Mindfulness for Messy Lives With Oneika Mays

0:03Oneika Mays:Thank you for joining me for episode 580 of Live Happy Now. If you like your mindfulness served up with honesty and accessibility, you're going to love this week's guest. I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and today I'm joined by Oneika Mays, a storyteller, author, and yoga teacher who became Rikers Island's first ever mindfulness coach. In her new book, Sit With Me, A No BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation, Onika shares her accessible style of meta and mindfulness and demonstrates why it's a perfect fit for the messy realities of today's world. Let's dive in. Onika, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now.

0:42I'm so happy to be here with you, Paula.

0:44Oneika Mays:I've been excited to talk to you ever since I got your book and I started digging into it. And, you know, we have talked about mindfulness and meditation many times on Live Happy Now, but we have never talked about it the way that we're going to talk about it today. And you give us what you call a no BS approach to mindfulness and meditation, which we're going to dig into. But before we get to that, can we start by having you talk about how you discovered meditation because your backstory is pretty amazing. Yeah, I would love to. I found meditation and yoga kind of the long way around. I had a personal tragedy that happened back in 2008 and someone who I was in love with died overseas in Iraq.

1:29And it left me feeling completely untethered to myself. I was in my mid-30s, yeah, mid-30-ish. And I felt like the world was pulled out from under me. I hadn't lost somebody who was like my age before. And I did all of the things you're not supposed to do when you're grieving. So I got a new job. I got engaged to somebody else, made all these big decisions, and then it all fell apart. And I found myself like on a yoga mat. I had been introduced to yoga in the late 90s, and I loved it. It actually really shifted something in me, but I wasn't ready to meet myself, right? I say sometimes, too, that yoga found me rather than I found yoga, but because I met myself for the first time.

2:16So when Mike, I call him in the book, got killed, I found myself going back to a yoga mat and felt so empowered as a black woman, as a queer woman. I felt like, oh, I can I can be myself and be comfortable with myself, even when there's parts of me that I don't necessarily like. And so I got really hooked on feeling strong. And then when I injured my shoulder, I started to sit a lot more, started to really get into this idea of being still with myself. And it was a really powerful and transformative experience. So I found myself teaching in places that, you know, folks who were marginalized were.

2:55So I went to Rikers Island to start to volunteer and then work there full time.

2:59Oneika Mays:Yes, and I want to talk about that because I think that will really surprise people. And the way you describe it in the book is haunting and beautiful. But what really struck me about your story is how you were completely transformed once you embraced meditation and yoga. And what is the difference between the person that tries it and is like, eh, that's okay, and the way that it just absolutely made the butterfly out of the caterpillar for you? You know, I think it was the idea that when I first discovered mindfulness, which, you know, is defined as being with whatever is happening in the moment and not trying to fix and change it.

3:41So if you try it and you're like, it didn't do anything for me. The fact that you're even saying like, I don't feel anything is you being with yourself in a particular moment.

3:52Oneika Mays:Oh, interesting. You know what I mean? I think there's a lot of us who think like, oh, I'm going to meditate and life is going to be really beautiful or I'm going to feel completely shifted. But what I realized was, oh, this is my life that I'm living and this is the reality. And instead of reacting to everything that's happening around me, meditation gave me an opportunity to pause. And then I started responding instead of feeling so reactive all of the time. And that was the transformation. So it's not like my life changed dramatically, but my response to how my life was is what changed. And I felt so empowered by that.

4:31I used to feel really overwhelmed by everything outside that was happening because my relationship with it was really adversarial. You know, I don't think I've ever, you know, processed that and said that exactly like that before, but it felt like I was in conflict with everything. And then when I discovered mindfulness and I took that pause, I could ask myself, is this conflict or is there something happening in me that I need to soften into? And that's when the shift started to happen to my life, to my relationships and to myself.

5:07Oneika Mays:That's beautiful. Beautiful. So what made you then want to teach it? Because you also became a Reiki master. You did so much with this whole area of practice. It's because it felt like such a blessing. It gives me a lump in my throat to even say that. I felt like it was a blessing to be able to find this path. And I felt like I had wanted to give back in ways before, but maybe couldn't articulate how or articulate why. And when I discovered this practice, I was like, oh, this is meant to be shared. It's meant to be shared with other people. And we don't keep it to ourselves because I recognized the interdependence of how we live our lives, that I am a part of something larger and I have to take care of myself to be connected with the world.

5:57So teaching just felt like a natural extension. And you don't have to do trainings to teach. You can just do them to deepen. But in my career before, I was a teacher in a lot of ways because I used to lead different teams. So I was doing training. So this just seemed like another way to sort of express that side of me.

6:17Oneika Mays:And then you, as you said earlier, you volunteered at Rikers and then that led to you teaching there for a decade. Tell us, first of all, how you started volunteering and that whole genesis of that journey? Yeah. So when I became a yoga teacher and I was so fortunate, I got to teach almost full-time yoga right out of the gate, which is very unusual to be able to teach full-time. And in a conversation with my cousin, we talk about social justice stuff. My family is very politically active and my grandfather was an activist and my grandmother and my mother's really active. So when we were talking about yoga and how blessed I felt to be on this new path and embrace this, you know, like spiritual life that I had, she was like, oh, you should be teaching in jail.

7:02Like that's how it happened. And I was like, oh yeah, you know what? Yeah. Why not? I should be. So I went to Google and typed in teaching yoga in jails in New York city. I know it's like, it's that simple. I wish I had some real sexy story, but that's it. And then I found a nonprofit and I started volunteering with them and did some other trainings and trauma-informed practices because teaching inside an environment like that uses different skills because you really have to know yourself so deeply. So you are showing up for people so they can be empowered and find their own sovereignty. And because the environment is so oppressive.

7:44And so I volunteered there for about six years. Then I also started teaching other teachers how to do this work inside jails. And then I got an opportunity to interview for this incredible new position to be a mindfulness coach. So I helped to launch a wellness program at Rikers. And I was working in the women's jail and I worked with an acupuncturist and a wellness coach. And we did some incredible work with women, with trans folks, non-binary folks in the women's jail at Rikers Island. And it completely changed my life because I think that's when I realized, oh, this is what it means to show up for yourself and to show up for other people.

8:23Oneika Mays:And how does it affect you to walk into that environment? In your book, just the description of going into the jail, going into that system and what you had to go through each time you visited was something that we don't think about. It's not like Orange is the New Black where they just show up and somebody lets them come in. It's very different than that. So what is it that really spoke to you and how did that affect you to be going into that environment? I think what impacted me when I was inside was I got a calling. Like the first time I walked inside and I met, you know, students who would be in my yoga classes.

9:05And it was just this sense of like, oh, I belong here. And I think it's because you connect with people. And I knew I've never been incarcerated, but what I did connect with, there were so many black and brown women who were incarcerated and who are still incarcerated at Rikers. And I saw myself in them and they saw themselves in me. And it's like bearing witness to people's experiences. You just realize people people everywhere. And what I realized that in some ways, my classes were different because of Rikers Island. But in so many ways, teaching a class and being with people was just like being in a yoga studio.

9:46And I hadn't been impacted or sort of recognized what it was like to be inside a jail. And so that carried with me when I left and the sense of guilt that I felt when I had to leave knowing people were still locked up. And that tethering to the island is what kept me coming back every day because people want to be seen. And so many of those women feel forgotten and lost. And so I wanted to make sure that I was witnessing them and bearing witness to their experience. And that's what kept me going back, you know, day after day.

10:20Oneika Mays:Was it hard to leave that? In a lot of ways, yes, it felt impossible because I was so connected to a lot of the people that I I was working with who were coming to see me for meditation or yoga or just to take a breath. So that was really hard. And it was hard to leave some of the folks who I'd grown so close with who were my colleagues. And in other ways, it was the easiest thing I had to do because I felt so burnt out. And I felt like I wasn't necessarily helping from like a macro perspective, because in some ways I felt like once people knew about our program, they thought we were doing, you know, and I put this in air quotes, like, such good work.

11:00And I never want the system to look better than it is. Like I want people to, to know that it's still terrible. And just because there's someone teaching meditation and yoga there, it doesn't mean that it's okay. And we still need to find ways to humanely have conversations about what happens when we make mistakes, what happens when we, you know, we lose our way and to recognize that so many people are there because they live in areas that are over-policed. So in that way, it was the easiest thing because I felt like I couldn't go on every single day doing what I was doing. If I wasn't taking care of myself, there wasn't any way that I was going to be showing up fully 100 % for the folks that I was supposed to be serving.

11:44Oneika Mays:Let's talk about your no BS approach to meditation. What does it mean and how did you come upon this? You know, when I was studying yoga and I was in a lot of environments and when I did my meditation training as well, I didn't feel like I was always heard. Every part of my story was always heard. And when I would talk about my experiences being black or being queer and feeling like, how do I teach from this perspective? I felt like I was often shut down or told that that wasn't important, that I just needed to focus on the teachings. And like politics didn't belong in a yoga studio or politics didn't belong, you know, with a meditation teacher inside, you know, know, a meditation studio, but I felt like that's not what I got from the teachings at all.

12:32And in fact, you know, if you really study yoga and this idea of oneness, right, yoga means young or yoke or union. So you are one with everything and everyone around you. So to ignore a group of people's experiences is actually not to be practicing yoga. And so I realized that I wanted to strip away a lot of the dogma, a lot of the inaccessibility I used to run up against when I was in certain spaces. And that meditation and yoga is for messy people. It's for the messiness of life. It's for the messiness of who we are. And we don't have to change ourselves to practice it. In fact, our lives may not necessarily change that much after we practice.

13:17And I don't feel like that's talked about enough, but we change about how we're reacting and responding to our environment. And that's like the core of what I teach, a really accessible practice that this is for everyone, no matter who you are, you don't need money to do it. You don't need special clothes to do it. And you don't need to go somewhere to do it. And it starts with you.

13:41Oneika Mays:And that's so good because there has been a kind of a mindset that yoga is more of an elite thing. It really did need to trickle out and be able to reach the masses. You know, and I loved where, you know, I practiced and got my first 200-hour training. I mean, it changed my life because here I am sort of doing it. But there was always a sense that it had to be done a certain way, that things needed to look a certain way on the outside. And I didn't feel like there were enough conversations about our own internal landscape and how that can shift and how yoga might look different in Iowa than it does in Harlem.

14:21But that doesn't mean that it's not the same practice. And the more folks who are teaching it, who look different and who have different abilities and who are all different shapes and sizes, we all have something to bring to the practice if we're teaching it from its roots. And that's why I love it. And that's why I continue to teach and that I teach from my perspective because that's what the teachings have taught me. And it's not something I do, but it's like how I live.

14:49Oneika Mays:We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

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15:48Oneika Mays:And now let's hear more from Onika Mays. We cannot talk about your approach without diving into metta. So tell us what that is. So metta is the Pali word for loving kindness. And it's rooted in Buddhism. And there's also talk of metta or loving kindness also in Hinduism as well. But from a Buddhist perspective, it's an unconditional love. And it's a love that we don't have to earn. It just exists. But the way that it exists is that we start with ourselves loving ourselves unconditionally. And then it expands. It starts to reach out. So then we recognize that we love people who are close to us.

16:27And then we start to expand that circle even wider. So we start to include people we don't know really well. the people who maybe are on the outskirts of our lives. And then we start to even incorporate difficult people, people, you know, in Buddhism, we traditionally call it like the enemy. And so this allows us to move through the world in a way with a sense of ease with people and with the, with the world. It's so powerful because when we embody it, we realize that more and more exists. It doesn't ever run out. So we don't have to be stingy with it. And it can transform our relationships. And it's part of the way that we live in Buddhism.

17:07It's partnered with compassion, like sympathetic joy, where we celebrate somebody else, and then also equanimity. And as a meditation, we practice it by offering phrases. So we say, may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, and may you live with ease. And then we do that for those different groups that I mentioned.

17:27Oneika Mays:And for people who are starting it, sometimes it can be very difficult to say it for themselves because that's where we start. May I be happy? May I be at peace? How do you help people get past that barricade that we oftentimes have? It's amazing how difficult it can be to give that wish to yourself. I used to encounter this so much with a lot of the women that I would work with at Rikers who felt like they were taking care of everybody else but themselves, to even think about yourself first can sometimes seem selfish or challenging. And Sharon Salzberg, who is an unbelievable meditation teacher, who's the reason that so many of us in the United States know Mehta, she said a way to think of it or a way in to loving ourselves is to imagine someone we love, whether it's a child or a loved one or even a furry companion loving us so we can hold on to that.

18:23And then from that place, we can start to love ourselves and offer ourselves that loving kindness. We can also think of a time when we were celebrating something so we can get that feeling of, you know, what it felt like to love ourselves or a time that we were really proud of ourselves. So those are, those are ways in. And I think it's also important to note that it's not like when you do this, you're like, oh my gosh, I love myself so much. It's so great. I'm so great. It shouldn't even necessarily work like that. But you start to notice like, if you're somebody who doesn't talk to yourself in a nice voice, and I'm one of those people, and something happens, and then the voice in your head is even just a little bit nicer, that's the win.

19:08And we look for those things to celebrate, rather than some giant transformation where we're seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. It doesn't necessarily happen some big shift. So I think that's also important to remember. It's a little bit out of time.

19:23Oneika Mays:But why does it change us so much? Because when I'm out of whack, I know that is the practice I have to go back to, is that loving kindness meditation. Because it starts with me feeling really frustrated with myself and then mad at everybody else too. And so that for me is that cue like, okay, this is what you need to be getting on. Why is it so transformative for us? Because we feel a sense of spaciousness and we don't feel so tight around the things that are happening in our lives. I used to compare my unhappiness or my discomfort, right? There's, I think it's because we start to melt the discomfort.

20:02When we're out of whack, we are generally uncomfortable with something, right? We don't want to deal with something that's going on in our lives, or there's something we wanted that we didn't get, or we got something we didn't want. So when we practice things like loving kindness, there's a sense of ease that we're not trying to fix or change anything. And it allows us to be with whatever is going on. And when we can be with something with a sense of ease, that allows us to step into more love because we feel relaxed. We feel comfortable. We feel at one with what's happening. That is how we find peace.

20:41That's how we find balance in the world. And loving kindness is a way to do that. Mindfulness can be a step for us to step into loving kindness when we can have that pause. So we learn how to pause and say, what's going on? This is really happening right now. This thing that I don't want to be happening is happening. And I realized that I can be with that and myself at the same time. And when we do that, we can also start to make decisions. So we can say like, you know what, this is happening, and here's how I can change it. This is happening, and there's nothing I can do about it. So let me be okay with that too.

21:16Oneika Mays:And I think that's particularly relevant for us right now. It's not breaking news that we are living in complicated times. And for many of us, like sending love to people who are hurting others right now might feel like the last thing that we want to do. Can you put into context how we use this meta approach in these specific times? When we have hate in our hearts, the Buddha told us that meta is the antidote to hate and also to fear. When we are moving from a place of fear or a place of hate, that burns us out. It doesn't accomplish anything. So when we're thinking about people who are causing harm in the world, when we can send them love and the hope for healing, for them not to cause any more harm, that's the solution to this.

22:09Love is actually the answer when we wish people not to be causing harm because if they're not causing harm to other people, they are also not hurting themselves. And that also has a ripple effect. And when we're wishing love for people who are doing difficult things, what we're really also stepping into is forgiveness, right? And the power of forgiveness. And it allows us to disconnect from the energy of something that's going on. Doesn't mean we're okay with it. It doesn't mean that we're not holding people accountable. It doesn't mean that we don't show up and protest for change, but we're doing that from a place of love and a place of non-harm rather than sort of, you know, there's that great Audre Lorde quote that we don't dismantle the master's house using the master's tools.

22:55And I feel like love is a way to dismantle without causing more harm. And we do that with love. We know how much happier we feel when we are stepping into love versus hate. Hate can fuel us and we can still have anger Anger is also a really good tool, but we don't allow it to overcome us. We don't allow it to sort of drive the way that we move through the world.