Meet Ashley Wray. She is the founder and CEO of Mala Collective which works with artisans from Bali, India, and Nepal to create beautiful and powerful products supporting a mindfulness and meditation practice. The inception of it is a story in and of itself that we’ll be discussing…plus it is a mindfulness resource for all of us. Seriously, we had never used a Mala and now understand the power! It may be just what you need to make meditation work for you.

Ashley is also a sought-after meditation and mindfulness coach for high performers. She helps C-suite incorporate mindfulness into their roles to reduce stress, prevent burnout, build confidence, and create clarity for decision-making and effective leadership. Ashley partners with companies including TED, Google, and VaynerX to bring wellness to corporate settings as well as universities, recently teaching at Oxford Saïd Business School in collaboration with the Institute for Real Growth.

Ashley leads you through a simple and short, yet impactful meditation during this episode…and she’s sharing easy practices that may make a huge difference in your everyday life.

Here are a few highlights from our Seeking Center conversation

Robyn + Karen: Ashley, you went from a journalist to a meditation coach – it’s quite the leap! What role did serendipity play in the launching of the Mala Collective?

Ashley Wray: Most people think I started this business because I was so in love with a practice of mindfulness meditation. But the reality is I had never sat and done a meditation before! It actually scared the life out of me that I would be doing it wrong!

When I went to Bali, I fell in love with Mala Beads. I thought they were so beautiful! I bought a whole bunch of them when I was flying from Bali to Thailand, and this beautiful woman came up to me and said, “I love your aura. Can I sit and talk to you?” She ended up being the woman that made the very same mala beads that we had bought while on the island!

That moment of serendipity completely transformed me and changed my life path. And while I do appreciate and love that story, it’s also about the realization of how much one meeting of two souls can change your life. And it’s the trust and the surrendering to let it unfold into what it’s meant to be.

That’s what meditation is all about. And that’s how my life shifted from being a journalist into meditation and mindfulness.

R+K: Tell us more about Mala Beads. What are they and what is the tradition behind them?

Ashley: The intention behind a Mala is rooted in Buddhism and in Hinduism. It’s a physical, tactile tool that you use in meditation to hold your focus and your attention. Visualize a string of 108 beads with a tassel on one end that looks very similar to a rosary.

When your mind starts to wander in meditation, we use the Mala Beads to come back to this thing in our fingers, in our hands. We turn each bead. Inhale. Exhale. Turn the bead. Inhale. Exhale. And when you go all the way around back to the tassel, that symbolizes a full meditation.

So Mala is this thing that you can hold to ground you and bring you back to the present moment over and over again. And it’s such a special way to connect beauty and intentionality and practice.

R+K: It sounds like at its basics, meditation is really all about giving yourself the space and time to just listen to your inner self, right?

Ashley: Absolutely, that is it! I believe we already know deep down everything that we need to know. We already know our purpose. We know what we need to do. We know how we want to feel, who we want to be, how we want to show up, how we want to be seen, what we believe we’re worthy of.

I think meditation creates that space for us to listen to that.

R+K: Ashley thank you! And for those who may have seen the term meditation when they saw this episode and thought, “I can’t do that,” you’ve now been introduced to a beautiful practice and new way to start!

MORE FROM ASHLEY WRAY

• Find out more about Ashley and how to work with her at ashleywray.co
• Shop Mala Collective. Use promocode: Seeking20 for the Seeking Center discount
• Free Meditation Series: visit Mala 5 Day Free Meditation Series

Listen to the entire conversation.