"You are the Medicine" with Asha Frost, Indigenous Medicine Woman

0:00:00 - Andrea Moore
Welcome. Welcome, asha. I am so honored and excited to have you here. 

0:00:05 - Asha Frost
Thank you for having me. 

0:00:07 - Andrea Moore
Yes, I would love you to just start out by telling everybody who you are. I know that is impossible to do in two minutes, but let's just give a quick background of who you are. 

0:00:20 - Asha Frost
So I'd like to introduce myself. Traditionally, my speed name is Healing Rainbow Woman, nada and Aguiapke. I am from Nation Agamain, cape Croaker First Nation, and I am from the Crane Clan. I'm a mama of two boys and I am a daughter and granddaughter of brilliant people. I'm an auntie, I'm a medicine woman and an author and an Oracle debt creator. I have been in business for just over 20 years as a healer. I was a homeopath for 15 years and then transitioned into more medicine work and ceremony work, then, of course, wrote my book. So things have kind of changed and taken a different direction since then. My ancestors are from the lands of so-called Ontario and I am an Anishinaabe, which is one of the First Nation tribes in Canada. 

0:01:11 - Andrea Moore
That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I first had the honor of being exposed to you and your work through a community that you were a part of as well and that I was a part of through Dr Valerie Rain, who's also been on this podcast. There was just something about you and the way you spoke to us. Honestly, I can't even remember what. I don't remember any words other than like I just felt so grounded and your presence just felt so healing. I was just like I just want to be around you more, even if it's just on the internet. I just want to say that, yeah, I don't know something about your presence. It's just so beautiful. 

I know it was right when your book was coming out which is right here you are the medicine and I immediately bought it or preordered it or whatever it was. Then I'm going to be honest of it came and I was like am I allowed to read this? Wait a minute. It was such an interesting experience and it was funny if I had just picked it up and read it. You addressed all of that immediately, but of course I didn't. It was funny because it never made it onto my shelf. 

I have a little meditation corner, so it sat in this basket that I have for probably months. I think many of us are so deeply, especially with social media and awareness. It's been this double-edged sword of bringing awareness but also feeling a lot of fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. You have this quote that says, I believe, that antidote to defensiveness or shutdown which is what I was in in relation to this is compassion for self. I actually wanted to start with that in case any of my listeners felt the same as I did and feel the same of like am I going to do something wrong? 

Have I done anything to ever harm somebody, whether it is somebody of indigenous origins or somebody else, we shut down and we get very defensives and it actually blocks us from receiving this beautiful medicine. 

0:03:33 - Asha Frost
Yeah, I think what I started to notice this was in 2019. I was talking about cultural appropriation because it was a conversation at the time. It was before 2020 happened and folks were asking me to speak on this. I had written that letter Dear White Woman who Wants to Be Like Me, and that had gone viral. Then, of course, everybody wanted to chat about this. 

What I noticed is if I could ask people to drop into their hearts and drop into compassion for self, then there'd be a space for listening and there's a space for reciprocity and space for relational communication. If I didn't do that, then I'd feel that energetic defensiveness and even a freeze or a shutdown and there was a block. I got really curious about that and thought how can I get my message across in a way where we can develop this co-creation, this reciprocity, this relational energy together? That's really where it stemmed from, I felt is when we are being hard on ourselves or we're shaming ourselves or we feel shamed, then we shut down and we can't hear anything. It's like that child that goes into that trauma response or freeze response. But when we can hold that space of I'm human, I make mistakes. 

If I have harmed somebody, I can make amends, we make space and we have that curious mind and heart. I think that's where healing can come. Because I am a healer, I have a very different view than I think many all indigenous people would have a different view of this, but that's where my standpoint comes from is I want us to heal together, because I want us to move forward together, and if we're all stuck, frozen and shamed and unable to even communicate with one another, we're not going to shift anything. 

0:05:12 - Andrea Moore
Oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes. And as I was reading your book, I was like, wow, it's so cool to see a similar path in that, wanting to increase capacity to feel and to heal and to be with ourselves, and just doing it in very different ways. But at the same time, it's all about coming back to self and, yeah go ahead. 

0:05:35 - Asha Frost
Well, that's I mean, that's the title of the book. You Are the Medicine, and I've always been an introspective person. I think that's part of my personality. And as a homeopath, asking folks questions, I spent a lot of years with thousands of people in my little office just asking those questions and asking well, how does that make you feel? What sensations does that bring up? And just getting people realigned to that conversation of oh, I've never even thought about that, I've never even listened to my body before, and that's how we've all been colonized. So this just isn't an indigenous experience. I believe we've all been colonized from our connection to our bodies. 

0:06:11 - Andrea Moore
Oh my gosh absolutely, and one of the things that I have written as my reminder and my why is that when I increase the collective capacity to look, we increase the collective capacity to heal. That's what I have written for myself as my why, because I think this inability to look at the pain, which you talk about so beautifully, and to really see each other for where we are and who we are in our wholeness, including all of the pains and the truths behind it, is what moves us forward. 

0:06:51 - Asha Frost
I believe that wholeheartedly and, as we know, you have a healing energy and I have a healing energy. That's like we have that sort of resonance together that we can only go as deep as we are sort of willing to go ourselves Right and imagine we all committed to going just a little bit deeper. Imagine we just committed to seeing another person's pain and lived experience. I think it's so valid and vital to be a spaceholder for somebody else's lived experience and just have that bit of understanding. I haven't lived in those shoes and I haven't walked that, but what would it be like to do that? I think our hearts would just burst open a little bit more. So that's my hope in sharing the stories of the truth of our country in Turtle Island. 

0:07:33 - Andrea Moore
Yes, that's so beautiful. 

And just speaking of hearts bursting open because I think it's so interesting that you've been like use that expression is like. I know for myself that sometimes what can even get to the way of doing this work is that that bursting open is often painful, like when I feel my heart opening the way I envision it. I'm so curious to see it here if you have like a visual to it. My envisioning is as my heart's opening. It's literally like opening these doors and pressing all the pain to the surface because that has to in order for it to open, which means that I have to move through pain for it to like. I don't know how to. At least I have not yet gotten to the point where I can just feel the opening without the pain of everything that just hasn't been felt. For my lineage and for my ancestors and as I've helped been able to increase my capacity to hold that and to move through it, my heart's been able to open more and more and more, and I think you speak to this so beautifully, yeah. 

0:08:34 - Asha Frost
I love that and I think we can titrate it, you know we've done a little work in learning in these containers together, but I do think we don't have to let it burst forward all at once and flood us, and I think sometimes that's why we get afraid, because the flooding has happened and we think I don't want to go back there or that was too much. So what if we just took a little bit of time? And I think, with social media too, we are bombarded by so much pain that's happening on this planet and the earth and with humanity, and it does flood us, no matter who we are, how sensitive or empathic we are, we are just flooded with that. So that's why those boundaries of how much am I going to take in today? How much can my system really hold today? 

Yes, I want to take action. Yes, I want to speak up. Yes, I want to be an ally or an accomplice. How am I going to do that? In the way where I am still sustained and my system can show up, in that way. Otherwise, we will just get flooded and shut down, and I've seen that happen over and over again. 

0:09:30 - Andrea Moore
Yes, oh, my goodness. Yes, I know that's what I experienced for myself, and thank you for speaking that's so beautifully about the titration. Yes, absolutely, we do not, and should not or do we need to feel it. We can't. We can't feel it all at once. 

There is something that you wrote about white people who take everything and I'm reading this, this is a quote take everything they considered beautiful as their own and leave all the trauma and truth behind, and this is in terms of using the indigenous practices or medicines and just appropriating them, and when I read that I mean one. I want you to speak on that as well. I want to give you a chance to speak on that, just in itself. But when I read that, I realized for myself that so I'm Jewish and my ancestors and not my me, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors and you know I have a lot of trauma in my lineage and I realized that for myself, I had taken all the trauma and none of the beauty of Judaism Like. All I knew was the trauma, because my family had basically just abandoned Judaism altogether and I grew up with very little of it and very little exposure to the beauty, and really all that's left is the trauma and it really inspired me to because you said this very, very early on to start finding the beauty right. 

0:10:56 - Asha Frost
And in. 

0:10:57 - Andrea Moore
Judaism, all of the amazing practices. So I just want to say thank you, because those words right there inspired me to take a deeper dive into the beauty of my own culture that I just had never even realized existed وت. 

0:11:12 - Asha Frost
Whoa, I love that so much and maybe you know, as you express that, I think about the why. I always think about the why. Why are non-indigenous person people so attracted to our medicines? Why will they not see the rest of it? You know, and I get curious about that, but that's a beautiful thing If we have. Many of us have trauma in our lineage, no matter what our background is. So perhaps we're blocked from the beauty, so we're blocked from our own beauty. How can we invite ourselves to be unblocked by that and heal? 

0:11:41 - Andrea Moore
them. And then you also say that this is an invitation to really see indigenous people and the issues they deal with in present day and to see the medicines and the teaching, this holding of both, and I think throughout your book, this is such a beautiful theme of holding both. It's not one or the other. 

0:12:04 - Asha Frost
Yeah, I think that a lot of people have put us in the past and sort of stamped us there and rooted us there and they don't see the evolution that many indigenous people have come and moved through or the healing that we've moved through. And it is a bit tricky because we're asking folks to honor the history and honor what has been and then also see us now and also see the impacts of that history on us now, because it's not that long ago. The last residential schools closed in the 90s. That's in a lot of people's, you know, that's in their lifetime, that wasn't that long ago. And then for people like myself, it's my grandparents generation and, as you know, having Holocaust survivors as grandparents, that the stories, that energy, that generational trauma is just passed down through stories, through words, through energy. So that is in our lifetime. 

And then people say get over it. And you can just see how you just can't, because that impact has so many generational, yeah, just imprints for so many people. And we are struggling on so many First Nations with so many issues that people don't understand and that trauma of being of, almost you know that genocide attempt really, really impacts people to this day and I still hold that. You know, when something happens that feels like I'm not being seen or, because I'm an indigenous woman, you're not going to honor or respect me, I can feel those threads of all of that racism that happened. You know people say, well, we're such a more open community now, an open country, and I just don't always see that and that's not always my experience, so those things matter. 

0:13:41 - Andrea Moore
Yes, oh my gosh. And we know trauma is passed down through the DNA and, like you said, it's not just the DNA, it's also the stories, are lived experiences, your lived experiences and what you said you're like. I don't always see that and I think getting to being able to hold someone else's truth and realize it is different from your own. I always wonder why that is so hard for us to do. Because it is hard. 

0:14:09 - Asha Frost
It really is. I've been practicing that, you know, and I've been in communication with folks with completely different political views, completely different, you know, religious views, all of the things, and I've been really practicing. What does it feel like to sit with this? And this is probably what would mend the world, too, if we could sit with each other. I really, you know, I feel like I'm blaming social media a lot, this interview, but I do see how it's. It's got this very black and white energy and very divisive energy and I do think if we sat in circle and we spoke heart to heart and we saw somebody's eyes and talk oh my goodness, there's a spirit in there, there's a light in there, there's a connection in there we would start to soften a little bit. 

0:14:51 - Andrea Moore
Oh my gosh, I so agree and I'm so with you when I feel like lately I've been on a little bit of a social media like oh trend, but it's because of that I really can see where certain conversations that I used to have with people have become much more challenging and it is because of social media and this black and white thinking it really ingrains it in. 

I recently just had an experience where she's like a cousin of my husband whatever that relation is and like his family is very different from my family. 

He's from, like Kentucky Hallers and I am friends with her on social media and I actually think at one point I may have just blocked you know what I mean her posts, because every time I saw her post I would just be very angry at a lot of her posts and we have very different world views. And then just this past weekend they had a little family reunion and I found myself talking to her for like almost two hours and she's I just forget how lovely of a person she is and how almost every time we have these family gatherings, her and I always are like the ones talking and just have such great conversations and it's like we just forget the humanity. No, we don't agree on a lot of issues, but we're two moms and there's a lot of things we do agree on and can get along with and just have great conversation about. And I'm like man. I can just see where it becomes so divisive if I just looked at your posts that you choose to post right. 

0:16:17 - Asha Frost
That's right. Yeah, I'm here for expanding our hearts and minds beyond social media. Yes, I mean back to this humanity. I believe in us. I think that we can do this, we can develop our connection. That was when everybody asked what's the attention of your book? Or even when you know the publisher or marketing. People would say, like how do you describe your book in you know three sentences. I send this a warning, because what I really wanted was reconnection. It wasn't like manifest your best life or make six figures out of a bigger bit, like it's not these, like big flashy thing. It was like how can we come back to reconnection with ourselves, with one another, with humanity, with all of creation? Reconnection is where we start from. So that feels like the foundation to everything, but of course it's not the most sexier flashy in this world. 

0:17:05 - Andrea Moore
I don't know. It's pretty sexy and flashy to me, Asha. That's why I bought the book immediately and I don't buy a lot of books I'm a big library person but this was like I have to own this, even though I didn't read it for a while, but it's okay. 

0:17:18 - Asha Frost
I love that you shared that, though, because I think many people have asked me, even as my Oracle Deck came out, am I allowed to use this? And I was actually shocked by that question because I just assumed well, I'm with hey House, of course this is like a huge publishing house, of course I'm creating this for all people, and I love that people were reverent. I love that they asked that question. I love that they treated it as sacred, knowing, and, if anything, I think if you ask yourself that question, then it means yes, yes, yes, please use it, because you know that you are going to uphold it with care and with tenderness. And I started to speak about it because I thought, oh, I didn't even realize that people would think that. So I just created another deck. 

It's in its edits right now. It's an animal spirit deck, and I wrote in the intro about everybody using this information this way, and Indigenous people will get upset that I'm sharing these teachings and, on the other hand, there's been so many non-Indigenous people sharing these teachings, so I have to ask well, who do you want sharing these teachings? If I have the opportunity to take up space and take up a stage, you know, be here and have a platform. How am I not going to take that? That creator is calling to me. My ancestors are pushing me forward in this. How am I not going to take that opportunity when you're mad that all these other people? 

are sharing it and they're not from our lineage. So it's been a tricky path to walk in so many ways, and even I am just getting more clear on it as I go, leslie. 

0:18:40 - Andrea Moore
KENDRICK, oh, that is so beautiful and I love your willingness to share, even though you say other Indigenous people are mad at you for this. Like that, I can't even imagine the amount of just courage and bravery and you know what inner work that might go behind that. At least it would for me, because it can be so scary when people that we feel like are part of our community are mad at us. Leslie. 

0:19:05 - Asha Frost
KENDRICK, yeah, and my people, please yourself. It rises up a lot and I think that, yeah, it's been a daily practice, because sometimes things will still rattle my nervous system when I see somebody with that sort of calling out energy or it's not always offered in this question, curiosity plays, as always, the warm and attack energy, so I've had to learn how to regulate myself around that. I'm not perfect at it yet. 

0:19:28 - Andrea Moore
I don't think we ever are right and I love I have. I wrote like so many random notes I started. It was so funny. I restarted reading, I started dog-earing and I was like I'm dog-earing every page of pay, every end, until, like, not trying to pull out little things. But it is see the Thunderbird Medicine, the daily practice to continuously align ourselves with our energy and see what we have to offer the world as of great value. And you talk about a practice of like zipping into yourself every morning and I was like, oh, I love that and I just love your emphasis on the daily practice. Leslie KENDRICK. 

0:20:04 - Asha Frost
Yes, yes, and all of these that I share are things that I've done or things that I've had to turn to because I've, you know, I felt not connected or I felt, on those days of doubt. It's not easy. I think we project a lot on people that we look up to or people that we feel, you know, have wisdom in medicine. It's not. It takes practice and I think that we somehow think that they've got it somehow or they've got it down, and I only continue to do this because I practice every day. I like, can continue to do this because you know everything or what am I like they're part of my ritual and my ceremony, but without those things it would be really hard to show up in the world and share my medicine. So I understand when people are frightened or scared or feel doubt, because that goes through cycles too with me a lot. 

0:20:48 - Andrea Moore
Yes, leslie KENDRICK, yes, and since you just said cycles, I would love for you to touch on the cycles, because I think we all forget that life is cycles and that is another theme that is just so beautiful in the book, and I think we expect to have this, like we just show up as the same person every day and we have this perfect day and we're perfectly authentically ourselves and that's going to be the most fullest energy and it's like no, that's not how it works. Now is it? 

0:21:12 - Asha Frost
No, it's not. We keep it so hard on ourselves about. You know, every single day is different and I love that sort of teaching of like this is your best, this is your best today, and your best today could be at, you know, if we're not feeling well, it could be like 50%, but you still showed up at your 50%, which is still your best, right? Yes, I think that those are really beautiful teachings and the earth teaches us about cycles and we see those memes on social media. We see not everything blossoms at the same time and you know, the leaves fall off the trees and they die. But do we actually begin to embody that and take that in and notice? Of course it live in a place that really cycles through the seasons quite intensely. But does Mother Earth ever stop and ever like just stay in summer the whole time? No, she has to move through to fall and then to winter. So imagine we gave ourselves the same permission to take that much of a season for rest, for death and letting go, for those curious steps we take before we take a leap of faith, like all of those things that we gave ourselves compassion and care for those times as we cycle through. I think we'd all be rooted in our medicine a little bit more profoundly. I think we could see each other's more clearly, we wouldn't compare and contrast so much. 

Because I know that happens to me all the time and I think that if we could just trust those cycles, when I'm in like a death cycle or a rest cycle, I still find myself. It's so hard and I still find myself disoriented, thinking why is nothing dropping in? Why do I have nothing to say? Why do I feel so lost? And I can shame myself for that. And I also know at the other end, so much medicine has dropped in. So now I'm learning every time okay, let this letting go happen, let this sort of darkness and disorientation happen, because there's medicine here and there's magic here and you might not be able to see it yet. But trust, but it's the hardest one. It's the hardest one for me and for everyone. 

0:23:09 - Andrea Moore
Oh my gosh, it's so hard and thank you for just so openly speaking about it being hard, right? I think sometimes we get the impression that it's like, oh, this is something that we just totally master and we move through each cycle with complete ease and no resistance. One of my clients let me message the other day and she's like I still had this reaction, but then I shifted out of it. But that reaction was still there and I was like but you shifted out of it. I was like, screw, who cares if the reaction's still there, that's always going to be there. It's not about not having the initial like resistance to whatever is coming up. It's about noticing it and then allowing yourself to move into whatever feels most supportive in that moment. 

0:23:50 - Asha Frost
Maura. And again it takes practice. I think, even if we did it 10 times before and we think why is this lesson coming back to me? I thought I healed that already. We have healed something, we have rooted something down into our knowing, in our bones. You have done the work, so we always have to trust that when those cycles come back to us. It's just another layer of teaching, because I could be like that too. I'm just a coach. I thought, I thought I, you know, I felt so peaceful after that. Now it's happening again. So we have to trust that layer has been tended to and we will be able to source from that at some point in our lives. 

0:24:28 - Andrea Moore
Oh, that's so beautiful. Yes, thank you for that, and I know you. Obviously my audience has a lot of chronic pain or chronic symptoms, and you yourself have had a lupus diagnosis. And you don't remind me of reading something from your book. I just thought it spoke to it so beautifully and very much from a paradigm that I tend to operate out of as well, of when I didn't listen to my body. 

The nudges would get louder, eventually becoming symptoms, more extended flares and illness. Our world teaches us to push harder, go for more and drive ourselves at the expense of our health and well-being. This leads to burnout, chronic disease and other disorders, and, I'll add, absolutely chronic pain. Many of us lose the ability to make rest and play a priority, and if we continue in this way, our bodies will stop us. The wisdom of bare moon calls us back to the truth that it is not humanly possible to move through life without breaks. We are earth and we too must cycle through our seasons. So beautiful, but yeah, if you don't mind speaking to the chronic piece, because I think this is something that obviously my listeners really are struggling with. 

0:25:38 - Asha Frost
Yeah, I was diagnosed with lupus when I was 17. And at the time I didn't have a lot of symptoms. So it wasn't until I went to university that the stress increased and then my symptoms got a lot worse and I couldn't find any help. At the time. The doctors didn't. Well, not that they didn't help, but they offered medications that were really harsh for my body and because my body was so sensitive, it felt like just too much again, like I was flooded with too much and the side effects were things that I didn't really want to deal with when I was so young. So that's when I started to look closer to the earth and I started to see naturopaths and different alternative healing modalities. I tried those out and I eventually became a homeopath. That's what led me to homeopathy, because homeopathy, being an energy medicine, really spoke to that sensitive soul, that sensitive empathic nature, its energy. And when I took remedies and noticed a huge healing effect on my mind, body and spirit, I thought this is it. This is what's been missing, because of course, it's not just my physical body, it's my mind and my heart and my spirit, and over these last 30 years it's been a journey. 

People say are you healed. Are you cured? No, I flares. I have symptoms. I still struggle with chronic pain every day and I live with it. I live with it. 

I think even myself being in this wellness world, an alternative health world, I can see how I'm unwinding from all of these paradigms of you must heal yourself this way and I've tried all the diets, all the alternative therapies, all of the things, and I've shamed myself many times from not following through for a year on just doing great juices or whatever those protocols are offered to you. 

So I've been through a huge journey of coming back to loving myself more deeply, having that self-compassion, that softening, that tending. That's really where the healing for me has been. If I can listen to that voice that speaks as I share it in my book, that says you are tired, please go take a nap at your max of all of these bookings of why are you saying yes to this? You don't have the capacity for this. That colonized version of me, or that colonized trauma, is always operating in the background saying do more hustle, push, you're not good enough unless you prove your worth. So I've had to unwind a lot of that and Lepus has been the teacher, the voice for me to unwind all of that. So it's profound and it's still challenging. Carnite pain is challenging. 

0:28:10 - Andrea Moore
It is. It really really is and thank you for speaking to that of and especially the piece of where we start to have perfectionism about healing in itself, like it's got to be done this certain way or that there's something wrong with you if you can't follow through or haven't healed yet or are still experiencing pain, and it's oh my goodness. I think all of those are just added layers on top of everything else and ultimately become such a distraction from even tending to what really needs to be tended to, and it's. I just want to say it's not your fault that that's something that you feel has added pressure onto yourself. Right? Our society teaches us that we need to have a certain body and a certain way of being and I know you speak to that as well of like. 

0:28:59 - Asha Frost
If our body isn't functioning at this optimal level, then again it's one more thing that is not good enough in quotes yeah, and we've done something wrong, like I think that that's the big thing and I think what wellness has missed for many years because, again, I've been in this industry for over two decades now and I've seen it change and shift and missed out on some of those impacts of generational harm, of white supremacy, of systemic racism. Not seeing those pieces and parts of our systems as a whole and the impacts they have, and then shaming the individual for being sick and not being able to heal themselves and not acknowledging and addressing the impacts of white supremacy on our bodies, on a brown or black or indigenous body, is doing a disservice to so many people. So I am here to completely hold space for that, because that is something that's only come into my own awareness over the last, I'd say, five to seven years that I've had to unwind as well. Yes, absolutely. 

0:30:00 - Andrea Moore
I am so, so in agreement of that and I see it for so many of my clients and I think it is so important to have an understanding of what an individual's lineage is and what their ancestors may have experienced and to make sure that you're speaking to that and again, I think you speak to this so beautifully of a way to honor and respect indigenous traditions is to know the history behind them. Growing up, my mom always used to be like if only you knew the history, or what was her phrase. It always be like you just need to know the history. And it drove me nuts and I have found myself saying this now of you need to understand the history. That's the word, that's the phrase. 

I found myself saying this to my husband and just other people who understand the history and I'm like, oh, my goodness, how my mom was right all along. I totally see it, because she grew up in a communist country where they had no freedoms and everything was restricted and they couldn't speak any, they couldn't say anything out loud without fear of literally being killed. And it's like it is important to understand the history from which you came because it's carried in your body. 

0:31:07 - Asha Frost
I love that she said that to you. I love it when you become our mothers, oh my gosh, it really was right One time. 

0:31:14 - Andrea Moore
it's so annoying, I will randomly send her texts anytime. I'm reading history, I'm like, look, mom, I'm reading the history. I get it now because we'd always roll our eyes. 

0:31:24 - Asha Frost
Oh my god. 

0:31:24 - Andrea Moore
So much and understanding and I know we're not. 

0:31:27 - Asha Frost
All of us are going to be historians. No, even for myself, that's not really the lens that I speak from or teach from. Necessarily. I teach from the impacts of the history in my bones and what that's done. So I think that it's really not hard as you've noticed because you read the history to go back and see and even hear people's stories. I think that's not hard. It's not a big ask for us to do that it's not. 

0:31:52 - Andrea Moore
It's really not, and I think there are so many ways you can do it. A fun might not be the same as other people's definition of fun, because I'm like, ooh, let's read about trauma, but I mean literally historical fiction. Books, I feel like, are such a accessible way if there's just just look on Amazon. It takes a couple of readings of some reviews to be like is this historically accurate? And the amount of I feel like history and story you could get, even if it's a fiction or if it's a memoir, is another beautiful way. I feel like that is one of my favorite ways to interact with history is just reading people's stories, and sometimes it's a fiction story, but it's such a wonderful way to expose ourselves to that and a way that's light, it doesn't have to be. 

0:32:40 - Asha Frost
I love that as people's homework. I think of reading a historical fiction book or listening to it on Audible and on your daily walk Just take it. And because I think there is something to be said about it not having to be serious all the time or that we need to. There's that guilt and shame piece too. I think that some folks put themselves in and I've noticed that a lot people will say they'll come to me and say I'm just so sorry and apologize. 

If you feel like very kind, but I don't mean to do that necessarily, I would love for you to uplift my work or have me on a podcast or have a conversation and all of that outpouring of guilt and shame. I can feel that and we can release that. If we're taking action and we're intentionally speaking and sharing and building relationships, you can forgive yourself or you can release some of that. I think that's so important because that also gets in the way right and maybe doing it so seriously too is part of that. Like I must punish myself and do it this way. So I think the lightness of what you've offered is such a beautiful way of just softening again, the way that we can learn. 

0:33:41 - Andrea Moore
Yes, yes, so beautifully said. 

And yes, to bring humor in, I remember I have one of the same, just from the program where we're in Dr Valerie Raiton, one of the same mentors of Jeffrey Tambor, and I remember having a session with him and I can't even remember the image, but it was so dark, asha, it was so dark and I bust out laughing Like I just couldn't stop laughing all of a sudden. 

He was just like you know him, he's just, so, just joyful as well and can take humor like any one of us. And just, oh my gosh, we just had such a great time of just laughing at, like, the absolute darkness of this image I had, because it just became funny that like, oh, inside my stomach I'm experiencing this thing that is totally in my mind but clearly my cells are holding onto but it's not real, like I don't know. It was just this really profound experience. And ever since then I've just been able to have so much more lightness in this work and even I have some dark visuals. I can, you know, have some very dark things that come up, but to have the like, the lightness, to win them at the same time is, I think I've been one of the most powerful healing things on my journey. 

0:34:50 - Asha Frost
I agree with that. I think that ability to hold both you know that dark and light and goodness, how are we going? Yeah, how? 

0:34:57 - Andrea Moore
else would we be open to this? 

0:34:59 - Asha Frost
Like that's what I'm here to, for the dancing and the laughing and the playfulness, those things I want to make way more room for. So we can do this work with those things too, and I think that we can invite ourselves to be a little bit more lighthearted. 

0:35:13 - Andrea Moore
Oh my goodness, yes, yes, yes, I love that. And you have another medicine from the Canada goose of the true oneness comes from seeing the truth of another's reality, and that was one another just piece that I wanted to bring up, because it's so crucial again to be able to hold, I think, both our own reality and someone else's. Again, that's just like paradox, or the nuance of both. 

0:35:41 - Asha Frost
And, yeah, I just want you to speak to that a little bit more, and I know you have a little bit already, so yeah, I think I love the Canada goose teaching because it's also we don't leave anybody behind and what I've noticed in this world and because I think I'm trying to sort of share my medicine in like a coaching role, where a lot of white women have risen really quickly and I noticed just the dynamics there they're not leaving anybody behind as an interesting concept, because I think that we don't always think about that. 

We are thinking about people who look like us and act like us and are in our communities and we're not seeing those that maybe aren't part of those communities. So my invitation is to look beyond and widen your gaze to those that perhaps you're not used to being in communication with and that's why I love the goose, because it's almost like they're weighing you and widens the gaze and says let's invite other opinions and perspectives, colors of skin, ways of being, cultural awareness, languages, all of those things it invites that in and I really wish the world would do that. 

0:36:50 - Andrea Moore
Yes, yes, and yet I think I know we've talked about this already, but I just wanna bring that full circle that I think what allows the world to do that is when we can be in tune with ourselves. I really do feel like it starts with a relationship with ourselves. 

0:37:06 - Asha Frost
Yeah, you're right. We talked about that building capacity for opening. If we can build the capacity for compassion, it all begins with compassion, in my view, because if we can build that compassionate connection with ourselves, then there's softness there and we're not gonna shut down and be so hard and critical with ourselves. We can say, oh, my goodness right, I had the conversation, it was a little bit sticky. Oh, I have compassion because I'm learning and I'm human and now I'm growing and I'm evolving and we always have that growth mindset, like we have with our children. Right, we're all growing. I am learning every single day. I don't do it all right, but I'm here to try. 

0:37:43 - Andrea Moore
Yes, oh my goodness, yes, and you speak to this like the ability to make mistakes and to be learning and to have that sticky conversation, like you said, and it takes being able to hold the discomfort of all of those things and realizing that nothing has gone wrong. And I think, sometimes, speaking bringing social media back in right, there's beautiful modeling and teaching us of, like, how to have this conversation or how to approach this, or how to set this boundary, which can be so beautiful and helpful. And then if we already are seeing the world through this lens of perfectionism, through a lens of we're not allowed to make mistakes, then we use all of that against ourselves. We use it to be like I have to say these exact words in this conversation, which then makes it so when we're having a conversation, we can't actually even see the person in front of us. 

0:38:35 - Asha Frost
We're so focused on yeah, a script. Yes, yes. 

And I know that like 2020 really set us up for that, because it was so. And then the pandemic. So we go through 2020 and then we go through the pandemic and there was just so much energy. I don't even know if we've caught up to the flooding that those years really brought our way. I still think we're healing from that. You know, I was doing some speaking gauge this last fall and I was talking about the sort of defrosting from that time. I still think we're doing that. So let's have compassion for ourselves and each other too, as we're moving through those times, because it impacted everybody very differently and I think that we can't just leap over the amount of impact it had. 

0:39:23 - Andrea Moore
Yeah, oh, I just got like full body chills, as you said. That it makes me realize and this is a not fully formed thought, but it's one that I've had and it just came back in that I think my experience of the pandemic. I had a really good experience of the pandemic, which I understand sounds weird, but like it was a time that I mean I never stopped working I was an essential worker at the time but our clinic just had a ton of fun. It was like a very light time for us. We were, as like me and my best buddies at the clinic playing movies because our patient load was so low. 

And then we moved across the country and we went on a road trip. That was very you know, just not really exposing ourselves to anybody. So it was this very nature experience. And then we got to move and we got to stay with our in-laws who like live again and just gorgeous Kentucky, like rural Kentucky. So it was just a lot of. It was a very like healing time because it was a lot of introspection and a lot of restarting of our lives in different ways. It was when I then like moved into my business, and so I think I tend to forget that that was not everybody's experience. 

0:40:30 - Asha Frost
And it's interesting because we are connected online. So we were in the most locked down place in North America, in Ontario, and we could not basically leave our houses for almost that whole time. So I would speak to people in different states and they'd be like what are you talking about? So that's another example of really stepping in somebody else's shoes and seeing oh my goodness, yes, we're talking on screen and right now your children are home, they're not ever going to go back to school. We're trying to run your business full time and write your book. It was very traumatizing for me. Those two years were really really hard and just the way that our province was set up, it was just been very locked down. We couldn't go anywhere. So, yeah, that's a perfect example, right, of two different experiences. We don't live that far away, really, and, yeah, that we just I think if we had that mindset always of, oh right, that might not be everybody's experience, oh my gosh. 

0:41:23 - Andrea Moore
Yes, yes, just remembering that. So one thank you just for reminding me of that, and I think you're so right of like we have not defrosted from this experience at all. I think there's a lot more healing to come from it, for sure. 

0:41:38 - Asha Frost
Which is always a good thing. The vision for healing and moving forward is a beautiful thing. 

0:41:42 - Andrea Moore
Yes, yes. Thank you so much, asha, and I feel like I could talk to you forever. I want to be respectful of your time, though. Is there anything that you'd love to leave people with Any just words of wisdom or medicine? 

0:41:55 - Asha Frost
I hope that you can have compassion for yourself in these conversations and in your healing journey with chronic pain. I think that I want to say I see you, I understand the depth that I can and I hope that you just know that you are so perfect as you are. 

0:42:10 - Andrea Moore
That's what I feel. Then so beautiful. Thank you, and I highly highly recommend checking out Asha's book you are the medicine, and she has some beautiful oracle decks. And is there any other things that you want to just share or where can people find you? Yeah, I'm on. 

0:42:25 - Asha Frost
Instagram. I'm Ashafrost and I have actually a moon offering coming out. That's a 12 month ceremony offering that goes along with the book. So if you've read the book, you don't have to have read the book, but it just helps us to embody the teachings and to move through them in ceremony together. So that's what's coming out soon. Oh, beautiful. 

0:42:46 - Andrea Moore
Thank you so much for just sharing your medicine and your words and just being here. I appreciate you so much, thank you. Thank you for having me, Andrea. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page