We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Ludman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Ashley, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

The defining moment for me was actually catalyzed by the recession in 2009. I was the founder and co-owner of a yoga studio in Wilmington, NC. We were making plans of expanding and buying land to build a second studio and the recession hit us the year before our final year of the current lease ended.

Experiencing the waves of uncertainty and sudden loss of revenue was a turning point to help me consider how I wanted to move forward. I felt that I didn’t have the potential to expand my business or grow personally if I had continued doing what I was doing.

I made the difficult decision to close the doors of the studio that had been in existence since 2002. But, before I announced the decision to my community, I took a trip to Nosara, Costa Rica (where I had been traveling since 1999.) It was on that trip that I gave myself the permission not to have a plan and just relax.

By the end of that trip, I had an offer to teach Yoga Teacher Trainings and retreats at a new retreat center that was opening simultaneous to the closing of my studio.

It took me about a year and a half to transition to living in Costa Rica full time, and I have now been here for 13 years.

And, I always look back on this time to remember that relaxing into the moment and open eyes to possibilities that are everywhere is an important way to live. As painful as it was to let go of the Yoga studio and community that felt like family to me, I can now see that there was something more aligned to my higher potential.

Instead of looking backwards and trying to hold on to the past, I took the time that felt supportive for me to make the transition to a new country and new ways of living and teaching.

Ashley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been in the wellness industry for close to 30 years, beginning in the fitness industry as I was in college, studying to be an occupational therapist. I began bridging the two parts of my life, and created my first business, Life in Balance, and offered “coaching” and life integration support before coaching was actually an industry. My love of yoga led me to establish the first interdisciplinary Yoga studio in Wilmington, NC in 2002.

I began educating Yoga teachers that same year and it is a big part of my passion to mentor teachers and have schools in both Yoga education and Breathwork education.

Breathwork became my passion when I began teaching in 2012. It helped me in understanding myself in relationship to being an adoptee. I began supporting clients through processes of trauma recovery and nervous system repatterning with breathwork.

My personal and professional practices have been supported by my introduction to psychedelic and entheogenic medicine work since 2004, and I am currently completing a memoir based on my experiences of breath, medicine and life.

Just before 2020 turned lives upside down, I began to create a new community, The Body of Breath. Our mission is to uplift the world through the process of presencing practices such as Breathwork. I have come to see the power in the strength of community and the support that the circle gives to itself has been heartwarming.

I have been training Breathwork Facilitators since 2014 and have just been acknowledged by the Breathwork Alliance as a 400 hour registered training program. I always remember that when I educate others to then go and share the work, I am affecting a bigger imprint in the world. It feels important to me to continue to step out in ways to remind my students that they are in fact, the best teacher in the space.

I now lead experiences both in Costa Rica and the US for participants to explore living in ways that more authentically align to their deeper desires and purpose.

Have you ever had to pivot?

It’s interesting, because the theme of “pivoting” seemed to come to the forefront during the pandemic. As I heard many entrepreneurs starting to use this word in relationship to making changes in their businesses, I felt as though I had been pivoting all along.

From the beginning of my professional career, I continued to follow my own internal nudges which has always prompted me to shift, change and pivot based on my own personal growth.

By the time the recession hit in 2008, I had already begun to feel a bit unsettled in my business, but the thrust down the rabbit hole of financial uncertainty was enough for me to do something about it. We rode our the end of our last lease, taking us to a total of 8 years in the physical location we were established in, and I made the decision to let go of the studio.

I didn’t have a plan at the time, but knew that I needed to find some alone time before I returned to my community to let them know we would be closing in 3 months in early 2010.

I traveled back to Nosara, Costa Rica, where I had been traveling since 1999. I had no real plan other than taking some time away. By the end of that trip, I had visited a retreat center that was scheduled to open around the time I was closing my space. I was offered a position to collaborate with them, offer Yoga teacher trainings and retreats, and eventually moved there to support their first 5 years in business while establishing a home base and traveling and teaching through Costa Rica and Guatemala.

The key in the pivot was to let go of my goals and plans and give myself some space to not have the answers. Trust became my North Star at that time.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my first business partner when I was his personal trainer when I was making a transition out of my role as an occupational therapist in the hospital. I had the vision of working with clients to educate about lifestyle choices so that they would prolong a need for crisis management or rehabilitation, as I was originally working in my role in the western medical model. When I had my next vision of opening a Yoga studio in 2001, I shared my idea with one of my clients who was educated in business management and had been a partner in various businesses of his own. He asked me if I had heard of an “angel investor” and proceeded to describe the concept of that.

I came to understand that he was speaking of himself. I explained to him that I was looking for a “feet on the ground” kind of partner, and eventually, we worked out the details and he became a partner in a group of 4 of us who opened the studio. After closing the Yoga studio in 2010, I oversaw the management of a home that he had purchased in Nosara, Costa Rica, after traveling there with me in 2005 for the first time and falling in love with the place.

Jimbo passed away last year, and I brought on another business partner who collaborates with me in the expanded vision of Casa Zorro that began with my partnership with Jimbo. We consider that he is still our angel partner in the project.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thebodyofbreath.com
• Instagram: @ashleyludman
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashleyludman.333
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-ludman-thebodyofbreath/