Episode 12 - Your Body as an Instrument: Nervous System Regulation, Meditation, and Self-Devotion
- Sara Hurd
- Jul 1
- 26 min read
New Episode - Your Body as an Instrument: Nervous System Regulation, Meditation, and Self-Devotion
What if your body isn’t a problem to fix, but an instrument to tune?
In our latest episode of the Builders of a Better World podcast, “Your Body as an Instrument: Nervous System Regulation, Meditation, and Self‑Devotion,” Ashlieya and Neff dive deep into what it truly means to live in partnership with your body—so you can receive more wisdom, serve more fully, and experience more freedom.
A pilgrimage, a body, and a remembering
This conversation begins with a story.
Fresh from a solo pilgrimage through Scotland and Ireland—lands tied to her ancestral roots—Ashlieya shares how being on the land felt like a reclamation of home. Returning to places that carry her lineage, she describes the “vibration,” “frequency,” and familiarity of those landscapes, and how they re‑ignited memories, wisdom, and a profound sense of belonging in her body.
This wasn’t just a trip. It was a living reminder that our bodies hold history, resonance, and knowing—and that when we listen, they can guide us toward what we’re here to remember and share.
Your body as a vessel, ship, and instrument
From there, the episode moves into one of the core themes of Ashlieya’s work: your body as an instrument.
She likens the body to a vessel—a ship we pilot through the waters of life. Everything we perceive, feel, and interpret comes through this vessel. And as she puts it:
“You’re only going to go as far as your ship will carry you.”
That framing shifts self‑care from a chore or afterthought into something sacred and strategic. If your body is the instrument through which you receive intuition, inspiration, and guidance, then tending to it becomes a foundational part of your spiritual and creative practice—not an optional add‑on.
When service is threatened: a dance teacher’s story
Neff brings this down to earth with a vulnerable story of his own.
He shares about the infection that nearly cost him his foot—and with it, his ability to teach dance in the way he’s called to. Yes, he could have found other ways to serve, but the experience made something crystal clear: how we care for our bodies directly affects how we’re able to show up in our gifts.
It’s one thing to talk about self‑care in theory. It’s another to face losing the very form your service has taken in the world. That brush with limitation reframed “health” not as vanity, but as a form of stewardship.
Meditation, magic, and the nervous system
A big part of this episode centers on meditation—not as a performance, but as a living relationship with your body and nervous system.
Ashlieya and Neff get honest about:
Falling asleep in 4 a.m. meditations
How alcohol, sugar, weed, and late‑night TV can dull presence
The very real impact of sleep, hormones, gut health, and blood sugar on your ability to “drop in”
Why some days, meditation feels like pure magic—and others, like static and distraction
Rather than treating these as failures, they frame them as information. If your “instrument” is out of tune—overtired, inflamed, overstimulated—it makes sense that your meditations feel foggy and your intuition hard to access.
In other words: nervous system regulation, digestion, hormones, and rest aren’t separate from your spiritual life. They’re the ground it stands on.
Self‑devotion as devotion to the divine
One of the most powerful threads in this conversation is the idea of self‑devotion.
For those who believe in a creator, higher power, or the divine, Ashlieya makes a bold claim: if you truly see yourself as an extension of that, then caring for your body is not selfish—it’s devotional.
Self‑discipline, in this framing, isn’t about restriction or punishment. It’s about devotion. It’s about choosing habits, inputs, and environments that support your ability to:
Perceive reality accurately
Stay present rather than reactive
Receive subtle information—intuition, “hits,” and even telepathic impressions
Live in a baseline of grounded peace, instead of constant survival mode
This is where the language of “fit for service” shows up again and again. You aren’t just caring for your body so it looks or performs a certain way—you’re cultivating a vessel that can hold more presence, more clarity, and more contribution.
From survival mode to presence (and premonition)
The episode also touches on nervous system conditioning and “threat detection.”
We’re wired, biologically, to prioritize survival. That means our systems are quick to interpret discomfort, unfamiliarity, or emotional pain as danger. When that survival wiring runs the show, it’s easy to live on autopilot—reacting, defending, and looping old patterns onto present‑day situations.
Through practice and awareness, though, we can:
Learn how our bodies respond to stress and stimuli
Differentiate actual threat from old conditioning
Re‑train our systems to return more quickly to regulation and presence
From that regulated place, something beautiful happens: you start to notice more. You read emotional and energetic cues more clearly. You feel into possibilities before they fully arrive. What some might call “premonition” or “sixth sense” becomes, in this framing, an extension of attuned presence.
Freedom, devotion, and the I Thrive lens
Near the end of the episode, the conversation turns to freedom.
Ashlieya talks about freedom—physical, financial, time, and spiritual—as a core driver behind her I Thrive work. For her, self‑care and nervous system regulation aren’t about shrinking life, but about removing unnecessary limits so she can explore, learn, and serve as fully as possible.
Neff points out how often we disguise limitation as freedom: “I’ll eat what I want, live how I want, because no one can tell me otherwise.” The episode gently invites listeners to ask: Is this choice actually expanding my freedom, or slowly taking it away?
It’s not about perfection. Again and again, they return to the importance of grace, lessons over “mistakes,” and remaining a student of life.
Why this episode matters
If you’re:
A creative, teacher, healer, or leader who wants to stay grounded and clear
Someone rebuilding your relationship with your body after burnout, illness, or trauma
A spiritual seeker navigating meditation, intuition, and nervous‑system‑aware practices
Or simply someone who wants to feel more free, present, and fully alive
…this conversation offers language, perspective, and encouragement to see your body as a sacred partner in the life you’re building.
It’s an invitation to move from survival to presence. From self‑neglect to self‑devotion. From seeing your body as an obstacle… to honoring it as an instrument.
Listen to the episode
Episode title: Your Body as an Instrument: Nervous System Regulation, Meditation, and Self‑Devotion
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If this episode resonates with you, we’d love for you to:
Share it with a friend who’s navigating burnout, spiritual growth, or a healing journey
Leave a rating or review so more listeners can find these conversations
Comment with your own experiences of partnering with your body as an instrument
Thank you for being a Builder of a Better World—from the inside out.
Transcript:
Welcome to Builders of a Better World Podcast, a space for depth, clarity, and honest conversation, where presence matters more than performance. Let’s begin.
Ashlieya: Welcome back to the Builders of a Better World podcast. We have an episode for you—reasonably impromptu. What are we talking about?
Neff: So, you have a clip that you recorded. Where were you when you did that one? What was that clip? Where were you at?
Ashlieya: I was in Scotland. Wasn’t I? No—was I in… Glasgow? Glasgow, yeah.
Neff: So you were in Glasgow, okay.
Ashlieya: I was in Glasgow, yeah. I was in Scotland. Yeah, just recently.
Neff: A great trip that inspired you, gave you some new insight—maybe not new insight, but reminded you of stuff, I would assume.
Ashlieya: Well, the trip itself was transformative. I mean, it started as a solo travel, returning to the homelands, reclamation of that which I feel most homey and connected to—my roots, my lineage, that which makes up a certain essence that is me. You know, you return to a specific land, it has vibration, it has a frequency, it has a familiarity, there’s a connotation that you’ve assigned to it, a meaning that you’ve assigned to it.
And so Ireland, Scotland, UK, has a very special significance for me. I go to Scotland every year for my birthday. I go back to Ireland. I have an agreement with myself to go back more often. Um, but Scotland, I spend my birthday.
And I ended up doing this really lovely solo self‑exploration, as I do, and I ended up on this pilgrimage. And along the way, you have—I had a lot of very profound insights, things that I wanted to further expand upon for myself. Also, more wisdom came to the surface, more remembering was kind of reactivated, reignited in a way, that gave me a lot I needed to share with people.
And so I shot a bunch of content around that, and I shared it with you. You’re the first viewer of said content before releasing it into the world, and you were very emotional about one of the topics I had spoken about and something I write about, which is your body as an instrument—this vessel incarnate that you move through the world in.
It is that which we process all information through. And it is our ship that we get to use to navigate through the waters of life. And you’re only gonna go as far as your ship will carry you.
So, tending to that, you know, and building it—the architecture it’s made of, the materials it’s made of. How is it being tended to? What condition is being maintained? How are you being of service to that vessel?
Because the more you yourself are fit for service, the better you will serve, right?
Neff: Absolutely. And I, you know, as I was listening to that recording, so many things, you know, came up for me because of my personal journey.
It doesn’t matter, I think, how you are of service. For instance, in my life, one of the things that I—one of the, I guess, I’m going to say talents that I have—is teaching dance. That’s something that, you know, I’ve been blessed with, not only the love and desire, but also the ability to teach, which is wonderful, and I feel very blessed to be able to do that.
And you know that recently I went through an experience where that was in danger of being taken away from me. The ability to actually teach people dance was, you know, almost taken away from me. And that was because of an infection that could have potentially gone into the bone, and they would have had to amputate my foot.
Now, I mean, I could have continued to try to teach. I’m not saying that would have stopped me from at least trying. I’m sure there’s other things that I could have done, other avenues with which I could use my talents. Uh, but I wouldn’t have been able to fully utilize my abilities, my talents, for what they were given to me for, I would think, right?
So that’s one just small facet of understanding that how we take care of our bodies will affect our ability to, like you said, serve—but in many different facets, in many different ways.
You know, another aspect with what I was thinking about was even just as small as meditating. Because meditating is a way to not only get inspiration, but it’s also a way of helping yourself to recover, right? Meditation has a benefit of giving yourself quiet time and reflection time and stuff like that.
And if you’re not… So I have a hard time staying awake when I meditate. And so the meditation doesn’t really accomplish what it’s meant to accomplish, because I’m sleeping. And why am I sleeping? Because I’m not taking care of myself. I’m not getting the rest I need when I need to get it, right?
And again, small thing, but it creates an effect, of course.
Ashlieya: I write a lot about self‑care, and I preach a lot about self‑care. I’ve gotten so many questions over the years about how I do all that I do. “How do you do it? Do you not sleep?” No, I do sleep. I do sleep.
Coming back from this trip, I was in bed at 7 p.m. and stayed in bed, asleep, until 7 a.m. I needed the recuperation. I needed the recovery. I needed to catch up on sleep. So, I made it a point to do that.
There are other aspects of self‑care that I am unwaveringly committed to doing. Just I will not compromise, and when I don’t do them, it dramatically impacts my performance in life.
I want to emphasize, however, the commitment to caring for your body isn’t just about a physical performance, as it pertains to dance. More correlated to the ability to meditate, I would say, because we are surrounded by information. We’re surrounded by energy, we’re surrounded by frequency.
Regardless of what your personal beliefs or views are in angels, or extraterrestrials coming to help us—however you want to say it—if you believe beings or entities have a presence that is within your auric field, and they’re there, obviously, to communicate with you in some way…
I very much believe in guardian angels, I very much believe in spirit teams, or, you know, different—you can call them beings, you can call it energy. You call it higher wisdom, you can call it frequency, you can call it whatever you like… My body has an attunement to receive and adequately process that information, to be open and available to it, through the senses that are our beingness as humans.
Our body is a vessel for receiving that, processing it, and being able to utilize that information. Our degree of attunement is going to be enhanced or limited by our body’s limitations in being optimally healthy or higher‑vibrating.
The ability to tune in and be present with, without distraction, or what I call debris. If you’re stressed, if you’re experiencing ailments, your body is in a state of survival. It is focusing on that which it is conditioned to do, which is survive. You’re not as open or as present or as able to be attuned to all that is around you, or from the other side of the world.
I speak about this as it pertains to telepathic ability or other psychic abilities—quote unquote “psychic.” We all have this ability to expand and do so much more than what we perceive to be capable of.
Nonetheless, I personally have experienced having telepathic connections with other people. I personally have had the ability to tune into someone else’s energy or frequency and be able to entirely determine what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, in live time, and they could be in the same room with me, or not in the same room with me. This was all when I was a child.
Nonetheless, I know what it’s like to have that ability, and I know what it’s like to experience that. And I personally believe everyone is capable of developing that ability, or those kind of abilities.
And something that helps you do that is this whole commitment and understanding to self‑devotion. Self‑devotion is an extension of devotion to the creator. If you have any semblance of belief in creation, higher power, the divine, Gaia, God, and you believe that you are an extension of that, you have an obligation to serve yourself, just as devoutly as you would serve that belief.
You will be the benefactor of all that is possible, all that divine wisdom, all that higher vibration, if you act with that sense of devotion for this vessel, for this physical body.
Self‑discipline, as it pertains to self‑care and prioritizing self‑care, is an act of devotion—not only to yourself, but to creation, to God, to the divine, that which we are all a part of.
The more you are able to be physically and mentally fit, the more you are fit for service and fit to receive all of the communication that goes beyond just spoken and written word, which is happening all around us all the time, for us to just tune into, and be able… able to hear, to feel, to sense, to be in tune with. That’s where intuition comes from. That’s how we are able to develop a sense of sureness in information when we don’t have information.
As we are more often in, you know, programmed to determining definitive information—written, measured, spoken directly, visually, auditorily experienced. And I do believe that you can enhance the ability to see more, to hear more, to feel more, to be in tune with more when you have a healthy body and a healthy mind.
You can’t have a healthy body without a healthy mind, you can’t have a healthy mind without a healthy body. The idea of whole self‑wellness: are you feeding, nurturing, contributing to your whole self, in that sense, body, mind, soul?
Neff: Yeah, I like what you said about the idea that there are obstacles, right, that are there to vibrating at a higher level, so that you can be in tune. And we should be trying to avoid as many of those obstacles as possible, and that’s what being healthy will do, right? Is that it eliminates some of the obstacles to us vibrating at a higher level, and allows us to be in tune with inspiration, or anything of that kind of influence, I would think.
Ashlieya: I mean, we can keep using meditation as an example. It is a really easy one, you know?
I know that if I drink alcohol, eat a bunch of sugar… Um, I have no issue with those that want to partake in THC of any kind, but if I smoke weed the night before, I’m not as present and as focused, and as able to transcend during my meditation the following day.
If I’m sleep‑deprived, it’s also harder. Right. You know, I am not a “deprive yourself of sleep, and meditate.” Sorry, Dr. Joe Dispenza, that did not work for me. I rarely fall asleep during meditations. That 4 a.m. meditation, I fell asleep.
Neff: Yeah, yeah.
Ashlieya: So, sorry.
I would totally love to do another week‑long Joe retreat, now that I know what it’s like exactly. I’m asleep for a good nine, ten hours, and then I can meditate like a champ.
So, and same thing: I know that if I’m eating really well, I feel better the next day. I’m going to be more present in my meditation.
Neff: I was just about to say, if you’re hangry…
Ashlieya: Or you have gastrointestinal upset, right?
If I’m needing to, for some reason, really, you know, increase my probiotics that day, for whatever reason—you know, if my gut is not right—then I am going to have a harder time being present in my meditation. The gut is a second brain. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s very important.
My hormones—there are certain times around my menstrual cycle where I know that my meditations, it’s just so much easier for me to drop in, and then other times, I just have that little bit of extra preparing for, you know, giving myself a little more grace and understanding, that it’s just not as, what I say, dropped in, grounded, or present.
When we’re present, there’s no debris, there’s no obstacle, there’s nothing in the way of us truly being able to sit and be in the present moment, receiving information, and just being with that information. I’m not uncomfortable, I’m not worried, I’m not having these racing thoughts that I’m finding difficult to kind of, um, just make peace with, ’cause that’s what meditation is.
You’re not trying to stop thinking. You’re just observing that you’re thinking thoughts, and then you return to whatever type of meditative practice that you’re participating in. There’s so many. Um, and I go back and forth between many different ones, also, depending on how I’m feeling, because some meditation techniques are easier, depending on what’s happening with my body or my psyche that day.
It’s all about awareness and knowing of thyself, knowing how to accommodate those things, knowing how to navigate, again, with that sense of understanding and self‑forgiveness and grace, which can be difficult for some of us.
I have a hard time not having a really high standard for myself, and so giving myself grace is a continuous reminder of something I need to ensure I do.
When you have brilliant meditations, or you have these profoundly insightful, incredible downloads or resolves or reframes, or, you know, you’re able to transcend this whole other universe, you want that all the time.
Neff: All the time, every time, right?
Ashlieya: And you can’t sit down with that expectation.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: It is what it is, depending on what you’re fit for that day.
Neff: Absolutely.
Ashlieya: So, are you gonna set yourself up to be most fit for service?
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Are you gonna set yourself up to be most fit for service, you know, outwardly, but as well as internally?
You have to live with yourself. I have to live with myself. I have to live with how I feel, and what I think, and what it feels like to be in my body.
And you want to love that. You want to be at home in that place. You want to be safe and comfortable and familiar with yourself, and set that homeostasis of what your baseline navigation system, you know, is programmed towards, in a very intentional, mindful way.
And you do everything you can to kind of stay there, stay the course, and then ideally elevate, you know, over time.
Neff: Yeah, I love how you’re saying, give yourself grace. Because we—’cause we understand, of course, that, you know, nobody’s perfect, and there’s always gonna be challenges. There’s always gonna be frustrations, you know, situations where you may have, you know, a stomach problem or whatever. It doesn’t matter what it is.
And the idea is you want to try to avoid those as much as possible. You’re trying to create an environment within yourself that is optimal for inspiration. And this is a way, you know, making sure that your body is healthy, making sure that you’re aware and consciously doing things to make that better.
Ashlieya: Well, you’re reducing the static in your tuner and receiver. Right? If our bodies are the vessel or the instrument, to, you know, be able to receive information, like a radio, right? Like, you’re wanting the clearest signal possible.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: You’re wanting, you know, to be able to—for me, personally, I want to be aware of what’s going on from an accurate perspective. I want to be in the land of reality, very wholeheartedly attuned to what my surroundings are, what my environment is, so that I can adequately influence and be the, you know, kind of the designer of my life and my day, from a sense of accuracy—not reactionary, not conditioned, not programmed.
When we’re uncomfortable in some way, we’re reactionary.
Neff: Very reactionary, yes.
Ashlieya: And we’re… our tuner is experiencing a very significant amount of static. And so you’re not able to hear the music.
Neff: And programming.
Ashlieya: Right.
Neff: It’s easy to go… It’s easy to go back to the programming that has been…
Ashlieya: …kept for life.
Neff: Yeah. When you’re not optimally able to tune in to the inspiration to not… You know?
Ashlieya: The evolution of humans is fascinating. You know, human evolution, as it, you know, pertains to biology, is slow when you’re actually measuring time the way we do in this three‑dimensional world. So, it takes a long time for us to more organically, automatically override the system that is our genetic signature, designed to keep us in this primal state of surviving or existing.
I’m all about going beyond that as quickly as possible. I think we have no excuses, now that we have the information, we’re aware of what it is. Let’s move forward and condition ourselves to go from a more automatic, survival‑based navigation system to one that is far more expansive and celebratory and living in this peace and present moment.
That, to me, is enlightenment. That is where heaven exists. And we can have that now, in moments. We can have that in durations of time. If we’re present to it, we can have it more often than not.
Because the reality of this saber‑tooth tiger jumping out of the woods to come eat us is hopefully less and less, you know?
Neff: Depends on where you live, but yes.
Ashlieya: Well, reality, I mean, you know… Yeah. In my universe, in my neighborhoods, we don’t have as many.
And I’m a trained martial artist, so my primary predator in life being men—good luck.
Neff: Yeah, you can kick booty.
Ashlieya: Good luck.
Neff: That’s for sure.
Ashlieya: But I teach about it, there’s a lot, right? This whole idea of, like, you know, being the re‑conditioner of your nervous system. That’s a huge… like, just everyone right now is talking about nervous system regulation. Good—I mean, it should be talked about.
I talk a lot about that, because that is, you know, our body’s response to stimuli, to information. And the more grounded, the more present, the more accurately you can perceive threat, because more often than not, no actual threat is what you’re faced with. We’re just responding to it that way, based on our conditioning to survive.
The more you can get comfortable and familiar with the way your body responds to things, the more you can in some way have a governing sense of how to take control of that, and how to influence it for the better and more accurately, you know, assess situations so that you can respond from a place of truth. Which is, more often than not, as I’ve said, no one is actually threatening you. The sky is not, in fact, falling. You are not in any physical danger.
And I want to live my life, like I said earlier, in that state of accurate awareness of what is actually happening. I want to be in tune with all that is. That’s where you can start to, you know, have what someone would call a premonition, or you see something happening before it actually does. I have experienced that so many times in my life, you know, where you can have a moment you’re so present with what’s happening, you can start to anticipate what comes next from a state of accuracy.
It’s not paranoia, it’s not worry, it’s not fear. You start to get a sixth sense about things, right? Which I believe we all have. You have the ability to really tune in, to really be able to read the frequency and this information that surrounds us.
You can get better attuned, as far as empathy is concerned, in reading people’s emotions, in feeling people’s emotions, and expanding your conscious awareness, to understanding something vicariously, that you yourself haven’t had a direct experience or witness.
You know, it’s all wisdom, but what makes it beneficial is the embodiment of that wisdom. And again, that’s attunement to frequency. That’s being able to use your body to receive this information, process the information, and then assign meaning to it. So…
Neff: Yeah, and I think that that process does take time and effort, and…
Ashlieya: Devotion. It takes devotion.
Neff: Yeah, and you need to have the right tools to be able to do that. And I think that that’s, you know, the body is one of those tools, right? The body needs to be healthy and capable so that you can go through the process of developing those intuitions.
Ashlieya: It’s about a state of clarity. Clarity is an embodied state of being. You’re entirely present, your nervous system is relaxed, right—parasympathetic versus sympathetic. Like, you’re in a state of peace. And then, from that state of peace, you can exercise presence.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: From that presence becomes curiosity. The expansion of learning, knowing, understanding. And from there, I mean, it’s—the potentials are infinite, absolutely infinite.
When you can start by embodying clarity, being healthy enough, right? I’m rested enough, I’m hydrated enough, I have sustenance moving through my, you know, like, my metabolism. Although fasting is a really excellent tool. I’m a huge fan and advocate for that, people have had profoundly increased benefits in fasting. Your body is not digesting the way it typically does; it takes a break from that. The digestion takes a lot of energy for our bodies.
So, for me, I like meditating on an empty stomach. But I’m not in a state of having overeaten, having eaten the wrong stuff. I am not still processing a bunch of sugar or fat or, you know, all of that stuff. To me, that’s worse. Fasting has a benefit. So, there’s that.
If you’re not a person who fasts, however… and you’re prone to hypoglycemia, and you’re in a state of low blood sugar, you’re gonna have a harder time being attuned with anything other than your body going through what your body goes through. Right?
It’s the same with any other ailment. If your body is focused on, you know, one thing that puts it in a survival state, yeah, you’re not gonna be able to be as present or as attuned with all that is around you. Which makes sense.
Neff: Yeah, thus giving yourself grace and having a greater understanding of what your capabilities are. The key, I think, is not limiting yourself. Right?
Ashlieya: (whispers) Yes, that’s my whole mission in life.
Neff: Not limiting yourself, because that’s, I think, where I come from is, I don’t want to do something that will take away my ability, take away my freedom, take away my control over that being “the sky is the limit,” you know, that being…
I want to be able to become as… I use the word spiritual, but I want to be able to become as in tune as possible so that I don’t limit myself.
Ashlieya: That’s my—that’s me as well. That’s me as well. Freedom. I want freedom in all things. And that’s the I Thrive series. That’s the whole concept of thriving as a human. For me, that’s it. That’s exactly it.
I want optimal growth and expansion, the constant improving, developing, enhancing—how far can I possibly take this? For the sake of benefit, but also just for the sake of experiencing all that is possible, truly possible.
I want financial freedom. I want time freedom. I want physical freedom, right, as you’re saying. I don’t want limitations. I don’t want a lack of ability in any regard.
Neff: Yeah, somebody might say, “Oh, but I, you know, I choose to eat this way because, you know, I don’t want anybody telling me I can’t,” or “I choose to live this way because of whatever.” But… that’s great. But do you think about the fact that that is limiting you in other ways? Do you know what I mean? It’s taking away that freedom. It’s taking away that ability to grow and progress.
Ashlieya: Not everyone has the same ambition. Not everyone has the same interest in growth. Not everyone has the same, you know, wanderlust of heart and soul, like I do, right?
I’m a… You know, I want to discover, and I’m so curious. I have so much interest in the way the world works, and in discovering more about myself. And the deeper and further I can go in my conscious expansion in the mystic, right, like, the more that you come to learn and understand, the more you realize there’s so much more to learn and understand.
I love, love being a student.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: I love being a student. I love being a student in so many contexts, but I am a student of this world. I’m a student of life.
So anytime I have the experience to go out and be curious, right, I have the ability to do that.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: And what would stop me from having the ability to do that is so much, and I’m not gonna entertain that.
And—but not everyone has that same desire or interest or inspiration. I don’t relate to those people, although I still love them.
Neff: Well, I kind of want to just, I want to bring this up, because, you know, we both have gone through these little, I don’t know, paradigm shifts, right? Paradigm shifts, where, you know, you talk about like, alcohol or, you know, weed or whatever, you know?
Ashlieya: I have love relationships with both.
Neff: No, I know, and it’s like, it’s like one of those things where there was a point where you did go, “No, I don’t, I don’t really want to partake of this all the time because I can tell that it influences my ability to stay high‑vibrating or be in tune.” And I think that that becomes easier to choose because of those understandings, right?
Ashlieya: Oh, exactly. It’s… again, it’s devotion. It’s self‑devotion. Self‑care is self‑devotion.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: You know, discipline is devotion.
Neff: Yes.
Ashlieya: And I’m not talking discipline as it pertains to restriction. I don’t restrict.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: I don’t restrict. I’ll have a margarita. I’ll have, you know, I had a margarita last night. It was divine, a double. It was amazing.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Espolòn Tequila. I’d never heard of it before. It’s like, you know, of course, 100% agave, zero additives, they have won all these awards. I was like, “Give me a double, please. Thanks.” Jalapeño, spicy margarita, delicious.
Neff: Delicious.
Ashlieya: Easy on the agave, ’cause I’m sweet enough.
Neff: Yes.
Ashlieya: And make it a double.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Fantastic.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: So great. One. One and done.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Hadn’t had one in a couple of months, maybe?
Neff: Sure. Sure.
Ashlieya: Not saying you even need to go that extreme.
But for me, right, I just… I’ll have some wine, I’ll have a beer every once in a while. Like, I’ll have a cocktail every once in a while. I don’t deprive myself of these things.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: Because of my commitment to being disciplined—discipline being my devotion—I don’t want it that often.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: So I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: It’s not that hard.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: It’s not that hard to go, “Well, I actually just really want to be hydrated, and I really want to sleep well, and I really want to have an awesome meditation,” because meditation is magic and freaking miracles, and you don’t want the magic to stop.
Neff: Yeah, it can be, right?
Ashlieya: Oh my God.
Neff: And that’s, and that’s the point, is that meditation that you do want to have over and over again.
Ashlieya: Way better than a buzz from tequila.
Neff: Way better than the tequila, the sugar, the whatever it is, right? It’s way better.
Ashlieya: It is.
Neff: It’s way better than the TV show that you binge, so that you don’t get to sleep until 2 in the morning, you know? Like, it’s way better than that stuff, but we are maybe not paying attention to that, you know what I mean?
Ashlieya: I think you don’t know until you know.
Neff: Sure.
Ashlieya: So I’m here to tell you. So that you know.
Neff: Thank goodness, right?
Ashlieya: You’re welcome.
Neff: Thank goodness.
Ashlieya: Like…
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: You know, there’s no excuse anymore. Like, people need to understand what is possible. But in order to understand, you have to be interested in knowing.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: You have to be interested in knowing.
And I have experienced magic and miracles.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: I’ve experienced magic and miracles in my life. I’m a very magical person.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: I have magical people around me. I’m surrounded by magic and miracles all the time. And I choose to see it that way.
And for me, it’s incredible. When I chose to subscribe to that, my life became a powerful, beautiful, brilliant force that just keeps going and going and going.
But I have to be awake for it, and therefore I have to choose to be able to be present. And there, in this three‑dimensional world, because we inhabit these beautiful bodies, there are a series of steps you must take in order to be able to achieve that presence.
And it takes intention, and it takes purpose, and you have to exercise your free will, and make the decisions.
Neff: Yeah. And sometimes you make the mistakes and learn from those.
Ashlieya: They’re not really mistakes.
Neff: Well…
Ashlieya: If they’re lessons.
Neff: They are lessons, yes.
Ashlieya: If they’re lessons, they’re not mistakes.
Neff: Yeah, that’s true.
Ashlieya: You have to… It’s a series of learning. That’s what this whole life experience is.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: You know, we’re here, as humans, to observe the different versions of ourselves from different perspectives. We can learn vicariously through each other, or we can directly learn from our own experiences and situations that we choose to put ourselves in, both of which are beautiful.
I would like to observe and be as present with what other people are experiencing so as to spare myself the direct experience of some things. It’s my own choice. I’ve gone through what I’ve personally gone through. Now I choose to learn from a state of peace and joy, as an observer, and an empathetic, compassionate human able to understand someone else’s suffering or struggle or hardship or joy.
It goes both ways, and as an observer of it, I am also a recipient of the benefit, as long as I am present and aware. And I choose, again, to see it that way.
Neff: By taking care of your body, you can keep yourself in a state where you can see it that way. You can be present.
Ashlieya: Yeah. It’s all about presence.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Everything I talk about, everything there is, everything that has made me who and what I am today, my understanding of all the gifts, of all the magic, of all the lessons—it’s the ability to be present. Meditation—presence. Command over a regulated nervous system—presence. It’s all about the presence.
You know, are you in this moment right now able to adequately perceive it for what it is? Are you assigning other things to it? Did you take yesterday’s situation and put it on to today? Are you projecting what happened years ago on this present moment?
Most of us do that unconsciously. That which isn’t conscious is unconscious. We tend to default to navigating life unconsciously. We go into this, again, pre‑conditioned survival‑based autopilot. I don’t live there. I live from a state of presence.
And yeah, you do have to have a type of self‑devotion—or discipline, you could call it… both are the same, if you ask me—in order to be able to develop a skill.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: The skill of being present.
Neff: The skill, yeah.
Ashlieya: And being able to integrate the internal information with the external information.
Neff: Right.
Ashlieya: Adequately perceive that, and then choose to assign meaning to it.
Neff: Right, without programming.
Ashlieya: That’s what my Nervous System Mastery webinar was about—was that one topic. It’s a series. The Nervous System Mastery webinar. But…
Neff: I love it, yeah.
Ashlieya: The power of presence and integration—inner state versus outer state—and being able to accurately assess threat. It’s very powerful.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: But it’s a skill set. It’s a series of…
Neff: Absolutely.
Ashlieya: How‑tos: can you do this, putting it into applied practice? Yeah, just like anything else, it requires learning.
Neff: Yeah.
Ashlieya: So. But it’s good stuff.
Neff: I agree.
Ashlieya: Cool.
Neff: Powerful.
Ashlieya: As are we, so powerful.
Neff: We can be, can’t we? Absolutely.
Ashlieya: That’s a good place to end here, I think.
Neff: I agree.
Ashlieya: Power of presence. Ah, partnering with the body. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing.
Thank you for joining us for this episode. You’ll be seeing more of Neff and I, and maybe some solo Neff. Maybe some Neff playing the role…
Neff: What? Neff by himself?
Ashlieya: …of interviewer. That’s so exciting.
Neff: Oh, no, that’s cool.
Ashlieya: He’s a good dude.
Neff: I’m all right.
Ashlieya: Yeah. Um, thank you for joining us. Builders of the Better World podcast. Building a better world is an inward to outward process. That which you see, you see with.
Neff: That’s right.
Ashlieya: Thank you so much for being here.
Neff: Please like and subscribe.
Ashlieya: Like and subscribe.
Neff: Like and subscribe. What?
Ashlieya: Cheers.
Neff: Cheers.
Thank you for joining us here at the Builders of a Better World podcast. Please share, subscribe, comment, and be sure to pass this episode along for anyone who may need it. See you next time.
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