Rise. Renew.
Reconnect.
Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where bold conversations empower healing and authentic, vibrant living.
I'm your host, Valerie Hwang Beck, and I'm on a mission to evolve the dialogue that moves humanity harmoniously forward.
Welcome back to from the Ashes.
This is your host, Valerie Hwang Beck,
and it's taken me about a year to get to this point,
but we finally reached the season finale of season four.
And today I want to do a short and sweet reflection on everything that has happened this year and on the topics that we've covered.
We started off season four with Becoming the Intentional Rebel.
And I have sat into this theme and what it actually means to me.
And the more that I dove into all of our conversations,
the more it really comes back to the idea of rebellion not being a way to fight back or to prove other people wrong or to say that the world is all messed up.
Rebellion is about reclamation.
So I want to dedicate this episode to my clients and my students.
Everyone who has worked with me, whether that be in the vibrant visionary collective club Phoenix Intrepid, Ayurveda, as a dance student,
as an English student, if you have come into my world,
I want to dedicate this to you and everyone else who is choosing to ask the tough questions to themselves every day.
Because I see you show up.
I see you show up with doubt. I see you show up scared. I see you show up determined and ready to work anyway.
And so really this episode and this whole season, I dedicate to you.
So going back to this idea of rebellion as reclamation,
it is the reclamation of you as the individual to choose your own destiny.
Becoming the intentional Rebel is about you reclaiming your right to choose your own destiny.
When I started this season,
back in the fall or winter of 2025, or could have been early 2026,
we started off with an interview with Asia Dorsey,
talking about the body as a site of liberation,
realizing that we cannot fight the powers that be if we neglect our own ability to thrive.
If we forget to love ourselves,
feed ourselves good food,
we wear down the walls of our own container.
We wear down on our own ability to bounce back.
And when we wear ourselves down so much on the physical side,
it makes it really hard for us to continue fighting the fight that we want to fight.
I fully support people who are out there fighting for social justice,
racial equality for all of the causes worth fighting for that are the fights that are meant to bring us back into harmony with ourselves and with each other.
But when we forget that we too are included in those that we fight for,
it is easy to forget to take care of ourselves.
And so rebellion is about reclaiming the body.
Then I had a conversation with Telford McConaughey.
We talked about reclaiming our discernment and critical thinking.
Not only our discernment and critical thinking,
when we are taking on new information,
when we are enthusiastically learning about different healing modalities,
histories,
cultures,
but also reclaiming our own felt sense and our own inner knowing so that we can speak out with our own unique perspectives and. And not just regurgitate the ones that we were taught.
Every single person lives a unique life.
Every single person walks through a different history.
That history is meant to inform the choices that you make.
You are not meant to just follow somebody else's advice,
but to take the experiences that you have lived and the information that you've gathered through learning, through mentorship,
combine those things to choose what truly feels right for you and what you want in your life.
And so reclaiming your discernment and critical thinking,
realizing that models are just models,
they are not dogma for you to regurgitate. They are not for you to simply follow blindly,
is part of becoming this intentional rebel.
I've also had a couple of conversations this season about reclaiming your right to take up space and be seen.
Featuring my friend Tarna,
we explored what it means to be authentic,
what it means to really own some of the darker sides of our past.
And the darker sides are not meant to be hidden.
They are meant to be metabolized.
They are meant to be transmuted.
They are meant to be taken by us as lessons.
And sometimes our hardest lessons, the things that we bury the deepest down in shame are the things that connect us with other people.
Because everybody suffers, everybody goes through periods of difficulty.
But thinking that those are things that we need to hide because they make us weak, or they make us different, or they make us weird really causes missed opportunities for us as human beings to learn from our mistakes,
learn from our pain.
And when we actually own our own journeys,
when we actually can share our experiences with each other,
we create bonds of compassion.
We create spaces for safe conversation,
and we create opportunities for healing.
When we reclaim our right to take up space and be seen for the whole of who we are,
we are creating a chance for growth.
I've also had conversations this season with some of my vibrant, visionary, collective Members Alvin and Tiffany and we talked about reclaiming our creativity and our voice.
It is so easy in this world to try to fit ourselves into other people's boxes,
to show up and say,
how can I be of service today? How can I make your dream possible today?
How can I give my creativity so that you can see your vision realized?
And that's great.
I think it's great to support other people's missions,
especially when they resonate with your own.
But what Alvin and Tiffany and I talked about together is that we, too,
us, our own individual selves,
also have our own visions and voices,
our own unique creativity. And sometimes when we've done the work and we know what it is that we want to stand for,
we can no longer simply ignore the yearning to say something different,
to create the art that truly reflects who we are and to stand for something,
a change in this world that is worth the fight,
that is worth the risk,
and that is worth being a little bit weird sometimes.
I love the theme of Alvin's podcast episode of how he stopped auditioning for his own life,
how it stopped being performance,
how art stopped being performance for him.
He stopped trying to be good like everyone else and really sat into what it meant to create,
to represent himself.
That didn't require an audition,
that didn't require meeting somebody else's standards.
What it actually required was bravery and the inner knowing that if he did this,
it would be okay.
And not only would it be okay,
but that the world won't turn their back on you if you choose your own voice.
And even if it did,
you're making the choice to not turn your back on yourself.
In the season,
I also had conversations about reclaiming connection with our own power to heal.
Kate Stillman and Joseph Dowd,
we both had conversations on the use of psychedelics as a means of healing and connecting with our own power to bring ourselves back to a state of homeostasis.
And so much of homeostasis,
so much of our own ability to heal our own bodies relies on the this constant,
close connection to who we are.
And that is so rooted in the concept of health in Ayurveda,
where health is defined as being settled in the self.
Svastha.
Psychedelics are just a means to get us connected to our own deeper consciousness.
And so it is not the substance,
but the choice to show up again and again to connect with your own soul.
When we establish our own connections with self,
then it's not about fixing ourselves anymore.
So much of healing has become about fixing.
But when we are trying to fix a problem, fix something that's wrong,
there's always another problem.
And what happens is that we tell ourselves that there's something wrong with us.
And so we get into this loop of trying to find the solution without trying to find the solution outside of ourselves,
as opposed to finding the solution within.
No single retreat, no single drug, no single psychedelic, no single substance or food or practice is going to heal you.
It is you who is going to heal you.
And the choices that you make are the healing choices.
And as long as you continue to choose yourself,
you will continue to bring yourself back to a state of connection and settlement in who you are.
Every day that we decide that we are worth our own fight,
we are making those choices.
Every day that we decide that we are worth our own fight,
we are making the choice to listen to our own voice.
We are making the choice to treat ourselves a little better,
eating a little bit better,
going to bed a little earlier,
getting that rest that we need,
talking to ourselves a little bit more kindly,
appreciating our own actions,
going for the things that we want.
When we decide we are worth our own fight,
we are making choices. And these choices compound over time.
Becoming the intentional rebel isn't about going against the grain or beating the bad guy.
It's about becoming your own hero.
It's about seeing yourself as an integral part of the world you want to better.
When we say self improvement,
oftentimes we mistake self improvement as this means to fix a problem with who we are so that we can fit in with a world that is quote unquote better.
But perhaps that is not the way for us to see it. If we truly want to see a better world,
when we see ourselves as an integral part of the world that we want to better,
then we are no longer excluded in the conversation.
We become the change we want to see in the world. And it starts with us.
When we decide that we are worth the vitality,
we are worth our own vibrancy,
we get to enjoy the beauty of this world as much as the next person,
as much as the next generation,
then perhaps we get to be a part of our own sacred vision.
And so the choices that we make no longer are sacrifices of our own self.
And instead what we see is that we are going for what we truly want.
And instead what is sacrificed is everything that keeps us from going there.
Every choice that we make to bring ourselves down,
every choice that we make to bring others down,
every choice that we make to be self destructive,
every choice that we make that isn't in our highest good,
the choices we make to deprive ourselves of sleep,
to deprive ourselves of love,
to deprive ourselves of nutrition, to deprive ourselves of healthy relationships,
those become the sacrifice for a better life for ourselves.
So as we wrap up season four,
I want to leave you with these thoughts,
because I see every day people wanting to love themselves a little bit more.
And yet the permission to do that,
they're waiting for someone else to give it to them.
So what I'd like to suggest is perhaps it is time for you to give permission to yourself to love yourself a little bit more.
My life has radically changed since I started the season.
The way that I show up every day is different.
My surroundings are radically different.
I started off this season getting ready to leave the states,
and now I'm here,
living in Japan with a completely different routine than when I started this year.
And not only that, but a different mindset.
It is so interesting to see what becomes superfluous when we actually take the time to give ourselves the nourishment that we need.
When we actually take the time to get the sleep that we need,
the peace that we need,
the love that we need.
How much other things become superfluous.
How much of the urgency that was manufactured becomes very obviously manufactured.
How the constant messaging of needing to be more successful,
needing to be more wealthy,
needing to be more sexy,
needing to be XYZ falls away when we actually stop to give ourselves a little bit of tender loving care.
I am pretty tired of being sold a message that I am not enough.
And that doesn't mean that I don't want to go anywhere or achieve anything. I do.
But rather than chasing the things that would supposedly give me the freedom to do what I want,
I just simply do those things instead. Now I don't have to earn my freedom by earning more money.
I don't have to earn the right to work on my body by being more successful elsewhere. I just simply have to show up and work on my body,
give it better food,
get myself rest.
And so going back to this idea of becoming the intentional rebel,
through this journey,
I have reclaimed my own peace.
I have reclaimed my own vision for how I want to live my life.
And I have reclaimed my own mission for how I want to help people going forward.
And it really is about this choosing of the self,
choosing to empower yourself,
choosing to allow yourself your own voice,
choosing to take up more space,
choosing to live true to who you are.
None of us are guaranteed tomorrow.
And so one of the things that I say to my clients often is to have the life that you want today so that you can have the life that you want tomorrow.
Live your life every moment, being the person that you want to be.
And sometimes that might not be easy. Sometimes we might not feel like it.
And that's okay. Because part of being the person that you want to be tomorrow,
or having the life that you want to have tomorrow is making sure that you are taken care of today.
So for everyone out there who's followed me up until this point,
episode 80 thank you so much for listening,
for lending me your ears.
I really look forward to season five and beyond,
and I will be back in a couple of short weeks with a different speed.
And I hope that you continue to listen and respond and let me know how this is all resonating.
Remember that you are worth your own fight.
And every single time you choose to fight for yourself,
you are creating the change you want to see in the world. You are being the change you want to see in the world.
So thank you so much for tuning in to from the Ashes podcast. I'm Valerie Back and I will see you later.
