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An Interview with Heather Ash
Heather, an apprentice of don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, has been coming to the northwest for the last few years sharing her dynamic philosophies born of a broad spiritual base. Heather brings both a spiritual and grounded approach to giving individuals tools to truly change their lives, not just talk about it. She consistently presents spiritual material in a practical application. In her new book she has mapped a very systematic approach to identify what keeps us from changing our lives and then she provides the tools to overcome those blocks and make lasting change. Heather, would you start by describing your personal experience of sustaining change in your life and how this led you to writing your new book? I grew up with a tremendous amount of change in my life. When I was three weeks old my family moved from Hong Kong to California, and basically I’ve been traveling ever since! Over the years I’ve traveled and lived around the world (we moved back to Asia when I was three), and was blessed to explore many different cultures, religions, lifestyles, and ways of perceiving the world. When I first moved to the United States to go to college, I had a difficult time integrating into this culture. Living in Asia, I had grown used to being surrounded by people who were dedicated to spirit and community. Without really understanding what I was looking for, I yearned for a sense of spirit in my own life. My search led me to study many spiritual traditions and to get a degree in International Community Development. I have always been fascinated at how communities of people gather to create change. During this time, I studied with several different teachers, including shaman Vicki Noble, author of Shakti Woman and Toltec naugal don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. Both European shamanism and Toltec wisdom supported many changes in my own life. Over the years working with shamanic tools, I watched myself and others move through limitations, break old agreements, and step out of suffering. But I also noticed a tendency to seemingly make a huge change, and then end up back in the same place days or weeks later. As I worked with my students and my own inner journey, I recognized a pattern of breaking down an old structure, only to have fear arise and eventually the old structure reassert itself. The Four Elements of Change is a synthesis of different shamanic traditions and tools, designed to help people create positive and lasting change. I found that the key to change is to create a new structure that surrounds the old structure. This new structure allows us to feel a greater sense of stability and ease as we release the old. Can you please describe the vision that led to your identifying the four elements of change? I’ve learned to really love living the questions of my life and waiting for the answers to present themselves in any form. For months, I opened myself up to the questions around transformation and truly moving beyond old structures. I studied my students and myself; I tracked patterns; I explored different traditions. One night I had a dream, and the next day I found myself teaching the answer to my question, "How can we create stable, lasting change?" In my vision, I stood in a circle with a group of elders. The elders shared with me that it was possible to live a centered life, even in the midst of great change. They then invited me to experience living from center, supported by a new structure of air, fire, water and earth. Each element represents a different part of our beings, and has a quality to facilitate change. From this vision I learned that the reason many people go out of balance when making changes in their life is that dismantling our old structure makes us feel unstable and unsafe. It may be causing us pain, or limiting our choices, but it is familiar. If we create a new structure that surrounds the old, we create a firm foundation that holds us when our familiar structure starts to dissolve. Would you now describe each element of change, and how a person integrates that element into everyday life? The four elements of air, fire, water and earth are central to many shamanic traditions. These elements are the building blocks of life. They also represent the four parts of the self: the mental body, the energetic body, the emotional body and the physical body. When we learn to balance these four bodies, we become stable and present. Most of us live out of balance, with the mental body being our main focus. I wrote The Four Elements of Change to explore each of these elements of transformation, and to give people practical tools to assist them in integrating these elements into their daily life. What I learned from my vision was that each of these elements also has a quality associated with it, an action designed to help us live from center. The mental body, the mind, is represented by air. The quality of air is clear perception. No matter what our spiritual or healing path, it is vital that we learn to see through clear mind rather than through what I call disaster mind. Disaster mind is the judging, comparing, critical mind. Disaster mind is based in fear, and is constantly looking at what could go wrong. When we are honest and listen closely to our minds, we often are shocked to discover the extent of our own disaster mind. Disaster mind is the mind out of balance, based in fear and scarcity. Clear perception moves us out of disaster mind into seeing what is without judgement or comparison. We curiously investigate our beliefs and agreements, rather then being ready to judge ourselves or others for the slightest transgression. When we see clearly, we move into acceptance. And from acceptance, there is no resistance to change. The second element in this new structure, fire, represents the energetic body. The quality of fire is cleaning. When we are young, we each take on agreements and beliefs that cause us to look for validation and approval from the outside world. Often we end up acting against our true natures. Over time, our vital energy becomes clogged with beliefs and actions that create an actual structure inside of us. This structure limits our choices and causes us to live outside of our own center. We learn to be afraid to share who we really are, so we hide what we don’t want other to see, or what we don’t want to see about ourselves. To reclaim our energy we must be conscious of our own "dirt" and have the willingness to clean it out. The third element is water. Water represents our emotional bodies. The quality of water is opening. Opening teaches us not to resist what is. Instead of opening to what we consider "good" and closing to what we consider "bad," we learn to open to all of us. Resistance causes us to shut down our resources and intuition. Opening creates more space for our creativity to flow. Instead of stagnating in fear, we open to and see the vastness of who we are. The final element is earth, and our physical bodies. The quality of earth is nourishing. Nourishing is an act of feeding our deepest needs, rather than feeding our minds or the ways we keep ourselves safe. We can nourish our fears, or we can nourish our love, our acceptance, our innermost dreams. True nourishing moves us out of looking outside for love and approval, and brings our attention to our own self-validation and experience. There are the basic needs of the physical body: enough rest, good food, affection and touch, and shelter. There are also the deeper needs of the child self, all the places that we have looked outside for approval. We must learn to give love and forgiveness to ourselves. This nourishment strengthens our new structure and dissolves the old. I am interested in how you would suggest someone work toward changing aspects of their personal life. How would you recommend someone start a new relationship? Change careers? Any type of change begins with a sacrifice: What are you willing to release to make room for the new? Whether you are starting a relationship, changing careers, or working on your health, you must first get clear about what you want and what you don’t want. I begin any transformation by aligning my perception with what I truly want. When we are in the middle of change, it is easy to go into fear and slip back into disaster mind. One way to switch your perception is to consciously pull in disaster mind. Ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen during this change? Allow yourself to talk about or write down all the worst case scenarios. Then step into clear perception by writing or speaking what it is you really want to create. Once you set your intent, you can keep your intent alive and powerful by constantly clearing out what isn’t in alignment. Let’s say you want to start a new relationship. You first write down all your old fears, and then write a list of what it is you want in a relationship. Then each day you’ll need to stay conscious of the ways you are still creating dirt and chaos: all the old agreements and habits that arise. I always remind my students that when you set an intent, what arises is anything that is in the way of that intent. Pay attention to what arises from the closet of your unconscious to be cleaned. Simply say, "ah, something else to clear!" knowing that as you clean, you will be moving closer to your intent. So when you hear yourself saying, "No one is ever going to love me," or "I’m too old to attract a new relationship," these are the very things that need to be cleaned. What new agreement or thought do you want to put in their place? You will also need to be honest about where you are in your process of change. Are you really open to what you want to create? If you open yourself to the truth, you may discover you actually do not want to be in a relationship right now, you are not ready. Can you be open to not being ready? Or to feeling desperate to have a relationship, thinking it will make you feel safe? When we open to our own truth, we honor our emotions without fixating on or denying them. We are open to the stuff we like about ourselves, and the stuff we do not like. Opening to the truth is powerful, and will allow you to become more intimate with yourself. Change happens effortlessly when we honor the truth of where we are, and nourish our own needs. Once you open to the truth, practice nourishing your truth. Stop feeding the lies and fear and judgments. Nourishing the deepest part of yourself transforms you from the inside out, instead of constantly searching for something outside that will fill you up. When you work with clear perception, joyful cleaning, conscious opening, and deep self-nourishing change becomes an art rather than chaotic disruption. Heather Ash will be speaking at East West Bookshop on Wednesday, September 3, and doing a workshop on Saturday, September 6. For more information or to register for the workshop, people can visit her website at <www.spiritweavers.com> or call the Toltec Center at (510) 649-0352. Tasha Taylor is a free lance writer who also works at the University of Washington. |
Change… the
final frontier! How many times have you attended a human potential
workshop and walked away saying to yourself, "This is it!
I have finally got the tools to make my life better and to heal
myself. And then after a few days or months back in the "real
world" you find yourself drifting back to the old habits
and ways. Heather Ash has the answers to stop that pattern. Heather’s
new book, The Four Elements of Change, will give you valuable
tools to make lasting changes in your life.