Meet Jess Ashby, the woman behind East Sussex’s Temple Nights

Describe yourself in three words?

Devotional, unapologetic, fierce

What services do you offer on Sensuali?

Temple Nights and Retreats, Devotional Bodywork, 1:1 mentorship.

Tell us more about yourself…

I’m a Canadian-born, UK-based, nature-loving, pleasure-seeking woman with a wild streak and a big appetite for life. Pisces sun, Scorpio moon, Aquarius rising AKA underworld mystic & queen of shadowy waters with a touch of weird. A geographer at heart, I love the Earth, I’m fascinated by people, cultures, the natural world and all the wonderfully strange ways we co-exist.

I love deep conversations, cats, beautiful rituals, dancing, bathing in the trees or in the sea. I’m equally at home in the sacred and the profane, and I have a particular fondness for people who are comfortable with their ugly as much as their beauty.

I’m a bit of a paradox. Deeply sensitive and fiercely independent, a lover of beauty and quite a bit of chaos. I’m forever exploring, questioning, learning and finding new ways to fall in love with being alive.

What turns you on?

Presence, devotion, deep bass, being in nature, the sun on my naked skin, mystical experiences… and I can be a bit of an exhibitionist ;).

What was your journey into this world?

I grew up with a pretty strict religious mother and grandmother, where sexuality was surrounded by shame and judgement.

I was put on the pill at 14 to regulate my very heavy cycles which made me anaemic, and through this experienced slut-shaming before I was even sexually active.

And yet, I’ve always had this wild, rebellious streak. A fascination with people, with sexuality, with taboo, with psychedelics… basically with all the things we’re told we shouldn’t do, feel or want. I’ve always been interested in what lies beyond the rules, and who we might become when we stop following them.

I love this side of me now, but back then, it caused a lot of trauma which I have spent my life healing.

Abuse, sexual assault, repression, shame…my journey has been anything but linear.

Over the past 18 years or so, I’ve explored sexuality, intimacy and human connection in all sorts of places and through all sorts of experiences, in an attempt to free myself from shame and heal trauma. From working as a hostess in Japanese kyabakura clubs to exploring London’s Soho play-party scene, from BDSM to Tantra, conscious relating, psychedelics, sacred sexuality, Temple spaces and of course a ton of shadow work.

Some experiences were liberating, others deeply uncomfortable, and plenty taught me things I hadn’t expected about myself. I discovered a lot of freedom along the way, but also how easy it can be to lose yourself when you’re exploring it all.

And I think that’s where my deeper fascination began.

Because you can be incredibly sexually liberated on the outside and still carry shame, fear, insecurity and conditioning on the inside.

You can explore all sorts of wild experiences and still struggle to ask for what you actually want. You can be comfortable with nudity and sexuality and still find genuine intimacy absolutely terrifying.

I’ve certainly met plenty of those edges in myself.

Alongside all of this, my life took me down some seemingly very different paths. I hold a BA and MSc in Geography, International Relations/Development and Sustainability, as well as a postgraduate qualification in Education. I’ve worked in Brazilian favelas, NGOs, schools, and lived in six countries exploring the world through different cultures, communities and ways of living.

The running thread? My fascination with power. Who holds it, how it’s negotiated, the rules we live by, and how those rules shape the way we move through the world. My exploration of sexuality and relationships has been driven by many of those same questions, just in a much more intimate setting.

Who gets to decide what is acceptable? Who do we become to be loved, desired or accepted? Where do we give away our power? And what happens when we begin to reclaim it?

Eventually, I found myself drawn more deeply into Temple spaces, ritual and embodied practices. I loved the possibility of bringing together sexuality and spirituality, wildness and reverence, pleasure and personal responsibility. But I was also interested in what happened beyond the beautiful experiences themselves.

What did we actually learn about ourselves? Could we communicate our desires more honestly? Could we hold our boundaries without closing our hearts? Could we surrender without abandoning ourselves?

And could we take any of that into our everyday relationships?

That’s really where Divinely Untamed began.

I wanted to create spaces where people could explore all of this without having to be a particular kind of person. Where you could be spiritual and filthy, tender and fierce, shy and wildly expressive. Where you could laugh, cry, play, feel awkward, change your mind, discover something unexpected about yourself, and have all of it be welcome.

I started hosting Temple Nights, and over the past three years they’ve grown into a beautiful community, with retreats, workshops, private rituals, bodywork and mentorship becoming part of the world I’m creating.

And the more I do this work, the more fascinated I become by the human experience.

I’m still exploring my own edges, still meeting my own conditioning, still discovering the places where I contract, perform, protect or hold back.

What do the first 60 minutes of your day look like?

I get woken up by my kitten with cuddles, kisses and aggressive purring, give her breakfast and go out by my river for some movement and stillness.

Why do you do what you do?

I think, in many ways, I do this work because I needed these spaces myself when I was younger.

I know what it’s like to suppress so many parts of yourself just to be accepted, loved, or to feel like you belong. I’ve experienced the consequences of that in my own life, and I’ve witnessed it in others, too.

As a teacher, I remember watching teenagers being shaped in real time by the expectations, judgements and rules of the world around them. Watching young people learn which parts of themselves were acceptable and which ones they needed to hide. It broke my heart, because I recognised so much of myself in them.

I wish I’d known earlier that there was nothing wrong with my sexuality, my desires, my wildness, or the parts of me that didn’t fit neatly into what was expected.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret my journey. I believe deeply in initiation, in the experiences that challenge us, confront us and change us. Some of my hardest lessons have been incredibly formative.

But I also believe that coming home to ourselves doesn’t always have to be so hard!

That discovering our sexuality, our pleasure, our desires and our capacity for intimacy can be beautiful, sweet, playful, nourishing. That we can learn through joy and pleasure, not only through pain.

I think so many of us are desperately longing for connection, love, intimacy and acceptance, yet we’ve been given very few tools to actually experience those things. We’ve learned how to perform, please, protect ourselves, compete, seduce, achieve… but how many of us have really learned how to be honest about what we want? How to receive love? How to stay present when intimacy gets uncomfortable? How to meet another person without losing ourselves?

Over the years, I’ve witnessed things in Temple that have moved me beyond words. People discovering parts of themselves they’d buried for decades. People finding the courage to express desires they’d never spoken aloud. People making enormous changes in their relationships and lives after something they experienced in these spaces.

I’ve watched people break open in the most beautiful ways.

But something I didn’t necessarily expect was how much holding these spaces would change me, too.

For a long time, I carried a lot of distrust towards men and the masculine, understandably shaped by some of my own experiences.

And then I began witnessing men in these spaces. Men being tender, vulnerable, courageous, deeply respectful, beautifully present. Men willing to look at themselves, take responsibility, listen, soften and love.

It changed something in me.

I have developed such a deep love and compassion for the masculine, both in others and within myself.

What is an unexpected pleasure you’ve discovered in your work?

How much my work has restored my trust and love for men. I started holding these spaces for women, ready to send any man who would cross boundaries home. Spoiler alert, it never happened.

Instead I witnessed wild tenderness, courage, vulnerability and care. It has transformed my relationship with the masculine within and in others in such a deep way.

What do you wish more people knew about your practice?

IT’S NOT ABOUT SEX!!!

It’s so easy to see these offerings and immediately jump to the connection with sexuality. But there’s so much more happening beneath the surface.

We use sexuality and intimacy to crack ourselves open. Because they’re taboo. Because they hold so much shame, conditioning, fear and vulnerability. Because there’s probably nowhere else we become quite so exposed to ourselves.

The way we relate to our desires, our boundaries, our bodies and other people tells us so much about how we move through the world.

Can you ask for what you want? Can you hear a no without making it mean something about your worth? Can you receive without feeling you owe something in return? Can you stay connected to yourself when you’re desperate to be chosen, loved or accepted?

These questions show up in our bedrooms, of course. But they also show up in our friendships, our families, our work, everywhere.

And that’s what fascinates me about this practice. We get to explore some of our deepest patterns through experiences that can be pleasurable, playful, confronting, tender, messy and incredibly beautiful.

Sometimes a seemingly simple interaction in Temple can reveal something you’ve been carrying your entire life.

And once you’ve seen it, you have the opportunity to choose differently.

That’s the real magic for me. What we discover in these spaces has the potential to change how we live outside them.

What’s your superpower?

Seeing people beyond the versions of themselves they’ve learned to present to the world, and making them feel safe enough to reveal what’s underneath. And a deep love for the masculine which many have lost touch with.

We love vices. What’s yours?

Deliciously complicated humans, a little too much intensity, and an irresistible urge to question anything I’m told I shouldn’t do.

Who are your sensual inspirations?

Cleo (The Tantric Muse), Mama Gena, Carly Mountain.

Closing thoughts?

I’ll leave you with this.