My favorite thing to do when I am folding laundry, driving or cooking is listening to a podcast. Here are some of my favorite podcasts:

• On Being is my all-time favorite podcast. Krista Tippett interviews people from all religions and backgrounds, as well as artists, poets, scientists on the meaning of our existence and all things related to how to be a human in the world. Some of my favorite episodes are the conversations with Mary Oliver, John O’Donohue, Gordon Hempton, and Richard Rohr.
• Armchair Expert has come into my life unexpectedly and became my go-to podcast for funny, deep and unapologetically real conversations. Host Dax Shepard has a way to disarm his guests with humor, his amazing vulnerability, and direct questions. Some of my favorite episodes are with Esther Perel, Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Kimmel, Will Ferrell, Edward Norton, and I love the entire 10-episode series Monica and Jess Love Boys for the amazing insight into how to be with our relationship patterns.
• Meditative Story combines two of my favorite things, meditation and true inspirational stories. The stories are read by the person joining the podcast and the host prompts brief meditation cues here and there which helps you get back into experiencing the story with your body and breath. Here’s one that I love, this one and this one brought me to tears.
• Tara Brach’s podcast is a collection of her dharma talks that break down living as humans and how to find our way through everything with the help of meditation. Her wisdom, insight, and expert storytelling are like balms for the soul. You can listen to her and meditate with her. Here’s an episode that I really loved on Finding Freedom In The Midst Of Failure.

When you have a chance, check out my podcast Conversations With Healers, where I talk to self-healers and healers on all things related to healing and being and becoming a Healer.

Your turn, what are your favorite podcasts? Please comment below and let me know.

With love and light,

Damla

This is me. I am Damla Aktekin. I was born and raised in a tiny town in Turkey, went to undergrad in Istanbul, then to Germany for my graduate studies (my MBA), then to Washington, D.C. to finish my MBA. My name (Damla) means a water droplet in Turkish and the name of my business A Drop Of Om, came to me in a dream. This is the story of how I got to that dream.

It was while I was working in the corporate world in the US when I had my first healing crisis. In 2005, one day after being in the office until 9pm, I woke up in the middle of the night with an unbelievably painful headache and started to slur my words. We ended up in the emergency room and I was administered an erroneous spinal tap resulting in the leaking of my spinal fluid. I had to be on my hands and knees crawling on the floor for two weeks (if I didn’t, everything hurt). I was literally brought down to my knees by life, something had to change. So began my yoga journey, buying every book, taking endless workshops, attending many teacher trainings, managing a studio, and filling my life with all things yoga.

The more I dove into yoga, the more I got fascinated not by the movement, but the philosophy and the depth of the paradigm shift it was offering me. Before then, I lived in my head (hence the headache), and had no means, knowledge, or training to give attention to my body, which was a revelation. This is also the time that I discovered meditation and slowly fell in love with it.

My second healing crisis came in 2012 when I gave birth to my daughter through an emergency C-section. I lost all my connection to my body and the deliciousness I had experienced through movement and meditation. I had to discover new ways of finding a connection with my soul. It was through mantras first, then crystals, EFT, and tuning forks that I began to dive into not just my mind and body but the vibrational field around me and around all of us that is meant to an integral part of our lives here on Earth. I devised my own crystal healing method Chakra Bliss Healing, simply because I needed it. Through experimentation, I realized that I was getting glimpses into my vibrational reality really strongly with the help of crystals.

People usually ask me where I got trained to be a Healer. The truth is I didn’t get any formal training if you don’t count the three days I received my Reiki attunements between 2005 and 2012, which honestly felt like receiving energy healing from three different strangers. At the time I was receiving them, it never occurred to me that I might be using my hands for offering healing sessions. I don’t call what I do Reiki because what I do isn’t simply repeating something I was taught. Every time I am working with someone, I am diving into the landscape of their vibrational field, sometimes with my tuning forks, sometimes with my hands and the help of crystals, and sometimes simply by listening to them speak. I am not following a script or a prescribed set of movements and steps. We are co-creating an experience where what needs to be heard, seen, understood, and released is coming out to the surface safely and lovingly.

The reason I call myself a Healer is because every time I connect with someone’s energy field and stay with it and help that person discover a knot that they unfold and release, it feels like they are becoming who they are meant to be. I am not someone who aims to cure you, but someone who is here to help you be even more you, even deeper you, a more vibrationally healthy you. Sometimes the pain is part of it like it had been with the start of my migraines. I strongly believe that that ailment was my body’s way of awakening me to own who I am. When I get migraines I now know that a part of me needs to change and I need a new perspective in life.

The other part of it is that you can hear the call, but it takes a while to answer the call. At least it was for me. It took me falling down on my knees again through the journey of becoming a mother, to own who I am, and really, truly accept the call. Because there was no other way for me. I could no longer ignore it when my intuition spoke to me (louder and louder). I could no longer pretend to be happy in an office job and try to fit in. I could no longer put my time and energy into things that didn’t matter to me.

The journey continues. Now we collectively find ourselves in an awakening. What matters is to stay true to yourself and leave what doesn’t work for you and invite more of what feels good, authentic, and true to you, now more than ever. Your needs matter during this time as we are all carrying and feeling the heaviness of our collective trauma. These wounds can heal, as all wounds can. We all need a little more courage, a little more presence, a little more resilience.

I know from experience that these are the perfect times to lean into our tools. Tools like mantras, crystal healing, talking to a friend, a loved one, being out in nature, or simply taking a day or an afternoon off when you can be with and listen in to your vibrational reality. If you need help with that I am here for you.

With a huge hug and lots of love,

Damla

P. S. If you are looking for a simple tool to help you during this time, check out my new publication 40 Days Of Shanti Mantra Journal. It was made for these times, to help you begin to get connected to the peace that lives deep within you.

Photo taken by my 8-year-old daughter in our yard

I am waking up with anger in my belly. It is familiar. I am painfully aware of all that is going on in the US and in the world. I am Turkish with olive skin and brown eyes. When it comes to being labeled as the ‘other’ because of things I can’t change about myself (and don’t want to change), I have experienced my share:

• During my graduate studies, I was yelled at on a bus in Germany by an older gentleman. When he heard that I was Turkish he said on the top of his lungs ‘You’ll go to hell!’. He continued to yell and yell while I responded calmly. No one said or did anything even though it was clear as day that he had no right to yell at me.
• When I first moved to the north of Boston in the US, during a professional dinner for my husband’s work, a woman asked me if I got tan on a recent vacation in the middle of the winter in New England (the answer was no, I hadn’t gone to vacation at all)
• My cousins often teased me growing up saying ‘They got you from the gypsies!’, which hurt deeply because for the longest time I thought I that was adopted as a child because my mom has fair skin and green eyes, and I look nothing like her. In Turkey, fair skin and blue/green eyes are considered beautiful, special, desirable, promotable as well as proofs of European or Balkan ancestry. You are destined to be made to feel less than if you are someone who doesn’t look like that. Fair skin and blue eyes are always mentioned as amazing, admirable, beautiful qualities in conversations. People with fair skin and blue eyes often brag about these qualities and the ancestry these qualities imply.
• I often feel people looking at me strangely when I take my fair-skinned green-eyed child into public or in stores. This happens in the US where we live and in Turkey. Some even comment ‘That explains the blue eyes!’ when my fair-skinned, green-eyed husband walks in.

In all of these instances and interactions, people have ignorance, energetic wounds, want to make themselves feel better by labeling the other something less than, or they simply don’t think of what their words and actions imply. This said, I also haven’t experienced the degree of otherness that people in more marginalized groups live through every day. I haven’t been denied education or opportunities. I haven’t felt like I am in danger every time I step outside because of the color of my skin, the way I look, my sexuality, or religion (well, I mostly feel I am in danger when I step out because I am a woman).

But that is not all, I do this all the time too. I have made people into ‘others’ in my life by:

• participating in racial jokes
• categorizing and stereotyping groups of people
• not reaching out to know, hear, and understand more
• changing the sidewalk or moving my gaze down because I see a homeless person, a person of color, a person of another economic status, or someone showing any other suspicious behavior because I am terrified and unsure of my safety.
• glorifying a certain style, look, clothing, make-up, etc. over another
• judging myself and others
• not initiating conversations or kindness when I could
• not learning, questioning, reading, or supporting enough

I need to do better, we all need to do much much better. Today I am listening to my anger. Clearly, she is not done talking. Within my anger, there is much sadness and fear mixed in. Within my anger, there are so many different layers. Today we will have some tea together, engage in a conversation. I will begin to forgive the parts of me that push out other parts. I will embrace our broken heritage, our togetherness on this strange planet, in this strange time, with all our individual and collective wounds coming up to the surface one by one.

Here’s what I know: unless we tend to our needs and heal our individual energetic wounds, we will always have a tendency to make someone else into an ‘other’. What action will you take today to show responsibility for your own wounding? I am here if you’d like some support to dive into the energetic wound jungle that is you and begin to love all of it. 

With love,

Damla

P. S. If you’d like to get started healing your energetic wounds by yourself, check out my online healing sessions and online courses.