Dream Awakening with Misha Chakrabarti

An Argentine rock song dubs Buenos Aires “The City of Fury” and Diana Vaisman has lived through it all! From being bullied as a child for being tall and wearing glasses, to a debilitating spine injury as an adult, to the ever-present ups and downs of inflation, to the pandemonium of the prolonged pandemic that required her to postpone her wedding, she has seen more than her fair share of chaos.

This external turmoil moved her to seek a deeper, more internal peace. This took a number of different forms from therapy, to the community she found in her tae kwon do classes, to a number of different artistic pursuits. This resulted in a shift where Daiana looks less to find fulfillment in her plans for the future, and more to savor the simple pleasures and appreciate the joys of today, particularly her physical and emotional health.

Today, Daiana loves all types of creative endeavors and is an avid baking enthusiast. She has come to understand that she doesn’t have control over what the universe may throw at her and what may happen to her body, yet she finds a sense of agency in intentionally choosing how she wants to nourish herself. She also delights in the culinary process; from figuring out a way to make something delicious based on what she has on hand, to savoring the meditative flow as she folds, kneads, whips, and rolls, to feeling the love when she shares her food with the people she cares about.

As for her wedding, her plans have changed a number of times and the details are still up in the air, but the quarantine has brought her and her partner even closer together so it’s a matter of when not if. 

You can see what she’s up to in the kitchen on her Instagram @migatococinero.

As a young child growing up in Boston and traveling widely around the world, he had many visceral moments of deep, spiritual union. In his early years, these experiences were affirmed by his mother, yet as he reached adolescence and was thrust more and more into the machine of the United States, he was met with an impatient, production-oriented culture that did not share his connected reality. This was a dark time when those around him continually told him that his intuitive sense of truth, which clashed with the status quo, was not only misguided, but that it was destructive to himself and those around him. As a teenager with limited agency of his own, he saw no other option than to accept their diagnosis, that he had a mental disorder, and to try to survive.

Eventually he reached the point where he could no longer ignore his intuition and came to realize that it was the masses who were misguided and not himself. He came to recognize the need to devote himself fully to this inner transformation. He spent the following years in intense introspection, reading world spiritual and philosophical texts to contextualize this shift. At the same time, he began to manifest a community of foreigners and other outsiders, while still in Boston, that later served as a bridge to Buenos Aires where he lives today. 

When he finally made it to the City of Fair Winds, he found the fertile solid that gave him the grounding he needed for his life to flower. Following his inner light and leaning on his relationships led him to a friend, who indirectly introduced him to his husband, who helped him plant his roots into his new earth. From this newfound space of stability and authenticity, he was able to shift from a state of surviving to thriving.

At first there were no visible external signs of abundance, yet an active passive nurturing was underway that eventually gave birth to his first book "Undividing." At the same time, he began teaching this inner awakening and counseling others into it and he gives regular talks on spirituality and meditation on his YouTube channel, Conor Detwiler, and through the meditation app Aumhum. Last week he published his second book, a meditation children’s book called "Light, Bright Light," that he wrote and illustrated in the midst of the pandemic. 

You can get in touch with Conor and find his books and teachings at the links below:

Website: conordetwiler.com

Light, Bright Light Animated Picture Book: https://youtu.be/H0sqtx8Q5Ns

Light, Bright Light on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1734785748

Undividing on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087DV2SG8

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX3MWK3h5JS5hG3-sETIH8Q

Instagram: @conordetwiler

Facebook: facebook.com/conordetwilerauthor

Max Solomonyuk is a software developer and newly self-dubbed entrepreneur who believes that being playfully curious about yourself and your surroundings will help you find new dreams or goals. After his first stint with solo-travel back in 2016, Max dreamt of being location independent so that he could see the world while working from these remote places. In 2019, he took the leap and went through Asia with just a backpack filled with a handful of clothes and his laptop. From working on a farm in Japan, to learning the art of sound healing in the Nepali Himalayas, to plugging into and building out an ex-pat community in Da Nang, Vietnam, Max gained many insights into confidence, self-motivation, and building community that he shares in this episode. 

After his travels were cut short due to the pandemic, Max and a few friends that he met in Bali, started an online video speed networking platform Hi Right Now that has recently gotten into a world-renowned accelerator Fast Track Malmo. He is now currently back in Bali where he is working full time on his current dream to make meeting people online less weird and more fun and effective.

Hi Right Now: https://hirightnow.co

Fast Track Malmo: https://www.fasttrackmalmo.com

We're back! Welcome to season two of the Dream Awakening Podcast. 

On this podcast I have authentic conversations with people living with purpose. We’ll speak candidly about the joys, woes, laughs, traumas, and mishaps on the not-so-straight and narrow path to manifest a full and vibrant life. We’ll hear stories of the vulnerable moments of stepping out of the shadows and into ourselves. We’ll feel the full range of human emotion and maybe even connect more deeply with ourselves and the world around us. Along the way, I’ll look to answer questions like “how do we discover our passion,” “how do we find the courage to follow our hearts,” and “how do we keep the faith?”

In season one we heard stories about dreams relating to creativity, travel, and spirituality. This season we’ll continue to hear about these types of passions but I want to expand the notion of what a dream is to include love, parenthood, activism, and entrepreneurship. I feel this is especially important at a time when the world has been ravaged by a global pandemic, an epidemic of fake news, and an addiction to technology. At a time when our mobility and sociability are so heavily restricted, it’s even more important to connect with ourselves and find an inner spaciousness and abundance. Often it’s easier to move into this manifestation when we see people we relate to recounting their reveries and revelations.

In addition to expanding your concept of what is possible, I also invite you to broaden your idea of who you can relate to. In the first season we heard from mostly millennial women. This season we’ll hear from people living vibrantly from different generations, genders, and walks of life. By hearing from storytellers of all sorts, I’m hoping your humanity surprises you and that you wind up empathizing with people you previously thought were worlds apart. 

To hear the podcast in Spanish search “Despertando Sueños con Misha Chakrabarti”. Taking the first step to awaken your dreams can be daunting, but sharing our stories we do not walk the road alone.

Evy Duskey dreams of conscious creativity. Evy grew up in Ohio, USA with a love of music and a passion for performing. While she felt open and free as a child, the corporate culture of the U.S. moved her toward a practical path and convinced her, for a time, that art was a trivial pursuit. In college she studied abroad in Argentina and her experience had a profound effect on her. She moved from Ohio to Buenos Aires, now nearly 10 years ago, to pursue her love of music in a variety of contexts. 

While living in the U.S. stability had been a priority for her. Since relocating and being swept up into the chaos of the City of Fair Winds, she realized that life rarely goes as planned no matter how hard you try to make it so. Evy now creates from a space flow and feels like a conduit, channeling something greater. She never forces herself to make music or art, but instead lives vibrantly and goes with the creative energy when it comes, whether it happens in the middle of a bike ride or a brisk walk. Ultimately, she makes decisions based on her intuition, even when the road ahead isn’t clear.

Today Evy is a musician, copywriter, and magazine founder. Whether writing and performing as frontwoman of the dream pop band Fervors, to starting local arts and culture magazine La La Lista, she has long-nurtured a voracious appetite for “soul-feeding” creative projects that —  in her opinion —  make life worth living. 

She is passionate about supporting local businesses and culture, valuing art and artists, and establishing healthy work-life relationships that respect our limited time on this earth. 

La La Lista:

La La Lista

La La Lista Instagram

Fervors:

Fervors Spotify

Fervors Instagram

Fervors Bandcamp 

w.a.n.t.o.n (solo project):

w.a.n.t.o.n spotify 

w.a.n.t.o.n instagram

Book Evy mentioned about the creative process and the “morning pages”:

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Trina Chakrabarti dreams of healing the world through music. Specifically, Trina dreams of working with teenagers in inpatient psychiatric care. She wants to provide a space for youth to feel listened to through facilitation of emotional expression using music therapy. 

Trina’s sense of purpose in helping teenagers with their mental health and doing so through music came from her own personal experience. As a teenager she struggled with depression and felt lost and alone in her plight. She didn’t know about resources that could help her and didn’t know of any others going through the same thing because depression was a taboo subject at the time. In her darkest moments, she found solace in music and the arts and she says they saved her. Trina wants adolescents to know that they have a myriad of resources available to them to help them with their mental and emotional health; from traditional therapy, to music therapy, and beyond. She also believes in community and wants people to know there are others grappling with the same challenges as them and that they are not alone.

Trina is an accredited Music Therapist who is currently working on her master's thesis. During her masters she specialized in child psychiatry and hopes to work in adolescent mental health care in the future. She is also a musician on her own time. She has achieved her Grade 10 in Voice with the Royal Conservatory of Music, writes her own songs, and plays a variety of instruments. She is currently working on a fiction novel that tackles mental health struggles during the bridge from adolescence into adulthood. In her free time she loves reading, baking, and dancing! Her new original song can be found on her youtube channel, linked below.

Youtube: Channel, New song “Stolen Pressure”

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trinachakrabarti/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrinaChakrabartiYoutube/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/trinachp_19

Sage Behr dreams of a Finding Realized Life in the Present. She grew up in Iowa, USA surrounded by a culture of success and constant production. Later as an actor based in Chicago, this took the form of a culture of auditioning for a limited number of roles and the pressure to continually turn her ideas into something consumable on a set timeline.

In 2017, after finishing her undergraduate studies, she moved to Buenos Aires to study clown, acting, and improv in Spanish. Performing outside her context, in a different language and culture, she found herself in the midst of a new world that was simultaneously terrifying and liberating. These moments of intense discomfort and vulnerability in front of a live audience moved her deeper and deeper into the present moment. This enabled her to connect with herself and others in a new way.

She saw things in a different light; and found a new sense of possibility. She met so many people doing their own independent projects instead of waiting for a studio to hire them. Sage decided to produce her own original web series Skype with Sage and ¡Gringa! Despite her limited resources at the time, collaborating on these projects with a community that shared her inspiration, gave Sage a new feeling of abundance and joy in the process while letting go of a predefined goal.

Skype with Sage is an original bilingual comedy series that moves in and out of Spanish and English in a series of Skype conversations about multicultural love, life as a young adult in Argentina and the U.S. and what the actual hell might make someone a happy person. It was shot in Buenos Aires in 2019 and has a cast of 19, including Cris Condomí, Julián Lucero, Fede Simonetti, Eliana La Casa and Ondina Arneodo.

You can find Skype with Sage on YouTube and get updates on Instagram:

Skype with Sage on YouTube

Instagram @skypewithsage

Sushmita Banda dreams of continuing the cycle of empathy. She believes that everybody has a story that deserves to be told. Her experience as a teacher and marketing and branding consultant help her guide organizations to understand their 'why' and create processes to help them reach their goals. 

Sushmita grew up in India, and since then has lived and worked in the U.S. and Argentina, spending over a year in each country. In 2018, she embarked on a 4-month solo expedition throughout Europe before moving back to India where she lives now. Over her travels and times living abroad, especially in Argentina, she has been touched by the kindness of those who have helped her for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do. Now she feels moved to continue the cycle of empathy and share that positive energy with the world.

Sushmita has been off social media for over a year, which she has thoroughly enjoyed and feels has helped her to find presence, nurture more authentic relationships, and let go of arbitrary expectations from society. That being said, she says to feel free to reach out via email or to send her a request to connect on LinkedIn or Instagram and she will get back to you at some point in the future.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sushmitabanda/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sushbanda/ 

Email: [email protected]

Piyali dreams to travel and travels to dream. She grew up in India with very specific ideas about what her life could be, how the world was, and what was possible. Since then she has traveled widely and moved abroad to the U.S. Through unforeseen challenges and encounters while traveling she expands her sense of what is possible and learns to see the world through others’ eyes. 

In addition to travel, Piyali has always wanted to be a war photographer and photojournalist because she never understood what drives people to destroy lives just to gain control of a piece of land or increase their political power. She wanted to expose the horror that war zones create and show how it affects the lives of those living there in the hopes of bringing about true reflection and a real reckoning. Piyali firmly believes and preaches this quote from Jimi Hendrix: “when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace, so yes my ultimate dream is probably a world without fear.”

To see Piyali's photography, check out the links below:

Website: http://piyalichowdhury.wordpress.com/

Instagram: @pc_piyali

Laura dreams of finding authentic connection through music. She has felt moments of true peace and unity in nature that awakened her spirituality and changed the way she makes music. Now her creative process comes from a deeper place of flow and Laura brings a sense of openness and presence to her collaborations. She feels most fulfilled when she performs live and people truly connect with her music.

Laura is a writer, musician, board-rider, and human being. Her newest single, a dark and bluesy cover of CCR's "Bad Moon Rising," was released on Oct 9. To listen to Laura's music or follow her journey, check out the links in the episode description. She's open to any projects—music, business, or otherwise.

Find her music on Spotify or Apple music searching “Laura Paragano”.

Instagram: @lauraparagano

Website: www.lauraparagano.com

Email: [email protected]