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"On last night&amp;#039;s episode of Dating Naked, viewers finally got to meet Ashley and Alika, the naked couple that went on to get married in a naked wedding earlier this month. (The special airs September 18&amp;amp;nbsp;on VH1.) Cosmpolitan.com spoke to 27-year-old Ashley this morning about what it was like to shoot in the nude, what her husband actually does for a living (he&amp;#039;s a &amp;quot;sexual healer,&amp;quot; but she&amp;#039;d rather you call him a daka), and that sex bomb she dropped in her confessional (she doesn&amp;#039;t remember saying that, exactly). Did you and Alika watch the show together? We did not. We&amp;#039;re in different states at this time. I&amp;#039;m actually going to be going up to Northern California [where he lives] in this next coming week, which is exciting. We were together in spirit.  Are you guys not going to live in the same state now that you&amp;#039;re married? [Ashley lives in Colorado.] Right now we&amp;#039;re kind of feeling it out. I travel a lot, so I&amp;#039;m kind of doing that and focusing on that for myself; I have some personal goals that I&amp;#039;m working on.  Like your work as an art therapist? Yeah, I&amp;#039;m going to Northern California to work on meditation for the next two months. I just want to go and focus on some yoga and meditation [and] self growth. I learned a lot from the show and I&amp;#039;m taking a lot away from it.  What did you learn? One of the original reasons I went on the show was as a challenge to myself to overcome some of the body image issues that I had growing up. I&amp;#039;m a smaller woman and growing up I didn&amp;#039;t have the &amp;quot;perfect body,&amp;quot; and I know a lot of us struggle with this growing up. And I took this experience as a personal challenge, like, Look, I can get naked and be on television with no makeup and take the judgments that are going to come based off of what I&amp;#039;m doing and be OK with myself and who I am and still feel beautiful, despite what some people may think. So it was very liberating and empowering to overcome that hurdle.   When was your episode of Dating Naked shot? This was 2 \u00BD months ago. Oh, so you and Alika got married quickly. Yeah. What Alika and I are sharing with everyone during our ceremony is that this is a non-traditional marriage; it&amp;#039;s more of a New Age ceremony. There&amp;#039;s no church; there&amp;#039;s no white dress. There&amp;#039;s just going to be something that a lot of people haven&amp;#039;t experienced before. There&amp;#039;s going to be some confusion about what it is that we&amp;#039;re doing. And I think that&amp;#039;s exciting, because I think we&amp;#039;re going to break some barriers.  So what are you doing? I would call it a shamanic ceremony. A ceremony of love \u2014 of each other, of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. We&amp;#039;re standing as two very strong, spiritual, individual people that are coming together as a representation of the balance and harmony that we need to have a little bit more of in this world. I mean, it&amp;#039;s going to be naked \u2014 it&amp;#039;s a naked wedding. Are you and your guests naked the whole time? We all wore clothing and disrobed for the ceremony. This is a naked ceremony. I did wear a naked wedding dress, I guess you could say.  What is a naked wedding dress? I wore a dress that was a good representation of my spirit animal. My good friend designed a beautiful piece for me to wear \u2014 I had to have a dress, I couldn&amp;#039;t let go of that idea. But it&amp;#039;s definitely not white. There are a lot of feathers on it. There are a lot of crystals. It&amp;#039;s very dreamy.  I want to talk about last night&amp;#039;s episode: When you see Greg naked for the first time \u2014 on your first naked date \u2014 you seem nervous. Initially I was nervous, and I think it&amp;#039;s adorable to see myself going through this experience. It was more comfortable for the other dates because you slowly get used to the fact that you&amp;#039;re nude and there&amp;#039;s a big production going on around you. But initially I was still a little skeptical, like &amp;quot;What am I doing here? What have I gotten myself into?&amp;quot; But I pushed through it.  When you&amp;#039;re talking to Alika and he says he&amp;#039;s a sexual healer, what went through your mind? I would like to rephrase the terminology and instead of saying &amp;quot;sexual healer,&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s actually called daka and then the female version of that is dakini. [Ed note: Alika does refer to himself as a sexual healer on the show.] Sexual healer, that goes along with the Marvin Gaye song, that was the tune that started going through my head. That was kind of the theme song for the island for the rest of my time there. But, yeah, I did not know that [profession] existed, I did not know what it was; that was the first time that I&amp;#039;d ever heard anything of that nature. So he opened me to a very ancient practice that&amp;#039;s been going on for a long time. It&amp;#039;s beautiful what he does. There are a lot of challenges that women have with their body, with their mind, with their spirit. And he helps to move them in a more positive direction to have more love for themselves and be more connected to who they are. It sounds pretty obscure, but it&amp;#039;s not as wild as [it sounds]. I&amp;#039;ll let him explain the details on that. But it&amp;#039;s a very beautiful thing.  Does it require him to have sexual interactions with women? With the term sexual, there&amp;#039;s definitely going to be \u2014 I think that it&amp;#039;s making light of it saying &amp;quot;sexual healing.&amp;quot; For example, a daka worker, if there is a woman who has experienced trauma through rape or she&amp;#039;s just never really been able to take off her clothing and feel confident, he will do a workshop with her to be more confident about her body and who she is. There is no intercourse that is happening within his work. There&amp;#039;s different breathing techniques, massage works; he uses different essential oils; there are different meditation practices. And that&amp;#039;s very lightly skimming the top of what he&amp;#039;s doing. What did you think of Greg talking about your &amp;quot;bush&amp;quot;? Oh, I loved it. I thought it was hilarious \u2014 &amp;quot;you can put dreads in that thing&amp;quot; \u2014 I loved it. I did that to myself. I was a lot more comfortable having grown that. No shame at all.  Oh, you purposely grew it? Absolutely. I told them, &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t have to censor this. There&amp;#039;s no reason!&amp;quot; It was all in good fun.  I thought that Greg seemed like a good guy. I know you two didn&amp;#039;t get along romantically. But I felt a little bit bad for him watching the episode. Greg does have a really sensitive, soft, compassionate side that I don&amp;#039;t feel was 100 percent there for people to see. He has actually had some experience with a few other reality television shows, and being that this was my first time on a reality set, there was moment where I was like, &amp;quot;Oh my god, this is intense, there&amp;#039;s 25 cameras,&amp;quot; and he leveled with me and said, &amp;quot;I understand what you&amp;#039;re feeling,&amp;quot; and he made me feel a lot more calm.  Do you regret making fun of his penis size? I was making fun of his penis size also in good humor. I had a feeling the bush comment was going to come out, so \u2026 we were just having fun. You&amp;#039;re naked, you&amp;#039;ve got to make light of it a little bit.  Were the confessionals shot after you already made your choices? I&amp;#039;m not sure if I can share that.  I ask because at the end of the episode you say you guys are getting married, and I&amp;#039;m not sure if that means that you guys decided to get married when you were on the island? Oh, yeah. I told the producers \u2014 the cameras weren&amp;#039;t rolling, we were just hanging out on the set and one of the producers walked by, and I just started telling him, &amp;quot;Hey, guess what. This is what we&amp;#039;re doing.&amp;quot; And I don&amp;#039;t think he believed what I was saying because that&amp;#039;s a pretty intense thing to say so quickly.  Were you ever seriously considering choosing JR? There was definitely a time in which I was connecting with JR on a more communicative level. [But] I was a lot more focused on Alika. He and I spent a lot more connective time together on the island, and I don&amp;#039;t think it was portrayed as much as it actually happened. We&amp;#039;d wake up and do meditation together in the morning; we were constantly exchanging our different viewpoints on life and spirituality and our body and our minds. So there was a lot of growth very quickly with us. It seems like the tension over who you&amp;#039;d choose was a little bit played up for the sake of television. There always need to be some good suspense on a reality TV show for people to tune in.  I appreciated that you said you and Alika had sex. Because on a lot of dating shows, that&amp;#039;s glossed over, even though everyone knows it must be happening. Was that a conscious decision for you to go ahead and say it? When I watched myself say that on television, I was actually kind of shocked at first, because everything is moving so fast, you&amp;#039;re going from here to there \u2014 I was a little shocked to see myself say that, to be honest with you. I would just leave it at that.  Shocked in a good way or a bad way? I can&amp;#039;t really say which direction I&amp;#039;m shocked in. But I&amp;#039;d forgotten that that was what I was saying. It&amp;#039;s hard for me to \u2014 I&amp;#039;m a very honest person. And I don&amp;#039;t remember saying that, because that wouldn&amp;#039;t have been something that I would have said. And I don&amp;#039;t know how to say it without going outside of my contract. I&amp;#039;ll just leave it as, &amp;quot;I was very shocked that I saw myself saying that.&amp;quot; So you don&amp;#039;t think you said it? I know I said it, I&amp;#039;m just not sure if that&amp;#039;s the context in \u2014 I think there&amp;#039;s more to my statement. I have an obnoxious question, and if you&amp;#039;re not into it you don&amp;#039;t have to answer: Is a daka generally better at sex than the average man? So, yeah, the reason I&amp;#039;m a little shocked with the sex comment is because Alika and I \u2014 I was very curious about Alika&amp;#039;s work, and so I inquired about experiencing it because he knows what he&amp;#039;s doing. This is his job; this is his purpose in life, to empower women through these methods. And so I asked if he would share that with me. I guess I should have said, &amp;quot;We had sexual healing last night.&amp;quot; Because I had the pleasure to experience his practice and, during the filming, I did not feel shameful for interacting with someone who I&amp;#039;d just met in this manner. He helped me a lot. He guided my body to do something that I wasn&amp;#039;t aware that it was able to do. I don&amp;#039;t want to go into details with it, but what he is doing is a very good thing. There are jokes around it, but this is a New Age practice that is going to help a lot of people. He&amp;#039;ll also help men. He&amp;#039;ll also help men to treat women better as well.  Going back to the wedding: Were your parents there? Unfortunately my family was not at the wedding. I would have loved for everyone to have attended. I have three really good friends who attended and I would call them my family, so I don&amp;#039;t want to discredit that. But as far as blood-related relatives go, neither Alikanor I had any of our blood-relatives at the wedding. I did ask family members of mine to come onto the show, but it&amp;#039;s very intense. It&amp;#039;s intense to be on film with your clothing on, let alone removing that.  One of my guests, my really good girlfriend, she went through the same thing I went through the first time around \u2026 She was scared. Before she removed her clothing, she said, &amp;quot;Ashley, how did you do this? You&amp;#039;re such a courageous, brave woman to be able to stand up and do something like that.&amp;quot; I guided her through it. I explained to her, &amp;quot;You have a beautiful body. Love yourself. Do not be ashamed of your temple, your vessel. This is what you have to move you through this lifetime. Embrace everything about yourself.&amp;quot; And she was scared. She had specific things she mentioned to me were bothering her about herself, and I tried to coach her through it. Ten minutes into it, she was so thankful and like, &amp;quot;I love this.&amp;quot;  Were people crash dieting since they knew they&amp;#039;d be naked? I personally did no dieting. I don&amp;#039;t need to do dieting, I&amp;#039;m a very thin girl. I run ultra marathons. I&amp;#039;ve been running since I was younger; that&amp;#039;s just my body type. I&amp;#039;m sure some of the other girls had done some dieting; maybe some of the guys as well. I know that people went tanning, got their hair done. For me, those aren&amp;#039;t really priorities in my life. I didn&amp;#039;t go tanning \u2014 I have tan lines, no big deal. I&amp;#039;m not going to obsess over something like that.   Follow Patti on Twitter.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/q-and-a/a30356/dating-naked-ashley-interview/>