Nyasha and Reuben
Jared:
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Kajabi Edge Podcast, where we talk to real entrepreneurs to give you an edge on Kajabi. I’m your host Jared Lohman, Vice President of Customer Experience, and today I’m joined by Nyasha and Rueben, founders of The Ascension Seed. How’s it going today Nyasaha and Rueben?
Nyasaha:
Good, we are so excited to be here! Hello everyone.
Reuben:
Thank you so much! This is a really exciting conversation we’re going to have.
Jared:
Yes and this is exciting to me because this is not...we’ve got a couple of first here. This is the 1st time I’ve had two guests at one time on the podcast and we are as far away from each other as we can possibly be, I think. Because for you guys it’s 6pm, for me it’s 6am so that means...I don’t think we could get any further away.
Nyasha:
Yeah, exactly!
Jared:
Well tell us a little bit about The Ascension Seed kind of what is your elevator pitch on what it is?
Nyasha:
So The Ascension Seed is a soul business essentially. It’s the kind of container for which we manifest what we feel to be our souls’ mission on earth which is to emanate love and unity consciousness and support the awakening of consciousness on the planet. So we hold containers for deep introspection and for shadow work, for self healing, emotional processing, shedding of limiting beliefs and illusions and coming into alignment with our true nature, our true essence and our true purpose.
We believe that everyone has a divine contribution to make on earth as we collectively come into states of unity and deeper embodiment of love and we’re really passionate about supporting people to find what their unique offering is to the earth. And yeah just helping them forward on that journey in the same way we’ve helped ourselves and been helped by others. So that’s kind of the essence of what we do but the work itself looks very different each time. It includes a lot of embodiment work, meditation, we channel consciousness downloads, we do movement work and we work with sound healing and instruments to move and clear energy through the body as well as upgrading consciousness and literally changing our DNA and the expression of our genetics through energy work and through connecting to higher dimensions of consciousness. So that might be new for a lot of people but that’s the truth of what we do and that’s why we’re here.
Jared:
Wow!
Reuben:
Yes! Our work is very spirit led. We’re very connected to ideas of spirituality, something that resonates to a lot of us and The Ascension Seed is really an extension of our relationship. We’ve been together for three years and shortly after we got together we realized that this energy that we have found [inaudible 3:39] was meant to be shared with the world. It was almost too strong for us to just keep in our own bubble and yes it really is an extension. The Ascension Seed is really an extension of some of the work we started doing individually before meeting each other.
And yeah going forward into our life and into our relationship The Ascension Seed was born because we realized that the things that we start to tap into within ourselves needed to be shared with the world and we didn't know that could...how’s that going to look but yeah gradually it grew. Yeah, that’s what it is now.
Jared:
Amazing! Yeah, this is definitely another first which I guess you know we’re still early in the podcast journey but super cool! So I guess I’d love to hear a little bit more about like...what was happening before The Ascension Seed for each of you?
Reuben:
Wow! Yes, it could be a very long conversation but yeah I guess...so just before we met individually or we met together, in our own individual past, we had started tuning into self healing, to you know self development kind of self evolvement. I don't know how the best way to describe it but we both start tuning into this energy of understanding that you know we can upgrade our frequency, we can change the essence of who we are by the intention we put into our day to day lives and to how we choose to manifest reality.
So we both came from a very spiritual lens and we were...yeah. Me personally I was more of a performer like I...music was one of my big passions and I was very much in the world of being a performer and kind of being the kind of spectacle. People kind of look at me and...yeah beat boxing was one of my big things and but what is really interesting is coming into a work, it actually stripped away a part of me that was used to me being the kind of the center of my essence.
It kind of took away my kind of self indulgent identity and stripped that away to realize that what I actually have to offer the world is to be of service to others rather than to kind of feed my own sense of self. So yeah essentially I was a musician before we started The Ascension Seed, that could be my main source of income in the way that I see myself making in the world. That was the vision that I saw for myself before The Ascension Seed.
Nyasha:
And I also had worked in the music industry. So we work a lot with sound together now, sound healing through the voice, through instruments, using sound to clear energy and yeah I’d always been super passionate about music as well. I went to university and went the kind of more typical route and then went on to have a job at the BBC where I was working for Radio1 on 1Xtra doing online content production. And working in and around music and doing creative things that were inspiring to me but really I was like “I need to work for myself.” I’ve always had that kind of “rebellious, don't fit the mold, like need to be on my own timeline” kind of energy.
And so I would struggle to fit into the boxes of the 9 to 5 and being on someone else’s time and doing things when they wanted and needed rather than when I had energy and capacity. And I can do a lot very quickly but it needs to be coming from inspiration and my true energy level so it didn't work for me to work in a 9 to 5. So I worked there for like a year and in that time towards the end I had a spiritual awakening. A sudden awakening to my true nature and to a new way of looking and understanding the world. A multi dimensional way of understanding the world beyond this physical dimension.
Understanding you know this is physics there are multiple dimensions not all of them are tangible but they exist. So I started to understand that and understand how everything is energy and what that really means in terms of my actual experience in the world you know. They tell us in Content Physics how nothing is actually solid and everything is just matter vibrating. It's just slowed down so much and so it appears so dense that it seems to be solid.
But understanding energy and understanding some of these laws of the universe, I started to gain a deeper understanding of my placement and what that actually meant for me as a multi dimensional being within this world, this universe, this multiverse and why I’m here on earth. And so I started the journey of self healing after I had my awakening and spent a couple of years going deep into my own inner work and also training in some healing modalities.
And right before I met Rueben I’ve just done a 3-week intensive sound healing training where I was facilitating group work similar in many ways to the sort of things that we still take now. And I came out that training and I have massively kind of healed and shifted my own vibration through those 3 weeks and within a few days of leaving that training I met Rueben. And somehow within our first conversation with you know... five minutes we spoke about collaborating. We didn't even know where it came from really.
Our first messages were like “Yeah we should collaborate” and we were like neither of us were even doing anything yet. I knew I was about to start and he was kind of in a group of people that were doing some kind of healing work but obviously there was such a strong pull that was calling us to co-create and since then you know we ended up starting The Ascension Seed. And at first we did a lot of in-person events, for about you know I’d say 6 months we were kind of intensively focusing on in-person events.
And we opened a Healing Space in my parents’ house and just you know did it very DIY but put loads of love and intention in and started to build our online presence. And then we did our first online coaching program which is our first kind of experience of doing online work and then when the pandemic hit we realized that we need to take more of our work online. We wanted to do a membership so we started a Patreon and we knew we’re meant to create an online course and it was kind of there but we were like how you know.
Reuben:
Yeah. How do we do it?
Nyasha:
And so eventually we found the way to create our first online course and that was when things really started to blow up for us because we started to share our voices in a different way. We created a course which is about racial healing, collective racial healing at the time of the Black Lives Matter uprising. And what was unique about our container was it was very grounded in love, and compassion for all beings and it brought everyone together.
It was a unity healing container for people of all races and backgrounds encouraging people into the work of clearing racism and the illusion of race from our genetic line, from our conditioning in our unconscious mind and clearing some of the ancestral trauma and programming so that we can truly align with unity consciousness and open our hearts to each other in a new way and create a new paradigm which is where we are relaying beyond the illusion of race right? The illusion that we’re separate. Because science shows that even people that appear to be of completely different races share, you know, 99.9% of the same DNA. And often have the same ancestor right? We’re all one family, we’re all related. And it appears that we’re different and these categories and labels, they all serve to divide us and to create these ideas that you’re this and I’m that and we’re different. And then create more separation right?
And so all of our work is about you know...dissolving those illusions of separation so that we can remember our oneness and come into true alignment with unity because on an energetic level we’re already one right? If you zoom right out way beyond this earth you wouldn't see ourselves not as separate humans. We’d just be a ball of vibrating energy right? From a cosmic perspective. So that is what we perceive to be the truth in the higher dimensions.
And so what we are passionate about is landing that truth in this dimension and helping people to understand how working with this spiritual truth and this spiritual knowings can support us to do our inner work, to expand our consciousness and awaken from the sleep of unconsciousness, and unconsciously being embodied in separation consciousness and then expanding into unity. And so yeah that’s kind of what happened with our racial healing course and that also brought us much more success in our business and we started to earn much more money and we had like almost 200 people sign up for the 1st course that we did. We were kind of like “Whoa this is big!”
Reuben:
We weren’t expecting that at all.
Nyasha:
“This is much greater than us!” You know we have that sense of...we’re being guided to create this container right now, in this moment in a way that only we can and it was very unique and innovative.
And that’s why I think it stood out to so many people and people were so cool to it. And so we did 2 rounds of that and that kind of launched us on our online course journey.
Jared:
Very cool! I won't put you on the spot right now but if there’s something later... I’ve done this in the past. I'm willing to be a guinea pig. If you want to show off some part of your work like if we can accomplish something in like a 2-minute or a 1 minute thing like let’s give it a try so we can see it. But I won't put you in the spot yet I’ll give you a chance to think about it a little bit more. What a great way to...I mean I guess it's silver lining. And we talk about this a lot like you know obviously the pandemic is still on everyone's minds and a lot of people who are kind of new in this base if you will. Like one way or the other the pandemic impacted them and so to see the... like the silver lining come out of this for you is incredible.
I’m just going to make a guess and say that I think no matter what pandemic or not you probably would have experienced similar results. But at that point in time, just to kind of get into your mindsets, as you have, you know, a couple of 100 people registered for your course, were you guys thinking about this like this is going to be our way of making a living? Or is this like still kind of...maybe you still are. Like what phase are you in in terms of...this is our livelihood versus this is something we love and care about doing.
Reuben:
Well I guess before we did that initial first course we had already decided that this was going to be the way we make our living. But we hadn't applied ourselves in a way where we were actually going to scale and grow our business. We're more comfortable with kind of you know with it’s kind of doing...I won’t say the bare minimum but we’re doing what we felt comfortable to do. And kind of not pushing ourselves in a way where we could yeah where we actually opening ourselves to receive more people to view our work, to join our program.
So we had already made that decision to make it our live’s work, to make it the thing that is going to help us earn money. But it wasn’t...yeah we had not yet opened up our energy to be able to receive that amount of attention really, you know. And we...to be honest in some ways we...well, we were ready for it really but it all came very fast and then we decided to work with that momentum and energy as it came.
Nyasha:
Yeah I mean for me I think that there’s a definite point when the pandemic hit that we decided to really take our business seriously. To really call it a business, to see it as a business. You know we were getting by and we’ve been working for ourselves and supporting ourselves with our business. I mean we weren't even calling it that but…
Reuben:
Yeah. We didn’t like the name business.
Nyasha:
We knew we weren’t going to do anything else but we weren’t making enough money you know. We were making some money, you know but it wasn’t supporting us to not have still anxiety of it like “Are we gonna have enough?” And once the pandemic hit, it really brought all that up. And you know add to this that we just had a baby 3 months before the pandemic you know hit as well. So suddenly now we got our own place and we had a child to support and so that was obviously an initiation into our parenthood in a different way. And so, us being called to step forward to provide for ourselves properly and for our business to really support us.
And so without doubt, there was a turning point when we made the decision that this was our only option that there wouldn’t be external help. It wasn’t going to come from other people outside of us, it wasn’t going to come from parental support, it wasn’t going to come from someone else like taking a chance or being our investor. We decided that we were going to be the source of our own success and that we were going to make this work and that we were going to apply ourselves as much as we could to manifest that vision, to create an abundant business, to create an abundant life, to you know really kind of take back our power and steer the ship of our own, you know, vision and our own trajectory.
And so that is a very empowering choice to make and I remember that moment that we chose it felt like we put ourselves on a new timeline and suddenly inspirations and ideas and support started flooding in to support us. In manifesting the vision from the power of that declaration of you know this is our only option and this is going to be a success and we are going to pull ourselves through this. And we’re ready to do the work, and we’re ready to grow, and we’re ready to do more, and create more, and receive more but not from the energy of work, work, work, work you know and burn ourselves out.
Rueben:
Yeah, pressure.
Nyasha:
In a way that was sustainable and in a way that truly supported us and that enabled us to live that quality of life and be there with our child, and support our child and also serve the world you know. And that it gets to be all the things we really calibrated to the consciousness that enabled us to see that serving the world and serving ourselves could all go kind of hand in hand you know. So that’s kind of that was March 2020 when we made that decision.
And then things started to take off you know very quickly. I think within 2 months from that point we’d launched our first, or 2 to 3 months, we launched our first course and yeah we had like you know almost 200 people signed up and we made I think £15K in that one launch. And that was the first time we’d ever received such a big amount of money in one go, we were like “Whoa!” you know. That was just the start for us really.
Jared:
It sounds like you were very intentional about your approach to this which is like, one thing...that’s the commonality amongst everyone. You make that decision, you make that conscious decision to commit to something and that’s ultimately where you’ll find you know your first...at least your sense of success. So I’d love to hear you know this like I don’t want to call it a fairytale because it never is no matter how great it sounds, it’s never a fairytale. So, like, what are some of the struggles that you had kind of getting up and running? What are some of the struggles you faced like from you know beginning phases to ultimately where you find yourself now?
Reuben:
Well I guess it’s different sort of struggle it’s kind of like a personal struggle of like yeah kind of self belief, kind of you know learning how to use software, knowing if we are doing it right, are we doing it the best way, kind of researching different things, learning how to use different online platforms and...But I think one of the biggest things that was...I mean for me I can speak personally that was hard for me was actually like putting ourselves out there in the way where it’s not...we're no longer like hoping it’s going to work, we’re like creating the condition for where it will work because we’re putting that energy and place to receive that energy.
So it was definitely a step for me to yes be much more vocal, to be more outward, to...it’s almost like part of me was struggling to claim that power because you know if you have something like low self esteem or kind of low thoughts about yourself which can block you from rising into this power, yeah you almost won’t allow yourself to rise in that place because you don't feel worthy.
But it’s been a journey for me from that initial faith of like kind of just getting by and hoping it’s going to work to like showing up to make it work. That journey, that progression yeah it was hard and of course that’s not a place you just get to like...there’s part of me that you know has full resistance to showing up that feel blocked to you know doing this thing in a new way that I haven’t done before for example.
But I’ve definitely come a long way in regards to, like, showing up for the work because we know that’s not going to work unless we put in that energy. Which before we did put in some energy but maybe like 10% compared to what we did now we put in like so much more energy. And of course we could still put in more energy but it’s about... I think yeah for me it’s about the application and just generally just self belief like knowing it’s going to work rather than hoping it’s going to work.
And I know that something that a lot of people fail when they’re beginning new venture, new businesses, new thing just like “Oh I hope this is going to work” like you know “I’m going to try this thing and I hope it’s going to work,” and if one little thing happened I’m going to be like “That’s a proof to me it’s not going to work and I’m going to give up now.” It was definitely the persistence and the inner knowing that we’re going to make this work which helps us to get to this place. But that’s one thing that was hard for me, one of the hardest things going forward into our journey up to this point now.
Nyasha:
Yeah. I feel like for me that was a real shift when it felt like both of us really got on board you know. Because I felt like before like I saw the vision for what this could be but it was obviously a joint venture and I think Rueben you know he didn’t believe that we could get there so much when we weren’t there at first. So he was a bit more like a...well you know he couldn’t see the point in showing up in the early stages as much you know.
And I tried saying to him I was like “We have to do the work at first in these ways while we’re starting off.” And eventually we’ll build momentum and we’ll get to a place where we will be more successful but it does require us to do you know some of the more less engaging work and some of the less exciting bits and to do more of the admin and to be all of the roles and stuff like that. And so there used to be a bit of a struggle before we had a child, of me wanting Rueben to be more onboard with, like, the potential for the business and him not really seeing it in the same way and not having the motivation for it.
And then after we had a child and once we had our own flat and the pandemic hit and I was like “We have to make this work, now we need to provide for ourselves and I can’t do a lot more of the work on my own,” I felt like really Rueben came onboard more and that was a big shift as well to feel both of our energy really getting behind it. Because obviously we’re two people and I know that trying to do it on your own it’s just you and you that you’re struggling with you know if you’re someone who’s starting a business on your own. But with two people, because it’s a joint energy you know that’s behind the business, it still really needs both of those energies in alignment with the growth for that growth to happen in an easeful way. Otherwise you know I can feel like a push pull you know.
And so I felt like that there was a bit of that before of me pushing and pulling and trying to get Rueben onboard and him not being kind of ready and willing. And then when he had that shift and he was like “Okay I’m ready to apply my energy.” You know the moment that both of us were kind of aligned in that intention immediately there was so much more available energy for the business to grow with.
Reuben:
Yeah!
Nyasha
And so very quickly we started to grow massively from both being aligned and being able to share the load and share the work and bounce with each other and kind of see bigger and go bigger together you know. So I think that was the big shift but then in terms of other challenges apart from that you know, working dynamic you know there’s yeah there’s the earlier stages where you’re kind of growing your platform, growing your audience, and you want more people in your online space and things like that.
And I remember feeling a bit of resistance before when I was focusing more on the things that I found hard and what wasn’t here like...oh! I want more engagement and I want more people in our space like I find it hard to show up consistently online and creating a lot of stories that were blocking me essentially from just sharing and showing up consistently.
And so when I realized that a lot of that was noise and I was like “Well if I want to build an online business you know I just have to be willing to consistently show up online” you know. I have to put my energy there. I have to be willing to be here consistently. Not to say that I have to do it every single day or that it has to be really rigid but there needs to be consistency.
Reuben:
A driving force yeah.
Nyasha:
Consistency doesn’t mean everyday but I was like I know...I searched within myself to find the part of me that could be consistent in creating content that serves the people that we wanted to work with - now, our current clients, the people in our field, our potential clients. And so that energy and that intention you know meant that we...I and we showed up much more consistently in our online presence.
And that was the big turning point for us. And our platform started to grow because we are creating, you know, innovative art and music and powerful captions that you know showing powerful messages that were inspiring and empowering the people in our field and people started to share our work. And so you know within a year we went from 3K followers to 10K and now we're, you know, almost 13K and that’s been a lot of growth in our account.
Because we showed up with this consistency and we’ve stopped trying to be like anyone else in any unconscious ways that we might have been doing that and kind of come into our own lane even more. Like this is who we are, this is how we do it you know what we do and always being open to grow and change that allow our consciousness to evolve and allow our offerings in the world to evolve as we evolve as beings. Seeing our business as a living entity that is not us but we're kind of powering it but it’s responsive to us.
So as we change and grow our consciousness shifts and you know the things that we want to create shift we let our business you know take new form continuously. It’s almost dying and being reborn and I think that willingness to be true to where we are and to show up as we are with authenticity has really helped us to stand out and you know to be seen as the kind of innovators that we are in our field and to take out space as people ar offering something very unique you know.
There‘s not a lot of couples that work together in this field especially you know... people of color and we know that we work in a way that is very unique and what we offer is unique and so we kind of stood in that uniqueness more. And owned our power, owned the value of what we had to share. And you know also, like, raise our prices. And we’re willing to say like this is worth more money than we had been like confident enough to say it before, you know. And let people kind of rise and calibrate with us.
And so our energy shifted so much as well as we came more about power and stood in our power more and kind of got our energy behind our business. And so that immediately, because reality is a mirror, that immediately changed what was appearing in our life you know. The amount of clients coming in, how much money they are willing to spend with us, the amount of people who are following us. And you know all of it, it’s all interconnected right? So when you shift things within yourself like that’s the thing we would say has been key to our business success is the internal shifts in our mindset, in the way we show up our devotion and our energy, our vibration, our consciousness. This is the crucial work that has really enabled our business to massively grow within a short space of time.
Jared:
Yeah that really sounds a lot like a...the way I heard this phrase and I don’t know if this is identical but people often think about like our inner worlds being reflections of the outer worlds. So for example the circumstances, if the circumstances are bad then I feel bad or if the circumstances are good then I feel good but the opposite is also true and that’s that the inner world actually can be reflective on the outer world. For example in a very simplistic manner, if I show up a podcast interview for example and I’m very angry and I’m sad and I’m emotional that has a tendency to reflect on perhaps you as the guest or anyone else like it all plays together. So that’s...you put it much more eloquently than I did but I…
Nyasha
Yeah. Now you’re spot on exactly!
Jared:
So I’d love to zoom in a little bit more on like what does your audience look like? And what was...like how did you find them?
Nyasha:
They found us!
Reuben:
Yeah, yeah! I’d definitely say they found us. I mean our audience definitely is more of the kind of holistic...I’d say people who are into more like a…
Nyasha:
Expansion of consciousness.
Reuben:
They’re the people who are looking to...like they want to change the world but in a tangible way not in a way that is like kind of detached from reality. Which we have noticed a lot within the field that we’re in is that sometimes spirituality and wellness and these sort of things can be used as some type of escapism you know. And sometimes it’s easy to kind of detach from some of the pain of the world by doing some of this work.
And that’s something that we’ve found passion in this work is...In our work is it’s bridging that multidimensional view and that kind of bigger picture that our spiritual lens and bringing it on earth to see tangible ways that people can actually implement into their lives to create change first of all in their own reality and then extend that outwardly. Our audience I mean I couldn’t put an age on our audience...
Nyasha:
I think that they’re mostly kind of, from my Instagram insights, between like kind of 25 to 35, 80% women usually, mostly in the UK. There's now more people in America that actually follow us and we have a mailing list as well of you know almost 3K people now. We’ve grown mostly over the last year, I think before that we had like 500 people something you know.
And so obviously we’ve...yeah there’s just been different ways we’ve grown. We’ve just grown. Growth kind of trickles out in all areas but yeah I feel like a lot of people discover us just because we create content which has value. A lot of our content is kind of very inspiring and uplifting and helps people to have faith in life and the process that we’re all going through in this time of collective turbulence on the earth. And yeah people are drawn to that.
We’re drawn to things that help us to feel good and to find our way. And that’s essentially what our work does in often playful and lighthearted ways, sometimes in more direct and kind of almost a bit more blunt but just kind of piercing ways where we’re revealing the truth of what’s really happening but always very loving and compassionate.
And so yeah I feel like we attract people that are interested in self development, self healing, inner work, shadow work, connection to something bigger than just this earth. And also a lot of people who are kind of on the path of soul led entrepreneurship, starting their own business, running their own business, people who are doing coaching, healers, people who are facilitating the expansion of consciousness.
So a lot of people like us on the path who are doing work online or offline but also you know definitely obviously as we speak expanded in the online space because a lot of people who are also in the online space who are drawn to us. Especially because they’ve seen us grow and expand and expand financially, expand in our following in a very quick way so I think people are interested in how we managed to do that. And you know there’s not a clear recipe, it’s not like you do XYZ and you get the same result. Everyone has their own unique path. But devotion and commitment and authenticity are crucial and just trusting your inner guidance and taking risks and being willing to do things that scare you and make you want to curl away and hide.
You know it’s all part of the journey of being seen and you know and owning that you have something of value to say and to give to the world and that you know you’re brave enough to be like “I’m going to do this for my living.” And people will pay me and people want to pay me for the value I have to offer you know and what I have to offer is worth it you know.
So yeah I think that’s kind of our audience really. And I feel like I want to bring more men in our space as part of our mission as we expand and yeah we’re always interested in attracting more people also. We not only desire to cater to the people that already understand the work we do. We want to bring new people in and different people in. You know, to anyone who is in resonance, who feels called to be in our space, is truly welcome. It’s not like you need to be spiritual and you need to have knowledge about this type of things and “Oh you’re not welcome in our containers and our causes, in our Instagram following.” This is a space for anyone who feels called right?
And I remember early on my journey I followed certain accounts long before what they were doing made sense but there was a part of me that was drawn because I knew that there was something there for me. And sometimes what I saw or heard didn’t resonate or land properly until a lot...you know a lot later but there’s the seed planet right? And I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people who are receiving this podcast right now. We’re talking about some things that might be triggering or like aaah!
Reuben:
That makes no sense at all.
Nyasha:
You know bringing up your belief systems or whatever. But there’s also a reason that you’re hearing this. Because not everyone is hearing this. Not everyone chose this podcast episode and not everyone has listened this far through. So if you’ve listened to this far through, even if it’s new to you there’s a reason right? And so there’s a seed that’s been planted for you of coming home to your soul and letting your kind of unique gifts be your way of thriving in the world and of offering yourself to the world you know where you can be in your own flow and your own cycle and your own boss and it’s so empowering.
That’s what I love about Kajabi and resources like Kajabi that enable you to really take back control of your capacity to offer your gifts to the world. And to create community and create content and to resource yourself and to thrive you know. And that’s been an amazing part of the journey for us is seeing what’s in the world that can support us to get to where we want to go and then you know saying yes to those opportunities.
Jared:
That’s amazing! I think that’s the perfect segue. I don’t know if you guys if anything came to mind but like, for those people who maybe aren’t familiar with it, myself included. I think I’m familiar with at least a few of the terms that you brought up. One thing I have no idea of what it is, is shadow work. I have no idea what that is. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about that but I guess like if there was something like let’s just say that I was a client, we got the call set up like we’ve got 5 minutes to figure something out like what is your process? I don’t know this is probably not even what you do but like...what would you start talking to me about?
Nyasha:
I would bring it back to you and I would ask you know what’s coming up for you? And then why do you think that is and what do you think it means? And so often there’s answers already there that we haven’t been aware of and we bring them out from our intuition and from our unconscious mind. And then I’d also start to bring into the body like how does that feel in your body and what does that remind you of and this is all working with the shadow, the shadow is just the unconscious mind.
Rueben:
Yeah.
Nyasha:
And you know it’s Science says that 80% to 90% of our thoughts, emotions and behaviors come from our unconscious mind right? So who we think we are and why we think we’re doing things is just 10% of our consciousness. The rest of it is actually coming from places that we can’t see. And so shadow work is essentially kind of excavating things from the dark kind of water of the unconscious mind and bringing it into the consciousness where it simply…
Rueben:
Illuminating.
Nyasha:
Bringing it to awareness, the light of awareness right? And so in our dreams often we’re working with the unconscious mind which is the shadow and so things come up from our unconscious and that the anxieties or fears, or unprocessed traumas, or anything you know it could be random things as well that we just absorbed because the unconsciousness is absorbing everything right?
So when you watch TV and you’re seeing lots of adverts, this is going into your unconscious mind and that’s how advertising works. It's programming you. Until eventually you’re going to buy the thing and you don’t realize and maybe you sort of you know saw it 20 times in an advert first and you know you’ll think “Oh I just saw it and I like it you know.”
Anyway, so that’s one kind of way the subconscious mind works. But you know a lot of the other things that happen from the unconscious is that we are running limiting beliefs and stories. For example you might want to start a business and then in your unconscious, you have this belief that you’re not good enough and that you can’t and that you’ll be a failure. And maybe you know...maybe you had a parent telling you that you’re not good enough with everything you do is not enough you know.
So that’s unconsciously impacting your capacity to be who you want to be in the world. Or maybe you have some traumas around sharing your voice you know. Maybe you did a reading one time and people laughed or you cried and brokedown and you froze when you’re a kid. And that’s unconsciously…
Rueben:
Made home in your body.
Nyasha:
And so you no longer feel...you want to share your voice but you feel blocked and you don’t know what the block is. And that is the unconscious you know that’s the trauma in your unconscious which is held in your subtle body, in your energetic body, in your emotional body. There are many ways that you can do shadow work and it could be personal stuff and it can also be collective. There’s a collective unconscious where we all kind of like things that run through the kind of collective shadow that can also be internalized in our being.
And there are many layers to it but yeah I mean it’s almost to bring the [inaudible 33:52] session. I’d ask why they’re there and then we just start to go in a process and I’d share insight and guidance before us receiving any information for them. And I’d also tell them what I was feeling and reading from what their body is saying right? Because we speak words but there’s information that we’re communicating with our body language, with the tone of our voice, with our eyes like so many parts of us are actually speaking and communicating.
And so you can read beyond the words the more in tune you are with, like, subtle energies. And so you can actually look at the whole kind of communication and then you can reflect back to some of what you are reading from them. And in that you can trigger things in them - more awareness or they’ll join some dots and they’ll realize “Wait a minute you know, I’ve been feeling this way about this thing and it reminds me of this time where actually I realize this thing is happening in my life and that could be impacting me in this way.”
And so ultimately shadow work is about making the unconscious conscious so that we’re no longer just operating from a place unconsciously that isn't in alignment with who we want to be, where we want to go, how we want to relate, how we want to create our visions you know. And so clearing out the noise, the layers, the limits, the traumas, anything that’s there that’s in the way of us being our you know most open, loving, creative, confident selves, that’s so much that is to do with shadow work you know.
Jared:
Okay.
Rueben:
Yeah. I just quickly say that like rather than like trying to look elsewhere for like happiness and to like move on their life it’s kind of like turning their back inwards to look at where are the...where’s the like... if we’re like a computer system for example, like where is the software and hardware in us which is blocking us from like upgrading for example. Like that’s the simple way to look at it rather than looking externally for the next kind of fix, or the next project, or the next creative outlet, or you know to some people the next like outing, the next event whatever it is. It’s like looking inside of us and seeing what is actually blocking us from showing up in a new way in our life.
And that is...I’m the perfect example of that. Like at the beginning of our journey, there was this block, this heaviness just like “Why can’t I do this?” you know. I want to move forward but I don’t feel ready to do it, you know. I was like I have to look into some of those beliefs, why is this happening?” Well because there were probably things that happened in my childhood. They weren't terrible but it could be really be a small thing that we don’t realize have an impact on us you know. And of course it takes me ages to go into the details but it’s essentially like looking at some of the limiting beliefs and why they are there in the first place.
And then once you kind of shine the light on that it becomes more clear of how you can move forward in your life rather than constantly kind of avoiding the shadow. Like the shadow it can... when you say shadow work some people sound a bit scary it’s like the shadow, what’s that? It literally just...it’s making the unconscious conscious so you’re not unconsciously being unconscious just like you are conscious of your unconscious in that way you can bring it into your conscious mind.
But of course again it’s an ongoing process. It's just a tool that you build and it’s something that we incorporate a lot into our work because we believe that’s what really help people move forward in their process, in their journey to like...yeah to really see where there’s hurt that’s housed within their body. And then move forward because our body is living history you know like we have our mind which carries all these memories but our body also has memory of the past you know. So by doing shadow work you can also look into those deeper parts of yourself and yeah tune in to whatever that’s going on deep within your body.
Jared:
Is there like...is there an appetizer version of this? So like let’s say if someone was in their car listening to this and they’re going “Hey I’m thinking about starting a business but I don't believe in myself or I don’t think I’m capable of this” like is there something like...I know it’s obviously a big process but is there something we can give them like in a 30-second or an exercise or anything that would maybe help surface some of those things?
Nyasha:
Yeah, I think you know a simple practice of self awareness like writing down all the things that you’re scared could happen if you started a business. And then also writing down all the things, the amazing things that could happen and then just noticing what comes up in that process. Because you’ll see how the fears are mostly just projections. You know there’s no guarantee that those things will happen, you know. Most likely a lot of them won’t happen.
Some things will happen that are not, you know, what you desire and there will be uncomfortable moments, there will be moments of rejection. But the potential for what you can gain right? If what you’re looking to potentially gain from doing the things, it’s not in the business, is, you know financial independence you know, freedom and autonomy to create what you want to create. You know doing something that really lights up your heart and makes you feel on purpose and alive you know all of these things.
And then the fears might be like oh people reject me, people don’t understand, I don’t get clients at first you know. I feel my ego...like it’s hard for me to think that people don’t want to hear what I have to say and all like I have to put work in like none of these things actually hold up as reasons not to try. So you can just start to see what’s unconsciously getting in the way of you going in the direction of that vision.
And then you can kind of reflect and be like actually on balance. None of these things are worth me not trying you know. And you know if you never try you'll never succeed you know. So it’s just like if you want a chance at success you have to be willing to try, you have to be willing to fail, and you have to be willing to start. Like everyone who you could ever perceive who is successful they have to start and they didn’t know that they would be successful, and they didn’t know that they would necessarily get to where they wanted.
I mean they could believe that they would but they couldn’t guarantee it like as in yeah this day and by this point you have this amount of money and this is the timeline you know. And so it’s kind of like I’m willing to be in the mystery of the process, and I’m willing to trust the journey and I’m willing to show up again and again. Even when it feels hard, even when I, you know, I feel frustrated and even when I feel impatient, even when my ego takes knocking and I feel rejection, whatever because I’m committed enough to the vision of what I really want to create in my life and the world you know.
And so a simple practice of self reflection and then just noticing your thoughts and noticing what you say. Noticing why you put yourself down, where you don’t believe in yourself. And imagine that you were speaking like that to someone else who you love in your life and they wanted to just to kind of start a passion project and they want to start a business you know. Would you really be like “Nah, you won't be able to do it.” “You’re not good enough! You don’t know enough!” “No that’s not!” “You know people might not understand you, what’s the point? “Like you don’t know you’ll succeed so you…” Like we would never speak like that and so on. So it’s like this inner critic which is ultimately trying to protect us from failure but actually it’s just holding us back from success you know.
Reuben:
Yeah, so true.
Jared:
Yeah, I absolutely love that! That makes...it adds such a humorous tone on the inner voice that you know I assure everyone deals with. You’re absolutely right! Whenever someone came to me, a friend and I wouldn’t be like “Na! you know.”
Rueben:
Don’t do that!
Jared!
That’s a really cool way to put it. Well I feel like we could talk for the next two hours on a lot of these things but in interest of kind of keeping things rolling along, how long have you been at this and where are you at today?
Nyasaha:
So as we've mentioned earlier, we started The Ascension Seed three years ago. Like literally like a week ago we had our 3rd birthday with just like a free online event which is amazing. Yeah so we had 1 year being in the business by the time that we had our child Shiloh and so I’d say like by really really focusing in this way it’s been okay since March 2020 like I feel like we almost went through a business rebirth then even though we’ve been doing The Ascension Seed for 3 years.
And it was March 2020 when we made the decision to really take it seriously and we launched our first course in June 2020. So just, you know, kind of over a year where we’ve been really focusing on our online business and like the growth in that area. And yeah it’s funny because I was saying at the start when we were speaking to you before Jared, that just today, we got our Kajabi Hero badge for making our first 100K through Kajabi which is good.
Nyasha:
So that happened today, which is, you know, beautifully timed.
Rueben
Of all days!
Nyasha:
Yeah! Of all days! Before Kajabi we actually used a different online course platform and we decided to change over because Kajabi just felt you know more aligned for us and so we also made money before with that. So yeah we’re now running a 6 figure business and growing as well. And expecting more, and more growth but also trusting the flow without pressure of like it needs to be more and more every month because our business is soul led and it comes from us and it comes from my inner process.
So we now have the freedom to rest when we need to rest, and to not work when we need to work, and to be with our child, and to be in the creative process. And we are currently working on other things that we’ve just recorded our first EP. We're in the studio this week to release some sort of sound healing music, music which is encoded with consciousness to program the subconscious in an aligned way. We’ve got a great song which is all about finding your purpose and knowing what you know what gifts you have so you can look out for that.
Jared:
Oh cool!
Nyasha:
But yeah that’s where were at today really. You know we’re running a thriving online business, we have a community of 12.5K people in our space on Instagram and yeah. We are just about to launch our podcast, we have more new kind of online courses coming. We’re about to launch and open the doors to the Seed Bank which is like a living library of all of the trainings and courses and master classes that we have done over the past couple of years. So that’s exciting too!
Yeah just you know we’re very in [inaudible 43:07] but that’s where we’re at right now. We’re living in Ibiza, we’re running our business, we’re also living our lives fully. Because ultimately running a business is to support quality of life and sometimes that balance can go off and people can think it’s all about the business and all about the money goes and forget that it’s you know the business is to support your life and then your life supports the business you know and that it goes both ways. So yeah that’s kind of where we’re at now.
Reuben:
Yeah. Definitely a key point is you know a year ago basically we were living in a small flat in London and then from the growth of our business we moved to a tiny beautiful island in Spain where we live five minutes away from the beach and where our child can just go and play outside in nature and really enjoy life in a completely different way than we could in the city before you know. We were definitely in the place of yeah like I’d say a fear of money rather than feeling like we had a control of how we earned. It was more of a fear of how kind of money was controlling our situation. And we completely did a 360 with that.
So that’s been a massive shift which we have experienced in the past year. Like this was a...yeah by us making this shift things change very quickly for us you know over a year but with the massive turn around to what we had been doing previously and the 2 years before that. And yeah Kajabi has been an amazing help for that. It’s made everything very streamlined, made everything very easy to have in one place. And before we were kind of having to grab all these things from different places and bring it into the thing we were using at the time. But yeah, everything at Kajabi literally, like, seriously feels much more streamlined and easier to use and we’re very blessed to have this platform to use for sure.
Nyasha:
Yeah I definitely think our online business growth is what’s enabled us to move countries and to go after our dream life you know. To make it a reality not like something that we’ll do one day you know. So that’s been amazing!
Reuben:
Yeah, exactly!
Jared:
Well everything that I would’ve asked you, you guys have already covered. Talk about being intuitive like...I don’t even know how to ask questions and you’re covering everything. Well if anyone’s interested in kind of getting to know you guys a little bit better, where do they find you? Like where do you prefer they start to reach out and kind of connect with the work that you have coming out?
Nyasha:
So Instagram is always the first place that we direct anyone. We are @theascensionseed on Instagram and we will always be on there sharing consciousness, sharing inspiring reels, sharing songs, different things to support you on your journey of awakening and expansion and everyone is welcome. All of you are welcome in that space and if you want to journey deep with us you are so welcome in any of our containers, our masterclasses, online courses, in the Seed Bank which enables you to work with us in a self-paced way.
And yeah and we are also launching our podcast so you can stay tuned for that. We’ll be sharing a lot of conversations on topics like what we’ve touched on today, consciousness, and the journey of service, and solid entrepreneurship and yeah. And our website is www.theascencionseed.com and if you sign up to our newsletter you get a free Abundance Meditation and abundance work has been crucial to our expansion with our online business over the past 1 ½ year so we highly recommend you tap into that frequency.
And try if that’s something that you’ve never done before you should completely just try it anyway.
We highly recommend meditation as a practice to rewire your subconscious mind and to get into alignment with the vibration that is going to create the life you want for yourself and the feelings ultimately that you want to feel. So yeah you can get that on our website, free newsletter, a little...what’s it called? GIF?. And yeah I think that's everything about connecting with us really.
Nyasha:
Send us a message on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you if you resonated with this podcast, if you’ve had any moments of clarity or if this is new for you but you’re like “Wow! I really like it though” you know just feel free to send us a message and connect and we’d love to hear from you.
Jared:
So great! Well Rueben and Nyasha thank you so much for joining us today. It has been an absolute pleasure listening to each of you share your stories. Again like you made my job really easy because you somehow intuitively knew everything that I was going to ask and just covered it which is another Kajabi Edge Podcast first. Yeah we really appreciate it!
Rueben:
Thank you so much!
Nyasha:
Thank you!
Reuben:
It’s been great. We really enjoyed this it's been a beautiful conversation. Thank you so much!
Nyasha:
Thank you! Thank you to everyone who’s listened and received, especially if you’ve stayed till the end, we’re so honored to share this time with you and thank you so much Jared for holding the space and for yeah inviting us on. It’s been so great to share with you and connect with you and we’re yeah we're deeply grateful. And we trust that you’ve also received something from this transmission too. So excited to see how it all unfolds for all of those of you that have listened and yeah just sending lots of love to you.
Jared:
Well with that thank you all so much for listening we really appreciate you tuning in. We will look forward to seeing you all next week on our next episode of the Kajabi Edge Podcast.
