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 
way 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.
Denise K. Bonnaig
Authentique Coaching
dkbonnaig@gmail.com
(212) 374-1511
Snores and Mirrors
In my last post I talked about that great usurper we call Fear. This week I’d like to turn my attention to something called Resistance. What do I mean by Resistance?
For me, Resistance occurs when something bothers me in another person or situation, something I don’t like or something I don’t agree with. As an attorney, this is something I must deal with every day. I have come to realize that in the courts there are three sides to every story – my side, your side and the truth. I don’t personalize that kind of resistance because it is part of the trade.
The kind of resistance one encounters in personal relationships is much more difficult to ignore. That’s because the bothersome things we see in other people are present in every one of us – otherwise we would not know what we are looking at! We can either choose to resist that which bothers us or give ourselves the freedom to love it.
Let’s take the case of how I grew to love my husband’s snoring as an example. For years I would despair as my deepest slumbers were rudely shattered by the sound that emanated from my husband’s nostrils every night. I just could not sleep through it. I would become angry and because I was angry, I would feel like I needed to react, and what was my reaction? Waking him, pushing him, elbowing him and calling him names. Of course none of that helped and he kept snoring away.
Who was suffering? Me.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at
someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
-Buddha
Now that I have discovered the benefits of Yoga and its philosophy, now that I have meditated on mountain tops and practiced asanas in the rain, how do I deal with a snoring man in the bed now?
Love. Love is the antidote to resistance. Love enabled me to accept the reality that my husband snores. People snore. It dawned on me that snoring is not any easy thing to change and it is a part of who my husband is.
How misguided I was to think I could grant or deny him permission to be who he is. I decided to accept the snoring and then go beyond the acceptance and love it, because I love my husband. Besides, whenever I point my finger at my husband, how can I ignore the three that are pointing back at me?
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
– Buddha
And guess what? I don’t hear snoring anymore…unless it comes from me!
Denise K. Bonnaig
Authentique Coaching
(212) 374-1511
dkbonnaig@gmail.com
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.