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A LU MN I P RO F I LE
MATT OMO
I
64 PUR D U E A LUMNUS
But after several years managing the largest day spa in
LA, he burnt out. “I felt this hunger to give something back
to the world other than pampering privileged Californians
with too much money to spend,” he says. “So I walked away
from it all and started a world tour of volunteer work.”
And thus he found himself one night deep in the Peruvian jungle, miles from modern conveniences, mind drifting, the air humid and thick with the shaman’s mapacho,
absorbing an entire orchestra of silence. “At that moment, I
knew and experienced firsthand this divine harmony playing through all of life, as if the vibration of creation was
whispering the secret of life into my ear,” he writes.
For so long, Omo says, he was restless. But after leaving the hut that night, after the divine music ceased, his
mind focused “in a way that had eluded me for a long time
in my life.” He now shares those vibes with the world.
—CARSON VAUGHAN
COURTE SY O F MATT O MO (3)
“I felt this
hunger to
give something back to
the world.”
t was the most divine music he’d ever heard
— not the shaman’s “bone-chilling” icaros, or
healing songs, but the harmony dancing in its
wake deep in the Peruvian jungle, the vibrations still eddying about the hut long after
the old man had laid down his cigarette and
his bundle of leaves. “Within seconds I realized
there was no music, no radio, no musicians,” Matt Omo
(ECE’96) writes in his book Love Your Vibe: Using the Power
of Sound to Take Command of Your Life. “I was listening
to the sound of life or creation, resonating through the
screens of the hut. … I believe it was in that moment that
my inner ear actually opened, and I woke from that ceremony hearing life in a new way.”
In 2011, Omo launched his own practice, Omo Sound
Journeys, and is now a leader in the sound-healing movement in Australia. Working with clients in both one-on-one
sessions and larger corporate retreats, Omo employs what
he calls soul vibing, a four-step process that incorporates
sound and breathwork to release endorphins and induce
an expanded state of consciousness. In doing so, he says,
clients can develop a new interpretation of their reality. “It’s
called soul vibing because you go to a place of resonating
with the vibration within your soul,” he says. “That might
sound a bit airy-fairy and woo-woo, but that’s the best way
I can articulate it.”
Omo’s personal journey to enlightenment didn’t come
easy. Born in Valparaiso, Indiana, he studied computer engineering at Purdue — or rather, he majored in it. Studying
came second to his social life until his senior year, when his
mother suddenly died under tragic circumstances. “I felt I
needed to grow up quickly and make something out of my
life to honor the short-lived life of my mom,” he says.
With his degree finally in hand, Omo moved to Los Angeles and worked diligently as a computer engineer until he
was laid off during a downturn in the tech industry. He
didn’t mind. Since moving to LA, he’d slowly begun to reconnect with the kid he used to be. He rekindled old hobbies
and started acting and playing in bands. He learned to surf,
started practicing kundalini yoga, became a massage therapist, and even earned a master’s degree in spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica. And in the process,
he began to finally unpack all the grief he’d been carrying
since his mother’s death.