From Trauma to Transformation – Ash Perrow’s Journey from Near Death to Heart-Centered Living

Brad Minus: Welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Challengers. Really excited. Ladies and gentlemen, I have Ash Perrow with us today. He's a coach, he's a musician, he is a podcaster, and he has an amazing story so without further ado, Hey Ash, how you doing today?

Ash Perrow: Very good, Brad. I'm actually superb. It's great to be here. I know we've tried to connect a couple of times and this morning as I was reflecting, I was thinking, oh, I'm actually really excited about meeting you and having a conversation today because it's taken a few little barriers that we've had to jump over to get together and have this conversation.

So, because of that resistance that's happened along the way, it actually increased my excitement. So, yeah, very happy to be 

Brad Minus: here. And so am I. The perseverance on both sides here, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, it took us three times, between technical difficulties. Oh, and there's a big time difference. So ladies and gentlemen, we're actually talking to the future.

I am, you know, it's evening time where I am, and we're ashes the next day in the morning. So Ash is in Australia, right? Yes. Which part? Yes. Yes. Sydney, Australia. So on the East Coast. Oh, capital. So Ash, can you just give us a brief account of your childhood, you know, like what was the compliment of your family?

Where did you grow up, and what was it like to be ash as a kid? 

Ash Perrow: So most people don't know, but the capital of Australia is a place called Canberra. Okay, so Sydney's the most populous city, but a two hour drive south of Sydney is a city of about 350,000 people called Canberra. And that was built just after 1900.

And basically it's an interesting story. We'll go into it a little bit. There's Sydney, which is on the east coast about halfway up, and then down on the south coast is Melbourne. They're the two biggest cities in Australia. And so when Australia gained its independence from England who invaded in 1788.

Yeah. And so Melbourne and Sydney couldn't agree who should be the capital. And so they decided to create a new city. Somewhere in between the two cities and they wanted it away from the ocean so it wouldn't be threatened by naval attack. I grew up in this government town called Canberra.

And so in Canberra that's where the parliament meets the federal Parliament and there's a lot of, military services and things like that. So my dad was in the Air Force and we lived in Canberra. So before that we traveled around a lot 'cause he would get posted from place to place. And so there was a couple of years earlier in my childhood where we were in Papua New Guinea, and that was in 19, 19 76.

And so, you know, Papua New Guinea was a very wild place back then. My mother had been there about 15 years before. She was actually one of the first white women to go into the jungle, and she was a nurse, so she would go up into the mountains and help all these people. And so at some point mom and dad met, and then dad back to Papua New Guinea.

And so one of my first memories of that was we had this, have you heard of General MacArthur? Yeah. So the American General, very famous, so we lived in his house in Port Mosby, which is the capital of Pub New Guinea. And it was this big sort of, plantation style house.

And we had these eight, eight foot cyclone fences with barbed wire around the top. And there was one day. And so at this age, I was about four. And this is actually my first memory. I had this little toy car, and I was crawling along one of the paths, pushing my car, you know, like boom, boom, boom, boom.

And I saw this snake right in front of me, and mom had always said, if you see a snake, just freeze, don't move. And it looked at me, and then it slithered down towards me, and I'm frozen, you know? And my, there was a friend behind me and he ran off, and I was just frozen and this snake crawled over the back of my legs,

and then it went off. And mum, you know, once it had gone, I ran and told mom and, and she came back with a shovel. And we had people that helped us with the house and things like that, and they were grown men and they were like, no, we are not going near that snake. And so mom ended up chopping its head off with a shovel.

It was a interesting start, right? It's like, oh, you know, this experience of seeing a snake and having a deadly snake crawl over my legs as a child, and not being fearful, just knowing, okay, just wait, just wait, just wait. 

Brad Minus: That is trust, man. Well, first of all, your mom's a badass.

Yeah, she's, yeah. So that's first. Second of all, the trust that you had in your parents had to be like, completely, like off the charts for you to not be scared and to have this, deadly snake over you.

And I don't care. If every snake is poisonous until someone tells me different, you know, to me. So that would, yeah, that would be rough. But you, you know, you had that, they, she told you, you listened to her and you're fine. You know, so that's good. I'm sure there's some sort of omen about that going over your legs because someone, someone could dig it up, you know, for the rest of your life.

But yeah, that's, I mean, that's amazing. Do you have any brothers or sisters? 

Ash Perrow: I was adopted as a baby. So the parents I grew up with were my adoptive parents, and I've met my birth mother, her family are like family to me now. When I was 23, I unexpectedly got a letter in the mail.

My whole life, my parents had told me, you know, you're very special to us. We picked you up from the hospital and I knew all how that happened. When I was 21, I got a letter in the mail and it was, hi Ashley, I'm your birth mother and I would like to meet you.

And it hadn't been on my radar to meet my birth mother. I, I had just kind of gone, you know, that happened. I'm going to just live life. I have my parents and it was probably one of the first identity crises that I went through because all of a sudden I met my birth mother and they lived out in the bush and, had a home that was sort of handmade and, and they were all musicians.

I wasn't a musician. And to meet somebody that had the same genetic characteristics as me. It was extraordinary. And it wasn't just one person, it was a whole family. In fact, I met grandparents. There was eight aunties and uncles on that side. There was 35 cousins. And so now my grandparents on that side, I think they're up to their a hundred and 16th descendant.

They're still alive. They're in their mid nineties. And so I went from this small family of my sister that I lived with that grew up with, and my parents and just a very few cousins to suddenly having connection with this huge family. And it was very different. But I had to go through this process of like, ah, did I miss out on this?

Where do I fit? How do I fit in this? And so that adoption stuff, and, you know, for people that are interested in psychology and things like that, it's okay. What is the impact on our, psychological makeup when we're adopted? And I went down a little bit of rabbit hole trying to understand that.

And I'd always been interested in psychology. One of the aspects of that is we're told that we're special. Adopted children are often special. And so what our identity will like to do is try and make us special and put pressure on ourselves to be special. 'Cause if we're not special, we're not loved, we're not fulfilling what other people expect of us.

So that was a big process for me to go through my twenties. But family-wise, I was very loved in both families. 

Brad Minus: So I'm going to assume that when you got to see your biological mother for the first time you asked why was I given up for adoption?

Especially since I'm, you know, you're telling me you got 35 cousins and grandparents that are still alive and all this, what was her answer? 

Ash Perrow: So she was 17 and it was, you know, an unexpected pregnancy and she just thought that someone else would be better to look after me.

Brad Minus: Okay. 

Ash Perrow: And so my grandparents wanted to keep me. One of the aunties wanted to keep me. And she was adamant that no, he has to go somewhere. And so that really, it hurt her for a long time. Still hurts her that she gave up one of her kids and my siblings from that side, they've said to me many times, mom would just be so sad at Christmas and Easter and things like that, and we could never work out why.

It was only when they were in their middle teens that she told them she'd had a baby and given the baby away. And my youngest sister, who at that age about 13. Was like, well, mom, let's just go find him. And so she went to the local courthouse and somehow was given my details, wasn't meant to be given my details, she asked for my birth certificate, which had my adoptive parents' names on it.

And from there she opened up a phone book. And so she lived in a sort of rural area, coastal rural area, and she looked up the nearest city. And there my parents were in the phone book. And so that's how the letter came to be delivered to my door. 

Brad Minus: That's amazing. I think we might have to define phone book that is Google for names and addresses and phone numbers in written page back then, just so everybody understands that.

Just wanna make sure we define what a phone book is. But no, that's an amazing story. I was a foster parent set on adopting, and there was a, family member came out of the woodwork unfortunately. We had him for 11 months and we were getting ready to do the final adoption.

And unfortunately, sister came out of the woodwork. And here we've got a, the Clinton, adoption Act. Basically states that blood has blood, family has priority no matter what. You know, you could be in any stage of it. And if they come out and, and they don't wanna give up rights, then it, the, the, the child's auto automatically to go with the blood.

So, mm-hmm. Unfortunately, that happened to us, but, but it was a, but I get it though. I was totally in love with this, with this child, so I think you, you know, obviously you are one of the lucky ones. You got a great childhood, you had adoptive parents that are fantastic, and then you found your other family.

I think that's, that what a, what a wonderful story that is. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah, it's not a common story. Most people that are adopted meet their birth parents, but it just doesn't work out. And it's very interesting for me around nature versus nurture. I'm blessed to have seen both sides, right?

I can go, oh, I can see that was from my upbringing. I can see that I have a certain way of being that is different to the rest of the family. But then I can also see the genetic path. So for example, when I first met my birth mother, I could not get over just looking at her, just going, wow, she has the same eyes as me.

And when I'm met my grandfather, we were holding our hands together. I was like, wow, someone has the same hands as me, you know, for 22 years. I'd never seen anything like that. It was extraordinary. I got to see different ways of being and different ways of thinking and relating. And so that was a real gift, but it was, challenging at the same time because the little voice inside my head's like, yeah,

I don't fit in. Which it wasn't true. There's always that, part of our minds that's trying to put us in a little box, you know, where do we fit in the tribe? 

Brad Minus: And then you're at some point, do I wanna fit in the tribe? Do I need to fit in the tribe?

There's all those other different questions that pop up at the same time. Family is, I don't know everybody that I've talked to that have come across their family, whether they get along with them or not. There is this deep seated connection in there, that seems to overtake any kind of nature.

Environmental situation. 

Ash Perrow: Mm-hmm. 

Brad Minus: I've got 12 cousins and I've drifted from many of them since high school. Yet the minute we see each other at some sort of family event, even if it's been 10 years, it's like, you pick up where you left off right there, there's a connection there.

You can feel it. There's a blood, there's a, you know, there's a blood bond there, so I imagine after being there for a while, you probably felt the same thing. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah. And you know, the tribe survived because of tribes.

Like one human out in the jungle, the desert, the forest hunting, a woolly mammoth, it doesn't actually work very well. Whereas a community with rocks and spears and helping each other, that's how humans survived. And so it's built into our brains that we have. A tribal sort of system of control in our brains.

So, for example, fearful about what people think. That's where that comes from. Because you can't go against your tribe. You can't harm the tribe. So when we put ourselves in a courageous or vulnerable place, people often put themselves out there and then afterwards they start judging themselves really harshly around, well, I didn't do this.

If we stay aligned with the tribe, with the values of the tribe, the tribe was more likely to survive.

If you go away from the values of the tribe, the tribe was less likely to survive. And so now we have this, we're very spoiled, right? With the resources that we have access to, but we still have this primal structure in our brain that's trying to hold us in the tribe. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. And now tribal tribes are digital, so, you know, you can, you can be part of a tribe and never leave your house.

I have a question for you.

'cause you said that your biological family was a family of musicians. 

Ash Perrow: Mm-hmm. 

Brad Minus: And you said you met them at 21. So at 21 you had yet to pick up a musical instrument. 

Ash Perrow: I had about maybe eight months when I was around 12 years old of playing guitar was so, you know, my amazing mom had had facilitated guitar lessons and I liked it, but I changed guitar teachers and the new guitar teacher I didn't resonate with.

So I, the guitar went by the wayside. And at some point, just around the time I met, met my birth mother and, and her family, her husband showed me a few chords on the guitar. And it was like my brain just went, what is this? And I became obsessed with guitar for 20, 25 years. Like literally, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say I'm as obsessed now.

Now I just sit down and play it and occasional gigs and things. But it was like my brain just went, whoa, music. And I'd always listened to a lot of music, gone to lots of gigs, loved music. But to be able to play music. That opened up portals for me. I playing and playing and went through it down that whole road of being in bands and was very, blessed to have a band that I was in, go quite well and travel all over Australia and festivals and airplane Europe and, did the whole film clips and radio interviews, which to me was extraordinary.

'cause I didn't start playing until I was in my early twenties most people were way ahead of me. I felt like a massive imposter. I was like, well, I don't even know what I'm really doing, but I'll just keep going. So, yeah. Amazing experience 

Brad Minus: the whole fake it till you make it. I get it.

Yeah. I played, clarinet and saxophone, in high school, then I'd gotten into musical theater. I was very happy. That I had spent so much time playing the claret and the saxophone because I could read music. So then when I started to sing, I could read the music so I could sight read.

And then the greatest part was that if I didn't get into the musical, if I auditioned for these musicals and I didn't get into the musical, I'd jump into the pit and I'd play clarinet or saxophone in the pit so I could still be a part of it.

'cause I just wanted to be a part of it at the time. Yeah. Fun. Yeah, no, absolute fun. Absolute fun. You know, it's two hours of playing and, you know, it was just good. So that was my gig. I didn't, I didn't, wasn't in a band. I would just be in these orchestras in the orchestra hits and then, you know, and play with that.

But it was, just so much fun. Just a blast. What kind of music was it? What kind of music did you guys specialize in? Blues, 

Ash Perrow: jazz folk, lot, you know, original music. But, you know, I, at some point, you know, I was playing solo, so I used to just go and play guitar at local markets. And at that point there weren't a lot of people doing that.

Now there's a lot more people that do those kind of things, but at that point, I saw somebody doing it one day and I thought, oh, I'm gonna do that. And I was playing at a market one day and, and this guy came up to me and said, oh, I sing, I really like how you play guitar. Do you mind if I get up and sing a song?

I'm like, okay, sure. And he got up and he started singing and he was fantastic. Like, he kind of really funky, kind of really lots of character, very, very sort of, charismatic singer. And people started to stand around and, and were really engaged. And we played another song. And halfway during that second song, someone came up to us and said, will you play my cafe next Saturday night?

And we're like, okay, all right. And she said, are, are you guys friends? And we're like, we looked at each other and we laughed. We said, we are now. And, you know, I think maybe we're up around 700 gigs that we've done together and best friends. And so that's over 15 years ago that, and it just, it just morphed.

It was like this thing that just happened. We just, all we were doing was doing what we loved with no expectations, and people just kept booking us for gigs. And it just got bigger and bigger. And musicians started saying, you know, phenomenal musicians, can we come and join and play with you? And we kept saying yes.

And so this phenomenal band was formed, Ryan and I, we didn't know what we were doing. We had no idea. And we had just these consummate musicians playing with us. We kind of had the spirit, the energy they had, the technical aspect as well as great energy.

And it came from no expectations. And I was just thinking about it the other day, how important it's to go forward with no expectations. And that sense of passion and just following the trail of fun, how important that is into life to, 

Brad Minus: have fun and the passion.

There's a passion for something. You had a passion for music. You both had a passion, you shared it, it connected. Mm-hmm. And you know, something incredible came out of it, you know, and I think that's a lot, that we're missing out on today, actually. When I'm scrolling through Instagram or Facebook a set of videos that love.

These set of guys in Europe that will go to like a European mall or in a, in a, a, a airport. And there's a freestanding piano just sits there. Mm-hmm. And you know what, at first I thought this was a setup, right? 'Cause there was a lot of these videos everywhere.

And at first I thought it was a setup because I was like, oh, this doesn't happen. And then I was at Heathrow and there is a piano sitting in the middle of the international terminal five. Nobody was playing it when I went through. Of course, it was like 5 45 in the morning.

But it was there and I was like, oh, wow, that's really cool that it actually does happen there. And it's in a very open area. So I'm watching some of these videos, but it's basically somebody sing down, they're just tooling around. They're playing some songs, and then somebody else comes up and says, Hey, can I play with you

Ash Perrow: mm-hmm. 

Brad Minus: And some of the stuff is amazing. They're like, Hey, do you know this song? Is it okay if I sing with you? Yeah. Great. They've got these kids that are prodigies and they're playing a song. Oh, there was this set of violinists that were playing Vivaldi, and this kid, he had to be 10 years old, came up to him and said, Hey, and the piano's sitting there and they're like, well, it's Vivaldi.

It's quite hard. He goes, let me try, I. And he was brilliant. Mm-hmm. He was absolutely brilliant. And these three people made this connection right there through music. Mm-hmm. 

Ash Perrow: It's amazing that the universal language of music. You can play music with somebody and when you connect in the music, you get a sense of who they are and it's, just such a universal language. 

Brad Minus: That is amazing. 

Ash Perrow: Did you go to university? So, I went to university, I started off doing a, I was accepted to university.

Early in high school, so a couple of years before I finished high school. Which for me was meant, okay, I'll just, you know, I'll just cruise from here on in. Then what I went, it makes me laugh that I started doing a bioorganic chemistry degree. Hated chemistry, but just the fact of, you know, okay, well I'm into university, you know, I'll just go do this.

It'll be fine. And I started and I was, I just hated it. I really just, you know, it just wasn't my forte, right. And so after a year and a half of that, my grades were so bad that I was like, okay, I just, I'm stopping. And so I took, took seven months off and worked in factories and delivered alcohol and pizzas.

And for me that was a real eyeopener. I spent, almost five years working in a factory, while I was going through university I saw people that are my age now that were on minimum wage, they were miserable. They didn't have the capacity to change how their life was.

They had kids and it was, I just thought, okay, I need to go back to university because I don't want to end up on this path. And so I went back and I wanted to do psychology, but I couldn't get in with my grades. But I got into primary teaching. And so I thought, well, I'll go do primary teaching and I'll get my grades up and then transfer over to psychology.

And so I picked a few subjects that were aligned with psychology so I could make that transition easier. And then when I did my first prac, I was in the classroom with these kids that were about 12 years old. And I just, this is cool. I really like these kids. This is fun. And so I end up being a school teacher for 22 years.

Brad Minus: Wow. That's awesome. So you went, you got in early, so you started that first set of college, well you were what, 17? So college I started at 18. Okay. Just turned 18. 

Ash Perrow: Okay. So, and you were in, you went for a year then you took seven months off?

Yeah, so I finished at that stage, it was a three year degree, so I finished that almost when I was about 23. And my first school, it was tough. It was the only school in the city where you could earn double transfer points to get out of it. So there was a transfer system where you work in a school and you accrue points and then once you have a certain amount of points you can apply to go to other schools.

This was the only school where you could get double transfer points because it was so tough and it was. There were times I felt like I was in Jurassic Park, you know, when the Velociraptors are trying to get in. At lunchtime I'd be in the classroom and kids would be throwing rocks the windows but what I found was I got really passionate about helping the kids, particularly the boys that had the real behavioral issues.

And so that led me to do a master's in education. I ended up in London, doing a similar kind of role working with children who were either permanently excluded from school or were about to be permanently excluded from school. I thought that school in Australia was insane when I went to this particular school that I was in London, which was on the verge of being shut down.

If the schools were too violent or not meeting their outcomes, they would go on like a probation. And if they didn't succeed in the probation, the school got shut down. And so this is where this was at. I'd never seen anything like it. The first day I went in they employed me as a behavior teacher, there was already one in the school, but he needed help. So I came in, it was an all boys school, and they're like, just come in for a day and see, and we'll put you in some classrooms. The first class that I was in, there was a fight with six boys in it, fist calves, desks, throwing things, throwing everywhere.

I was like, oh, okay. All right. And I thought, I don't know if I can do this. And. I went home and, okay, let's do it. And after three weeks, it was normal. It's amazing how quickly our brain, our system will adapt to an environment like that.

So, you know, there were things like kids lighting fires under classrooms. While the class was happening, there was, a lot of violence. There was a police officer permanently posted at the school to try and address the violence. And so it was a very hard environment to work in. But I came back to Australia and there everything was different.

This was, the comparison, right? Once you've experienced something and then you experienced something else, it's like, ah, okay. It's not that bad. 

Brad Minus: I mentioned to you that I had a foster child that I was planning on adopting, and his name was Sean.

When he came to me, he was a mess, like behavioral. He couldn't figure out where his rage was coming from. He didn't know when to place it. Behavior would turn on a dime, you know, one minute he'd be all happy and excited, and then the next minute he'd be throwing stuff and pitching a fit and the whole bit.

But it's amazing that you said that three months, that's about what it took, you know, for us to come up with strategies and ways to redirect him to where things became normal. For instance, took me to the grocery store the first time, you know, and I told him like, Hey, listen, keep your hands on the cart.

Do not stray, just leave your hands on the cart and as long as you're right there next to me and you've got your hand on the cart, you're fine. Took his hand off the cart one time. And this is the way we were taught in parenting class, give him a warning, get your hand back on the cart.

This, happened every once in a while. He took his hand off the cart. I pushed the cart away and took him out and said, okay, I'll have to come back from bother time. All of a sudden he kept his hand on the cart.

Then after a couple times there, I'm like, okay, now you can push the cart, but you're not allowed to bang into anything, intentionally if he misses a turn, I'm not gonna punish him for. Definitely rammed into people or things and I was gonna, do something about it.

Nope, nothing did exactly what he was told. Then we started going into like, I'm a health nut. So we were talking to him about, you know, what's good for you? What's not for you? And talking about ingredients and stuff. And I'll never forget this, took him to go get his Halloween costume and we're sitting in line and he asks me, he's like, Brad, can I go and look at the candy bars and stuff?

And I'm like, you can look, but you cannot touch. You just have to ask. And he says Yes. I'm like, okay, go ahead.

And he comes back and he goes, he goes, Brad, can I get a Nature Valley granola bar? I'm like, Hmm, what's in it? He goes, oh, it's nuts. Da da da da. I'm like, are those good for you? And he goes, yes. And I says, then yes, you may. And I grabbed it as he was going over to grab it. The, the woman in front of me said, I never seen anything like that.

I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, she goes, well, I was listening to him and as he was talking to himself, he was like, oh, there's chocolate. Nope. That's not good for me. That's peanut butter. That's probably not good for me. I don't think so he goes, that's got nuts in it. That might be okay. Gum. No, that's not good for me.

But it was just like, what you were saying is that all of a sudden, you know, things became normal and we were getting into a routine and everything was fine, but it took, it took three months. It took a good three months, so. 

Ash Perrow: Mm-hmm. 

Brad Minus: Yeah.

Ash Perrow: That's true. Legacy, the way you were with him and what you taught him, that that's legacy. Yeah, because. His descendants. He'll pass that on. I hope so. Yeah. And so like that changes generations, hundreds of generations. It's like how you were and what you taught and what he observed in you that that's true legacy.

Brad Minus: My wife was a nurse and he's now in nursing school in Arkansas. Wow. So we kept in touch a little bit here and there, and now he's in nursing school. So yeah, there's a little bit of legacy there, I would say to on that side too. So very excited about that. Basically you were, you taught, oh, you know what I was, what I was getting at before, why I was asking about your ages and stuff, because I wanted to find out where you were in your life when you met your biological parents.

So obviously you had finished school and you were starting your new career when you finally met your biological parents. Did you find a change in the way you went about it after that experience with you meeting your biological family?

Ash Perrow: Okay. Not that I'm aware of. You know, there was, my mom was a nurse. Yeah. And so that caring for people and doing good in the world, that was very ingrained. And so, that's what I've been working in my whole life. So speaking of legacy, right? That's mom's still alive, but that's been her legacy.

Brad Minus: Excellent. So let's fast forward a little bit. What was leading up to that? How did it happen and walk us through that. 

Ash Perrow: Mm-hmm. So, my adult life from 17, I surfed, you know, that was my addiction. And then, 23 guitar came along, so I surfed and played guitar at the same time.

Something happened with teaching where, I am a feeler, right? Like, I feel things and those kids that I loved helping, I just kept seeing them slip through the system and I would lay awake at night. Thinking about all the kids in my class that I wanted to help but didn't have the resources to help them the way that I felt they needed to be helped.

And so over time, I became disillusioned with teaching and I kept changing jobs, trying to find where I could fit right to help the kids that I was, wanted to help and be at peace at what happened. And after about 10, 12 years, I wasn't enjoying it. I felt like I was in this sort of system and that what I wanted to, to help children with, I wasn't able to.

And I was on holiday and I'd been surfing every day and towards the end of the holiday, my back was getting sore. And there was one morning where the surf was really big. There's no one else out. And that's what I loved. I'm like, okay, I'm going out. And I heard this voice in my head say to me. If you go surfing today, you will help hurt your back.

And I thought, bring it on. I literally said, bring it on, because I didn't want to go back to my job. And so I grab my board and I start paddling out, and the waves are quite big. I dive through the first wave, everything's fine. The second wave, I go to dive through like a duck dive. So you kind of stick your bottom up in the air and push your board through and kind of do this flowing motion with your body to go through the wave.

And as I did that motion, I popped two discs in my back. And so here I am in this surf. It's big. I can only paddle with one arm. Excruciating pain. I make it back into shore. I managed to stand up. I'm in knee deep water and I'm holding my board and I stuck. I can't, I can't walk. I'm just standing there. I can't walk.

Somebody came down and helped me up the beach, which took about 40 minutes just to walk up the sand up to the back of the dune. Flash forward year and a half later, I've tried all the natural therapies that I can to heal, and I've just resigned. I have to go in for back surgery.

I was on Endone, so an opioid, had been on that for six or seven months. It was at the point where it was very difficult for me to do my shoes up. I, it, it just wasn't great. And I, okay, so I was going in for spinal fusion the surgeon to a vein, he wasn't aware, he to a vein because very interestingly right, for that kind of surgery, they go in through the front, they go in through your abdomen.

So they, I had from my belly button down to, to my pelvic area, there's a long scar. And what they do is they cut it, they open it up, they take your intestines out, right? So they're still connected to your body, but they take all the tubing out and then they work on, on the discs from the front because most of the nerves run down the back of the spine and they don't wanna harm the nerves.

So in that process, they had to move a vein to the side gently and veins. They're very, very fragile and so lower down because of the tension on the vein, it, it tore in my groin. They didn't know that. So they did the surgery, stitched me back up, and then sent me back to the ward.

I bled internally for 16 hours. 

Brad Minus: So what happened? 

Ash Perrow: So the next morning the physio comes in and he says to me, we'll get you up and we'll start rehab. And I say to him, and I'd been, you know, telling the nurses all night, I'm in a lot of pain and they just kept, you keep, press the fentanyl button more, more pain relief.

You know, the fentanyl button will be available again in another five minutes or whatever. And so I sit on the edge of the bed and I look down at my thigh and my thighs about double the size of what it normally is. And it's full of blood. And I say to the physio, he's young, straight outta college, my legs not normally like this.

And he said, you'll be okay up your hop. And so I stand up and whatever occurred in, in that moment. I couldn't stay standing up. I collapsed. He presses the red emergency button, like the code blue and the siren goes off. All these people rush in. I'm on the bed and I'm like, okay, I'll be all right. I'll be all right.

They start attaching oxygen mask and the ECG monitors and then they start saying, you know, stay with this ash. He's not breathing, he doesn't have a pulse. And I went into this hyper-awareness of what was happening. So I knew what everybody was saying. I knew exactly where everybody was in the room and what they were doing.

I wouldn't call that an out of body experience. It was just like, I just became very, very present and aware of what was happening. And then I heard them talking about my blood pressure and they said his blood pressure's 52 on 36, 

Brad Minus: nothing. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah. And I thought, oh, this, this is serious. And it kept going, right?

Like they kept saying, keep your eyes open, stay with us, Ash. And I'm, I'm there. And I thought, oh, I'm dying. This is dying. And I had this immense sadness that came and it was, I'm dying and nobody I love is in the room with me. And, that was just an extraordinary amount of sadness that came.

And then what happened was I couldn't keep my eyes open. And the last thing I saw was that physio standing in the corner of the room. And he was white, just so white. And I thought, you poor guy, you think you've killed me? And then I blacked out. Except there wasn't like a normal blacking out. It was, a totally different experience.

Brad Minus: W don't keep us like this. Come on, Ash. I mean, I'm in suspense now. You gotta keep going. I thought you might have some questions, 

Ash Perrow: but 

Brad Minus: not a normal blackout. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah. Yeah. And so my experience was that I became these ripples, right? So some people asked, did you see a light? No, I didn't see a light.

I was in blackness, just total blackness. But I was ripples. And these ripples were going out and out and out. And I had this strange sense that the ripples were me and I was the ripples. There wasn't a separation between them. I just was ripples. Okay. I blacked out, but I still have this conscious awareness. I probably didn't have the language for it back then. And, you know, having told the story, it becomes, I get better and better at describing the experience, but the sensation was just going out and out and out. Infinitely. There was no limit.

And the further I was going out, the more I knew that I was dying. And so then I started to go, well, I wanna stay and I could hear myself express this. I had this deep sense of being myself, when I think about it now, it's like, the brain's starting to shut down, the conditioning of life and what's being programmed in?

As I've grown, that's starting to slip away. And what I'm being left with is the essence of me. I started saying, well, I wanna stay for my family. I wanna stay for my partner, the kids. And then I felt this warmth come over me and I said, I wanna stay for the work that I do and walk the planet from my heart.

And the moment I thought that I had like a download of what that was and came straight back into my body, opened my eyes. This day, we've got a pulse. He's breathing, eyes are open. And level 11 pain. Like I started moaning and screaming because I'd had zero pain through that whole process. No pain.

But soon as I came back in level 11 pain, I was like, I'm alive. 

Brad Minus: I'm alive. Wow. That is incredible. It does kind of adhere to a theory that I've always kept, and it's what you've explained almost goes right along with it.

I always thought that, okay, so we talk about in religion, you talk about the soul, the body, and how your soul is attached to your body until the time of death when your soul is then released and you're then able to go to heaven or to wherever else you might go, depending on what you believe.

But I always thought that what people thought was the soul was the electrical energy that runs our bodies, right? We know that we create currents. We know it's electricity, we know it's an energy. And science says energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be changed.

So that was the energy that left because you didn't have a pulse. So there was no electrical current running through your body at that time. The only electrical current that was going through was what they were doing using the defi and compressions on your heart.

It's, manmade, but the original energy that was, you left. That makes sense with the wave, with the waves that you said that you were ripples, right? Yeah. Because you started to expand. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: It goes along with everything that I ever thought and that, and I'm only talking about theory, you know? Just things that, you know, reading from other near-death experiences and everything.

It just made sense to me. Interesting that you said ripples though. Being that you had such a surfing background. Interesting. That kinda like went along with it. You know, you're very drawn to the water and just your vocabulary of saying that you became these ripples.

That makes a lot of sense to me. So, yeah. What even makes more sense is this, that you said that you wanted to stay and you had purpose. That's the why, which I always said that's what governs our lives is the why. Why are we here? We might not be able to define it, you can't sit there a lot of times, you know, that's a big thing that everybody tells you, marketing the whole bit.

They always say, Hey, what's your why? But I. I think it's deeper than that. I think it's, you know, it's ingrained in us. We might not know or be able to put into words why we're here, and then there's people that, fumble through life, different careers, different things. They come up with different passions, and they grow and evolve and that's that why.

But it's there, you know what I mean? If you are able to map people and as they go through passions, positions, families, the whole bit, there is a why in there somewhere. Why they were put on this earth. You found your why very distinctly, which makes big sense. Why you just like, you know, you immediately return to your body and you're ready to go.

Gives me goosebumps. Just a about it. Yeah, 

Ash Perrow: yeah. And connected to the why was afterwards I kept thinking, oh, I, I thought I was living from my heart already. You know, like I was kind and I was doing my best. But, and having said that, right, life had been very challenging leading up to that experience because in 20, 2005, my, my then wife, my ex-wife, we, we had a stillborn daughter, right?

And from that experience, I had post-traumatic stress and it took a few years. Like post-traumatic stress can be so subtle at the start, and then it just grows and grows and grows, you know? And so I ended up with, you know, I ended up where I hardly slept for eight months, so I then ended up in mental health clinics and severe depression and adrenal fatigue.

And it literally had taken me about seven years to get my health back to a reasonable level. And then I had the near death experience, right? Life was still hard. So the relationship I was in at that time, it was hard. We were doing our best. We cared for each other. And so here I am having this near death experience saying, I wanna stay for this family.

That wasn't what my purpose was, right? My purpose was to stay for the work that I do, walk the planet from my heart. And so our questions, they drive what we do in life. So we know we have questions. How do we do this? How do we make this happen? How do we get this outcome? How do we be happy? Whatever it is.

Those questions, they create pictures in our head, and then we operate towards those pictures. My picture changed, right? My picture had been and, and I was very good at being the martyr. Yeah. Very good at putting myself last, taking care of everybody else, not standing up for myself. That had to change because that wasn't walking the planet from my heart.

So this experience was almost, no, it was just over eight years ago now, eight and a half years ago. So from that near death experience, the question was, how do I live from my heart? And of course, also I experienced consciousness. What was that? What was that? I had left my body and I still existed.

What was that? And so the last eight years has been this inquiry into how do I live from my heart? What does that mean? What's consciousness? What does that mean? Am I, I had this experience where I was just energy and I could still think. And so that led me down this path of inquiry. The relationship I was in split up two weeks after I got out of hospital.

I was very, very ill. It took me eight months to get back to full-time work. But literally the universe just went, you have nothing. Right. You don't have anywhere to live. You have very few possessions. I had my daughter and her bedroom and her toys and things, and we moved out and we literally started life again from nothing.

And there were times when I was in a hospital and I was just this chunk of meat breathing in and out and all that. And I was so grateful that I had a meditation practice 'cause I could just lay there and, you know, I couldn't move in the initial stages and just lay there and breathe in and out and go, oh, I wasn't living from my heart, so what am I gonna do?

How do I find out how to live from my heart?

Brad Minus: Interesting. So what did you, what kind of questions were coming up? How do I live from my heart? What questions derived from that that put you down the right path? 

Ash Perrow: What was stopping me in pre near death experience?

What was stopping me? Ah, okay. It was conditioning. Yeah, it was upbringing. So it was the, the stories or the experiences that I had ingrained and, and the, the things that I had made that mean. Right. So, for example, any, any sort of experience where I felt like I got it wrong, well that made me believe that I was less than or I was not good enough.

So I started doing this deep personal work. There's a wonderful retreat called The Path of Love, and I had done some of their sort of minor work and post near death experience. I thought, okay, I. I'm gonna go do their, their major retreat, which is a week long retreat.

That's where I'm gonna start to learn how to live from my heart. And it was a perfect way to start. I actually been involved in that work for about eight years. I've gone and helped and volunteered for about 10 times on the retreat. And, that work was life changing.

Through that work, I met my now wife, it was all about, well, what is your unique fingerprint of your heart? How do you honor that? How do you connect with other people? How do you manage being vulnerable? What is the past that's getting in the way? Right? Like, my past was in front of me before the near death experience.

It was blocking me. And then through that work, I went in and learned, okay, now my past is behind me. Plant medicines came along. Yeah. Because the, the plant medicines, they open up consciousness, right?

Because my experience now from having worked with different plants is they, those plants, they actually have their own consciousness themselves. Like, there's beings that are connected to these plants and the oldest, you know, one of the oldest life forms on the plant are plants, right? So there's millions or billions of years of wisdom in these beings.

And that was opened up from that near death experience going, ah, there's something else, right? There's something else to life. And so that's created this adventurous life and, at times very challenging. But the rewards of living from the heart far outweigh what my experience of life was like before.

Brad Minus: That's so interesting that, the way that you say that, plant medicine, and I'm gonna, you know, let's bring up a couple of things. One makes me think of like ayahuasca. 

Ash Perrow: Mm-hmm. 

Brad Minus: Have you experienced ayahuasca? Yeah. Numerous times. 

Ash Perrow: Okay. 

Brad Minus: Yeah.

Ash Perrow: There's also the wisdom of plants that aren't psychedelic plants. So what you can do is you can diet on a particular plant and connect in with the wisdom of that plant through your intention and the diet of that particular plant. So it doesn't have to be a psychedelic plant, 

Brad Minus: right.

That's interesting. 'cause that's what everybody's gonna think of. That's what I thought of. Right. I thought of ayahuasca and psilocybin, you know? Yeah. And, you know, cannabis, you know, those are the things, obviously everybody's gonna think of that first, right? Yeah. So, but that's interesting that you bring up the master plants that you said is, it's a diet of that plant and then seeking the wisdom from it.

Yeah. So what does, what does it, does that look 

Ash Perrow: like 

Brad Minus: become, 

Ash Perrow: like? Yeah. So have you heard of homeopathy? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people say homeopathy is woowoo, right? But that is where modern medicine came from because homeopathy was about the essence of plants. Yeah. So you might, you take this little sugar pale, right?

Just this little, very tiny little, little Pele. Right? Tiny. But it has the essence of a plant. So if we go back to my, when I had post-traumatic stress, right? There was this fear of feeling exposed, feel, and I went to a homeopath, phenomenal homeopath. And she's like, okay, you need to take like a podium.

And I've never heard of this plant like a podium and like a podium. It's a lichen that grows on, grows on exposed cliffs. Okay. I took this like a podium within minutes, and it's just a sugar pill with the essence of the plant somehow infused into it.

Total relaxation, total calm, right? And it's like, like treats, like in homeopathy world. So you take an exposed plant to be comfortable with your own exposure. Yeah. It's amazing, right? It's mind blowing because it's so far from the mainstream experience. However, it's the ancient experience that's always been there.

This is how humans have evolved, right? We've watched what animals do with plants, the whole idea that lots of humans must have died experimenting with different mushrooms or plants to work out what we can and can't eat. What they did was they just observed what the animals were doing, right?

Tobacco is a phenomenal, mosquito repellent. And how they worked that out was that eagles were taking tobacco into their nest to protect the young from mosquitoes. This wisdom of the plants and, you know, that's where our modern medicine comes from, right? Iboga, which they use for addiction,

comes from the a Bogger plant, which is a psychedelic plant with deep wisdom. That's very helpful to people that have addictions.

If you wanna hear a great podcast around all these kind of thing, there's one called, plants of the Gods. And it's a phenomenal ethnobotanist who spent probably 60 60 around 60 years in the Amazon and traveling around the world exploring plants and the connection to medicine and, and human consciousness and things like that.

A really phenomenal podcast. And it's a very, it's very scientific and, and practical. It's not woowoo. It's not the, you know, stuff. You can't see it. It's, it's very measurable. 

Brad Minus: Those are my favorite kind of podcasts actually. I love 'em when they're a little bit moresy. And I like what we're talking about, but it makes sense what you were saying about watching the animals.

Right. Because we've always been told if your dog is all of a sudden craving grass, you start to see it moning on grass, their stomach hurts and the grass calms it down. So that's just an example of us watching animals and figuring out what that was.

Now we have wheatgrass and that is very good for your gut. 

Ash Perrow: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: But yeah, that's incredible. So you said, exposure, you're, it's a lichen, lichens, lichens live on the cliff, that's an exposure and it helped your exposure, yes.

Of your ptsd. Ts a crass, 

Ash Perrow: An example that people might be able to relate to more. You have a hangover, you have hair of the dog, right? You have a drink the next day. It helps you hangover. You don't wanna keep going, of course, right?

Brad Minus: Yeah. 

Ash Perrow: But there's a little sort of example around like treating, like, 

Brad Minus: I find that, you know, what do people say to settle your stomach? Ginger ale, which is actually acidic, not basic, but it does calm you down. The bubbles, the, carbon dioxide and the acidity of the ginger. It calms your stomach down, like treating like 

Ash Perrow: Yeah,

Brad Minus: interesting, isn't it? 

Ash Perrow: And if you are having stomach issues, something that's amazing for that is peppermint tea. Also, and so this is the wisdom that's come from thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. It's just that we've been led away from that two patented materials 

Brad Minus: and then mass processing and, dosing, changes, heating, cooling to make changes to phs and to the actual chemical itself.

She doesn't really have anything there. The person that she fell in love with back in the 17 hundreds. So she goes back and she stays, but she's the doctor at this point. She had gone through medical school while she was back. So she goes back, she finds her the love of her life, they get married, blah, blah, blah.

And, she, ends up being like the healer of the area. They're in Scotland and then they're in London, and then they end up in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War. And she develops Ether to help her to do those bullet wounds and everything so that she can actually get in, you know, well before it's time.

But she does it with plants. She goes, okay, I need this, this, and this in order to make ether. What is the first time we were able to have, you know, actually help people with surgery?

We had, we were able to develop ether, mold, penicillin. So, yeah, I get it. So if we don't think about some of these other plants, like you said, the master plants, then, you know, we're, we're fooling ourselves. 

Ash Perrow: And with the, so tobacco that, that's a master plan, right? So tobacco is a very cleansing plant and it's, so there's two strains of tobacco, right?

One strain is what people are smoking in western world, and that became very popular. The other strain, it's more, a pure healing strain, right? And so it's very cleansing, but being a master plant, tobacco has a being attached to it, right? So in South American culture, tobacco was the original master plant.

And what they found was that tobacco taught them how to make ayahuasca right. So there's hundreds of thousands of different plants in the Amazon and tobacco guided the tribes to combine the two ingredients together to make this psychoactive substance. The wisdom of the plants, it's been guiding for a long, long, long time.

But in our western world, we are desensitized, right? We are desensitized to our body. And you know, people will often say, when they go off medications, they realize things were happening, but the medications were blocking them from experiencing feeling what was happening. So we all have this sensitivity as our nature, but it's coming back to the sensitivity.

And you know, even if we think about emotional sensitivity, we have these layers. Some people will say, oh, I feel like my heart's really hard at the moment. Like, I'm just not letting anybody in. We are protecting the heart from feeling, we're protecting the sensitivity, but we have the sensitivity that we can open up to.

Brad Minus: So that sensitivity, is that something that you work with people to obtain that sensitivity, you know, helping people become more heart-centered, 

Ash Perrow: that changes everything because the heart is compassionate and kind and generous and loving patient and the mind, it's critical, it's judgmental, it's fearful.

And so when we can come from the place of the heart, we can hear the heart, we can hear the guidance, like the intuition. That guidance that I got that said, if you go surfing, you will hurt your back today. It's always there. It's whispering, right? If we can come into the sensitivity of the heart and connecting with that, and then use the mind as the tool, so I kind of go east meets west, right?

We need, in the world that we live in, we need action. We need the warrior aspect of ourselves to come in and take the action and complete the project or complete the triathlon, whatever it is, right? That we learn a lot from that when there's a lot of benefit from that. With the guidance of the heart.

So the heart will say, go this way. Come this way. It's like it's calling us. And so people with purpose, their heart is often calling them, although sometimes the mind, creates this illusion of what the purpose is and then creates all this fear and anxiety around how to achieve our purpose.

But if we come back to the heart, we reconnect with that compassionate patient aspect of us that is actually an easier place to operate from the world. It's a more sustainable place as far as energy goes. The mind is the tool for executing on the actions, not the one that should be deciding whether or not we do something.

It's the heart's guidance that's telling us where to go. So for example, for you with, Sean. It's like your heart was telling you do this, do this, do this. The mind might have come in and said, well, you've already got a lot on your schedule and you shouldn't be doing that, and you wanna go holiday and you wanna do right.

That's the mind. The heart is saying, go this way. And then the mind its true role is to go, okay, my heart's calling me to care for this foster child. How do you do that? 

Brad Minus: That's something that I would imagine with all the distractions nowadays, you know, whether it be entertainment, social media, news that you might find a lot of people that are blocked, like can't hear what their heart is saying in order to then execute. So basically what I'm hearing from you was that heart makes the decision, the heart leads you in the right direction.

The mind just helps you execute. 

Ash Perrow: Yes. Yep. And so if you're in doubt, if you're in anxiety, that's the mind trying to take control. And then it's like being aware of that and going, hang on mind. No. You are actually in the backseat. The heart's in the front. This is where we're going.

Your job mind is to get attention to detail, execute on the actions, and the heart will keep guiding me what the next way is. 

Brad Minus: Oh, wow. We talk a lot, I talk a lot about that in the mental aspect of triathlon and endurance sports. There's that aspect of, Hey, I want to do this. I wanna hit this certain time, I want to go.

And then you get out there and you are, you're feeling like, oh wait, this is too hard. I need to slow down. I'm not gonna make it the rest of the race. Or, oh, this is starting to hurt. Maybe I should bow out, blah, blah, blah. And we call it monkey mind. And it's like the monkeys on your back.

Are you gonna listen to the monkey or are you gonna listen to your desire? And that's basically what it is, you know? And you have to learn to tune out the monkey and go strictly on desire.

The heart becomes desire. The heart is what the heart wants. What the heart wants. That's saying that makes sense to what you're getting at. But the mind will stop you. I can't believe I'm bringing this up in this conversation, but I'm going to, 'cause I bring it up a lot, but David Goggins, have you heard of him? 

Ash Perrow: Yep. I know I've, read his book and familiar with his view of the world. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. But that's kind of exactly what he was trying to get away from. He was trying to get his body to go to the edge, but he knew that his mind was keeping him from doing that.

That's his whole thing getting past your brain, and getting your body to actually go to the edge of where does it actually start to break down? Where does it break down? And then pushing further, he uses fitness and everything, but it's almost the same exact thing because that was his whole thing.

Get past it. And the mindset says, that's when he says, so to me when he goes, oh, I have David and I have Goggins. And he says, well, Goggins will come out and says, you wimp, you need to get it. Goggins is the heart. David is his brain. 

Ash Perrow: And you know, the minds, all it's trying to do is protect you and make sure humanity survives Right to come full circle.

Survival. It's preoccupied with survival, so if it perceives that you are being courageous or vulnerable, it's going to activate protection mode. Because like the crudes movie, stay in the cave. Don't go out of the cave. But the heart, it's expansive. It's like expand, expand, experience the wholeness of yourself, the fullness of yourself, which I wasn't doing pre, near death experience because of the fear and the conditioning.

Brad Minus: So much sense. You know, now that you talk about it and how you were experiencing your life and how you felt like you were having a heart driven life, but then you weren't. And now how you're feeling about it.

It makes it, it makes complete sense. It is mind blowing almost. What you just went, what you just went over. So let me, you have a couple of workshops and things on your website. He has, it's ash pro.com, and then it leads you into something else.

But he's got something called what is your visibility level? Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that? 

Ash Perrow: So one of the things that I do now, so I do personal coaching. So heart center people want to connect with their heart. If they resonate with what we're talking about today, that's what I do.

And so, because I've had to learn to do it for myself and my own heart's guidance is, help other people. This is how you help other people. So there's that aspect. The other aspect is that I help heart center professionals to connecting with what it is they wanna do. Be seen, show up. Increase their visibility.

You know, how do you become a podcast guest? What do you post on social media? Because I was, it was through perseverance, but my guidance by heart's guidance, social media. Part of my download, my near death experience was be yourself. Share yourself. That's why I'm here having this conversation with you.

Right. That's the guidance. And I know if I don't follow my heart's guidance, my suffering will increase. It doesn't mean there's no suffering, but it means, if I listen to what my heart tells me, I'll do better. I won't have a back injury. I will do better in life. So it's like listening to that.

So, I help professionals do that. Listen to their heart, connect with the heart. How do you listen to your heart? And there's all these just wonderful, beautiful techniques that I teach people how to do that and help them stay aligned as they go through that journey. 

Brad Minus: So he's got a connecting, to your inner guidance, which is what we've been having this discussion about is the heart, and how it guides you and you use the brain for execution. Your education, and your experience. For execution. A Guide to Self Therapy with ai.

That sounds very interesting. I might have to download that one. The Inner Critic Micro course and identify your skills and strength. That's good. This is what he was talking about, that he's been working with, executives and, people in the Fortune 500, corporate world. And then of course, definitely if you jump onto this website, you need to do a one-on-one coaching inquiry that he's got there as well.

So definitely some great resources that, I would definitely take a look at. And then of course, he has his own podcast called Beyond Turning Points, so definitely take a look at that. And I'm imagining that you're on all of the podcasts. Directories, apples, Spotify, all that stuff. Great. Same place that we're here.

And he, I did, I did stalk your, your Instagram. Great. Some wonderful, wonderful, advice and stuff that he gives on there and then he is on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. And I will have all of that in the show notes. Also, his direct URL, all of the, links will be right inside the bottom of the show notes.

Just as always, you know that if you've been listening for a while, you know that the show notes are an incredible source of information. It doesn't replace what you hear, but it does give you a good idea of what's happening inside the episode. So that will all be in the show notes.

I, if you're listening on or watching on YouTube, I would really appreciate if you go ahead and hit that, like, subscribe and, you know, hit that notification bell so you always know the next time that we have a episode dropping. And if you're on Apple or on Spotify, if you'd like to go ahead and give us a review.

And I don't even care if it's a bad review because it just helps me evolve the podcast. And if you've been with us since episode one, you know that this podcast has evolved quite a bit. But we remain with the same message of giving you nuggets of information to help you reach your potential

this episode was a boatload of nuggets for you to be thinking about. All, you know, heart-centered, like we said, talk about executing with your brain, but listening to your heart, finding where your purpose is, using your heart.

It's amazing. And of course, the expansiveness of what Ash went through is a lesson within itself. Learn from that. Learn from other people, use it yourself, and you'll be able to apply things like that. Ash, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. I cannot tell you what a, what a enormous amount of wisdom that you had you granted us today.

I can't thank you enough. Thank you, Brad, 

Ash Perrow: It's a gift to me just to come on and yeah. What a beautiful gift to the listeners too. So 

Brad Minus: thank 

Ash Perrow: you. 

Brad Minus: Thank you so much. So for Ash Perrow and myself, Brad minus, we will see you in the next one.