The Awakening Spaces Podcast - Conscious Construction for a Healthy Home

Awakening Spaces explores the profound connection between our physical environments and our inner consciousness. We guide homeowners, designers, and wellness seekers beyond simply discussing "toxin-free" building methods to examine who we actually become on our "toxin-free" journey. In this podcast we’re not only talking about windows, walls, and wiring. Through expert interviews, case studies, and actionable guidance, we will explore how mindful design choices affect our relationships, stress levels, and overall well-being. Drawing from my background in design, building biology, and building science I guide listeners through both the practical and philosophical aspects of creating homes that elevate our health and consciousness. Each week, you’ll receive grounded guidance and actionable tips to help you eliminate the stress and overwhelm of finding, renovating, building, or maintaining your healthy home—so that you can create a space that truly supports wh

The Awakening Spaces Podcast - Conscious Construction for a Healthy Home is a leisure podcast hosted by Ashley Spanovich, with 55 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Ashley Spanovich hosts The Awakening Spaces Podcast - Conscious Construction for a Healthy Home, a leisure show with 55 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #55

  EMF Is No Longer Fringe: What’s Changing in Healthy Home Building with Guest Host Zara D’Cotta | EP55

  Oct 1, 202612 min

  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 ✨

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  Episode #54

  How I've Prepared My Body and My Home for a New Life | EP54

  Sep 24, 202633 min

  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: theguidedwell.com Brent Little, Pinehaven Healthy Homes: pinehavenhealthyhomes.com Zara D'Cotta, The Healthy Home: 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: 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 ✨

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  Episode #53

  Why Prefab homes Might Be the Future of Healthy Home Building with Mariana Pickering of B.Public Prefab | EP53

  Sep 17, 202647 min

  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: bpublicprefab.com/b-home B.Public fire rebuild program for Los Angeles: 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 ✨

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  Episode #52

  How an Autism diagnosis & CIRS lead this attorney to creating Consciously Healthy Homes with Cristina of Consciously Healthy Home | EP52

  Sep 10, 20261h 7m

  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 Consciously 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: Consciously 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 ✨

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  Episode #51

  Non-Toxic Interior Design, Cleanwashing, and How to Furnish a Home That Actually Heals with Kaleigh Concannon of Uniquely You Decor | EP51

  Sep 3, 202645 min

  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: [ drdorninger.com ]( http://drdorninger.comhttps ://drdorninger.com/) Coyuchi organic bedding and pillows: coyuchi.com AFM Safe Coat sealers and paints: 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. CONNECT WITH GUEST Instagram | Website 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. SHOW YOUR SUPPORT 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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