Authentique Coaching

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Say “Yes!” To Life

Samsara

Samsara

I am lucky to be one of the many thousands of students who have been uplifted by the teachings of karma yogi SN Goenka. I wrote about my experience meeting Master Goenka earlier this month.

I’m glad I did.

On September 29, 2013, my most accomplished yogi  gave up his body, no doubt to help other souls on their journey to enlightenment.

Since his passing, I have been thinking about this experience we all share – the splendor of being alive. Buddha taught that life is suffering, and I am here to say “Yes.”

Yes to illness, yes to the job that we fear, yes to whatever keeps us up at night. The source of your suffering might be a relationship; financial problems; losing a job or the death of a loved one, but whatever it is, say “YES!” as we head into the holidays this year. 450px-SriLanka_BuddhistStatue_(pixinn.net)

We’ll all be reminded of family members who will not be seated at the table with us because they have passed on. My own father passed 20 years ago. Even the family members who break bread and wishbones with us this year live a life that is rapidly fleeting, just like yours and mine.

But learning to say “Yes” to the impermanence of the people you love this year, during the holiday season, will help you to enjoy their company so much more. Forget about what they should have done, or could have done. Say yes to their so called “mistakes,” and accept them unconditionally. Because it is all too easy to lose ourselves in our technology, to multitask instead of having real conversations. To seek out every possible distraction from the temporary nature of our lives, whether it be fixating on a smartphone or looking at the TV while someone is talking to us.

Those big jets that take us to the places we are from, that’s the only technology we need.

SNG

SN Goenka

Being Pro-Choice does not necessarily involve politics…

What is consciousness?

Over the ages, humankind’s tendency towards introspection and self-awareness has led our collective consciousness to dwell on the nature of each of our own “individual” consciousnesses. It is a mystery that has entertained the minds of great men and women since antiquity, but great strides are being made today thanks to the unprecedented fusion of different religions and philosophies.

Denise Bonnaig, Being Pro-Choice does not necessarily involve politics...As a Yogini, I work in the trenches with consciousness every day. My job is to help my students tend to their mind, body and spirit. Before each class, I pray my students will reach the highest levels of human consciousness and I can’t help but feel my prayers get answered in every class.

Since my students intend to be loving and kind, I tell them that it begins with envisioning the invisible: loving kindness. There is an old saying, I tell them, “You become what you think about.” If a person wants to be of Love, they must first know Love.

That’s because everything that happens to a person, happens in their consciousness – both figuratively and literally! All of science’s brightest ideas to explain the universe and its many wonders started as seeds in the consciousness of a curious spirit.

Ok…so I’ll repeat: What is consciousness?

I believe that consciousness is the collective experience of all humankind. When I sit down to meditate, there’s nothing but me and you, you and me; we happen to be at different points in our “being-ness,” but we all have passports to go where we choose in the continent of consciousness.

Your relationship with your Self is the key to your mobility; if you don’t love yourself, you will never be able to love someone else.  By the grace of God, or the universe, or whatever one believes, the ability to choose to love is possible.

I often tell my students that meditation is an excellent way to start their journey. Letting the clutter and muddy water of your mind settle will reveal untold treasures within, I tell them – thoughts might  be hard to shake at first, but one is not one’s thoughts. If something negative surfaces, one can let it go just as easily with neither attachment nor aversion. So what is consciousness?

It is what it is.

Bonnaig - pB - Headshot - NC - Jan 18 2013Denise K. Bonnaig, Esq.
Authentique Coaching
(212) 374-1511
dkbonnaig@gmail.com

Breathing in Sedona

2013-03-21_06-50-04_508Earlier this month I made a sort of pilgrimage out to Sedona, Arizona. I went to attend a retreat with my friends who, like me, have been profoundly touched by the teachings of Lester Levenson. The retreat was hosted at the beautiful Sedona Mago Retreat, in plain view of the area’s legendary Red Rocks.

Lester Levenson was a physicist and engineer who, in 1952, came out with a philosophy that was way ahead of its time. Two realizations inspired him:

  • He realized his own feelings were the cause of all his problems – not other people or unfair situations, as he had previously thought.

  • He also realized his feelings were the main obstacles he had struggled against for so long. He saw that this struggle is what destroyed his health and caused him to suffer in every way.

In between workshops where I learned more about the Release Technique that was inspired by Lester’s teachings, I wandered the grounds of the resort. My cell phone didn’t work, and I was just fine with that; I stumbled upon the Healing Garden knowing that New York City would not be able to reach across the continent and remind me that I am Denise Bonnaig, Esq.

Alone, I sat down in the garden to meditate. My practice is to take 108 deep breaths to quiet my mind. With my closed my eyes, my completely relaxed body, and my mind still. I began to let go of sentences, words and thoughts, and I became profoundly aware that this journey was shaping up to be unlike any other I had taken before.

I could literally feel the energy vibrating in my fingertips and toes. My entire body just surrendered. That emptiness, that nothingness, created a sense of amazing love and brought me to the intention that I have had since the beginning of this year: Letting go of all my non-loving feelings. I found myself in a place where I didn’t feel my body.

And then I had the deeper realization that chasing anything will not get you anywhere.

The Healing Garden

The Healing Garden

I stayed there for 45 minutes. Near the end of this amazing session, I was struck by a vision. My long-gone grandmother appeared before me and she was standing next to Lester Levenson. They didn’t say anything, but the vision of them standing together touched me like nothing ever has before.

I left Sedona fortified and recharged, which is good considering the Spring we have been having in New York. But I won’t chase those sunny days. I have other places to be.

 

 

Bonnaig - pB - Headshot - NC - Jan 18 2013Denise K. Bonnaig, Esq.
Authentique Coaching
(212) 374-1511
dkbonnaig@gmail.com

Reset. Rejoice. Repeat.

One of my greatest pleasures in being a yogini is the ability to travel the world meeting people from all age groups and all walks of life. I frequently find myself in the company of young people who remind me of myself – when I was just starting to learn my Denise Bonnaig | Authentique Coachingway around a Yoga studio.

I call those days my my boxing days because not only was I boxing in the gym, but I was fighting with life itself. Back then I considered meditation to be an abstract, religious practice available only to the few who have the patience for it. I was content to derive pleasure from material things like the Porsche I so obviously needed. What I didn’t realize is that getting pleasure from an object is a double-edged sword; while material things can deliver intense pleasure quickly, it is just as easy to get cut by the ensuing crash.

The overarching characteristic of meditation is self-love. Self-love means not beating yourself up and, in fact, being compassionate towards other people. We humans are beings that crave the wellness of others in addition to our own. Some styles of meditation focus on breathing while others focus on the recitation of mantras, but the main tenet of most styles of meditation is the concept of “resetting” the mind. That is, through controlled breathing or chanting, or both, the clutter in our minds falls out of focus and the present moment becomes clear. This simple lesson can be applied to every aspect of life.

For example, the folks on Madison Avenue feed the world a steady diet of fashion and engineered beauty, images designed to stir up feelings of envy and poor self-worth. These feelings reside in the subconscious, so primal that it is difficult to describe them with words. One lesson from meditation that can be applied here is the idea of living in the now. All we have to do is make the decision to get on with our lives in the present moment and keep thinking of the present moment. In other words, keep hitting the reset button.

As we zoom out of our most basic emotions, feelings too basic for words, we can take focus on the sentences we form in our heads to express these feelings. At this level of the mind the clutter gets thick with insults, arguments and half-constructed sentences churning in the flotsam. How great it would be to find a method of expelling these cynical interlopers! One way to combat a string of unpleasant words floating around in your mind is to make the decision to repeat words of love. This can be in the form of an ancient mantra or something you just thought up. Either way, your negative thoughts will be neutralized, and you can carry on anew.

If we continue to zoom out we can see ourselves interact with other people. People who gossip, people who need to feed their egos by denigrating others, people who feel wrong about themselves and so are determined to prove other people wrong. How can a person counter such negativity? Love. If you are in the vicinity of a toxic person, imagine an ocean of love pouring down on top of them. If you can imagine loving someone who is a challenge to love, your own negative feelings will become outdated and inconsequential. Your heart will be reset and ready for compassion instead of contempt.

The theme is a simple one: Your mind is tough enough to overcome the obstacles you have in your daily life. Just be ok with yourself and outside forces will seem small to you.

And when each of my students comes to this understanding, I share with them my secret: Teaching this to my students is my favorite reset button of all time.

Densie Bonnaig, Authentique Coaching, Reset Rejoice Repeat

Denise K. Bonnaig
Authentique Coaching
dkbonnaig@gmail.com
(212) 374-1511

From Fear to Freedom

Dead Tree DesertNon-loving feelings are like rogue waves in the ocean. Appearing out of nowhere and swelling to enormous proportions, they take away our breath and toss us around until we lose track of which way is up.

As Hafiz wrote centuries ago, there are consequences to these destructive forces:

 

Selections from I Know The Way You Can Get

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Hafiz

O, I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

—–

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,

Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
– Selections from I Know The Way You Can Get

To me, fear is the most insidious non-loving feeling of all. Fear of death, fear of financial ruin, fear of not looking good enough – it springs from the mind like a predator pouncing on its prey, beguiling us into believing that there is such a thing as failure. In reality, you cannot take a picture of fear or feel the texture of failure because they don’t exist outside of the mind. Whenever you feel fear, remember that your mind is creating it and remember that what you think is what you get.

Do the thing you fear most, and the death of fear is certain.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In order to reach a state of quiet confidence filled with Love where nothing can bother us, we must change our minds, not simply our behavior. If you begin to detach yourself from your mind, you also begin to detach yourself from these non-loving feelings.

I have found that can be as simple as remembering to be authentic.

That means loving who you already are and not caring if you look good walking down the street or if you look silly slipping on a patch of ice. Someone who is authentic is comfortable in her own skin, because she knows it’s the only skin that she will ever have.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved 
for what you are not.
―André Gide, Autumn Leaves

Q: How can I rid myself of non-loving feelings?

There is something you can do to banish the non-loving feelings from your heart, and that something is nothing.

Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to mis-create and have not allowed me to guide it.
– A Course in Miracles

If you think of yourself as nothing, then nothing will bother you. What other people think about you is their business, it’s none of yours. That means you will not want approval from anybody else. You will not need any person or any thing to feel secure.

I leave you with a quote on this theme from one of the greatest spiritual leaders alive today. I hope it will inform your day and get you thinking:

There is nothing to trust seeking happiness from outside, you will only become exhausted with suffering,
which is without satisfaction and without end.

– His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Denise K. Bonnaig, Esq.
Authentique Coaching
(646) 483-4737
denise@authentiquecoaching.com

Don’t Let Your Goals Get In The Way Of Your Intentions

Once there were two sisters who were fighting over the last orange in the cupboard. Neither was willing to share it, as each had her own goal of taking the entire orange. When their mother stepped in to settle the dispute, she learned that one girl wanted it for the juice and the other for the rind. “See,” the mother said, “you let your goals get in the way of your intentions.”

Denise Bonnaig | Don't Let Your Goals Get In The Way Of Your IntentionsDisappointment, failure, apathy: All words that have a way of lurking in any conversation about New Year’s resolutions. Why is that? If people set goals based on what they would like to become in the new year, why can’t they do it? A knee-jerk reaction might be to say their goals are unrealistic, but what if the real culprit is the very act of setting goals?

I ask that question because there are people who have set goals and say things like  “I’ll be happy when I get a new job” or “I’d like to be in a new relationship” or “I’ll be happy when I have tons of money” – and when they do reach their goals they’re still unhappy.

I don’t like goals; another word for “goal” is “end,” and I don’t believe in endings. I would rather focus on what my intentions are.

An intention is something to move toward – there’s no conclusion, success or failure. Intentions are non-judgmental, they don’t lead to disappointment and they spring eternal from within each of us as extensions of our personalities.

This year, my New Year’s intention is to let go of all non-loving feelings. I would like to live a life where I don’t judge anyone or anything, where I’m content, and at every instance grateful. I want to keep love and trust, and throw out fear and doubt.

By letting go of all non-loving feelings we get closer to happiness, which is also peace of mind. The times that I have been able to experience such a place have been filled with beauty and the knowledge that everything happens the way it was meant to happen.

Even if today I’m not able to be loving and positive and accepting of everything, I still have tomorrow to start over without beating myself up.

This can be exercised in all areas of life. Relationships, finances, career, health issues; accepting what is happening, focusing on what is working rather than what is not working.

In meditation, thoughts may surface but the key to quieting the mind is to accept those thoughts and move on. Make your life your meditation. If negative thoughts surface into your consciousness, accept them and carry on with your intentions – they will remain the same, negative thoughts or not.

Here’s to 2013…may your intentions inform you and help you answer the most important question you will ever answer: Who are you?

A Flu Shot for the Mind

Denise Bonnaig, Esq. | Flu Shot for the MindScience has extended our physical lives through discoveries about exercise and diet, even going so far as to eradicate smallpox from the world. But while vaccines and antibiotics ensure our physical longevity, what can we do to inoculate our souls against the challenges we face in our day-to-day living?

We can literally, do nothing; stillness is the cardio of our minds. The act of mindfulness, of being aware of your thoughts in the present moment, is like being aware of your blood pressure or pulse. It alerts us as to what we need to work on, and provides us with insights as to the nature of our selves.

“The way to do is to be.”

– Lao Tzu

I like to “be” by incorporating the practice of yoga and mindfulness in whatever I do. We may not have the luxury of living in caves and meditating all day, but even the busiest person can reserve 20 minutes out of his or her day to do so. I was recently reminded of an old Zen adage which proves that the problems of today are the same as the problems humanity faced centuries ago:

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”

Denise Bonnaig | Authentique Coaching

“Do your duty, Arjuna.”

 Krishna to Arjuna, Bhagavad-Gita

The duty of humanity is to shed our divisive past in favor of Love. Love is the essential healing force in a chaotic world filled with alarm clocks, endless meetings and deadlines. However, if we do our duty to ourselves and do the best job we can, our minds will not be self-critical. One’s ego will no longer criticize him or her for not doing enough or not being good enough. So Love is like a flu shot for the mind, preventing us from getting sick with regrets and second thoughts. It allows us to nip our regrets in the bud – which quiets the mind, in addition to calming our bodies.

There’s no wrong way of doing this. All it requires is having the courage to make the decision to open the door to Love for ourselves, and the audacity to reject the non-loving feelings that taint our hearts.  It’s a way of giving approval to ourselves. It’s a way of accepting who we are with whatever is working well in our lives at that particular moment. Right now I’m sitting. I’m grateful for that. Whatever is not working well, I’m still grateful for it. I’m grateful for the lessons that I may learn from that.  I’m still grateful for the opportunity to do something else.

“To love is to recognize yourself in another.”

Eckhart Tolle


As a coach, I share with my clients strategies to vaccinate themselves against non-loving feelings – in other words, we build an immunity against self-defeating thoughts, laying the groundwork for prevention rather than just sticking a band aid on the problem.

Contact me today to find out more.

Authentique Coaching
Denise K. Bonnaig, Esq.
(212) 374-1511
25 Murray Street
New York, NY 10007
denise@authentiquecoaching.com

Be Grateful For Who And What You Have

It was my third year in America when my son Nicolas was attending preschool. One day in November he came home and said to me, “Mommy on Thanksgiving we eat turkey.” Princeton Power YogaThat year was my first Thanksgiving celebration and soon my sister, and only close relative in America then, joined in on all the Thanksgiving traditions. We, too, were using the time off to be together and create memories.

That is what is so special about Thanksgiving: The getting together of families.

The family gatherings where I come from tended to occur, unfortunately, through funerals. That is why I am so grateful this year to see my sons and my first granddaughter, my sister and her family, in a setting of celebration. That is a tradition I will maintain: Sharing and moving forward together as a family – two things to be so grateful for.

Gratitude, I would define as the appreciation of Life, the appreciation of the things we might otherwise take for granted.

Growing up in a religious family, I felt my father gave away much more money to the church than he did to us children. This instilled a deep sense of service to others in me, as well as a recognition of all the things I have. I think that is the reason why my mission, my purpose in life, is to help people discover that they will be happier if they appreciate all of the little blessings in their lives – in other words, to empower themselves.

The hurricane reaffirmed to me that point.

What we perceive as a curse can just as easily be turned into a blessing. Like everyone else in lower Manhattan, I was without power. But I empowered myself; I spent some great moments getting to know myself, reflecting on myself and meditating. I wrote Thank You notes to the people I love and I went through my address book to see if there were any relationships that needed mending.

Likewise, my intention is to empower my yogis and my coachees to discover that they have the power to turn a situation around, from one that hurts to one that heals. To turn “I can’t!” into “I can!”

That is not possible without gratitude for the unnoticed, little things; without appreciating of the breath of life. As Meister Eckhart said:

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.”

This ThanksGiving, I invite you to share in my journey with an invigorating physical and spiritual two hour Meditation and Power Vinyasa Yoga Workshop at Dance Exposure II in Princeton.

Discover Your True Self And Allow Your Authentic Personality To Shine!

You will leave feeling stronger, more flexible and energized, and most importantly—full of gratitude on this day of giving Thanks.

Prayer For Sweetness

Princeton Power Yoga

May the wind blow sweetness,
the rivers flow sweetness,
the herbs grow sweetness,
for the People of Truth!

Sweet be the night,
sweet the dawn,
sweet be earth’s fragrance,
sweet be our Heaven!

May the tree afford us sweetness,
the sun shine sweetness,
our cows yield sweetness —
milk in plenty!

– Author Unknown

Memories of Meditation and Mindfulness

All of man’s difficulties are caused by his inability to sit, quietly, in a room by himself.
–Blaise Pascal

Back in 2005 I was at a Baron Baptiste Power Yoga event in Rhinebeck, New York. During the lunch break, I saw there was another group sharing the venue with us. There were so many of them, and they all ate their lunch in silence! I eventually got to talk with a few of them and I asked what they were doing there. They were attending a Mindfulness Meditation retreat led by a medical doctor named Jon Kabat-Zinn. They recommended that I check out his book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness.

I rushed to the bookstore and devoured the book. I later learned that Mr. Kabat-Zinn would be doing a book-signing at the bookstore that evening, and I decided I must go and meet the man. I stood on the line for over an hour, with the book in hand and full of emotion. When I finally got to meet him, even though the line was long, he spent some time with me.

I told him that I practiced yoga but I had trouble with the resting pose. I said “I am just restless, I think I feel like I’m wasting my time. I want to work out, not just sit there.” He listened to me, encouraged me, and personalized my book, writing “May this be the door in,” in addition to the stamp he imprinted on everyone’s books: May your mindfulness practice grow and flower and nourish your life from moment to moment and from day to day. It was just so beautiful. That was back in May, 2005. And that’s when I truly started to meditate.

Be – don’t try to become.
– Osho

If you ask me now, seven years later, “What is the meaning of meditation?” I would just say it’s the art of quieting the mind. But how is that possible? Scientists say we have 6,000 thoughts a day, so how can we eliminate those thoughts? What I suggest to my students is that once you sit in meditation, all you need to do is check in with your Self, with the present, with what is happening now.

At first it might not be easy. My very first meditation when sitting down was really painful. My nose itched, I was restless, I was aching and my mind kept wandering on and on. Why was that happening? It was happening because I was pretty much results-oriented. In order to do something, I needed to know where it would lead to. I needed some specific results. I felt that just sitting down and doing nothing was such a waste of time. That’s how ignorant I used to be.

It’s not so much about doing as about being.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

In stillness there is really no thinking. Thoughts evaporate because they become meaningless to you – no matter what those thoughts are. Non-duality is so important because our world is the world of contradictions. Black, white. Good, bad. Beautiful, ugly. I meditate to get away from that and the independence I achieve brings me to a oneness, and from oneness to non-limitations, and from non-limitations to abundance everywhere.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
– Eckhart Tolle

Like everyone else, sometimes I am faced with outrageous tuition to pay or other devastating bills, and I always find my solution by meditating. “How am I going to pay that bill?” I ask myself, in a non-judgmental way. I say yes to it. I love the bill and I’m OK with it. Guess what? Somehow I’ll get the funds to pay. I’m going to make that tuition. I’m going to do this and pay it all. Somehow I will find the funds. I know that I always come up with it. Whatever it is.

Meditation to me is priceless. If I don’t meditate first thing in the morning, I won’t get out of my bed.

If every 8-year-old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.
-Dalai Lama

How do we get to that point? You have to say to yourself that meditation is something that is very, very important – not just to you, but for the world. It requires some discipline. It can’t be, “Oh I’ll do that once in awhile.” Just like the muddy water in a puddle needs time to settle before the water become clear, you have to let your practice of meditation take its course to settle your reckless thoughts, consistently, for a long time.

And that’s where my coaching comes in. Because if your mind is full of clutter, if you have so many nagging things from the past, that are haunting you, if you’re not living in the now, in the present moment, how can you find stillness?

Through release techniques, through rebooting your mental “operating system”, you and I will quiet the turbulent waters and let the mud settle down until there is nothing but you – on top of all your problems.

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