just it's going to happen in this lifetime, I'm sure. But um, the rest and renew holistic retreat, it's in Balayan. It is going to be four nights of just pure bliss. The space that I host the retreats at, it is so, so stunning. The minute you arrive, it's a little bit like your space, Alex. You take this deep exhale, the staff are amazing, the food is incredible, you are nourished from head to toe for the entirety of your stay. I wanted to create an experience for people who are stuck in the busy life. I think a lot of the times, and even some of my other retreats where you you come along and it's like it's pretty heavy lifting, you know, like we do some really intensive work. This retreat is not so much that. We absolutely do daily practices, we'll have a daily sadhana, we'll be doing meditation, uh, we'll be working with malibades, we'll be doing a yoga practice. There'll be all of those elements which you can choose to tap in and tap out at your leisure, as well as daily massages. But then we've got some very special guests coming along to do things like, of course, your kirtan, we've got a sound healing that's happening on water, so you like floating on the pool while they play the sound, but I mean it's just it's gonna be incredible. As well as um at the space where they've got the the sauna and the ice bath, so we do uh like hot cold therapy and lots of different activities spread throughout. So it's really, I like to say this particular treat is a retreat is a little bit of a choose your own adventure, but you're held and supported through all of it. So you can do as much or as little as you like, but you will definitely leave feeling like you have recharged your battery and regulated your nervous system so that you can step back into life, which you know, we're about to step into what I call the silly season. It kind of feels like from here in Melbourne, it kind of like kicks off from about October through December, where it's like go, go, go. So this is a really beautiful reset for anybody if they feel like they need that before we dive into the second half, the back end of the year.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

Amazing. And is it a women's only retreat or is it co-ed?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

So at this stage, it's all women. It's really interesting. I I don't promote my retreats as women's only, but it's they're they're always all women. So again, I let the universe uh guide, and it's um, yeah, it's turned out that way. So it'll be it'll be all women at this stage, yeah, which I can't wait. I think there's something incredibly special about having that feminine energy in in a collective community like that.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

I agree. So I I also don't I sometimes have specific women's only retreats, but those will be labeled as women's only. But like for my yoga teacher trainings, I don't specifically promote them as women's only. And now it's I actually think I've recently said that it's women's only because it was always women, and I was like, well, I might as well just write this.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I actually did a retreat earlier this year in May, and it was the embodied woman retreat. So, like obviously, women's that one, but I do feel like you just I think your energy draws your your your dream client or your dream student, you know, and that's what's so special, I think, as well. And you would know this to be true, Alex, is like every time I put one of these experiences together, it's almost like the universe conspires to create the most beautiful blend of exactly who needs to be there. Yes, the people who meet each other and connect and form these friendships and these lifelong connections. It's like this magical secret source that has to be divinely led because it it every single time it works out exactly as it's meant to.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

Totally. That's so true. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm I'm really excited to be included.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

It's uh I'm so honored that you're coming. It's gonna be so magical.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

So I'm wondering if someone, this is the last question. If someone's listening to this podcast um episode and they're considering uh they're sober curious, they're considering going alcohol free, what would you, what advice or wisdom or like last little nuggets would you leave them with?

SPEAKER_02 44:27

So I would go back to that idea of the domino and that sobriety is really the first domino to fall, to opening the door to a life beyond your wildest dreams. And if I had only known what how good life was going to be, then I would have done this so much sooner. Really important though to be realistic about what the first couple of years are going to look like. And for me personally, it was excruciating at times. Like, I think it's one thing to get sober, but then to learn how to do life sober, so not just to hide away for that 12 months, you know, to actually like actually learn to step out, to feel your feelings, to do the inner work for anybody on this sober journey. Start with 12 months, see how you go, but be honest with yourself throughout that period. Like, really lean in, do some different courses, some trainings, do some healing, do some breath work, yoga, whatever it is. Like really give yourself the full experience of this before you decide that it's not for you. And I'm pretty sure that if you do all of that, then you're gonna get to that 12-month mark and you'll know that this is a lifelong decision because it's seriously so much better than drinking ever, ever, ever is.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

Oh, ash, this was such an amazing, inspiring episode. I'm really inspired by all the work you're doing, and you just ooze um serenity.

SPEAKER_04 45:43

Like you just ooze the yeah, the the promises of of what sobriety can bring you. So I'm just I'm super grateful to have had the chance to sit down with you and and hear more about your story.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

Yeah, likewise. I'm so grateful for for your time. I'm so grateful that we met. And I just know this is the very beginning of our journey together. I cannot wait to have you on retreat. I can't wait to have you on my podcast, which is also happening soon. We've got so much to look forward to, and thank you for what you do and with what you do in the community and how you give back. It's just beautiful and it's incredibly inspiring.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

Thank you, Ash. Take care. I'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_03 46:23

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. I'm Alexandra McGrobert, and if you like the show, you can support my work by sharing, subscribing, and leaving a podcast review. You can find my online classes at www.themindfullifepractice dot com and my in-person Bali classes at mindful bolly, which is www.mindfulbolly.com.