Ash Johns

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how to take an inch and make it 5 miles

I’ve noticed that what stops a lot of people from getting into the depths of ancestral connection and healing is the fear of what will be revealed about them, their lineage and family of origin.

The very thought of opening Pandora’s box to what has been “forgotten” for the sake of healing and creating freedom seems counterintuitive.

Especially in today’s culture that’s all about innovating forward by ignoring the past and all the glaring issues of now staring us dead in the eye (pun intended).

But let’s play a little game and jump into the deep end together shall we?

How about, in the safety of this community, we all just ACCEPT we each come from and hold evidence of the world's atrocities in our blood, bones, DNA and psychic memories?

Instead of hoping, wishing, dodging and avoiding, let’s just step over the line already.

Take a few breaths and let that settle for a second…​

Now, that doesn’t mean we have to process all that shit in our bodies, minds and emotions. That’s not what ancestral healing is about, at least not in the way that I work, guide and facilitate.

But it is about finding moments in time that changed the energy, trajectory and understandings of your people for the worse, understanding how that’s affecting you and living family today (and communities, our culture etc.) and transmuting that wound into power, blessings, beauty and belonging…

So you can be free.

So you can lead.

So you can be the change.

(however that looks like for you and yours destiny)


There's so many paths to healing with your people. Let me share my point of view around the lands of working with the dead for your freedom and our greatest good.

Explore 8 ways to initiate your ancestral healing journey.


I often remind my African descended fam, folks and sibs that slavery was but an inch of time when you zoom out. Not that we are reducing the experiences, pains, injustices, and struggles of our ancestors…

but/and perspective matters.

And when we tune in for the healing, our people are constantly urging us to remember who we are, not what’s happened to us.

When I guide sessions for my Euro-descended community members, their dead ones mourn the loss of their cultural truths, pride and honor before they were reduced down to being “white” people.

And for my LGBTQI clients, it never fails, y’all are never the first to be in the lineage, just the first in a long long while to no longer hide. Y’all have a special role in your lineages and our society, and it’s incredibly powerful!

When we give ourselves permission to step a few inches into the healing space that is the ancestral realm, we have an incredible opportunity of remembering AND creating so much more than the grief, shame and guilt of our most recent humanity that shows up in “everyday” symptoms like self-sabotage, lack of trust, stagnation, complicity, betrayal and scarcity beliefs.

We each have so many ancestral blessings to reclaim, prayers to embody and freedoms to live.

​If only we’d take the inch right In front of our faces and within reach and turn it into a mile…or more.

Whatever healing is available for you today, do it. Enjoy it. Trust yourself in it. All the inches add up in the long run.

With love and devotion to my path

Ash x

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