Reclaiming your Self with Asha Frost | ep159
This is the final week of the Decolonizing Your Life interview series on the podcast and I'm ending it with a really special guest!
This week, I had the absolute privilege and honor of interviewing, Asha Frost. I can't lie — this was a BIG deal for me. I am so inspired by Asha and the fact that we are now colleagues and friends, blows my mind!
Asha created big waves in the world of wellness when she published her blog post, "Dear white woman who wants to be like me."
In our conversation together, she shares openly about how difficult it was for her to use her voice and publish this piece and how she listened to her body and spirit in order to reclaim her self and her courage.
This is such a powerful interview.
A little about Asha Frost
Asha Frost (she/her) is an Indigenous Medicine Woman, entrepreneur, and a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She is the best-selling author of You are the Medicine, and The Sacred Medicine Oracle and has guided thousands of people through profound and lasting transformation.
As a highly sought after speaker, Asha leads from her Clan teachings of the Crane – holding space from vision and heart.
Asha has blended her life experience in her work as a homeopath, energy healer and mentor, with her innate gifts and the wisdom of her Ancestors. She loves sharing her Medicine in powerful ways through Ceremonies, teachings, and speaking events. Through this work, she loves seeing people reclaim their roots, find their healing wisdom, and rise into their power.
Before we dive into this week's Mindset Monday, I have some news to share…
Next week will be the final episode of Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast before my summer break. I will also be announcing some very, very big news in that episode, so stay tuned.
If you're looking for your fill of Wholehearted content over the summer, it's a great time to (re)listen to the podcast and also check out my podcast with Chrissy King, Two Girls Talking Sh*t .
Alright, let's get into it.
This week we are being reminded of the power of reclaiming our selves...
I would love to hear how you define decolonizing our lives and what that looks like for you.
It really comes down to how it feels in my body. My body always guides me on this decolonization journey and I really like to frame it in that re-indigenization journey. I always like to think, How can I bring my indigenous spirit and soul, my ancestral medicine, my own medicine that flows from my bones and blood into a space?
It feels like an energy. It's a full body feeling when I feel like either there's old colonial patterns that are rising in me that are asking me to jump into or I'm coming up against colonial energy that feel like I need to somehow just address in a different way. It feels like a boundary or a barrier when I come and progress that energy.
I'll admit that it's a constant journey every single day, sometimes moments in a day. I have to check in and say, What does my indigenous spirit say about this? What do my bones and my ancestry say about this? And then go from that place of quiet sitting with the land dream time or ways that we haven't been conditioned necessarily to learn how to sort of express that knowledge of that wisdom.
I love that so much - that reminder that it's not just a insight that comes to us, but it's a constant reminder because it feels like that first instinct we have is that Colonial one.
So, you went viral a few years ago when you wrote a blog post. Tell us about that pivotal moment.
In 2019, I was inspired to write about what I'd been experiencing for the last 10 years in these spaces. I would just see all of these ways of extraction or harmful ways in the new age, spiritual wellness industry, but I never felt like I I was worthy enough to take up the space to speak about them, or I felt that, Well, who am I?
Who am I to speak about these things, even though it was directly impacting me and the next generations, and my ancestors. The space at the time really highlighted white women, white coaches, white wellness people, and I didn't feel like I had a lot of agency, but my body spoke louder than that and said,
If you do not speak this, you will get sick.
It is really weighing on you and you need to share these words.
So I wrote something that was called Dear White Woman that wants to be like me, because that was the phrase I would hear over and over again: “Oh my goodness, I wish I was like you. I wish I had your earrings. I wish I had your ancestry.”
And I would sit there and sort of smile, sort of fawn at that response, but then feel this knife go in my chest because I was thinking, “You don't necessarily wish to take on all of the things that you're saying that you want to take on.” So I wrote this letter. It went viral and I wasn't expecting that.
I wrote it from a place of invitation, and my way tends to be open-hearted, like that bridge, you know, let's try to work on this together. But of course we perceive things from our own standpoint and our own viewpoint, and it bounced up a against people and they didn't love it.
It caused a lot of chaos and disruption in this industry that probably needed it. My system wasn't necessarily ready for all the disruption. So it was a journey probably for a year before I could even go and check my emails again.
Wow. Oh my gosh. So people were emailing you personally about this blog post this, this Instagram post.
Yes. And DMing and that might sound really extreme, but because I didn't know what was going to be on the other end of any of my emails that I opened or any of my DMs, I just got into this freeze response where I couldn't go back in and look at them.
I had to hire somebody to filter through some of them to make sure that whatever I was reading was safe to read.
I understand that people are gonna have their opinions and all of these things, and I put out this really controversial post, but I think that many of them were just continuing that harm.
If it was just a disagreement, that would be one thing, but many of them were perpetuating, continuing the harm, and that's what was hard.
That doesn't sound extreme at all, Asha. That actually sounds like such a healthy boundary to have and I'm so sorry that you went through that, but also not surprised because you know it's not a controversial because I always define courage as speaking from your heart.
I would love to hear about the courage it took to even post that. I've had moments where I know something is gonna ruffle feathers and I experience that back and forth between whether I should and shouldn't. I'm hearing that you really leaned upon your body and its wisdom in that process.
I think that that's some of the discrepancy or the disparity between being a person of color and speaking some of these truths because, in my perspective, we have so much more to lose.
We're already not being seen, our voices aren't being heard, we're not given the space to show up and shine. So I think sometimes white women can share and they feel brave and that's amazing and I applaud them and they don't have as much to lose. But, we're putting a lot more on the line. Sometimes that's part of the courage it takes to think, How am I going to do this?
Even if everything falls away, everything I'm trying really hard to build falls away. I could not stop because I was shaking so hard. Every time one of these things happened, the shaking in my body was so strong that I knew that I had to prioritize my body over losing everything I had tried to build.
It felt really important. So that took priority, that took precedence and I really learned a lot from that and that was really important.
Listen above or tune in to episode 159 | Reclaiming your Self with Asha Frost on your favorite streaming platform to hear the full interview!
If you enjoyed this, you’ll love the rest of our Decolonizing Your Life series!
156 | Reclaiming your Roots with Emily Anne Brant
In this series, we are going to look at how we can decolonize our professional lives, our dreams, our spirits, our wellbeing and we are starting off with a wonderful guest, Emily Anne Brant – an Indigenous author, speaker, & mentor on a mission to decolonize the personal development industry. No matter what, I know you’ll get something out of these episodes, love.
157 | Reclaiming your Dreams with SharRon Jamison
SharRon Jamison joins us to talk about how we can decolonize our imaginations and our dreams, and if you're part of the Wholehearted Community, you know that this is something I talk about often: how our dreams can be limited within this box of what people tell us is possible for us, and today, SharRon Jamison is telling us to break out of that box.
158 | Reclaiming your Community with Marla Teyolia
When we think of decolonizing our lives, that is not a solo mission. It is an endeavor, a journey that we take in community. In this week’s interview, what really stood out to me was the importance of and the power of community as Marla Teyolia so vulnerably shared her story of decolonizing her life. I can’t wait for you to get to know her better.
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About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to listen to your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.