I Met Gabby Bernstein!

You guys know I love yoga, and I’ve mentioned I like meditation, too.

I also have a bit of a girl crush on Gabrielle Bernstein. A difficult personality in my life loved her work, and I tried to read her books to get to understand this person better. That didn’t work, but I did end up enjoying her work. If you have no idea who she is, here’s a piece from the NYT about her. While I’ve definitely become more spiritual, calling her a guru or a guide still feels a little hippy-dippy to me. Either way, she is an inspirational speaker and writer whose work focuses a lot on spirituality and meditation.

I started with her Add More -Ing to Your Life. Though I certainly believe in positive thinking and reframing negative thoughts, it was a little too out there for me. I also wasn’t sure I believed in her. Some former PR chick who got sober and discovered yoga? Okay… But I gave her another try and read Spirit Junkie, which talks more about her own spiritual journey and puts her work into context. I was also following her on Facebook and Twitter at this time and read some of her blog posts, and it made a lot more sense to me. I downloaded her guided meditations and was completely hooked. (It’s sort of weird, though, when your iTunes is on shuffle and it goes from Empire State of Mind to a guided meditation. Just saying.)

So when I found out Well + Good was hosting an event with her, I was all about it and so was my buddy Jen. It was hosted at the NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life, which also hosts lots of other events like this and has some meditation resources on their site.

She led us through several meditations, including this one:

via her Instagram

I wrote down pages and pages of powerful statements. (Yeah, I love that stuff.)

• There is a way through every block.
• Wherever you begin is the perfect place.
• Sometimes when you’re walking around acting like you’re the girl who’s always happy, you’re not allowing yourself to feel something.
• Accept it’s tough out there.
• When the time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off.
• I choose to let this go.
• Everyday is an opportunity to clean your life up.

One of the mantras she kept returning to was “when in doubt, play it out,” and this can apply to so many circumstances. She talked about using it for drinking, for example. Let’s say you’re trying to quit or cut back on drinking. You tell yourself you’re going to have one drink, and then you decide, oh eff it, and have another. In those “eff it” moments, she said, play it out. What happens when you have that second drink? Or third drink? How are you going to feel tomorrow morning?

It was an amazing event, and I’m so glad I went.

I stayed after for the book signing, too, and got to meet her, which was awesome.

Meditation: yay or nay? It was only recently that I got into it, but it’s been so helpful to me. Here’s an article I sent Laura recently with tips for people who don’t like to meditate (yet.)