#105 From Grief to Liberation: Ash Canty
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Michael Reiley: Welcome back to the Sounds of SAND. My name is Michael Riley. Today, I'm in conversation with Ash Canty. Ash is death Walker and spirit usher, psychic medium. We discussed their latest project, offering spirit readings to the families of deceased and displaced Palestinians. Collective and individual grief. And the weaving of that grief into joy, gratitude and collective liberation. All today on the Sounds of SAND podcast presented by Science and Nonduality.
I'm here with Ash Canty, on the Sounds of SAND podcast. Thanks for being back with us.
Ash Canty: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Michael. It's an honor to be here every time. I feel like I'm coming back home to a piece of family. So I'm just grateful for that feeling getting ready to come here.
Michael Reiley: Nice. Yeah. You were your episode resonated with a lot of people and I've shared it myself with other people we only scratched the surface, so I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Ash Canty: Yeah, me too. Me too.
Michael Reiley: We, I will have introduced you in the introduction. Do you want to talk about your journey as a medium and death guide and maybe things that have happened for you in the last year since we spoke?
Ash Canty: Yeah. Yeah, I think I told my full story in the previous podcast we recorded. But my journey as a death guide and as a medium started in 2020, and if you want the full, you can listen to that episode because it's it has just more details of the story. And, I, someone who, I really just listened to what is happening and what is going on.
And in 2020, a lot was happening and a lot was going on in my life. My health had crashed significantly. I was in and out of hospitals with, All of these different diagnoses and I had really hit a bottom. That oddly enough was the time that all my gifts came online. When I had tubes coming out of my chest and I did not see a way out of anything.
I was at my lowest, my most depressed and. That's really that rock bottom is what opened me up to something else. And at the same time the initiation of my grandmother's death. So those sorts of things came together and allowed me to step deeper into what would now be my gifts as a medium, which I did not know at the time.
I just knew that I was hearing my grandmother talked to me and kept following these little glimmers. And and I also was led to be with death. I had been at the verge of it and it had shaken me to my core, but it also had fed me this Lifeline this life force that was coming through in a different way and saying wake up, you're alive.
Let's go. Let's do this. That I hadn't really had before. I felt like I was sleepwalking through life before that experience. And Yeah, it truly changed me. And so now my role is really guiding people back into their liberation of living their life through really accepting and building relationship with death.
And then I also channel spirits from the other side in private readings and live shows here in Portland, Oregon. And I also mentored those as well that are coming online with their own gifts and abilities. And I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. And I also never imagined I would be doing all of this.
Michael Reiley: Nice. And obviously this journey you're on and the way you facilitate with other people is on an individual level. Thank you. But in the last year, since we spoke, there's been a lot of collective grief, a lot of collective death. Obviously at SAND, we've been focusing on the, on what's been happening in Palestine and Gaza.
And now that's expanding into Lebanon. So how has this kind of shift in the collective field of loss and death and pain impacted your connection to the spirit world?
Ash Canty: The big question. Here we go. Oh, Michael yeah, it hasn't impacted the work that I do profoundly. What I want to say first is that, and I come here today pretty raw to you and tender and I emailed you before to let you know of everything that's happening right now in the world. The climate collapsing the genocide in Gaza to the Palestinian people, the multiple wars happening in the world.
I am not immune to any of that. And even though I know that there is another side, there are other dimensions, we go somewhere, like there is all this love, there's all this, these different energies. I still hear grieving in a human body. And I feel the collective probably 10 times as much as I used to before I had my gifts, which is beautiful and also really hard, really difficult to feel so deeply that I can't just go on business as usual in my life.
It doesn't exist for me anymore. And, In fact, I've been thinking about this a lot in what it is to go business as usual right now and to walk out into the world and to not see any reaction to what's happening right now and how crazy making that can feel and how isolating. And so I've been, I've just been sitting with that.
These. These opposites going on in energy and what is my role in this, right? Like, how am I to serve when the world is erupting and part of the beginning of this year or last year, really on October 7th, it was really clear that I would try to offer my gifts. of channeling to those over in Gaza who were able to have access to internet, who could get online and or who lived in the States, but had family over there.
And we're going through so much. And are still going through so much and to read for them and to in some micro small way, offer messages from their ancestors to come through. So that is what I've been doing for the last year. Offering these Donated readings to families and to loved ones who have lost whole families.
And also those that are, still looking for their family, wondering if they're okay. And are in deep grief. And so I put the offer out there, not knowing if it would actually even be helpful because I don't want to give anything that's not helpful. Like I'm not here to I just want to.
Given a way that actually is needed and what I found is that there was so much outreach that we now have a wait list of folks who would like support in that way and find it helpful to be able to connect with their ancestors in this time where there is so much loss and death. And despair, like a deep despair.
So that's really what I've been doing and shifting over even how I work, what I do my energy and where it needs to go and trying to pivot. With the world and the collective as to what is really needed right now.
Michael Reiley: Wow. Yeah. It's quite beautiful and quite sacred what you're describing. Could you talk about the kind of early days of this offering and maybe some of the first people that contacted you and how this unfolded for you that connecting to ancestors of Palestinians? Yeah.
Ash Canty: Yeah. So in the beginning I, at the time I was on Instagram, which I haven't been on for seven months, I've left that platform. It was serving and then it wasn't. I'm not on there anymore, but when I was there, I was basically asking my community to. Ask their community who needs this?
Would this be needed? Is this what is needed? And to send the information out there in the webs and also through email and through my newsletter, I just sent it out and I found that friends of friends and family of family, like people would just send people my way and email me their stories, which I didn't ask for, I don't ask anything for anyone to.
But what I heard coming in was, I don't even know if I know how to even be with it, that level of trauma that level of pain, that level of suffering. And so many of these Palestinian kin, is what I call them, because they're like family to me, were reaching out in such desperation and in such grief of loss. They don't know if they can be here anymore.
And that was really hard. And I understood it. I understood the pain in a small fraction of a way. And so it grew in the early readings. I really didn't know what was going to support that, what was going to help that. And then I had no expectations. And I said, even if. If this doesn't serve I don't, don't worry about it.
And they were like no. I want this, and so the beginning readings I just opened myself up like I do. And in every other reading I do, and I asked for ancestors and guides to come through for each person. And they came in. Strong, very strong through literal physical ancestors that were deceased that are now coming through to animals and plants specific to Gaza that I didn't know that I still don't know that they understood to animals and elementals coming through and speaking in ways to Support them and their bodies right now.
And each one was just vastly different from the other and what each person needed. And again, I know nothing going into these things, so I don't understand it until after. And then they explain why this lands, why this is important. And from there, I just kept hearing the yes and offering these readings, these sessions and then checking in with folks after to see how they are, how was it, how are they integrating?
And so far it's been really helpful. They've said to get support and just be felt and heard around what they're going through and to also then hear from their ancestors, how to move forward. How to get out of bed, how to function in this time.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. I feel like in our You know, American culture, we're very death phobic. We don't talk so much about death. When people are older or sick, we often separate them from society. And there's a fear of death. But I wonder in a culture like the Palestinians where death is so present all of the time Is that, do you feel like that connection to loved ones who have died and to ancestors that have died as this kind of cycle that they're still here, they're still here, even though they're not here in physical form?
Does that resonate that idea?
Ash Canty: Yeah. And I can't, I can't speak for everyone cause I've only read, the people who've been on the wait list and what I've tracked for the last year. And in the readings and what I've noticed is one, the connection to the ends, their ancestors are strong everyone has connection to ancestors and even when we think of the white body, right?
Like the cut offness from ancestry has been severed quite extremely. And that's for a lot of reasons, but when. I'm channeling for them. The ancestors are like, I'm like, still here, still feeling them still with them. And they know that there isn't, there's no yes, I know. Yep. Yeah. And it's so quick.
There's no question. And I find that very interesting culturally to feel their intense connection already, even with the loved one on the other side. And the ways that they still speak to them, the ways that they still feel them is without question. And I would say even with the land of Gaza has come through in the readings to speak with people.
And this I find really fascinating and so healing because the land will come and speak to them as if the land is a being because it is. And then their response is, yes, I know, of course, that's a being, of course, I've been speaking to that for months now. And it always is a surprise to me because that's again, not something that in my other readings, I necessarily will come in contact with that often around the homeland speaking back to its people and feeling that intimacy of relationship.
Yeah,
Michael Reiley: Yeah. And so obviously we're talking about the grief of death of loved ones dying, but also there's the grief of the dia of the diaspora, of being cut off from the land. And this kind of, the Palestinian diaspora that's all over the world. Has that been part of the. Spirit connection as well, talking, connecting with that, that the grief around being separated from the land.
Ash Canty: I would say that's a huge, I would say that there's so much grief around that when it comes through in a reading what I have noticed. Is that there has been such a severing, right? Because of many things right now, there's a lot of severing. What I'm finding is that the land is saying to its people who are here in the States, it's not safe to come to me right now. then the heartbreak of that, because the longing to be with the land is so strong. And so I can feel, how my gifts work is I feel all of the Who I'm reading for their emotions. And then I feel the land and the energy of that land and the feelings and stations of the land. And so it's so overwhelming how strong that grief is in wanting to come together and wanting to connect back with its people and what.
It's interesting is that I don't even know how to describe this, but the land will speak to the Palestinian people in these readings and we'll say, keep talking to me because I can hear you keep sending me your prayers because I can hear them. Keep envisioning me in your mind, like I'm that close to you, even if you're very far, right?
And so there's this way that with everything going on literally on the land of Gaza, which is complete genocide and violence and horrors, the land is still underneath there. The land is still breathing and living and in connection with its people. And In that way, the land has come through in these sessions and has really supported people.
This one is coming to mind that, that just happened where this person couldn't breathe. As I got into their body, cause I can feel things, people don't have to say anything. I could just feel things. And as I dropped into their body, I felt I can't breathe. Are you having a hard time breathing right now?
Like I can't get a deep breath. And they said, yes, I can't breathe right now. And so the land offered to bring these stones, these hot stones, find hot stones outside of your house right now, get these stones, heat them up, put them under your chest, under your back, prop them up and breathe with them and bring us into these stones in your body.
We will help you breathe. You have to breathe. And so they started doing that as a practice. And they wrote back I can breathe. I can actually take a deep breath now when I'm coming back to the land in the body.
Michael Reiley: There's so much wisdom in that, like no matter what we're going through and what madness we're inflicting upon each other as humans, the land can always take it in some way.
Ash Canty: Yes.
Michael Reiley: Even if we end up making humans extinct and other species extinct in a few thousand or a few million years, the land will continue.
But still there, this, what you're talking about, this almost like motherly holding of the people of the land by the land itself is so beautiful. And it's something that I think people, descendants of colonizers miss, that importance of. Of the sacred connection that when it goes back, especially many generations, hundreds of generations aboriginal Australians, things like that, people that have been there for tens of thousands of years. Yeah it's the mother. It's the ultimate mother that with that is there for us.
Ash Canty: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so strong, and I think the severance is the illness, right? The disconnection from colon, and I have colonizers in my family, I'm Afro and indigenous and I have also colonizer blood running through my veins and I'm very clear about that when I speak. Because that is.
here too, right? And the severing that's in the throat and in the neck disconnected from the body is so strong when I am channeling and I'm reading specifically in white bodies. It's strong. And I've, after, six years of channeling and feeling this and dropping deeper, so much has been cut off, so much has been lost, so much disconnection has been felt, and then we go to the head, right?
And then the head becomes the one, becomes the most important, becomes the, the place that we feel The place that we sense and yet in the body is in the connection to the land, connection to the earth, connection to the everything, connection to the cosmos, the stars, the climate, right? And I'm finding in my own little research and data is that if we are cut off so severely from this illness, which is colonization, right?
We can't actually then feel our bodies and we then can't actually feel the land. And then we actually can't feel what is happening right now.
Like right now, the fact that we have category five hurricanes happening that are unprecedented. are not over here in some far off place that are here in the States, and that will continue to come. We are feeling that, whether we can't feel it or we, it, we're here, it's here, right? It's we're in it. And I'm curious and so interested in what it would be like if we start to heal that cut off ness so that we can actually, in our bodies, feel the grief. Of what we are living in right now, right? Like it's so into, I talked to every person this week and they are having a hard time.
They are really struggling. And they're like, I shouldn't, I don't know why I shouldn't be struggling. Nothing's happening to me. Really. I'm like, you're tied to the hole and the tie to the hole is tied to the earth in the land. And when things are happening and erupting like this in the climate that are also showing us what is to come. And are also showing us how we will need to adapt, of course, you're going to feel everything in the same way that war over there in Gaza is also happening here with us. It is overwhelming. And what I want to say is it's okay to be overwhelmed right now and not know what to do, right? Like in a culture that is constantly telling us do, which is further severing off
What it is there to feel.
What is there to grieve? What is there to be like, I don't know what is happening right now. And can we find connection back to the land and also back to each other? You know what I'm seeing and watching over in North Carolina, which I have family in and I have, my connection with North Carolina and Asheville is deep, my tribal nations are over there, Eastern band Cherokee, I visited that land two years ago. It is now completely underwater. There is so much grief there, and there is also so much to learn from what is happening right now. The one thing that I've really noticed is that relationships have been key to people's survival there, people need each other. Before anyone flew in, before any help could come, people came to each other.
And connected, right? And so there's something really visceral about this week, this month, this time we're in right now. In previewing what is coming and how do we be with it in an embodied way. way.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's so seductive to escape into the mind and escape into sort of storytelling mode. And like you're saying, grief is an embodied experience. When we're grieving someone or we're grieving A group of people, even people that we don't know, we have to feel it in our chest, in our organs, in our hands, in our feet, in our,
Ash Canty: Yes.
Michael Reiley: in our throat.
It's that's where grief is, so do you have many people that come to you that are stuck in that way? Like they're, they know they should be grieving. Maybe they're in still in, Living in memories and stories, but they're not embodying. They're not feeling that grief
Ash Canty: Yeah. I would say there, there's a lot of different ways that people come to me and I work with them also on the regular. And that's, what's so interesting about and helpful about being in community and working together. Because you start to see these patterns and these collective energies going on.
And so it starts to feel less oh, this is just me, but also, oh, this is the whole right now, like we're feeling the whole, the collective. And what I have found is that sometimes there's accessing the grief. That's the tricky part. And it gets stuck or halted, or the mind comes in so much. And then it's what's the reason for this?
You don't need to be filling it. Give me a good reason. There's no good reason. Okay, then let's move on, and so it can get really, it can get really frustrating for folks that I work with Oh, like I know it's there. But I can't touch it. And so I like to offer like different things to help and support people.
And part of the thing I'm doing right now, I run this program called the liberation portal. And it's basically being able to do these classes and practices that. Allow the body to fully come online and allow these things to be deeply felt, but also integrated and what it is to navigate everything that happens month to month collectively, right?
So that we're actually changed by it and that we actually, can grok it, can learn from it. A lot of that work consists of bringing in the elements to help us grieve. The elements and nature are just like bursting at the seams to work with us is what I find. They're like, over here.
Michael Reiley: You mean the four elements the classic four elements
Ash Canty: yeah, the water, the fire, the earth, the air. really want to work, right? And so I offer sometimes to have people just take a bowl of water, warm water. You can put some salts, you can put some oils, you could just do warm water and putting your feet in that water and allowing yourself. to hum and touch your body and taking like nice, slow, deep breaths and then humming them out and allowing yourself to just feel whatever is in the body.
There's no need to go anywhere with it. If you cry. If you don't, but allowing yourself to just feel back into the body. Like just that practice, people start crying. They start feeling, they start noticing their body. And also, there's really funny ways of accessing grief. I like to say I watch sad movies all the time.
When grief is stuck, turn on a really sad movie,
Right? Go into the sad, have a sad party, pop some popcorn, go into the sad. Because sometimes we need permission in some form on screen to let us know it's okay, you can cry, this is sad. But then we end up crying for many other things. That are within us that have been sitting with us sometimes for months. So there is frustration around how to access this. And also there's nothing wrong if you can't, we live in a culture in the West that doesn't make time or space, like moves really fast, has a lot of distractions. The perfect place to live in the head.
So we really, we don't, we didn't do that.
Like we. We are in this system that has been created for us and we're trying to get outside of it. So we're having to do weird things to help us feel.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I've been experiencing in my own grieving process over the last few months with the death of my mother is You know, I would read about the so called stages of grief and our sort of linear Western mind is okay, we'll do step two and then you do step three and then you do step four.
But the, death in and of itself is a breaking of the space time, our loved ones are no longer a part of space and time. So why would the grieving process be that uniform and linear? For me, it's been waves crashing into each other and peaking, whatever denial and then coming into sadness and then coming into all the different stages of the classic stages of grief, but all folding and morphing and, two coming up at once.
And Yeah. And again that's embodied. That's the way we feel in our bodies. Like my shoulder may hurt, my right shoulder may hurt, and my left shoulder feels great, and there's tightness in my chest and my feet are cold, and my stomach's grumbling. All of these things are cascading and happening all at the same time.
Ash Canty: Yes. That's exactly it. Michael. It's not linear.
But linear. As you just said, like it's oscillating. It's oscillating just like nature, just like the seasons, it oscillates. And sometimes a whole four seasons can happen in a month,
Michael Reiley: Yeah. , right?
Ash Canty: It's oh, this season it's no, they might all happen in one month or a week.
And that's, I think, normal, that's okay. That's part of what you're saying, being alive, having all these different parts. And all these different things going on at the same time, like that's what it is to be alive, actually, grief, the gift of grief is that it sends us into this place of questioning everything and of disrupting everything,
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
Ash Canty: Time goes out the window and then all of a sudden it becomes so what is here right now?
What am I feeling? I can only just feel this. I can't think of down the road or in the future,
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
Ash Canty: just right here in this feeling right now, and I think that's powerful medicine if we let it be right. If we really allow it to be, and that's hard, right? Cause again, we're in this Western culture.
That doesn't always allow time for that and doesn't see value in that, which is also part of the sickness of the culture, right? Like how would it be if we actually could allow each other that time to feel and not have to put a face on and I'm doing fine, I'm doing good, but actually like I'm moving through grief right now and it's hard.
And we do have that in communities and certain communities. And for the majority of folks I find that's just not there. Yeah,
Michael Reiley: I wrote an introduction or an essay as an introduction to a chapter of related to my teacher, Pauline Oliveros from Deep Listening, and the title of the chapter was Grief and Gratitude. And, they they gave me the title of the chapter that I wrote the introduction for, but then it opened this whole thing of like grief and gratitude are sisters, they're companions in the same because we grieve what we're grateful for and what we're grateful for one day we're going to grieve.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ash Canty: Yeah it's
It's really unavoidable. I feel like it's really what it is to be alive. Grief and gratitude, right? There's no escaping it, and I think the intimate choice. Is to lean into it and that also can feel really vulnerable. To really feel the love, the joy, the, wow, I just love this thing or this person or this moment or this experience or whatever it is so much.
I don't want it to go. I don't want it to end right. Like to allow that kind of expansion into the heart in is vulnerable. And then also the same expansion in, and they have died or they have transitioned, or this has ended. Or this is done and what that does to the body and what that does to the mind and the heart and the recalibration and the flinging ourselves into really the unknown into death energy. Into the cycles of everything, like it is a tender and raw place, but it also is so full of life and so full of this impermanence, this feeling of really being here and feeling what there is to feel, even when it just feels like it's going to break our heart. Yeah, I think that's the medicine of the time we're in is that grief and gratitude crux. Growing that and also, I will say that we can't have one without the other, it's I just want to be in gratitude all the time. It's okay. And there's some bypassing there also. It's maybe examine that, because that's flying on the sky. But the grief is really the anchor brings us to the dirt, the ground, the, whoa. And I think from there, it's like
The gratitude can expand.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I know like gratitude journals are popular. I think I have a few in my bookshelf
Ash Canty: Yes.
Michael Reiley: It'd be yeah Maybe there should be like a grief gratitude journal like on one page you write what you're grateful for and on the next you great what you're grieving,
Ash Canty: I love that. Yeah. I think, yeah, there are so many ways to incorporate the both and right. I'm always talking about the both and that the gratitude is beautiful. And yeah, how do we daily be with the grief? What kind of grief am I walking with today?
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
Ash Canty: Where can I locate the grief in my body?
Today. Ooh. It's over here. Okay. Like just these little tiny things of accessing it and naming it so we can feel it. Yeah.
Michael Reiley: And as we, we started this conversation talking about your work over the last year,. connecting ancestors from Palestine and. In the midst of all of these poly crises, what are some of the messages that the people who have left this world and they can maybe see a larger totality of time and of the world, what are some of the lessons and some of the things that they're wanting to say to us to help us, let's say?
Ash Canty: Yeah. The one that's coming to me, there are so many,
But the one that I want to speak about that's coming to me was an elder. A Palestinian elder who came through in spirit and said and again, these messages are hard for me. Cause I'm like, got to bring through just whatever it is, even though I'm like, wait a minute.
Can we examine that and talk about the intricacies? No, that doesn't, I gotta just be the channel. So this ancestor came through and said to their loved one, the hardest thing you're going to have to do in your lifetime here. in this genocide is to keep your heart soft and open. And this person just wailed. They just wailed. And I said, do you understand that? And they said, I have so much hate right now and rage, and it's killing me. It's eating my body, ash. And I'm very sick and I don't want to be sick anymore. And so that medicine came in such a powerful way from that ancestor, around what it is to soften the heart. Which feels like the hardest task. Right now, and yet this anger, which is so valid and so yeah yes, was impacting this body so intensely. And now hurting them, their own body, their own spirit. So that was a pretty big one that came through for that person that just I took with me. And the other one that is also coming through right now is that there was another father figure who came through a father, yeah, fatherhood passed. And he came through and he said, he said, my heart, your heart, our hearts. Are all connected. We are all in this together. And as he said that, I could feel him lifting my heart with them. And I could feel that interconnectedness of, we are all family. And it just it just radiated out. Like my pain is your pain. My grief is your grief. My heart is your heart is what he said.
Heart is your heart. And that person, again, just wailed and took that in and ended up like they were, I didn't know this and afterwards told me they were literally going back to Palestine to give aid. To people in their community and to help resource and do all of these things. And they really needed to feel that interconnection, that web of we're all in this together, that we're all grieving this together. And I think that just really has sat with me. because there's been so many messages of love that have come through in the midst of horrors. And pain, and also trauma healing has been a big thing from the ancestors to their own loved ones back who are here living through this is being able to support them and have them get support around their trauma, because it's what they were showing one time in this reading was.
That this trauma wasn't just happening here and now, trauma was being reactivated from an entire lineage behind them.
And so they were holding everyone's trauma in their bodies and their nervous system. And so they were doing these different practices and healings in the sessions with them to help them not have to carry that anymore. What's not theirs to carry, but to be with their body right now and to support it and to even for some of them to step away for a moment and to breathe. That was a huge one because there was a lot of like social media, like intake intake, all of these different things. But actually their body and nervous system was about to break is what they showed me.
And then that person was like, yeah. I've been sick for eight months and I can't get out of bed,
Michael Reiley: Right.
Ash Canty: So all these things were validated with these ancestors that came through of how to be in this wider time and there's a lot of similarities in taking care of ourselves to take care of each other, being able to stop, to slow, to lay down, to get on the earth was a big one. And to remember that we're connected much more than we realize. in what we're experiencing and feeling in our bodies and our hearts and our nervous system right now.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You said so much there. I'm just trying to feel into that, to actually feel into that with my body as I'm resonating with what you're sharing. it's it feels miraculous and otherworldly that we're connecting, that our hearts are connected, but it also feels so right and normal and yes,
Ash Canty: Yes.
Yeah. And it feels, let me go ahead.
Michael Reiley: Like we, we know that feeling with a loved one or a friend, if we walk into the room and they're feeling distraught immediately, our hearts, we feel, Oh, what's wrong,
Ash Canty: right.
Michael Reiley: And so if we can have that connection with, a partner or family member or a friend, why not with everyone? Why not, and there's so much Being discovered about heart coherence and the magnetic field, the Taurus shape that emanates from our heart, and all of those Taurus fields are interconnected and ultimately limitless.
And that's why It's not happening over there, wherever, whatever it is, if it's Palestine or Myanmar or the Congo or Mexico, it's happening right here. It's as traumatic as if our neighbor downstairs from our apartment was B, being a bomb went off and they got dismembered and their parents died in front of them, which is what Palestinian children are dealing with daily,
Ash Canty: that's right. That's right. It's happening in our own hearts
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
Ash Canty: and in our own words and our own thoughts. I've been thinking that a lot of what is it to be, carrying or speaking this energy of war or peace.
Am I speaking war? Am I speaking peace? And the nuances of that are where am I creating worse?
Where am I creating this war energy? Right now, where am I creating this connection, love, peace, curiosity, energy right now. And it's subtle, Michael, like it's comes out in the micro list of ways, right? Like I'm on the phone with someone and I may be frustrated or I can't get through or, I'm talking with a loved one and I'm low sleep and I'm blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.
Whoa, where am I coming from in this moment? Because that energy also is felt that energy also adds to the collective. That energy is also doing something right. And that energy builds to something. So that has been a practice for me is am I coming from war? Am I coming from peace here?
Am I trying to fight? What is this? Am I trying to understand? Am I trying to love? Because when we scale out, that's what's happening. These conflicts are, we're not hearing each other. Okay. And we have no time to hear each other because there's massive amounts of trauma and there's activation in the nervous systems and we're flipped, right? And so it's escalating to this point of extreme violence and genocide. And yet, what is it in our daily life here right now? Because we are all connected because our hearts are live wires to each other. Because literally, if I wouldn't been able to feel this, I wouldn't even be able to channel. The fact that I channel people who are not even from this country means that the hearts feel everything.
Our hearts are alive and connected, right? So what is it to actually practice this energy now, right? Like, where are we contributing to this and how do we change it? How do we lean more into that love, into that softness, into that openness, right? And take accountability for our own energy we're bringing. That's what I'm interested in now.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. So beautiful. So expansive. I think from this episode, your wait, wait list is going to get even longer. But,
Ash Canty: That's fine. It's fine by me.
Michael Reiley: yeah. What was the other thing you mentioned? The liberation portal program.
Ash Canty: Yeah. I, we started that liberation portal a few months ago. It's a membership program
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
Ash Canty: and on sliding scale and it's a program that has been in iterations and being birthed for some time now. And it's a a membership that focuses on everyone's unique liberation right now and how we get free together. So it is both the individual, but also the collective work we do in this group. And I teach embodiment. I teach connecting with your energy, connecting with the animal sounds that want to come out of you, how to grieve, how to rage in ways that are healthy and in ways that transmute and then add to the collective.
So we can all get free. And it's a powerful. Circle we have and we actually open up enrollment next month in November for new members. So yeah. Yeah.
I have a reading wait list for individual readings that's in January, 2024 that people can join on my website. And then I also I'm doing live show events in Portland, Oregon at the Portland grief house. So if folks are interested in coming, they can find that
Michael Reiley: People can do live sessions with you basically.
Ash Canty: Yeah. So it's a very intimate setting and this beautiful space called the grief house in Portland, and it's an old home living room and there's about 25 to 30 people that come, people buy tickets. And then we let spirit dictate where we're going to go and who's going, whose loved ones are going to come through.
And it's a very potent Powerful experience for all those who come. Yeah.
Michael Reiley: We'll have a link to that in the show notes and to your website and all the wonderful and important work that you're doing.
Ash Canty: Thank
Michael Reiley: Oh, wow. This has been another powerful encounter. Another yeah just Opening portals and gateways to a lot of things, a lot of really important things that we're all feeling collectively.
So thank you, Ash, for being back on the podcast and reconnecting.
Ash Canty: Yeah. Thank you so much, Michael. This was so special and I love yeah. Traveling to the cosmos and beyond with you every time. It's such a treat and just makes me feel really grounded here and yeah, really connected. So thank you.
