Interview with Jennifer Bonadio
INTERVIEW | JENNIFER BONADIO | Mentorship and Wisdom Alchemy“The place where truth and tenderness come together is a place of peace”
Interviewer: I met Jennifer in Maui, Hawaii. She was one of my instructors in my first 200 hr yoga teacher training, and she continued to be a mentor for the following 9 months I was there. Jennifer’s mentorship and wisdom alchemy program was everything I needed and more at the time in which I met her. Her program involved somatic meditation, heart centered meditations, talk therapy, journaling exercises and questions that rooted around core values and purposeful living. I cherish the time I had with Jennifer and all that she taught me. She is an intuitive, intelligent healer who has found a way to intertwine her life’s learnings into a unique, special offering that leaves you feeling balanced and fulfilled. I interviewed her in her peaceful home and took her photos in her garden.
Tell us about yourself?
Okay. Well, the first thing that comes, is that I really feel like a homegirl. I've been on Maui for 38 years and I'm very much a homebody, and I love where I live, and I feel very connected to the land, and it has had a really big influence on me in the time that I've been here. I really developed my work here, and I consider Maui one of my teachers. And, you know, I've very much connected to the ground, to the earth, and to the ancestors here. And it's had a big influence on me. So when you say- tell me about yourself, that's one of the first things that come to mind. I can't, I don't separate myself from where I live. I have a deep connection to where I live.
Where I am now- I'm about to turn 64, and I'm moving into another chapter of my life, which is the chapter of eldership. And I've been really deepening into my work with individuals and mentoring and teaching. I would say one of the highlights of my life is teaching and mentoring…It's funny at this point in my life you’d think I’d be slowing down, but I actually am more devoted to my work than ever. And I'm very excited about it.
So yeah, that's another important thing. I don't see myself separate from my work either. I guess when I say something about myself – my work, my home, my life – they're all kind of a piece. My spirituality, it's all of a piece. I don't really separate things out. It all sort of flows together in harmony, and I feel really blessed that way. And that's something that I've been working towards all my life, but also I feel tremendously like it's a great gift that I've been given, and that's a place to share from.
How would you describe you in your essence?
I would say in my essence that there's a simple, grounded connectedness to land and home and spirit. I am, I think, most essentially devoted to a spiritual life. And the funny thing is that as I've grown and matured and evolved over the years, I realized, well, there's nothing that's not part of the spiritual life. But that's the overarching umbrella for me. I think in my essence, I would say that body-mind-spirit harmony is my essence. It is always the devotion; it's my true north.
What is one thing you wish everyone knew?
Peace. And I say peace because you think, Oh, love... But peace actually feels to me like the harmony of love. It feels like it is a place of realizing that everything is love – the place where truth and tenderness come together is a place of peace. And I pray and I hope that everybody can experience that in their hearts, in their life. It's something that I wish for our planet individually and collectively.
What inspired you to get into your field of work or service?
What has always motivated me and my work – what got me started, and what has been the driving force beyond just my essence of my spiritual life – has been my own healing, my own growth. I've always sought out coming into harmony in my mind and body. And my healing always led me to the next thing. I started with hands-on therapy and healing arts. And then that led me to yoga and yoga therapeutic approaches and teaching. And so, it's always sort of stemmed from my own aspiration and my own growth, because I don't see my life outside of my work. I can't compartmentalize my work and my life. It's all of a piece.
“And that's true to this day. My growth and experience are what informs and inspires to work.”
When you first started with healing arts and hands-on, was there something specific about that piqued your interest in the beginning?
When I was in university, I was studying psychology, and it was so analytical and it was so left brain and it was so not what my body wanted to do. It was so not what I was being called to do. And it was just kind of kismet, serendipity that led me to this angel of an acupressure therapist.
I took a class and that was it, because I realized, for me, it was the body and mind in harmony as one. That was what I was looking for. That was the healing that I wanted to understand and that I wanted for myself that I knew was going to be my path of growth. And so, it was through the body that I was led away from academia.
What has been your relationship with your period and/or your cyclical nature in general?
As a woman… Now, of course, I am 10 years into menopause. But I had a really difficult time with my moon cycle for quite a while, and I was very estrogenic. It was really sort of climbing a mountain backwards. There was no information anywhere about it. And I was always doing research – the right supplements and the right essential oils and the right lifestyle. I didn't really have the understanding, but for me, my body has always been the thing that has taught me. My body has been my greatest teacher – certainly one of them. So it taught me to cultivate the yin. Little by little, it taught me to honor myself as a woman, to honor my own needs, to restore, to rest. It taught me that.
I didn’t know any of that. I had no clue. It certainly wasn't being reinforced. When I was coming up, that kind of information was not just lying around. You had to go dig for it. And even, in fact, you had to go find out for yourself and make it up as you went along, which I did. But I wasn't the kind to go to Western medicine. No. I was always the kind to do my own homework and dig in and find what works and work with my body. And that might be a long road sometimes, but it has been a source of wisdom for me, because it's something that I can turn around and share with others, because on my path, I've worked mostly with women – women of all ages – throughout my career.
I've worked with a lot of young women – women who were coming up behind me in generations behind me, and I still do that. So, I'm still sharing what I have learned along the way. And as my cycle has changed, now I have learned to honor my rhythms; to cultivate the yin; to trust my body, even when I have no clue what's going on intellectually; to allow my body to teach me. My body still has things to teach me every day. Every day. But I have learned to listen. It took me a while.
What helps you get into your rhythm and flow?
Movement does. Meditation, movement. I'm a yogini. I do practice, but I would say sort of non-traditionally. I really let my body guide me in my practice. So, certainly music and movement together. Lots of rest. It's key. It's key. A long time ago, I learned that “rest” was not a four-letter word at all – that rest was really important to my physical and emotional and mental health. And it has taken me a while to really make that a cornerstone of my self-care, but now I do. And it allows me to sink in. I mean, in order to listen, you've got to stop sometimes. So, that's an important piece for me.
Rest isn't necessarily just sleep, although I'm here to tell you that sleep is really, really important. But rest also means time in nature, time away from devices, time out, time away from people, solitude or just pausing, going outside and just sitting on the grass without any kind of direct goal orientation. Rest could also mean reading a novel – really resting from the here-we-go, straight-ahead task list.
So, resting could mean a lot of things, but it's just part of my rhythm now. That's another thing that took me a while to integrate. And a lot of times people think of rest as just something you do right before you fall asleep. That's what sleep is for. But I think that there's a bigger definition of it, one we could do well to really explore.
What is beauty to you?
Beauty is what inspires love in my heart. The beauty of the order of things, the beauty of nature, the beauty of people in their tenderness and in their fire, the beauty of the way things unfold, despite our efforts to meddle with them.
“Life is a beautiful thing. And beauty is everywhere and waiting for us to see it. And for me, it's kind of equivalent to magic. It's the same.”
Do you have any well-being rituals? If so, what are they?
Oh, yeah. Heck yes. Oh gosh. I think my life is a well-being ritual. That's kind of where it’s gotten to at this point in the game. Yeah, I do. I have routines, of course. I go to bed early; I get up early. I practice in the morning. A well-being ritual that's really important for me is, in the morning, I get up before I have to jump up. I wake up and actually sit. And I sit and pray and reflect and sink into any dream field that is still hovering, and meditate and have tea. So, I can really greet the day in touch with myself and how I feel, and in touch with what is greeting me that day. What’s there in terms of what is arising in me or what is coming to meet me? So, I would say that's my favorite one – that morning ritual that happens usually before dawn. I get up early to meet the dawn, waiting for the first bird to sing. It's a listening ritual.
What advice do you have for implementing a self-care routine that is from the heart and explorative, but still maintains structure and commitment?
This is something I do throughout the day is I stop and I listen. What am I needing right now? And I ask, How can I best love myself right now? What am I needing right now? What feels right right now? What is in harmony with the flow right now? It doesn't take long to make that pause and listen – listen and let my body answer, my heart answer. And that's what I set the stage for in the morning. It is listening. It's not always the same, even though from the outside, it might look the same. Sometimes I'm really in an active, dreaming state. Sometimes I sit and do a breath practice. Sometimes I feel like I need to go drop in and do a more formal meditation. Sometimes it's not formal at all. I just start talking to a spirit out loud. It’s more like prayer and connection.
But it starts with listening. It starts with really wanting to know, having it arise from my heart and from my body. It's very much that way. So, I think that that would be my suggestion. That’s a practice. Oh, that’s kind of loose, isn’t it? Well, no. That’s the ritual. I commit to tuning into myself for at least 10 minutes and see what arises, and really asking, What is the ritual that's right for me now? It might be putting on some music and dancing. It's really about setting aside time.
And I say that because if I've put myself in a box – like, Okay, you're going to do this every morning for x amount of time, I am setting myself up to fail if I put a structure on it. But the funny thing is, I do it every morning. But because there's no need to do it. But the time I do every morning. It’s really about setting aside time. Somebody asked me – they were like, “Let the ritual come up from you. Let it bubble up from your true needs.”
Talk a bit more about the nervous system. Why is it so important to you?
In our culture, in the modern world – I mean, this is the only one I've lived in is our Western culture. I’m an American girl. There's been so much focus on goals. And there is so much trauma – personal and collective trauma. And so many people have cumulative stress. They have a sympathetic nervous system that is actually a little bit sort of stuck on the fight-or-flight response – the part of us that is aroused and activated. And that's why there's so much stress-related disease and anxiety. It's rampant.
And there's a kind of pressure that comes with that. And yeah, I did decide that I wanted to be a nervous system that felt safe. For me, it's a sense of safety. So, that means that I’ve worked on my nervous system, that I am grounded, and that I have been able to develop equanimity. I'm pretty even-tempered. I'm calm. I feel safe to people. And I've cultivated that with my practice. I've cultivated that.
And for me, that's really important because sometimes people… We all are sensitive and we feel other people, and our nervous systems have a radar and they're always looking for safety or no safety or a lack of a sense of safety in their environment. All the time, they're scanning the environment. Is it safe? Is it not safe? Is it safe? That's one of the languages of the nervous system. And it's important for us to feel safe as humans. It is. And I'm not talking… You know, “safe,” yes, not in danger. But also safe to be present, safe to be vulnerable. Again, I'm definitely talking about consequences of trauma – the personal and collective trauma that we have all been – I would say all – been air to and exposed to.
That's something that's important to me to be for other people, because like I said, we experience our world through our nervous system. So, if you come to me for mentorship, for eldership, for support as a teacher, your nervous system is going to read mine and it's going to want to feel safe with me. So, you can feel safe to be authentic and vulnerable and to share and to connect. Right? Makes sense though. It’s almost like it's a reference point. It's like, Oh, that's what a safe nervous system feels like. You would say the word “grounded.” Like, “Oh, she's really grounded.” Well, what does that feel like? What does that mean? Is she barefoot or what? Well, that’s what I mean. You might even say “present,” but I think being grounded is a reference to a nervous system that feels safe.
What is a simple way to calm your nervous system??
Breath work, I'd say, in the simplest way. And the direct inroad to the nervous system – simple breath work. Grounding to the earth, connecting to your feet on the earth. But your breath is always right there. There might be snow on the ground outside, but your breath is always right here. And it's interesting that I have really revolved a lot of my work around breath work and meditation and slow and mindful body-mind practices that all really have that as their goal – starting to shift the nervous system into a place of more resilience and more regulation.
And I'm just starting some classes now on cultural awareness and practice. It's for yoga teachers, but it's for everybody to really understand how even other people's trauma affects us – the collective trauma, our own personal traumas. I think we need more solutions. It's good to know that your breath is there. How do I handle and regulate myself on a day-to-day basis and work with my energy? Breath is the number-one thing.
As a sensitive person, when I’m feeling the dissonance or the angst of the collective (especially these days, it’s pretty pervasive; people are afraid; they’re anxious), I stay connected to my own body. There’s a boundary practice that I like to do that is really about containment: really learning to contain my own energy inside my own body. Because how I feel it is sort of a free-floating anxiety. It’s like, Oh, wow. Or pressure. And for me, it’s really about coming home to my body – certainly my breath, but really even more syncing into a somatic, direct experience of being inside my body, staying in my own atmosphere. That is the way I would work with that. Because, yeah, I feel it, even here on Maui. It’s everywhere.
What does yoga mean to you?
“Yoga” means “union.” That’s what the word means or what the definition is. And I think that infers a lot things. Yoga, for me, is a profound way of living that brings us into harmony. For me, it really is about aligning with pure essence and coming into spirit, mind, and body harmony. And that can only happen in this moment.
That's not something that happens yesterday or tomorrow. That happens now. And so, it's really going through the door that says “now,” going through this moment to harmony – to harmony with the ground, to harmony with the heaven, to harmony with the elements, all contained inside of me. So, that's what yoga means to me.
What are some somatic practices and how have they worked for you?
“Somatic” is a word that I often use because it’s a cornerstone of my work, actually. “Somatic” practices, “somatic” meditation… “Soma” is the body. It is our physicality. It is our visceral experience of life. So, “somatic” means “of the body.” So, instead of having an intellectualized or a heady meditation, it is really taking our experience more in the direction of transcendence and the imagination. It's really going down into an embodied felt sense experience.
The felt sense – our perceptiveness, that felt sense of feeling from the inside out, sensing this moment through our body – is something that's not highly developed for us in the west. It's not something that we learned or has been reinforced often. I’m not saying this for everybody, but in general, we are a heady group. And I think we live in some consequences of that now, and that shows up – that disconnect. And it shows up in a lot of different ways – in terms of our health and relationships, in a lot of different ways. Our relationship to the earth... So, somatic practices all have as the foundation a connection to the felt sense, whether it's breath, meditation, or mindful movement – they all have to do with feelings, sort of a kinesthetic awareness. And interoception – learning to feel and perceive from the inside out. It's like a shift of our physiology of perception.
It all takes me in the direction of harmony, or there’s no separation. For me, it’s been important for my growth and my feeling to kind of bring that up, because by nature, I’m very analytical. I have a very strong mind. So, that was always the first way I would conceptualize life. I would meet life through that particular door. So, I’ve had to learn. And it’s also a really important part of healing trauma – reclaiming the body, reclaiming the felt sense, no matter what kind of experiences. You can’t separate them, after all.
Do you have any remedies or holistic practices that you'd recommend for any phase of your cycle?
As a matter of fact, yes. I mean, remedies, in terms of supplements… I would say the overarching… Certainly, a balanced diet, and for sure good nutrition – hugely important – but what comes to mind first is really the omegas. Making sure there are enough good fats. That is really important for a woman. I think it's important for everybody, of course, but that very much so has made a difference in general all throughout my entire cycle.
One of the main things I did as a younger woman was evening primrose oil and the omega 3s. And now, it's a balance of the omegas as I age. So, that is really an important piece. I've also used essential oils all my adult life. The essential oils that really helped me as a younger woman were lavender but also geranium, clary sage, ylang-ylang… Just the ones that have to do with the rhythm and the cycle and cultivating the yin.
That was really always important, because for me, what was underlying any imbalance was always too much yang in my life – too much drive and activity and fire. And always my body was saying, “Can we lay out on the ground for a bit?” So, anything that cultivated yin was really healing for me – stopping, having enough touch in my life was important. Restorative yoga in my cycle and the calming essential oils.
And so, I would say all of those things, again, under the heading in general of balancing yin and cultivating the yin qualities of comfort and soothing and patience and relaxation. I mean, relaxation is something that I don't know if people really even know what that is sometimes. And I think these are important things: really learning to listen to the body. But again, it took me a while to listen, but that one's key: learning to listen.
What is covered in your Spiritual Alchemy Course?
I actually offer so many different kinds of courses. Spiritual alchemy is one of them. There’s somatic meditation, trauma awareness, breath essentials for people who want to just learn about breath and really hone in on that, and more. I have another new one called “The Dreaming Body,” which just really goes into the dream body and symbology, and really learning to translate the language of the body.
Spiritual alchemy is really taking what we're given each day – our body’s symptoms and our experience and our relationships – and really working with everything to come into harmony with ourselves and to really dive into knowing ourselves better. Empowering ourselves to turn what we're given into wisdom and beauty, turn it into creativity, take the shadow of the things we wrestle with… We all have them. And turn it into wisdom, and turn it into something that actually becomes empowering.
What is your knowledge on trauma awareness?
The class focus for trauma awareness is sort of an inside-out understanding, starting with ourselves, how trauma shows up in our life and our body, how we recognize it in others, for people who teach other people and work with other people. Then it goes into, how do you hold space for other people? Important things to know, and the dos and don’ts, and just facilitating. It’s really information for everybody and every day. Like I said, if someone is, for example, a yoga teacher or a facilitator or whatever, there are certain things that I would share with them about holding space and the kind of language to use, for example, and all of those things. And again, definitely about the current theories about the nervous system and befriending the nervous system.
In terms of the more ancestral trauma… That’s a whole ’nother layer. That always depends on my individual work with people, because most of my work is one-on-one. I do teacher trainings and I get to work with groups, which is always fantastic, but I really value the one-on-one work because it’s confidential, it’s very personal and meaningful, and I can really hold space for that exploration with another person. So, that’s ancestral trauma, and that kind of legacy is something that they live with. That’s certainly what we’ll go into.
And for other people, maybe not. Maybe that’s not on deck. Maybe they want to know so they can go teach yoga at a recovery center, for example. So, I think it really depends on who I’m working with for the direction it will go. It’s really about skills, tools, because it’s a short course. There’s so much to be learned at the level of… It’s not really for therapists. It’s not at that level. This is for people who want to know how to manage this very present reality for people and really want to understand what’s going on and what kind of energy and what kind of space as a nonprofessional can I hold, as well as, how can I work with this in my own body?
What are some of your favorite books?
Oh, goodness. I read a lot. Some of my favorite books… That one's a hard one, because I've had so much influence from books over the years. Everything from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine, which is really about trauma awareness. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Those are currently on my book list because of my current class coursework, but also there are books like The Radiance Sutras by Dr. Lorin Roche. And I think it's really the wisdom books that I would have to say are my favorite, like the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I guess those that have stood the test of time are my favorite. I circulate through favorites. “Well, right now my favorite is…” Right? That was probably the hardest question so far.
What are some of your favorite mantras or affirmations?
The Gayatri mantra is the one I personally use. I was just making up Gayatri mantra tunes this morning, as a matter of fact, in the car. I make up my own little tunes. I make up a song. Like, “Oh, does that sound good?” I just play with that. But the Gayatri mantra is one I return to. There are other favorites, like Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.
Affirmations… There's not a particular affirmation. Perhaps just the “I am…” “I am light.” “I am love.” It’s in the evolution from worship to embodiment. Seeing something outside of ourselves. It's sort of like the golden shadow, like, Oh, yes, that's something I aspire to… Whether it's the Christ consciousness or love and light or truth – whatever we aspire to embody. I love to actually embody it with an “I am” affirmation. “I am beauty abundant. I am that. That is who I am. It is not something that is outside of me. I am.” The “I am” intentionality is the very definition of empowerment.
How can people get in touch with you if they want to work with you?
They can visit my website at https://yogameditationmentor.com and inquire about a free consultation.
