A Drop of Om

In the busyness of our lives, taking time to reset our nervous systems and renew our calmness reserves is becoming even more important. This doesn’t have to mean taking a long vacation. It may be taking 10 minutes out of your day for a sacred pause, or taking an afternoon off to spend doing what you love, or perhaps you can take a day off to just be and not do anything (like attending the daylong Chakra Bliss Soul Retreat, read more here).

These moments of non-doing matter. It matters to hold the intention to care for the life that you have. How else can you care for others if you aren’t willing to be gentle with yourself? How else can you be gentle without taking the load of ‘doing’ off your shoulders every once in a while?

Most of us are looking for clarity. Clarify for our life purpose, clarity for our relationships, clarity for next steps. Clarity doesn’t come in a moment of busyness and overdoing. Think of your past clarifying realizations, what were you doing when they arrived? Or were you simply being in a state of open presence so that creativity and new ideas, solutions, realizations could find a way into your system?

In the time that you carve out for reset and renewal, make sure to follow the thread of joy. What would be effortlessly joyful for you? Where or when do you feel most happy? What can you let go of thinking about or doing -just for a moment – to experience more joy?

In this -almost- holiday season, I wish you a huge dose of non-doing and joyful being.

With love and light,

Damla

Last Saturday evening, I had a huge migraine with a blinding aura and pain, which is usually a reset button for me. I can’t do, think, worry about what I usually do, think, worry about. My entire system shuts down and demands quiet, no-activity rest time.

The next day I had to shut down a Kindergarten yoga class that I started for my daughter and her classmates. We had five awesome classes but there weren’t enough kids signed up for the next session I had planned. Both my daughter and I grieved for it, she cried almost all day on Sunday as I quietly dealt with letting go of the beauty of sharing this side of my life with her and her friends.

Today we woke up in the middle of the night to our house being without power. I had to wake up at 4am, reassure my daughter that everything is going to be fine, figure out where the candles and matches were and ignite our stove’s fire to keep us warm. My daughter and I then went on to spend an entire day laughing, reading, playing, shopping for girly things and eating our favorite food (sushi, cookies, and chips). When we got home at night, the power was restored.

At some point, I found myself taking notes for another kids class, this time not just a cookie-cutter yoga one, but one filled with what I love to practice and teach, including crystal meditation and other tools to help young kids deal with the stress in their lives.

It feels as if the universe sometimes has to shut things down for us so that we can realize the beauty of what we have and who we are, and in that quietness, if we open up and let go, new light, electricity, ideas, and life rush in. When you look back, it all feels like a divine intervention.

What is your most recent shutting down story? Let me know.

With much love and light,
Damla

One of the questions I get often is ‘How often do I need to clear and tend to my energy field?’ The simple answer is it depends on you, the severity of your wounds and your life choices.

Getting your chakras cleared is like going through a juice cleanse. You will feel great afterward especially if you have never done one before. What matters after is how you keep up your health routine (or how you take care of your energy field). Do you go right back to eating heavy, fast food or do you consider changing your diet (your thoughts and how you deal with your emotions) to continue to feel better? Even if you don’t immediately manage to drastically change anything, wouldn’t your system handle the food (life) load better if you give it a chance to clear its passageways and let it absorb new nutrients?

The other piece of this is time. How long have you been living with a blocked field without giving your system a chance to renew its flow? If the wounds are long-standing from early childhood and you are new to caring for your energy field, you may need to do a series of professional cleaning sessions to get your system to a flowing state.

There’s a certain level of numbness in not caring for your field. You carry on with life not even realizing the amount of load you have been carrying. Once that load is relieved with a chakra healing whether it be crystal healing, working with tuning forks or any other chakra flow restoring modality, you will have a body-mind-soul experience of what it feels like to feel lighter, brighter and better. This is exactly what happens in my chakra healing sessions. People usually come in with a feeling of heaviness and life not flowing right. They leave with a renewed sense of lightness and resilience. I send my clients off with very practical messages and advice that sets them on a path of continuing chakra flow.

As you work on your field by yourself or with the help of an experienced healer, you will begin to notice when things aren’t flowing properly. You will begin to develop a sensitivity to your energetic clearing needs. Once you work through the bigger deeper chakra wounds, it becomes a question of what you need depending on where you are in your life. Through certain transitions, you may need more support. The truth is we all need an occasional deep clean to get things flowing again.

Ultimately chakra healing is all about replenishing your field’s resilience so that you can be more present and resourceful in the moment. It gives you the ability to not react but take inspired action. It opens you up to seeing possibilities in your life that you couldn’t notice before. It takes you to a magical place of oneness with your soul, where you can tap into your inner knowing for receiving answers to your most pressing questions.

One of the things to keep in mind is that if you have never done any chakra clearing work before, you are better off working with an experienced healer that you trust. Clearing your chakras will bring up old wounds and emotions. It is important to work with someone who is experienced in chakra healing to hold the space for you and walk you through the beautiful, amazing, extraordinary map of your chakras.

I can tell you from experience that investing in your energy field’s health is really worth it. The clearing and the lightness you gain aren’t only great for you but the results will carry over to your relationships, family, and community. Here are a few ways that you can work with me on your chakras:

• If you are interested in finding out how your chakras are doing, you can meet with me for a 30 Minute Chakra Consult over the phone. We will look into your most pressing chakra issue, the chakra wound it is tied to, and you will leave with a guided message on what your next steps are for your chakra health and flow. Schedule your Chakra Consult at this link.
• Chakra Bliss Healing works with intuitively selected crystals and a guided visualization to clear and expand your chakra field. You will also receive an upload of any light codes your system needs at this time, as well as channeled messages for each chakra. Think of it as a general house cleaning. More information is at this link.
• Sound Balancing digs deep into chakra wounds, smoothes out the disturbances and gives you a renewed perspective on how your childhood and timeline wounds may be affecting what is going on in your life right now. Each session is dedicated to one chakra issue. Think of it as doing Spring cleaning for a room in your house that really needs it. More information is at this link.

Looking forward to meeting you and your energy field soon.

With love and light,

Damla

Two years ago, I found ceramic pomegranates in a store nestled at a tiny alley in an enchanting Greek Island called Symi. I absolutely fell in love with these ceramic creations. Last summer, while visiting Symi a second time, I had the crazy idea of making ceramic pomegranates myself.

Pomegranates represent the continuity of life, the potential and the abundance hidden from sight but bursting to be realized, the seeds of our thoughts and intensions and how they get actualized in multiple ways, how we hold the potential to be more than what we seem, how there are layers and gifts to our existence.

In the picture you see the first four pomegranates I hand-built with clay. Working with clay as a teacher is a whole other story and I still need to wait for them to dry, get into the kiln, get glazed and baked again. Right now though, I am simply feeling so happy and content.

Next time inspiration hits you, I urge you to listen to your crazy idea, your call to creativity, your chance to bring something to life. Maybe it won’t work out or maybe it will, and you will end up with a beautiful meal, garment, writing, song, or a piece of ceramic that you can quietly enjoy and savor.

With love and light,

Damla

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