I would like to invite you to try out a simple practice. I call it ‘listening to the sound of joy’. Sometimes we put joy on a pedestal. Things have to be perfect for us to feel joy without any pain or struggle. It’s a lot simpler than that.

Close your eyes seated or lying down. In and around you, what do you hear? Breath by breath get super still and listen in and out with every fiber of your being. Notice what’s in, what’s out. Watch the shifts and layers in all that is in and around you. Inhale and exhale, and hear the music that your breath creates in you.

The joy is in that moment when you close your eyes and notice what it feels like being alive. There are shades and colors to our existence. There are sounds and distinct vibrations to it. And if you get really still and quiet, you can even begin to feel the song of your liver, your kidneys, your intestines, your heart. And if you open up your imagination, you can decipher how these songs and vibrations are speaking to you, communicating with you every moment of every single day. Isn’t that beautiful?

With love and light,

Damla

Let’s talk about the places where you feel stuck. Like not knowing how to get out of or make it work in a stagnant relationship, making difficult decisions, or making career choices and not seeing results. You then go into making or creating reasons and explanations about your situation. There’s a tendency in all of us to get stuck into a point of view or a story that we run in our heads. And the more you re-iterate it, the more it gets lodged into your consciousness and your way of being. Or you desperately try to dig your way out of the mud.

One way to shift your thought process is letting things be. Instead of explaining or threading through thick mud, let the mud be. Sit in the mud, have a conversation with your stuckness. While at it, invite it over to have coffee or tea with you. So that you can begin to get familiar with it and see it differently.

In that familiarity, you see that mud isn’t just mud. There are layers to it, nuances, cracks, fullness, emptiness, maybe a lot of yuckiness, and also some light in between the cracks. You become an expert at mud and the mud responds by opening up its rich moist life to you.

What is awaiting you in your mud, in your stuckness? What can you sense and see about it after having a conversation with it? Let me know.

With love and light,

Damla

When we are in the grip of fear, doubt becomes an easy ally. In the face of the uncertainties of our lives, while we face all that we cannot control, change or grasp, fear is our first reaction. Doubt and worry revolve around our fear that all of our reality will be based on the potential possibilities of what we fear most coming to life.

Fear is a reminder about our vulnerability. There is nothing that can be guaranteed in life including life itself. And maintaining a safe, comfortable, pain-free life throughout your lifetime may not be possible for you and for the ones you love.

Worrying gives you a sense of control. By always expecting and fearing the worst, you feel prepared for what might come your way. Doubt tells you to only see the unfortunate possibilities. I have no problems with either one as healthy initial responses to what life throws at you, except that they limit your possibilities and the way you relate to them.

Another way of looking at life involves hope. Hope that you already have the resources, life tools, support and unique solutions for whatever life throws at you. This is available in your blood and in your field as evidenced by your ancestors’ tenacity, survival ability, and creativity. I don’t know about you, but I grew up hearing story upon story upon story about my grandparents and great-grandparents on how they managed to survive wars, famine, hunger, financial difficulties, loss of loved ones, sickness, adversity, corruption, immigration and so on.

Not everything you are dealing with can be resolved, eased or navigated through easily or quickly. However, you have the option to lean on hope and the belief that you can go through it thanks to the creativity and the resourcefulness passed down to you by your ancestors.

I am sharing a resilience story about my grandmother and her rose garden in this recent interview. What do you remember of your grandparents or other family members? What resilience stories have been passed down to you by your family? Please email me with your thoughts.

I am opening my blog to guest bloggers who will share their strategies for maintaining hope and inspiration about life. If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger and sharing your insights, or know someone who has something to say about this topic, please let me know.

I highly recommend that you listen to this interview with Junot Diaz from start to finish. Regardless of where you stand on the political aisle, there are important messages in it like men and vulnerability, the gifts of silence, and the lessons to gather from our ancestors.

With love and light,

Damla

One of the things I tell my clients often is the case of the fried toaster. Imagine a toast machine whose electrical wiring got fried because of an access electrical shock. If you’ve had a traumatic childhood, adolescence or adulthood, you are the fried toaster. If the unusual charge happened early enough (as early as in the womb or during birth), you end up living with an electrically compromised system your whole life, feeling, struggling, stressing more than usual.

Then imagine toasting your bread with this fried toaster. There is no chance that it will work like one who didn’t go through what this one went through. Even with some repairs, this toaster may not be able to process the charges that go through it effectively. Much like those of you who got burned early enough that you had to live like a fried toaster, feeling everything a lot more than others, getting overwhelmed easily (because your system is overcharged to compensate for the burnt parts), feeling like your life is going to end with every little stress that comes your way.

Living as a fried toaster is not easy but there are tools that can help you better manage and care for your precious machinery. It means that you need a little more care than someone who didn’t get burned (which by the way at one point or another all of us do), a lot more gentleness, tons of space and time to process new things, people, emotions, situations, and in general letting yourself know that you are your own ally and you will hold your fried cables with a ton of self-compassion and give yourself the space and the opportunities to heal in your own time.

What matters most is for you to find your own normal, your own unique, crazy, eccentric, maybe nerdy way of living life. And if you need any help along the way with patching up some old wounds and old cables, just send me a note.

With love and light,

Damla

I keep coming back to sensing my heart lately. Closing my eyes, I first feel what needs to be felt, then I drop my attention right into my physical heart, resting within its constant beats. As I stay longer in this space, another quality emerges, I feel my energetic heart, expanding, creating light, reaching into and out of my body. I stay with it and my physicality melts into the delight of experiencing this spaciousness.

Dropping into your heart is a way to find out what you need most. Your heart knows. You already know. All it takes is taking three minutes out of your day to connect with your inner sensation of living. Then slowly but surely the truths begin to surface. Where are you stuck at? What is taking too much time and effort? What do you need to let go? What do you need to say, do, think or imagine differently? You stop, you wait, you listen, and then you take inspired action.

When there is a struggle in your body, the safest place to drop into is your heart because it can keep you centered. It gives you not only a physical place to concentrate into but an emotional refuge. When you come into contact with your knowing heart, suddenly things don’t seem or feel that hard any more.

When is the last time you dropped into your heart? When did you last seek your own counsel, your own wisdom, or your own companionship? I invite you to take a moment, drop everything else and rest comfortably in your heart.

With love and light,

Damla