The Awakening Spaces Podcast - Conscious Construction for a Healthy Home

In this special solo episode, Ashley walks through everything that led up to Stellan’s birth, from the journal entry she wrote to him on his due date to the moment her water broke twenty minutes later, through two and a half hours of the most intense and fast labor she could have imagined, to catching him in her own bedroom with Brandon by her side and her midwife barely making it through the door. It is exactly the kind of first-time home birth story Ashley wished she could have found when she was pregnant and searching for proof that it was possible.

Ashley also shares the moments she almost talked herself out of trusting her body, what the OB who told her she was high-risk and that her cervix might not open got completely wrong, and what her midwife team said after the birth that made her cry in the best possible way. She talks about castor oil induction, the fetal ejection reflex, why the shakes after birth might be the body’s way of releasing stored trauma, and what valerian did for her in the golden hour. She also gives a quick update on life with Stellan three weeks in, where she is spending time on Substack, and what is coming on the podcast while she continues her maternity leave.

This episode is for every woman who has been told her body might not be able to do this. Ashley’s story is proof that it might surprise you.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Ashley’s Substack with full birth story, photos, and motherhood content: Awakening Spaces on Substack
• Karen Welton Pain Free Birth courses and podcast
• Zara D’Cotta, The Healthy Home guest episodes:

• EP56: Better Buildings Start with People: Building Science and Industry Culture with Mark Wille of The Build Show
• EP57: Soul-Led Architecture: Designing Healthy Homes from the Inside Out with Jo Gillies of Archisoul
• EP58: Dancing Raven: Building a Healthy Vacation Rental in the Sonoran Desert with Ray Clamons

• Castor oil USP for labor induction (pharmaceutical grade, not the same as castor oil packs)
• Amniotic fluid pH test strips
• Valerian for post-birth shakes
• Organic cotton postpartum diapers (link to be included in show notes)
• Awakening Spaces email: hello@awakeningspaces.com
• Brownell Landrum wishing episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower you and one-on-one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it look like when Building Biology, building science, and natural building are integrated from the beginning of an ambitious, health-focused project in the American Southwest?

In this episode, guest host Zara D’Cotta sits down with Ray Clamons, architectural designer, natural builder, licensed general contractor, certified Passive House consultant, and founder of Natural Building Works in Tucson, Arizona. Zara first met Ray on site at the Dancing Raven project last year and returned for blower door test day, and the conversation they have here is rich with the kind of real-world detail that only comes from someone who has actually built the thing.

Dancing Raven is the vision and deeply personal project of Amelie, a French Canadian woman who spent ten years navigating mold illness before deciding to build the healthiest home she could possibly create in the Sonoran Desert.

Ray explains how the project team came together around Amélie’s brief and how rammed earth, straw bale, natural plasters, moisture-aware detailing, airtightness and mechanical ventilation were brought together within a climate that moves between extreme dry heat and monsoon-season humidity.

Zara and Ray explore the project’s blower-door testing, post-construction monitoring and what the data is beginning to reveal about the performance of the rammed-earth and straw-bale areas. They also discuss VOCs, ventilation, caulking, installation sequencing, and the necessary collaboration between designers, builders, and trades.

This is a conversation about pursuing an ambitious healthier-building vision while working through real-world sequencing, material and construction challenges. For anyone building new, working with natural materials, or seeking to understand how Building Biology and building science translate into decisions on site, Dancing Raven offers an exceptional case study.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• How To BUILD A RAMMED EARTH WALL: Sustainable & STRONG: https://youtu.be/VA-9d9_OhLk
• How To Get Started With Rammed Earth Building: https://youtu.be/3RyHy1bNJuU
• Dancing Raven project Instagram: @elated_raven
• Intello Plus air barrier by ProClima: https://proclima.com/products/internal-sealing/intello-plus
• Passive house principles applied in hot arid desert climate: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/16/14/2753
• Eliminate, ventilate, respirate framework for healthy indoor air: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123024014129
• Zara’s Healthy Building Materials Mastermind: https://www.thehealthyhome.com.au/healthy-building-materials-mastermind
• Ashley’s Conscious Construction Container: https://courses.awakeningspaces.com/ccc

CONNECT WITH ZARA
Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today, she works with builders, designers, building-product manufacturers and industry organisations across Australia and internationally, delivering professional education, technical consulting, EMF assessments, team capability training and keynote presentations that help integrate healthier materials, low-EMF design and Building Biology principles into mainstream construction.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Website | Instagram | Youtube | Facebook

Ray Clamons is an architectural designer, natural builder, licensed general contractor, certified Passive House consultant, sustainable building advisor, and certified permaculture designer, and the founder of Natural Building Works in Tucson, Arizona. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arizona and has spent over a decade building a design-build company specializing in rammed earth, straw bale, natural plasters, and regenerative water harvesting landscapes. Natural Building Works builds around the belief that every project should be self-sufficient in power, water, and food production, and, where possible, builds volunteer workshops around each project to create community and make natural building more accessible.

Ray is also a drummer in the Grateful Dead tribute band Top Dead Center and the creator of some of the most popular rammed earth building videos on YouTube. He is currently available for consulting on healthy natural building projects outside of Tucson.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What would it look like if your architect understood not just how you live, but who you are at your deepest level, and designed your home from that place outward? In this episode, guest host Zara D’Cotta sits down with Jo Gillies, registered architect, director, and founder of Archisoul Architects, for one of the most expansive and genuinely surprising conversations this podcast has had on the intersection of architecture, health, and the human spirit.

Jo’s path into this work runs through Guillain-Barré syndrome at twenty-five, a long journey of questioning what we put into our bodies and our buildings, and decades of sacred retreats across Africa and Peru that have shaped a design philosophy unlike anything you will hear from a conventional architect.

Together, Zara and Jo explore what sacred intention in architecture actually means in practice, how Jo uses the five love languages and the DISC personality profile to draw out what a client truly needs from their home, and why sacred geometry is inert until you activate it through intention.

They also get into Jo’s project in Costa Rica called The Vessyl, a copper dome sound healing space in the jungle where passive house technology was applied to achieve a stable ambient temperature year-round despite the humidity and a nearby volcano, and what early contractor involvement actually looks like when a building team is genuinely working together from the start.

Jo also speaks about why she refers building biologists as essential consultants on her projects rather than trying to carry that knowledge herself, and what she tells homeowners who are nervous about asking hard questions when interviewing an architect. This one covers a lot of ground and all of it is worth your time.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• The Vessyl, Costa Rica: https://archisoul.com.au/portfolio/vessyl-frequency-dome-costa-rica/
• Passive House Design: https://archisoul.com.au/passive-house-australia/
• Pyramids of Chi, Ubud, Bali: https://ubud.pyramidsofchi.com/
• Zara’s Healthy Building Materials Mastermind: https://www.thehealthyhome.com.au/healthy-building-materials-mastermind
• Ashley’s Conscious Construction Container: https://courses.awakeningspaces.com/ccc
• Brent Little, Pinehaven Healthy Homes: https://pinehavenhealthyhomes.com/
• Mevissen et al. (2025), Effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure on cancer in laboratory animal studies: A systematic review. Environment International, 199, 109482. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40339346/
A 2025 systematic review of laboratory-animal studies, partially funded by the WHO radioprotection programme, which found high-certainty evidence of increased glioma in male rats while noting that extrapolating risk to humans remains complex.
• The Body Keeps the Score (referenced concept): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score
• Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) model: https://www1.bca.gov.sg/growth-and-transformation/procurement/progressive-procurement-approaches/early-contractor-involvement-eci/
• NCC National Construction Code 2025 provisions for daylight, indoor air quality and VOCs: https://ncc.abcb.gov.au/news/2026/ncc-2025-released
• DISC personality profile: https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc
• Five Love Languages framework: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40977357/
• Sacred geometry and Platonic solids: https://www.sacredgeometryshop.com/sacred-geometry/the-secrets-of-the-platonic-solids/

CONNECT WITH ZARA
Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today, she works with builders, designers, building-product manufacturers and industry organisations across Australia and internationally, delivering professional education, technical consulting, EMF assessments, team capability training and keynote presentations that help integrate healthier materials, low-EMF design and Building Biology principles into home design & construction.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Website | Instagram | Youtube | Facebook

Jo Gillies is a registered architect, director, and founder of Archisoul Architects in Sydney, Australia, with over thirty years of experience designing homes, heritage buildings, commercial spaces, and international wellness projects that go well beyond function. Her philosophy was shaped early by childhood years in the Bahamas and English villages that left her with a deep understanding of how the built environment creates belonging, community, and a sense of soul. She studied architecture at Sydney University, worked across architectural firms, film set design, and high-end furniture layout planning before founding Archisoul in 2012 around a single belief: that purposeful design activates the soul of the people living and working within it.

In 2014, Jo delivered a TEDx talk at the Powerhouse Museum on masculine and feminine principles in architecture, and her work has since expanded to draw from sacred geometry, biomorphic design, the five love languages, and decades of personal study through sacred retreats across Africa and Peru. She leads a team of twelve across residential, commercial, and international projects, including The Vessyl in Costa Rica and an ongoing collaboration with the Pyramids of Chi in Ubud, Bali, and brings the lens of building biology and low EMF design into her briefing process and material selection through her participation in Zara’s Healthy Building Materials Mastermind and Low EMF Home Design and Construction course.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it actually take to shift an entire industry toward building healthier, higher-performing homes, and where does that change actually begin? In this special episode, Zara D'Cotta of The Healthy Home steps in as guest host and sits down with Mark Wille, author, builder, carpenter, and storyteller, and an integral part of the team behind The Build Show, for one of the most wide-ranging and genuinely inspiring conversations this podcast has had on the culture of construction. Mark brings decades of hands-on experience across renovation, rehab, new construction, and green building supply, and a philosophy about people, relationships, and shared knowledge that cuts through every topic they cover.

Together, Zara and Mark walk through why vetting your project team is about chemistry as much as credentials, how building science is happening whether builders acknowledge it or not, and why water control is still the most underserved area in residential construction despite everything the industry has learned. They also dig into the Build HD Standard, a living document being developed to take builders meaningfully beyond code in water, air, vapor, thermal, and installation practices, and why it starts long before the first shovel hits the ground. Mark also shares what it was like to host Zara at The Build Show for EMF testing, why that conversation generated more curiosity than expected, and why he believes the next frontier of sharing best practices belongs to the Spanish-speaking trades.

This episode closes with Mark's children's book, The ABCs of Construction Tech, and what he hopes a child, or the adult reading alongside them, will walk away believing about what is possible in the built environment. If you are building, renovating, working in the trades, or just trying to understand what good looks like in this industry, this one will stay with you.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• The ABCs of Construction Tech by Mark Wille: https://a.co/d/0g7do92z
• Build HD Standard: buildhdstandard.com
• The Build Show website and platform: https://buildshownetwork.com/
• G-Pod tour featuring Zara’s EMF testing contribution alongside Build Show experts.

CONNECT WITH ZARA
Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today, she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

Mark Wille is an author, builder, carpenter, and storyteller, and a team member at The Build Show. With decades of hands-on experience across renovation, retrofit, new construction, and green-building supply, Mark brings a deeply relational approach to the industry and a genuine belief that when you know better, you build better.

A passionate advocate for Spanish-language building science education and the author of The ABCs of Construction Tech in the You Can Too series, a children's book designed to open young minds to the vocabulary and possibilities of the built environment.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it look like when the healthy-home conversation begins moving upstream, from homeowners fighting to be heard to building professionals asking better questions themselves?

In this special solo episode, guest host Zara D’Cotta of The Healthy Home introduces herself and reflects on the shifts she has witnessed since being diagnosed with mould illness in 2015.

Zara and Ashley have been friends since 2021, connected through shared experiences with environmental illness and their parallel paths through Building Biology. Zara is stepping in to host a series of episodes while Ashley is on maternity leave.

She shares what surprised her during recent travels across Australia and the United States, including the topic generating unexpected interest among builders and other industry professionals at Build Show LIVE in San Antonio.

Zara also previews the conversations ahead with builders, designers and specialists from Australia, the United States and Canada. If you’re building a healthier home or supporting clients through that process, these episodes will offer practical, industry-facing perspectives that complement everything Ashley has created here.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Awakening Spaces Episode 46, Ashley and Zara's full conversation
• Zara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-dcotta/
• Zara on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zaradcotta_thehealthyhome/
• The Build Show, San Antonio: https://www.buildshowlive.com/

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower you and one-on-one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH ZARA
Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it actually look like to build a business around helping people create healthier homes while simultaneously growing a human inside your own body? In this special solo episode, Ashley comes to you at 38, almost 39 weeks pregnant, with a life and business update she has been sitting on for months. From the fear that she might never be able to get pregnant, to the moment everything clicked into place the day after a wishing card session with Brownell Landrum, to the nesting spiral that took over her entire home instead of the gut renovation she had originally planned, this episode is personal, warm, and full of the kind of honest reflection that only comes when you are days away from one of the biggest moments of your life.

Ashley shares what she believes actually helped her get pregnant so quickly after years of health struggles, including morning sunlight, blocking blue light, cleaning up endocrine disruptors, and something she did not even realize was a practice at the time: talking to her son Stellan like he was already here. She also walks through what she has been doing throughout pregnancy to feel supported, from functional lab work and electrolytes to hypnobirthing, the Pain Free Birth course, and a small but mighty stack of books she wishes she had found sooner.

This episode also covers exactly what Awakening Spaces looks like while Ashley is on maternity leave, who is stepping in to support one-on-one clients, who is keeping the Conscious Construction Container alive, and how Zara D'Cotta of The Healthy Home is taking over guest interviews while Ashley is away. If you have been following along or are just tuning in, this one will catch you up on everything and leave you excited for what is coming next.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Awakening Spaces inquiry form: https://awakeningspaces.com/new-client-intake
• Conscious Construction Container: https://courses.awakeningspaces.com/ccc
• Megan Carson, The Guided Well: https://theguidedwell.com/
• Brent Little, Pinehaven Healthy Homes: https://pinehavenhealthyhomes.com/
• Zara D'Cotta, The Healthy Home: https://www.thehealthyhome.com.au/
• Brownell Landrum wishing episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Nikko Kennedy doula episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Hypnobabies hypnobirthing course
• Karen Welton Pain Free Birth course and podcast: https://painfreebirth.com/
• Orgasmic Birth by Elizabeth Davis and Debra Pascali Bonaro
• Birthing from Within (book)
• Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
• The Positive Birth Book
• Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care
• Minerals and Chill electrolytes by Health Illy
• LMNT electrolytes
• Instant Hydration electrolytes
• Jigsaw Health electrolytes (higher in potassium)
• Quinton Isotonic sea water electrolyte
• HTMA hair tissue mineral analysis (referenced as part of functional lab work)
• Ashley's email for questions and inquiries: hello@awakeningspaces.com

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower you and one-on-one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What if the biggest barrier to building a healthy, high performance home was not the technology or the knowledge but the way the industry still builds one house at a time from scratch? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Mariana Pickering, Chief Brand Officer and Community Director at B.Public Prefab, for a conversation that makes a genuinely compelling case for why prefab is one of the most exciting developments in healthy home building right now. Mariana brings over fifteen years at the intersection of architecture, sustainability, and education, a Master's in Design Science from the University of Sydney, a BA in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, an architectural practice in Italy, and years leading Passive House training as CEO of Emu Passive before joining B.Public's leadership team in 2025.

Together Ashley and Mariana walk through what prefab actually means in the context of high performance building, why factory-built structural panels change the quality control conversation entirely, what airtightness numbers B.Public is hitting in the field and why that matters for indoor air quality, and why the Passive House standard remains one of the most reliable proxies for a home that will actually perform. They also dig into the materials conversation, what B.Public specifies and why, where healthy materials and high performance building science overlap and where they still have work to do, and why education and community building are just as important as the product itself.

This is a forward-looking episode about what becomes possible when you take building science seriously and design a system around it. If you are building new or wondering whether prefab belongs in the healthy home conversation, this one will shift how you think about it.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• High-Performance Prefab Installer Training
• B.HOME Collection: http://bpublicprefab.com/b-home
• B.Public fire rebuild program for Los Angeles: http://bpublicprefab.com/rebuild-better-los-angeles
• Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) certification
• Emu Passive (Mariana's former Passive House training company)
• Energy Communities AmeriCorps VISTA Program
• Building Science Summer Camp
• BS and Beer Show

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Youtube | Website

Mariana Pickering is the Chief Brand Officer and Community Director at B.Public Prefab, where she leads builder education, outreach, and community engagement across a growing network of high-performance industry professionals. With over fifteen years of experience at the intersection of architecture, sustainability, and education, Mariana holds a Master's in Design Science from the University of Sydney and a BA in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.

She built an architectural practice in Italy before founding Emu Passive, where she became a recognized leader in Passive House training for construction professionals. After exiting Emu Passive in 2024, she joined the inaugural cohort of the Energy Communities AmeriCorps VISTA Program before joining B.Public's leadership team in 2025 to continue building the case for high performance, healthy, and scalable homes.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What if your daughter's autism diagnosis was not autism at all, but a mold-induced inflammatory response that could be reversed? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Cristina, founder of Conscious Healthy Home and former corporate attorney, for one of the most powerful origin stories this podcast has ever shared. Cristina's family spent years living in a home with mold compacted inside the HVAC plenum, watching their daughter regress in ways that three years of speech, occupational, and physical therapy could not explain, before a single question from a functional medicine doctor finally cracked the case. When the inflammation was addressed, the behaviors stopped, the diagnosis was removed, and Cristina's entire sense of what mattered began to change.

Together Ashley and Cristina walk through the full arc of what it looks like to discover mold in a home, navigate insurance denial, find a remediator fast, move out, move into a rental that also had moisture in the plenum, test forty homes with ERMI before finding one that was safe enough, and then slowly put a family back together on the other side of all of it. They also dig into what Consciously Healthy Home does now, including a real estate agent certification program that helps agents ethically and legally market themselves as healthy home specialists, why no one can promise a mold-free home and what the right language actually looks like, and why the mold space desperately needs people who lead with solutions instead of fear.

This one is for anyone who has felt like every door keeps closing and wonders whether they are being redirected rather than defeated. It is also for every parent who trusted their gut when the system told them to stop asking questions.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Conscious Healthy Home realtor certification program: https://www.conscioushealthyhome.com/realtorcert
• ERMI testing for mold (referenced throughout as part of home search process)
• CIRs, chronic inflammatory response syndrome
• Shoemaker Protocol
• Building Biology Institute
• Passive House Network
• HVAC plenum mold and UV light limitations
• Colorado Green Building Guild

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Cristina Greenfield, J.D. is the founder of Conscious Healthy Home, LLC, a healthy home consulting and homeowner representation firm based near Houston, Texas, serving clients nationwide. A corporate attorney with 15+ years of legal experience, Cristina holds certifications as a Certified Passive House Builder (PHIUS), Building Biology Advocate, and Healthy Materials Advocate from the Parsons School of Design. She also serves as an Advisor on the Air Advisory for the International WELL Building Institute. Her work sits at a rare intersection — combining legal advocacy, building science, and a deep personal mission rooted in her own family's journey through toxic mold exposure. She trains real estate professionals through the CHH Realtor Certification Program and serves as Vice President of Malachi's Message Foundation, a nonprofit supporting families affected by toxic mold.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when an interior designer watches her husband get taken down by mold toxicity, CIRS, and Lyme disease and realizes that everything she was putting in their home was making him worse? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Kaleigh Concannon, founder of Uniquely You Decor and one of the only non-toxic interior designers in Denver, for a conversation that is equal parts practical, personal, and genuinely eye-opening. Kaleigh's path into this work runs through Seattle during COVID, a moldy apartment in LA, a Denver home that tested positive for black mold after purchase, a GC who spilled asbestos and got the house condemned, and three and a half years of watching her husband deteriorate before he finally got the right diagnosis.

Together Ashley and Kaleigh dig into what non-toxic interior design actually means in practice, why green and sustainable do not automatically mean healthy, how cleanwashing is manipulating well-intentioned consumers every single day, and what the biggest offenders are when it comes to furnishings that are quietly harming the people living with them. They also get into what to do when you cannot afford to start from scratch, why certifications are often more marketing than protection, and why bamboo flooring, recycled polyester, and antimicrobial paint are three examples where the sustainability story and the health story are telling you completely different things.

This one is for every homeowner who has ever felt overwhelmed trying to figure out what is actually safe to bring into their home, every designer who has not yet connected their material selections to their clients' health, and every partner who has wondered whether to believe what they cannot see.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Kaleigh's monthly newsletter: https://www.uniquelyyoudecor.com/newsletter
• Toxic by Design event for interior designers (annual, Denver)
• CIRs conference Fort Lauderdale, June 2026
• Dr. Eric Dorninger, Roots and Branches, Boulder: [http://drdorninger.com](http://drdorninger.comhttps://drdorninger.com/)
• Coyuchi organic bedding and pillows: https://www.coyuchi.com/
• AFM Safe Coat sealers and paints: https://afmsafecoat.com/
• EC3 cleaning products for mold remediation
• Mindful Materials guide
• Colorado Green Building Guild

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

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Kaleigh Concannon is the founder and principal designer of Uniquely You Decor, a non-toxic interior design firm based in Denver, Colorado serving clients across the country. After watching her husband navigate mold toxicity, CIRS, and Lyme disease over the course of several years, Kaleigh transitioned her twelve-year career in advertising and marketing into interior design with a singular focus: furnishing homes that support human health rather than undermine it. She presented at the SursX conference in 2025 and runs an annual event called Toxic by Design to educate fellow interior designers on the health implications of the materials they specify every day.

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What happens when the attorney who spent years suing companies like DuPont for deceiving consumers about toxic products becomes the patient who gets taken down by mold, Lyme, and CIRS? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Karen Bloom, founder of Natural Haven, for one of the most layered and honest conversations this podcast has had on what it actually takes to detox your home, your body, and your life at the same time. Karen's path runs through a traumatic ankle break in Shenandoah that triggered a cascade of mysterious symptoms nobody could diagnose, years of pharmaceuticals that made things worse, a bullseye rash nobody connected to Lyme until it was too late, and mold hiding in her HVAC that took multiple rounds of air testing to finally catch.

Together Ashley and Karen dig into the difference between greenwashing and cleanwashing and why even well-intentioned consumers get tricked by both, what certifications actually mean and which ones are nearly meaningless for health purposes, the top offenders in nurseries and fertility-focused homes from EMF-emitting baby monitors to off-gassing furniture adhesives, and why the nervous system piece of healing is not optional and cannot be outsourced to supplements alone. Karen also brings her attorney's skepticism to every product claim she evaluates, and what she shares about how to actually read past the marketing is genuinely invaluable.

This episode is for anyone navigating chronic illness, trying to create a healthier home for a baby, or simply exhausted by the impossible task of figuring out what is actually clean versus what just says it is.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Karen's fertility and healthy home course: naturalhavensb.com
• Karen's free guides and home detox resources: naturalhavensb.com
• Tech Wellness hardwired baby monitor: https://techwellness.com/
• Bebe Care audio baby monitor (referenced as lower EMF option)
• REACH database for EU chemical safety information
• Dr. Andrew Heyman, integrative medicine Virginia (referenced)
• Shoemaker Protocol for CIRS treatment (referenced)
• Brownell Landrum wishing episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Riun Ashlie EMF and nervous system episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Book referenced: Your Biography Becomes Your Biology
• Feldenkrais Method for nervous system and movement rehabilitation

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
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Karen Bloom is a consumer protection attorney and the owner of Natural Haven, a healthy home consulting practice creating homes that support families’ health. She provides non-toxic product recommendations, mold guidance, and healthy building and renovation consultations. Karen's path to healthy home consulting work and education was personal. She spent nearly a decade with a debilitating chronic illness stemming from CIRS, Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and all that goes with it.

She is deeply passionate about helping people who are struggling with what she once did and formed Natural Haven to help people reduce their toxic exposure in their homes and calm down their nervous systems.

Karen draws on her background as a consumer protection attorney where she brought multi-million dollar cases against major corporations, like Dupont, for selling products with harmful chemicals without warning consumers of the harmful chemicals.

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Most people buying a home are thinking about square footage, school districts, and whether the kitchen has been updated. Almost nobody is thinking about what is behind the walls, under the floors, or in the crawl space until they are sick and the remediation quote arrives. In this episode, Ashley sits down with Rachel Klein, licensed real estate agent and healthy home advisor based in Boulder, Colorado, for a conversation that every homeowner and prospective buyer in America needs to hear. Rachel bought a home, got sick from it, spent months figuring out why, and came out the other side with a completely different approach to how she represents her clients.

Rachel walks through what a healthy home-focused real estate process actually looks like from the very first conversation, why she does an environmental walkthrough before her clients ever set foot in a property, what red flags she is flagging in the Colorado market that most agents would never mention, and why the seller's property disclosure is one of the most underused tools available to both buyers and sellers. They also cover dirt crawl spaces, spray foam, whole home humidifiers, swamp coolers, attic fans, flat roofs, and what freeze-thaw cycles in Colorado are doing to older homes that nobody is talking about.

This episode is for anyone buying, selling, or even just thinking about their next home. It is also for anyone who has ever felt like they were the only one asking these questions in a room full of people who had no idea what they were talking about.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Dr. Terry Fox episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Brownell Landrum wishing and manifestation episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Stacy Levy, somatic guide: https://www.stacylevyyoga.com/coaching
• Erica Bonfanti flat roof episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Ashley's Awakened Homeowner guide: https://awakeningspaces.com/awakened-homeowner
• Awakening Spaces offerings and Conscious Construction Container
• Colorado seller's property disclosure requirements
• Moisture detectors and whole home leak detection systems

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Rachel Klein is a licensed real estate agent in Colorado and healthy home advisor with the Goodacre Group at milehimodern in Boulder. After purchasing a home that made her seriously ill with mold-related symptoms, Rachel combined her personal recovery journey with her real estate practice to create a process that helps buyers find healthier homes and sellers present their properties with greater transparency. She is building a national network of like-minded agents and educating colleagues on how to advocate for clients with health sensitivities in the real estate process.

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Most homeowners never think about their building envelope until something goes wrong. And by then, the mold is already there, the sheathing is already rotting, and the remediation quote is already six figures. In this episode, Ashley sits down with Erika Bonfanti, structural engineer turned building enclosure specialist and forensic consultant, for one of the most practical and eye-opening conversations this podcast has had on what actually keeps water out of your home and what happens when it does not.

Erika breaks down what an envelope consultant actually does, why they are not the same as an architect, and why bringing one in on the front end of a project is one of the most cost-effective decisions a homeowner can make. They go deep on flat roofs specifically, covering why membranes fail, what happens when you put a deck or pavers on top of one, why the seals around every penetration need to be replaced every two to three years, and what the building code actually requires for above-deck insulation in cold climates that almost nobody is following. They also walk through a real project in Santa Fe where all of these issues converged at once and what the solution actually looked like.

This episode is for anyone buying, building, or renovating a home with a flat roof, anyone who has ever had a leak they could not locate, and anyone who wants to understand what good looks like before something goes wrong.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• ASHRAE technical committee on health and buildings
• IRC and IBC requirements for above-deck insulation ratios by climate zone
• TPO, PVC, EPDM, and modified bitumen membrane types
• Infrared scanning for flat roof moisture detection
• Dense-pack cellulose and denim insulation in flat roof assemblies
• IECC energy code insulation requirements

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
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Erika Bonfanti is a principal at Acton Partners and a building enclosure specialist and forensic engineer with over fifteen years of experience in condition assessments, leakage investigations, material distress evaluation, and enclosure design on new, existing, and historic structures. She applies her deep knowledge of how and why buildings fail to consulting and design peer review work with the goal of improving the hygrothermal and functional performance of enclosure systems.

Erika currently serves as chair of ASHRAE TC 1.12, Moisture Management in Buildings, and is a dedicated board member of Preservation Austin.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when the host becomes the guest? In this special episode of the Awakening Spaces Podcast, Ashley's dear friend and building biology colleague Zara D'Cotta flips the microphone and interviews Ashley herself, pulling back the curtain on the work Ashley does behind the scenes on every project she touches. From the lawsuit that changed everything in her early career to what owner's rep work actually looks like day to day.

Ashley walks through how a project gone wrong became the foundation of everything she does now, why oversight is the single biggest indicator of project success, and what it actually means to advocate for a homeowner in a room full of specialists who all have different opinions. She also gets candid about her own health journey, what finally shifted after years of outsourcing her healing, and why neurofeedback, morning walks, and learning to stop scanning her environment for threats changed things more than any supplement protocol ever did.

This one is for every homeowner who has ever felt overwhelmed by decisions, every builder or designer who wants to understand what a healthy project team actually looks like, and every practitioner in this space who has ever wondered how Ashley holds it all together. Spoiler: she is still figuring it out too, and that is exactly what makes this conversation so good.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Conscious Construction Container: https://courses.awakeningspaces.com/ccc
• Zara D'Cotta, The Healthy Home: https://www.thehealthyhome.com.au/
• Building Biology Institute: http://buildingbiologyinstitute.org
• Green Building Advisor: http://greenbuildingadvisor.com
• Building Science Corporation: http://buildingscience.com

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Youtube | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it take to go from two cancer diagnoses and years of undiagnosed mold illness to becoming one of the most quietly influential voices in the healthy building industry? In this episode, Ashley sits down with her dear friend and longtime colleague Zara D'Cotta, building biology educator, electromagnetic radiation specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia, for one of the most personal and wide-ranging conversations this podcast has had. Zara's path into healthy building ran through a breast cancer diagnosis at twenty-nine, a melanoma two years later, and a slow, devastating journey through multiple water-damaged buildings in Sydney before she finally understood what was happening in her body and decided to do something about it at industry scale.

Together Ashley and Zara explore what is happening in Australia right now that the US building industry should be paying close attention to, including landmark 2023 National Construction Code changes that officially recognized mold as a hazard to human health and opened the door to lawsuits against builders and designers for mold in walls and roofs. They also talk about what it actually looks like to educate builders on EMF, why so many of the builders Zara works with are now taking electromagnetic radiation seriously enough to carry meters on site, and why the supply chain is finally starting to ask better questions about material health. And because this is the Awakening Spaces podcast, they go there on astrology, human design, and what it means to build a life and a business that is aligned with who you actually are.

This one is equal parts building science, lived experience, and soul. If you have ever wondered what the healthy building conversation looks like from the other side of the world, or what it looks like to rebuild yourself from the inside out while also trying to change an industry, this episode is for you.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Building Biology Institute BBNC certification program: https://buildingbiologyinstitute.org/
• Safe and Sound Pro RF meter (used by builders in Zara's programs)
• Use code: AS5 for 5% OFF
• Mitch Marchand, EMF specialist (referenced for collaborative site testing)
• ClimaSure hygrothermal analysis (Jess, Building Biology Podcast Australia)
• Enduro Builders, South Australia
• Wood fiber insulation and ProClima weather resistive barrier

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST

Instagram | Youtube | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when a commercial construction veteran with a five-hundred-million-dollar mixed-use project on his resume gets taken down by mold? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Dylan Hutcheson, healthy home builder and founder of Holistically Built in Atlanta, Georgia, whose path from high-rise construction management to residential healthy home construction runs straight through two years of mystery illness, medical leave, a disability insurance lawsuit, and a slow, humbling rebuild of his health and his career. Dylan brings something rare to the healthy home conversation: deep mechanical systems knowledge earned not just from building but from years of tearing sick buildings apart and figuring out why they failed.

Together Ashley and Dylan walk through the mechanical systems conversation this space has been waiting for, from why oversizing an HVAC unit is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in hot humid climates, to what ductboard actually is and why one of Atlanta's top ENT doctors will not see patients who still have it in their homes. They dig into manual J, S, D, and T calculations, why a dehumidifier is sometimes a necessary evil and sometimes misunderstood, how ERVs interact with the rest of your system, and why the IQ Air Perfect 16 filter may be one of the most underrated upgrades available for an existing home. They also talk about planning ahead, collision plans for mechanical and structural coordination, roof geometry, window placement, and all the decisions that cost you almost nothing to think about in design and a fortune to fix in the field.

This is a part one, and they are already planning part two around what it actually looks like to build Dylan's own home from scratch. If you are building new, renovating, or just trying to understand why your HVAC system is not doing what you think it is, start here.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• IQ Air Perfect 16 central HVAC filter: http://iqair.com
• IQ Air standalone air purifiers (note: measure for magnetic fields and keep away from sleeping areas)
• EC3 products by Micro Balance Health Products, Dr. Donald Dennis, Atlanta ENT
• Shielded Healing whole home EMF assessment: https://shieldedhealing.com/page
• Bioflex Laser Clinic, Toronto (photobiomodulation therapy)
• Therasage infrared sauna
• Santa Fe and AprilAire dehumidifiers
• Nikki Krueger episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Alex Kessler, Healthy Home Guide YouTube channel (air purifier testing episode)

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
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Dylan Hutcheson is a licensed general contractor and founder of Holistically Built, LLC in Atlanta, Georgia. After a career in large-scale commercial construction with Brasfield and Gorrie, Dylan was sidelined by a serious environmental illness that took years to recover from. That experience led him to environmental consulting, where he spent years conducting indoor air quality investigations and helping homeowners navigate remediation before concluding that the best solution was simply building healthier homes from the start.

Today Dylan combines his construction background, environmental consulting experience, and certification as a Building Biology New Build Consultant through the Building Biology Institute to build homes designed to support the health of the people living inside them.

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What does it actually mean to build a pretty good house, and why is that sometimes a better goal than building a perfect one? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Emily Mottram, licensed architect, building science educator, co-author of the Pretty Good House book, and one of the most thoughtful voices in the residential design space. Emily grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, got into architecture because her drafting teacher told her it was hard, and has spent the last two decades chasing every building science certification she could find, not because she thinks she knows everything, but precisely because she knows she does not.

Together they cover an enormous amount of ground: what makes a house healthy when the answer is different for every person and every climate, why spray foam keeps showing up as a band-aid for design problems, what paint is actually doing to your walls and to the ocean, and why the building code is a recipe book that people keep making worse by swapping the wrong ingredients. Emily also shares the story of two back-to-back clients, one with multiple chemical sensitivities and one with a serious mold history, whose needs were almost perfectly opposite, and what that taught her about materials, assumptions, and listening.

This is also a conversation about slowness, about pausing before adding more, doing better things instead of doing things better, and why the most important question to ask before reaching for any building product is whether you actually need it at all. If you are designing, building, or renovating and want to think more clearly about what you are putting into your home and why, this episode is required listening.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• BS and Beer Spray Foam Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGjnZmiviyk
• BS and Beer Spray foam Part 2 Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP0b2Ibe7WU
• Pretty Good House Book
• Get in touch or work with Emily: https://www.mottramandmaines.com/

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Emily Mottram is an architect and principal of Mottram & Maines. She developed an interest in building science and sustainable design in college, where she was inspired to design healthy, durable and energy efficient homes that are also comfortable and beautiful. She is a building science educator, co-Author of “Pretty Good House” a host on “The BS & Beer Show” and the creator of a monthly podcast “E3 - Energy and Efficiency with Emily,” focusing on building science, architecture and female entrepreneurship.

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What happens when the person who builds healthy homes for a living becomes the one who desperately needs one? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Brent Little, a thirty-year construction veteran and founder of Pinehaven Healthy Homes in McCall, Idaho, for one of the most honest and human conversations this podcast has ever had. Brent was a high-capacity, driven builder who had been exposed to mold on job sites for decades without incident, until a brand new RV became the straw that broke the camel's back, and both he and his wife found themselves navigating one of the most isolating and misunderstood illnesses of our time.

Brent walks through the full arc of what happened, from the early neurological symptoms he thought might be brain cancer, to the emotional dysregulation that had them considering psychiatric intervention for his wife, to the long and expensive road through functional medicine that led nowhere until he found Dr. Eric Dorninger and Lauren Lowenstein of the Biotoxin Lady community. He also talks candidly about what it is like to be a man going through chronic illness in an industry built on toughness, how CIRS has shifted his entire business model toward natural and low-toxicity materials, and why he now sees this experience as something that was given to him rather than something that happened to him.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like they were doing everything right and still got knocked flat. It is also for every builder, tradesperson, and contractor who has never connected the dots between the materials they work with every day and the way their body feels. Brent's story is a reminder that the healthy home conversation belongs to everyone, not just the people building from scratch.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• CIRS cluster symptoms and VCS test
• HLA haplotype testing
• Lauren Lowenstein, The Biotoxin Lady and her private CIRS community: http://thebiotoxinlady.com/
• Cholestyramine and Welchol binder protocol
• Silicosis and respiratory health risks in the trades

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Brent Little is a custom home builder based in McCall, Idaho and the founder of Pine Haven Healthy Homes. He has been in the trades since he was 18, studied Construction Management at Ohio State University, and has spent his career building in one of the most demanding environments in the country, a mountain ski town with high snow loads and complex site conditions that require serious technical skill to navigate.

Two years ago, everything changed. Brent was hit with environmental illness that put him out of commission for over a year. The experience cracked open a whole new understanding of how the homes we build directly affect the health of the people living inside them, and it redirected his passion and his practice toward healthy building.

Today Brent brings that hard-won personal experience together with decades of technical expertise to build homes that are as healthy as they are beautiful. Outside of work, he loves the outdoors, was a sponsored backcountry snowmobiler, and is in the process of adopting his eight-year-old son alongside his wife.

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What does it actually mean to build a healthy home, and where do you start when everything feels equally important? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Trey Farmer, Austin-based architect, passive house advocate, and co-organizer of the Humid Climate Conference, for one of the most grounded and practically useful conversations this podcast has had on the intersection of building performance and human health. Trey brings a rare combination of credentials: passive house certification work, affordable housing and emerging tech projects, natural building experience, and a seat on the advisory board of Malachi's Message, a Texas-based mold awareness nonprofit. He is also just deeply fun to talk to.

Together they unpack what passive house certification actually is, why it functions as such a reliable litmus test for the whole project team, and what it means in practice to build a home that controls its air, vapor, and thermal layers before worrying about anything else. Trey shares his hierarchy of healthy building priorities, from water control and airtightness all the way through materials and filtration, and why that sequence matters so much for homeowners trying to figure out where to put their limited time and budget. They also get into the gas versus induction debate, EMF considerations in context, the growing availability of red list free and declare-labeled materials, and why building smaller and better is often the most powerful financial decision a homeowner can make.

This one ends with both Ashley and Trey agreeing that the healthy home space is only as strong as its community, and if you have been looking for your people, this episode will feel like coming home.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Contact Trey directly: trey@forgexcraft.com
• 2026 Humid Climate Conference (biennial, Austin, Texas)
• PHIUS: Passive House Institute US certification
• HERS Index: Home Energy Rating System
• Building Science Corporation (host of Summer Camp)
• Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons New School
• ILFI Living Building Challenge and Safer Materials Shift Program
• Declare Label and Red List Free certification
• Malachi's Message nonprofit (mold awareness and support, Texas)
• Fastwall ICF (borate-impregnated wood chip ICF product)
• Lutron Caseta smart switches with Pico RF remotes
• Eva King, forensic home inspector (referenced)
• Stuart Brand, author of Whole Earth Catalog (new book on maintenance referenced)

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
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Meet Trey Farmer, Partner and Principal at Forge Craft Architecture + Design. With nearly two decades of experience in sustainable design and construction, and as the firm’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Trey is passionate about projects that make life better for people and our planet. He is LEED AP Certified as well as a Certified Passive House Consultant (CPHC). In addition to his architectural expertise, he is a certified permaculture designer and teacher. Trey joined the Forge Craft team in 2016, drawn to the firm’s dedication to sustainable design, building science, and the shared conviction that great design can solve big problems and improve lives in a tangible way.

Trey currently serves on the Austin Passive House Alliance Board, the National Passive House Alliance Council and Policy Committee, the Humid Climate Conference Steering Committee, and the ULI Austin Resilience & Sustainability Committee. Trey is a Master of Architecture graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, holds a Master’s degree in Ecological Design from San Francisco Institute of Architecture, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Otago. Prior to his architecture and design work, Trey worked as a writer, bartender, job coach, teacher, carpenter, natural builder, community organizer, and orchardist. He enjoys gardening, swimming at Deep Eddy, hiking, and spending quality time with his family in the passive house he designed with his co-parent, Adrienne.

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What if the chronic illness your doctors keep missing has been living in your walls the whole time? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Dr. Eric Dorninger, naturopathic doctor, acupuncturist, and CIRS specialist at Roots and Branches in Boulder, Colorado, who has spent over two decades helping patients with complex, mystery illnesses find the underlying causes that conventional medicine keeps overlooking. Dr. D brings something rare to this conversation: he is not just a clinician who treats CIRS. He is a patient who nearly lost everything to it, and his family's six-month remediation, biblical living conditions and all, is one of the most grounding and honest accounts of what this illness actually costs.

Together Ashley and Dr. D walk through the full arc of what CIRS is, how it is properly diagnosed using validated biomarkers rather than urinary mycotoxin tests, what the Shoemaker Protocol actually involves and why so many people think they have done it without ever truly doing it, and why clean building plus proper binder is still the irreplaceable one-two punch that nothing else replaces. They also get into the naturopathic therapeutic order, why effort does not equal outcome in chronic illness, and the real cost of CIRS in America when you follow the dollars all the way to memory care.

Dr. D also shares what he is building right now, quite literally, the healthiest home in America, a stick frame build redesigned from the ground up with CIRS patients in mind, and what he has learned the hard way about construction loans, lumber quality, builder integrity, and why having an owner's rep on your project is not optional when your health is on the line. If you are navigating chronic illness, trying to understand CIRS, or building a home for a sensitive body, this episode is essential listening.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Episode 08 of The Vitality Hour Podcast on YouTube
• CirsX Conference, OMNI Ft Lauderdale Hotel, June 25 to 28, 2026. Register HERE
Discount code for SirsX streaming: ASHLEY26
• Visual Contrast Sensitivity (VCS) test
• Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker and the Shoemaker Protocol
• Mold Warriors and Surviving Mold by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker
• IICRC S520 remediation guidelines
• Lab Corp (for Alpha MSH)
• National Jewish Hospital (for C4A)
• Brian Tinker of Tinker Homes
• Bill Weber (construction defect expert)
• Christine Cimabue (new build remediation course)
• Foundation Training by Eric Goodman
• Roots and Branches clinic, Boulder, Colorado

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

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Dr. Dorninger graduated pre-med from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1997. He then volunteered for Porter Care Hospice, shadowing renowned herbalist Brigette Mars and earned his EMT. This dual exposure of medical perspectives laid the foundation for an integrated approach to diagnosis, treatment and healing. After serving as an EMT , Dr. D completed his Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and Masters of Science in Acupuncture at Bastyr in 2003. He then completed a 2 year residency in Boulder.

In 2005, Dr. Dorninger founded Roots and Branches Integrative Health Care, a clinic dedicated to “Mystery Illness” where he focuses on elucidating the underlying causes of unrelenting chronic Illness. In addition to private practice, Dr. D is Shoemaker certified doctor, co-founder of http://cirsx.com/ a conference dedicated to eradicating mystery / chronic inflammatory illness. He also teaches functional medicine weekends for Apex Energetics, serves as Director of Research and Development for Blue Sky CBD and the Chief Medical Officer of Medviro, a remediation company dedicated to "medical grade" remediation.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What if the appliance you hate most in your kitchen was actually one of the most important tools for your home's health, your food waste habits, and your daily ease? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Tim Ketchum, CEO and co-founder of Composer Appliance, a startup out of San Francisco that is doing what no one else has bothered to do in decades: completely reimagining the garbage disposal.

Tim walks us through everything that is wrong with the traditional disposal, from the disgusting rubber gasket to the ear-splitting noise to the pipe-clogging paranoia that keeps most people from using the one they already have, and explains how Composer is solving each of those problems one by one with a thoughtfully engineered, beautifully designed system built around a stainless steel iris, single-touch operation, automatic water injection, and an enzyme-based cleaning mechanism that keeps your pipes healthy without you ever having to think about it.

This is a conversation about more than kitchen appliances. Tim and Ashley explore the real story of food waste in America, why composting fails most people in practice, and why the garbage disposal, when designed correctly, might actually be the most accessible, environmentally responsible solution hiding in plain sight. They also go deep on what it actually takes to bring a hardware product to market, including funding, prototyping, market research, intellectual property, and the humbling reality of being a two-person founding team wearing every hat at once. If you have ever stood at your sink wondering what you can put down there, why it smells, or when it is finally time to upgrade, this episode is your answer.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Composer Appliance website: composer.me (pre-order link)
• Ashley's Awakened Homeowner Home maintenance guide

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Tim builds and launches hardware products at the intersection of electronics and user experience. He led new product development at Thomas Electronics, bringing advanced technology products from concept to launch. Tim also brings deep experience in IP management and venture investing. He holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨