Mat & Ash are best known as The Yoga Couple to their 500K+ online community. The influential couple is internationally recognized for their holistic healing work, authentic yoga teachings, and as the creators of The Inner Work method. Mat and Ash boldly give a voice to taboo topics such as pornography addiction and the importance of women’s menstrual cycle awareness and as Top 10 Amazon bestselling authors of The Inner Work, hosts of The Inner Work podcast, and cast members on the first season of Battle of The Fittest Couple on Paramount Network, they have made it their mission to bridge the gap between Western Psychology and Eastern Philosophy. Currently, they reside in Hawaii where they host healing retreats, yoga teacher trainings, and offer one-one-one life counseling specializing in The Inner Work teachings. Their methods focus on understanding the varying levels of human consciousness and the power to self-heal any aspect of the human condition including relationship issues, overcoming addictions, inner child healing, and trauma recovery. Up next, The Yoga Couple are gearing up for the release of their second book, The Inner Work Rituals; 15 Routine Recipes To Help You Self-Heal Your Body, Mind, Heart & Soul (set to publish on 2/22/22). Find The Yoga Couple on www.theyogacouple.com.
Welcome everybody, welcome to Spiritual Biz Chat for Spiritual Biz Magazine, I am your host, Kimberly Maska, and today we have joining us Mat and Ash who are best known as The Yoga Couple. Mat and Ash, welcome, and thank you both for being with us, how are you two doing today?
MAT: Doing great, thanks. Happy to be here!
ASH: Very excited, thank you!
Excellent! So, could you share the story behind your personal journey down the path to your current life’s purpose and work?
MAT & ASH: Our work is really about empowering people to self-heal and create lasting transformation in their lives. Both of us have past experiences where the conventional systems of medicine or therapy were unfortunately unsuccessful in our individual experiences, either for ourselves or our immediate family- especially for the concerns of addiction and chronic illnesses. This search for answers inspired us to branch out and explore alternative methods for healing. We dove into things like authentic yoga, inner-child healing, shadow work, chakra balancing, and science of mind. And it worked! We finally started seeing results for us personally, friends, family, and eventually our clients! So, we created a self-healing manual of sorts, The Inner Work book. It draws from our personal experimentations, but also from Mat’s graduate studies in naturopathic medicine and Jungian therapy and Ash’s professional training in yoga therapy and background in Eastern philosophy. To our surprise, The Inner Work really took off and became a movement for self-healing.
You say that your mission is to bridge the gap between Western Psychology and Eastern Philosophy… what is this gap? How do you plan to bridge it? And why do you make it your mission?
MAT & ASH: There seems to be a dividing line between whether someone sides with science or with mysticism, as if you can’t believe in, or benefit from, both simultaneously. Because our work is in the field of self-healing, we of course honor and respect the traditional Western fields of medicine and psychology. But when those paths can only take a person so far in their healing journey, we try to introduce a more holistic, spiritual approach, and that comes from the East. The notion of ‘mind-body-spirit connection’ has roots in India and comes directly from the ancient yoga traditions. We feel like it is our life dharma (purpose) to bridge this gap because of our unique backgrounds with the two schools of thought. Mat worked in inpatient psychiatry, went to naturopathic medical school, and explored a master’s program in family therapy. So, he really gets where most people are coming from when they enter these conventional, Western systems.
We also understand how turned off people can be by things that appear to be “woo-woo” or pseudo-science. Ash especially, being the previous owner of two yoga studios and being in the spiritual community for the past decade. Because as a couple we bring both perspectives to the table, we feel we have a unique opportunity to help people enjoy the benefits of both worlds instead of only accepting one, while missing out on the advantages of the other. Because we understand the mentality of each school of thought, it’s like we serve as a translator between the two, to help people understand each other and not immediately reject the benefits from something outside their paradigm. We love helping people connect the dots between the two worlds. And in such, we have had a lot of success with helping people that otherwise would have probably never been open to hearing alternative perspectives, that they so desperately needed, but didn’t know how to find.
It is very interesting to observe the relationship dynamics of a couple like yours – you two are not only life partners, but work partners also. How do you balance both worlds? And how can one partner assist the other in their inner work and self-discovery?
MAT & ASH: We are very fortunate to have made our passion into a career, so we don’t really feel like we work together, we feel like we do our passion together. From our perspective, there is nothing more sacred than two people striving together to create something Divinely inspired. Our paradigm around working together is similar to our approach to healing; it’s holistic. We don’t really like to compartmentalize. Being yogis, our life, our career, our relationship, it’s all one thing. One continuous present moment or one continued experience. We know it’s not for everyone and some people prefer hard lines between work time, playtime, and relationship time, but for us, it really works to just see it all the same–all as one.
As far as helping each other in our inner work journey. We always say we are each other’s greatest teachers. We believe that our partners serve as mirrors. They show us things about ourselves that we otherwise wouldn’t be encouraged to look at. It’s within a conscious relationship that you get the opportunity to finally heal unresolved trauma. Trauma usually happens within a relationship dynamic, whether familial, romantic, professional, or friendship. So, it takes a relationship in order to heal and work that out. Like a “re-do” or sorts.
We hear a lot, especially in the spiritual community, that everything comes from within, and that can get twisted out of context to make us believe we don’t need people to heal. We are profoundly aided by others. We can’t work on ourselves without the contrast of others. We need relativity. And that helps us to discover who we are. It also gives us the simulation of doing and being whatever quality or aspect of ourselves we are working on healing or developing. How can you work on being a more compassionate person, without someone triggering your impatience or frustration? Or how can you work on being more loving, without the contrast of someone tempting you to withhold your love? That’s how it works. We need each other to reach our potential.
What is your advice for navigating and healing from trauma with your partner? Be it an addiction, childhood trauma, past relationships, or any other form of emotional pain or abuse…
MAT & ASH: Become interested in understanding your partner’s unhealed trauma and inner child wounds. There is richness and depth in knowing and understanding the shadow tendencies of your partner because this is most likely the source of all confrontation or concerns within the relationship dynamic–it all comes back to unhealed trauma. The world tells us to seek ease and instant gratification wherever possible, but there are enormous blessings awaiting those who do the work to heal that which is unhealed. And there is no one on this planet who can reveal your shadow to you more clearly than the eyes of your beloved. Have courage and compassion to see the inner child of your partner. Have courage and compassion for yourself, because yours will surely be seen too.
In the current health and economic crisis, it may be a challenge sometimes to not let the stress from such crisis affect personal relationships with our loved ones. As conscious relationship experts, could you share one or two strategies with those who are currently searching for much-needed peace and comfort in their families and in their homes?
MAT & ASH: Yeah, a lot of relationship struggle is rooted in stress around finances. Dealing with the pressures of life are already challenging, so it’s in our best interest to not add to that with additional angst and relationship strife. In our opinion, this can only be avoided by each individual doing their Inner Work. This comes down to becoming self-aware around triggers, limiting beliefs, and conditioned behavior that may be causing us to self-sabotage the relationship. For example, two people could be in the exact same situation, even a challenging, stressful one, and perceive it completely differently as well act differently. Whereas one person may feel fear and go into fight or flight mode, another in the exact same situation may feel hopeful and optimistic and become proactive instead of reactive. This reveals that in order to feel empowered in challenging circumstances, we must take the focus off what our conditions or circumstances are and instead focus on our inner perspective.
By doing Inner Work to actively choose how we think, feel, and respond from a conscious place, we not only can stay internally at peace amongst pressure, but we also end up making wiser decisions and choices that further help us because of our centered internal state of being. Our personal practice: things like meditation, yoga, breath-work, and reading spiritual literature, is most needed in these stressful times to help keep us anchored to our most empowered state. It may seem like the last thing we have time for or should do, but if we commit to putting our Inner Work first, we only see benefits forthcoming.
Is there a final message you want to let our readers know? Or just any last little words that you have for them?
MAT & ASH: Yes, there is no greater gift you can give to others or the world, than doing your own Inner Work. Healed people heal people.
Thank you, Mat and Ash, very much! It has been such a pleasure chatting with you today!
MAT: Thank you so much for having us!
ASH: Yes. this has been so fun! Thank you!
