Here's How Wellness Warrior Ashley Marietta Made Her Home A Simple Sanctuary
In xoNecole's Dope Abodes, we tour the living spaces of millennial women, where they dwell, how they live, and the things they choose to adorn and share their spaces with.
The best things in life are simple and sometimes the most exciting part of waking up is knowing that you're at home. While jet setting the world and securing a bag may be a whole mood, you also need a peaceful landing strip to recollect and recharge. According to Atlanta native and professional wellness savage, Ashley Marietta, your home should be a place that heals you from the inside out.
The work-from-home creative and her boyfriend, Forte, who is a producer, share a two-bedroom apartment in the Lindbergh area of Atlanta that is abundant with foliage, crystals, and a whole lot of zen. While one room of the house acts as Forte's in-house studio, the rest is adorned with plant life and vintage finds found at thrift stores and estate sales.
The creative says that she inherited a love of plants from her mother, who Ashley hails as a "master gardener", and is now working to cultivate has a mini-conservatory of her own while she pursues an education in herbalism. She told xoNecole, "I'm just really in the wellness field. I'm an herbalism student. I love anything that has to do with herbs and nature, natural remedies."
Photo by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
To Ashley, her plants are not only a hub of medicinal properties, but they also hold a great deal of sentimental value. Aside from her aloe vera, majesty palm, and bamboo plants, Ashley says that there is one very special piece of greenery that will forever hold a place in her heart. She shared that when she was fired from the last 9 to 5 she ever had, she left with nothing but a shrub and a dream. She explained, "I love this plant because I got fired from this job and that's the last job I ever had. And when I left I had a piece that was [very small] and I took it with me. And I grew it from there, so that's my baby. We came up out the mud together, literally."
We got a glimpse into this herbal hottie's simple sanctuary on an exclusive tour, where Ashley gives us the details on what she looks for in a home and how to make minimalist magic on a budget:
Manifest & Chill
Photo by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
"I'm not playing about my energy, I sage once a week," she told xoNecole sternly. "I don't even know if the whole crystal vibe is real, but mentally, it makes me feel better, so I keep my crystals on deck. I have crystals everywhere, in the bathroom, on the bookshelf. At the very least, they claim that they deflect cell phone waves, allegedly."
Frugal Finds
Photo by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
"I try to treasure hunt because I'm just now starting to make stable money. So before this point, I had to really hunt for things that were nice but affordable. Even Ross for me was expensive. So I would say thrift stores and estate sales are really cool. Because it's stuff you can't find anywhere else or people are just basically trying to get rid of it."
Vanity Fit For A Queen
Photo by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
"I'm not gonna lie, this is why we even ended up here. This is what sold us on [our home] because we were like, 'Eh, it's okay, whatever.' Then we saw the bathroom, we were like, 'Okay cool.' 'Cause he and I, we used to fight to get ready in the morning to get ready. So it definitely was a selling point," Ashley laughed. "I could stay in here forever. I really take pride in it. When I get ready to go, it's my time to kind of pause and meditate and just take a breather. And then I start getting ready and just zen out instead of rushing like I used to."
Comfy Corner
Photo by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
"My boyfriend and I are both antisocial and we both like to just chill and relax. So even though we're like together in one space, it's not invasive because we're able to do our thing. We'll kind of congregate here which is is why I love this couch."
Vision Boards & Views
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In regards to her vision board and its very bold writing of the word "no", Ashley shares a sentiment a lot of us feel about the powerful boundary-setting word. "I just felt like I need to say 'no' more and not out of like negativity, but just out of respect for myself. This is like the year of me focusing on me. I think I was like really considerate of everyone else and helping other people build their brand. So I said, this the year I want to focus on my health, my wealth, be more of an entrepreneur. Just feeling like I don't have to be tethered to people, family and doing what I gotta do for myself and knowing that my wealth will overflow into them. I know that's like complicated but that's literally what I'm thinking when I did this."
Click through the gallery below to tour her dope abode, as well as some of the intimate details that make her apartment feel like home:
Keep up with Ashley by following her on Instagram @AshleyMarietta!
Featured image by Sanniyah Sloan for xoNecole
Taylor "Pretty" Honore is a spiritually centered and equally provocative rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a love for people and storytelling. You can probably find me planting herbs in your local community garden, blasting "Back That Thang Up" from my mini speaker. Let's get to know each other: @prettyhonore.
Black women are not a monolith. We all are deserving of healing and wholeness despite what we've been through, how much money we have in the bank, or what we look like. Most importantly, we are enough—even when we are not working, earning, or serving.
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Release Stress & Restore Harmony In Your Body With Shaking Meditation
When we reflect on our own path as women in light of the women who came before us, it’s easy to see that the loads we’ve carried haven’t always been the lightest. From everyday stresses to generational trauma with roots that are difficult to trace, one must ask where all that weight goes if we never release it.
The body holds the score for all the anxieties, worries, and unease that we’ve endured over time. Family and society often tell us to quiet our emotions, maintain a brave face, and keep our emotions bottled up within. But as we know, anything with too much pressure will eventually burst.
And while we are steadily discovering self-care methods like meditation to shed this emotional baggage, it may take a little more than sitting still in the quiet of our mind to let go of our deep-rooted tension. Fortunately, mindful movement could be an unexpected way for you to let go of worry and anxiety while building emotional resiliency, and such is the case with shaking meditation.
What Is Shaking Meditation?
Shaking meditation is a form of tension and trauma-releasing exercises or TRE that “assists the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension, and trauma.” This series of exercises of muscular shaking and vibrating activates a natural reflex mechanism that releases muscular tension, thus calming down the nervous system and encouraging your body to return back to a state of balance.
“Shaking meditation can be powerful because it moves your body — and in Eastern medicine, we say that moves your chi,” says Jenelle Kim, DACM, L.Ac, a ninth-generation doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine and author of Myung Sung: The Korean Art of Living Meditation.
According to Dr. Kim, understanding chi helps us understand our bodies and how we're feeling mentally, physically, and spiritually. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), chi is known to represent your life force; it is the energy that flows through you and everything, and in many cultures, plays an essential role in our health.
“We have chi that moves in our blood and throughout our entire body; connecting our organ systems, muscles, and joints,” she tells xoNecole. “It allows everything to function and to be nourished. We know blood travels throughout our body through our circulatory system, but chi also travels through our body — much in the same way — through the meridian system. If you picture chi as vital energy, it moves the blood.”
It’s important for our body’s chi to stay in flow. When we go about our daily life with stress, trauma, or even mental injuries, our energy becomes stagnant. But various movement practices like Qigong or shaking meditation encourage your chi to circulate through your body which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which “is in charge of telling our brain and body to calm down, relax, ultimately, let go,” Dr. Kim says.
As Black women, there are times in life when it feels like we bear the weight of the world on our shoulders, with few spaces to go when we need to lighten the load. But as Dr. Kim explains, because women are “naturally yin beings,” we take on more because we can handle more. “According to the energies of nature that have been passed down for thousands of years, women are more complex. And what that almost always means is that we can think a lot more.” And while that speaks to the resiliency of our being, it can have a negative effect on our bodies when we store more than we release.
“If we don't have ways of releasing this, it will ultimately affect our lives physically, mentally, and spiritually. Then it passes on to our children, and that's where we get generational trauma,” she says.
Although shaking meditation may be a new and unfamiliar practice, it’s one that could prove to be beneficial to those who have experienced trauma on an individual and communal level. The movements are simple to follow and accessible, and in a matter of minutes, you’ll feel more calm and relaxed, while relieving any anxiety, frustration, and tension inside of you.
So if you’re ready to restore harmony within your body, here are the steps to perform shaking meditation on your own.
How To Incorporate Shaking Meditation Into Your Daily Routine:
Step 1: “Stand with your feet hip-width apart. You can do this while sitting or standing — depending on your comfort level. Make sure all of your joints are soft, so nothing's locked.
Step 2: “Begin raising onto your tiptoes and falling back onto your heels. Not so hard to where you're shocking your spine, but enough to just kind of wake up your body. Repeat three to five times, dropping down onto your heels.”
Step 3: “Next, start with your hands first and shake them. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Shake them and go up to your arms, to your elbows, and then up to your shoulders. Now your whole arms should be moving.”
Step 4: “Then you can start your legs, repeating the same shaking movement. You then move your feet moving, go up through your core, and then shake everything out through your head.”
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