Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Mizzell.
Hi Ashley, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
As an intuitive healer, I’d like to think my story has just begun. The beginning was the part where I began to awaken to the true essence of my being once again, released trauma, and picked back up with life after releasing and clearing much of what had been in my system through an eight-year toxic cycle that took place in my life.
My name is Ashley Mizzell. I am the Founder and Executive Director of Breath to Blossom and Yoga and Mindfulness Teacher. My dirty little secret is that I also work in real estate. I’ve worked within the scope of the real estate industry for about eight years or so. I am not a fan of grind culture and a huge advocate of Rest. My sun sign is Gemini so duality and complexity are my true nature. I find balance, flow, and ease within what many would find to be chaos.
If we’re talking about the sensational, juicy, compelling stories of my life that most survivor-led nonprofits feel obligated to share in order to raise awareness and bring in funds I’ve got a little I can share.
Since beginning to build this organization just very recently, I have been pushed into learning how to assert stronger and healthier boundaries personally far beyond I could ever imagine, which I’m sure you can imagine has helped me tremendously not only with my own inner work but for those I teach and serve. You see, I founded a brave space and I have signed up for martyrdom to a degree. Being the martyr of re-exploitation, re-injury, and further re-traumatization. There’s actually no way to condense my story into paragraphs, it takes at least three hours to share my whole story to have many people understand the full picture of societal grooming and exploitation and these cycles of violence. It takes simply a moment to create shock and sensation. But here we go…
I’d like to think trafficking and this ancestral trauma in my lineage began far before what I can even imagine.
I’m a native Charlestonian. I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. I’m also mixed race. The maternal side of my family was trafficked from Barbados. Slavery in America, which helped shape our society and build our economy, entailed every form of human trafficking. As we know, women are just beginning to speak up, and not have to continue cycles of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is cyclical. It’s not gendered specific. Even for our little boys, the vicarious trauma of being stuck in the system is a huge driving force in perpetuating this cycle. We all suffer from this, but unfortunately, women are suffering at disproportionate rates.
My paternal side, Well although my father was Italian. He was a survivor of familial trafficking as a young boy with the Catholic Church as the vehicle…right here in the US.
Again, cycles of various abuse I internalized and suffered from vicariously and of course these systems of oppression-I’ve not been immune to this.
When it comes to my story, I’m not sure when I’ll ever share it in media. I typically share more at speaking events.
I’ll fast forward through much of the story that I am still writing. I found yoga in 2013. I’d just begun working full-time within the real estate industry in a very lower level/entry-level position. I was suffering. My yoga journey began with a gym class, Eventually, I found myself practicing in studios, and discovered more restorative styles of practice. It calmed me. It slowed down my chaotic “ADHD” mind. I never stayed consistent. When I found power yoga and more energetic Vinyasa styles in hot classes. It was a wrap. I was hooked!
On this journey, I lost my father in 2018 very unexpectedly to his alcoholism, I was constantly on the road for work, and didn’t have a great life as my partner and I at the time did not know were two traumatized people just trying to figure out life. It was sitting with my father…just he and I, for four days. I help walk him back home and transition in those four days. My once big, strong super hero-I watched turn into this very child-like state and deteriorate…in four days. This prompted me to want to commit more to my mat, which led me to enroll in yoga teacher training. I had no interest in being a teacher unless it had to do with serving others with the capacity of sharing yoga as a volunteer with underestimated populations. Somehow in this journey of studying to be a yoga teacher, some underlying subconscious limiting beliefs dissolved, and I felt that there was space for me to be a yoga teacher. It hit me in a class when the topic arose that there’s not enough diversity and no one seemed to care. Hello, representation!
Representation is needed. I had never been in a class led by a black woman in Charleston back then. Immediately I felt fire. I remembered every time on this journey how I felt so uncomfortable in studios as a student and felt a sense of otherness for being black, curvy, and all things behind my societal mask. Truly this painful moment was profound and helped me to break through one of the glass ceilings of my healing journey.
I did not judge my peers for that conversation. That’s when the passion for teaching actually ignited.
When the last big BLM movement wave arose in the midst of COVID19, I felt very disappointed that many in my community weren’t stepping up. That was sort of my internal enough is enough moment. White supremacy and spiritual bypassing infiltrate wellness and the capitalistic yoga world.
I often integrated social justice dharma talks into my yoga classes. I felt crazy. I felt unheard. After a class where I’d do this the only comment, I’d ever received would be something along the lines of. “That one transition from x pose to z pose was tough.” Something like that.
People were finally listening because their properties were finally being destroyed by looters posing as activists.
On this journey of spiritual teachings for justice, I’ve messed up a lot and have not always held the utmost trauma-sensitive space, but I have held a lot of space.
Anti-oppression is the root of all my work, no matter where I am or what I am doing. That is light work. Healing and justice are not the same things yet they coincide.
When I began my nonprofit work, I thought the mission would be children…nothing would work as I tried to organize and build then one day I received an intuitive nudge, a spiritual download if you will. It was Breath to Blossom. It terrified me, because there was no way I could do this light work as someone who was a victim for so long. However, this immediately gave me the clearest blueprint of how and where to do the work starting from the inside out.
Those closest to a problem are often closer to the solution. I’m in alignment for my highest good and for the collective. It’s worth the risks.
I love the business side of yoga, and I love being on the education side of this as well. It’s been quite a journey, but my heart truly smiles when I am able to work directly and more intimately with what I love to do in this healing work.
I can wait to share more with you sometime as this story continues.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Absolutely not, but I find, joy, ease, and flow ease every day. (See last response) I love the business side of wellness, but I cannot wait to spend more time doing the work I truly enjoy. To keep a smooth pathway, I try my best to do business through what I call “divine feminine energy” essentially the mindset of creation, rather than the hustle, fast, exhausting grind.
As you know, we’re big fans of Breath to Blossom. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Breath To Blossom provides advocacy and accessible trauma-centered, mind-body therapeutic programs and mental health services to survivors of intimate trauma-heavily focusing on populations of survivors who have survived intimate abuse, sex trafficking, and those who may currently work in the commercial sex industry. BTB is a minority/survivor-led organization based in Charleston, SC.
We provide community, a network of resources, and holistic clinicians/healers to recover, manage, and propel our participants forward by providing nine-week programs filled with various holistic healing modalities.
BTB specials all go through a month-long BTB-specific curriculum for training before working with our participants who are often referred to us from hospitals and other aligned organizations.
Breath To Blossom is currently repairing the building of its first healing center which is set to open in January 2022 to better serve its participants. Any donations to help cover operational expenses and to support the overall vitality of this work, and expand its impact are appreciated as this organization is in need of major support in its infancy.
You can check out our site at breath2blossom.org to donate and learn a little bit more about our mission!
I’ve worked in the real estate industry for nearly a decade. I’m multi passionate. I’m a shamelessly spiritual money motivated individual. However, any designer bag I ever carry is a gift. I am money motivated to share resources and invest in my community.
I want young people as well as anyone who identifies with being part of an underestimated population to know they can follow their heart and align with their soul’s desires. I’m 26 and have always been good at silencing out the status quo and attuning inward. I have not one regret about quitting on formal education. I invest a lot into my education energetically and monetarily but not through traditional institutions and never will. Of course, ego kept creeping in thinking I needed a degree to affirm something for many years.
Cultivating your intuition is detrimental for your success. That can be scary….but when you do it with a heart of service, your success will be inevitable. My curriculum in this lifetime for sure is to master the art of balance. Personally, I believe success is balance in all of these colors, complexities, ebbs and flows and stepping out of the scarcity matrix. Essentially, what I call radical trust. Coming back to our breath somehow innately give us this reminder.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I define success as balance, fulfillment, and sustainability. True fulfillment for me is balance. Perfection is not attainable, and I’m not sure what perfect is, but if I can come to a home filled with love every day, be healthy, have fun serving others and be able to have enough resources to make a huge ripple effect of healing impact-that is success to me. This also includes being able to really show and be present for my family and special moments. The more I can do this and can become better at this, I will feel I’ve achieved ultimate success.
Contact Info:
- Email: contact@breathtoblossom.org
- Website: breath2blossom.org
- Instagram: @ashleymizzell
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Breathtoblossom
