Therapart

For those readers who don’t have the pleasure of knowing you personally, who are you, and how did you come to found TherapART?

I'm Ashley, Ash for short. I am love. I am a sister. I am a friend. I feel so blessed to be in this life to be on this journey and have been fortunate to go through everything I have gone through as it has my inspiration to go on this journey to create, serve and spread love. I’m a trained yoga instructor, meditation teacher, movement educator and the founder of TherapART— a 501c3 non for-profit organization that amplifies unheard voices and creates safe spaces through art and creative expression. My own lived experiences with a sibling suffering from drug addiction prompted my journey to self-discovery. Through dance and movement, I found healing and freedom. My work focuses on free form movement and meditation as a way to heal the body, mind and soul. I now bring these practices to both corporate and non-profit environments such as The Class, Soho House, Good Move, Young New Yorkers, and Neon Summer teaching meditation, movement and art therapy.

I'm really fascinated by the concept of how we carry things through life with us. And the more I learn about your modality it seems that you’re investigating a solution for us to not have to carry everything, all the time. So that everything's not so heavy. How did you come to dance as a form of processing and letting go of what you've been carrying?

Yeah. I’ve always danced, but I try to explain what happened without sounding like I am fucking crazy, but I literally just started listening. Listening to my soul and listening to my body. I was reading the Keith Haring Journals, and it's where I got all this inspiration from. He talks about never reliving the same moment twice and as I continued to read I received all of these downloads. Therapart was kind of born after that and my original idea was to raise money to send my brother who suffered from drug addiction to rehab. And really then I just literally started dancing in my apartment. I can't really explain what happened but I was just a vessel and it was like someone was trying to come in and communicate to me and through me and it freaked me out so much. I got really scared and it felt really vulnerable. And I was like, who is that? And so I started to record myself to actually study the conversations that were happening through my body and also through my mind and through my face. And it was just so interesting. I mean, that's kind of how it all happened and I just started doing it more and more. And I started to kind of correlate, okay, well, I felt like shit today. It's because my boyfriend, or during that time, actually, I was going through a really hard breakup. I had just had an abortion. Like, it was just all in me and I just wanted freedom and I didn't really know how to find it, but I kept realizing that every single time I danced, I felt light. I felt good, I felt free.

What did you feel after that initial exploration?

I felt a little freer, but what I did realize was, it was really dark. Like what was coming out then was really dark compared to how it is now, you know? And I almost had to be in a really dark place to kind of get that movement and to get that, find that freedom within my body. But now I've kind of learned how to separate and how to control it in a sense, before I felt like I wasn't able to control it. And it felt like an exorcism, to be honest, but the more I controlled it, the more I worked with it, I was like, whoa, this is something, and there were times when I wasn't able to translate it. I remember when we were making the film and Mads was like, try to try to explain to me, like, what's happening and what's going on. And I just couldn't. And now that I think about how I've translated it into an actual method that actually helps and actually works, It's like mind-blowing.

It's funny to say this in an interview because obviously, this will be all words, but some of the best things don't need to be put into words. It's more of a feeling, an experience. That actually kind of leads me to my next question. In our culture, especially as a woman, dancing has this tendency to take on this relationship between performer and viewer, even when we don’t wish it to. How did you detangle your relationship from the performance for it to become something that is only for you?

It's funny because I really blackout. I actually just recently watched the video and I am completely in another place. I'm completely gone. And there's something that just happens where I'm like, it's just about my body and I'm talking to my body and I'm like praying for my body and praying for my mind and using dance as prayer. So it's almost like no one else exists. And I think that's the only way that you are able to really tap in and embody. A friend of mine asked me, well, like how do you do it? And I'm like, I don't know necessarily, but I can help you. At first, you have to meditate and let those thoughts go. You have to not worry about anyone giving a fuck about what you look like because it's not about anyone it’s for you, you know? And I used to be there raw, like in my fucking underwear and just crying and I would have breakdowns. And I think that for me, I was just able to go back to that space. It was like when you're super-concentrated if you're like sculpting or doing art, or you know when it doesn't even feel like you're doing something. I also wanna protect that space because I think we all, when we're in, you know, ceremony, for example, we're all going on a different journey and we all have different things that come up for us. So you really need to stay in your own heart and really protect that space because I don't know what you're going through or you don't know what's happening within my body or what's happening in my womb or my heart, or what thoughts and feelings and emotions come up. We actually just had a class, which we call “Ceremony of You'' a few weeks ago and all we did was scream.

Okay, I need that right now. I keep it asking myself, like, where could I go? And just like scream really loud where I wouldn't alarm anyone?

Exactly. And it just happened like normally when I like to hold space, the only thing that I kind of prepare is the playlist. And I try to build a story with the song. So you kind of find the frequency in your body, you know, like, so you can find the notes in your body or a beat or you can catch something .. almost like when you catch the holy ghost, which is reference used in black church, like something some entity is moving through you, that's what I would compare it to. But we were listening to fucking Kanye I think it was New Slaves and just started screaming and we were like frothing at the mouth and stomping and crying. And like that release in itself, just like shaking and crying. And like you end up blacking out because it's something that we don't do. We should be crawling on the floor and like being as animalistic as we are because that's who we are in our nature, you know? Like sometimes when I dance, I make these crazy faces, it's literally like, someone's trying to get out of me. I think it's important for all of us to try to go back to being the animals that we are.

We’ve all been living in such a collective state of high stress, I think we all need that right now. I’ve been doing deep dives into the benefits of allowing your body to tremor during trauma, or even after as a means of allowing the body to process it thoroughly as animals do, and I feel that dancing has a very similar benefit.

Yeah, like whether you're dancing or trembling or whatever, it's like finally you're like dislodging these things from your system and the vibrations. Even just using your voice. We did a toning and we were singing and using the voice and so much energy was stuck between the heart space.

I want to go back to something you said earlier when you said it feels like something's channeling through you. When you’re dancing, do you ever receive visuals where you're like, okay, that is an ancestor, like, that experience is not mine, but it is mine, but I've never been there before...

One hundred percent. And it's really funny because it's heavy male energy. Like it's heavy and I feel it, and it's like this masculine energy, but I know that it’s not me. I've kind of learned to work with it and kind of invite them in, in a different way, you know? I feel like before like I said, it was really angry and it was like, they were trying to get this message across, and now I can work with it with the spirit or entity or whatever you want to call it and it's a little bit softer and it's a little bit lighter and it's still working through something. But I felt like it was like, ‘this isn't my shit’. Like, what is it?

You're like, who are you? 

Yeah. I'm like, who are you? And I think over the years, learning how to work with that relationship, we all have that right. We all have the power to access that. And all of our ancestors live and move through us. I feel like there were all these different stories that needed to be told and they wanted to tell, and that's why when I move, it's not like on the beat of a song. It's, it's just, it's like what it is. Very much back to earlier, it's not a performance. It's like an inward-facing experience rather than an outward-facing experience. Which I think is to me almost the key. Even to meditation. Sometimes it's like, people want that spark of enlightenment so badly that they're like skipping all the steps. You have to prepare the space. You have to make the offering. There are so many steps to get to that point, and it's a daily practice, just like movement is a daily practice. My friend was like, but I wanna shake. And I wanna go crazy, I'm like, well, number one, it's your story, so it's gonna be very, very different than mine. And, and number two, you can't go in with the intention ‘I want, You kind of just have to be. And then when you can just be, then you let the universe speak through you in whatever way that is. And for me, it's my body, but maybe for someone else it's writing, maybe for someone else it's music or film, you know? Eventually, I don't want you to come to class anymore because I want to give you tools for you to figure out what it is, and who you are. You know what I mean? And it might not be a dancer. It might not be all of this, but there's something there, and there's something to unlock. I just wanna give you the tools and the inspiration to unlock something new.

Your approach to sharing your modality is so refreshing because more often than not our entry-level experience with healing modalities is that they are so hierarchical, and we must seek out this all-knowing guide to fix us. But you’re offering a resource at no cost and saying I too am working through it. 

I'm on the journey with you. I've also found recently when I've been in space, it's been nice because no one's on a different level. I'm screaming and I'm cursing and I'm crying and I'm still trying to give you, you know, a prompt, but like I'm in it with you. And that's the magic for me.

Further, often when we try to quantify our creative outlets or pursuits it drains the joy from it. 

One hundred percent. Honestly, I feel like that's why I was in corporate for so long. Like I don't know if I would want to do TherapART full time because I enjoy it so much. And it's such a creative outlet for me that I feel like if there was an association with money, then it would just change.

I wanted to touch a little bit on wanting to share this work with other people in the community and making it accessible. Can you tell us more about your work with the Young New Yorkers? 

Yeah. So young New Yorkers are an amazing non-for-profit in Brooklyn. And I actually found them about four years ago, when I was just starting out. Young New Yorkers’ restorative art diversion program allows young people to exit the criminal legal system, have their cases dismissed and sealed, and avoid a lifelong criminal record. I started volunteering there and it transformed me. I just kept seeing how impactful art was to the youth and how art can truly save lives. I think that's really important. I've been a teaching artist on the team now for about 4 and a half years. I want to continue to expand on that, like how can we as a community, people who are more fortunate, show up and give back? And so within Therapart, there's an option to volunteer, whether it's at the Bowery Mission or at Young New Yorkers. It's called the give-back program because I think inherently, we all have to continue to do the work, you know like we do the work on ourselves and we have to give that to others. The youth I work with at YNY are amazing and truly magical. They're like family now, you know, like, and you just end up having this beautiful long-standing relationship.

Wow, that’s an incredible form of restorative justice that could be a great model for bettering our systems. 

Yea, art not jail.

As you're saying that my brain is having this realization that being a good artist, (air quotes) has become such a capitalist accomplishment. Right? Like this concept that you're supposed to be good at something that we've made totally intangible. Why have we made art this weird thing that you have to achieve? Why can't it just be something that you do and don't show anyone? 

Exactly. There are so many talented people, actors, singers... we've just made it a money-making machine. Art should just be accessible. Like we were all born with a gift and we just need to weed through the bullshit. We've just been conditioned to think and feel like we don't even have enough time to explore that because we're just trying to make money and we're trying to do this and we're trying to do that and just hustle, hustle, hustle.

Yeah, it’s a great conversation about our relationship to productivity and how we feel that at all times we have to be producing, and we have to have something to show for it. 

We always have to have something to show for like, oh my God, and don't get me wrong, I'm that person like I woke up at 8:00 AM, did this, did this, did this. But by the end, you're drained. Like you're not really fulfilled. I also realized when I was working in corporate and I would go to a yoga class. I wasn't even in the class, it was just a checkmark for me. Like, yep. I went to yoga, I went to work. It becomes just a checkmark. You're just kind of moving through it. You're not really understanding what it's doing for you or you're not even embodying it. You know, every step that we take, and I'm not saying it has to be like this all the time, because obviously just have to function, but just being more intentional with everything we’re doing, every conversation that we're having, whether it's with ourselves or with our friends, just be intentional. How can we just come together as a community and like level the fuck up?