Megan Monahan Tells Us: Don’t Hate, Meditate!
“Stop Pressing the Snooze Button on Your Awareness.” To me, this says it all. It’s the first subhead in the first chapter (“Meditation—Your New Nonnegotiable”) of Megan Monahan’s first book, Don’t Hate, Meditate! In these pages, Megan fully delivers the methods to make this happen. The series of practices offered show us how we can stop fussing with the mental snooze button in order to wake up and live an aware life.
The book is arranged into six chapters. In addition to suggesting that meditation is your new nonnegotiable, they are: Presence, Acceptance, Intention, Nonjudgment, and Trust. Within each chapter, she speaks to the modern meditator with discussions such as, “Trust Doesn’t Require a Cosigner.” And “Are You Believing Every Thought You Have?” As well as “Evict Energetic Roommates.”
Megan is the teacher I would have loved when I was first beginning my practice and she’s one of the teachers I am grateful for now.
Collect Spiritual Extra Credit
Some of the many things I love about her book are the ways in which Megan’s brings it home. She includes assignments for Spiritual Extra Credit, quizzes that guide choices for practice, and takeaway reflections.
We hear more and more these days about the benefits of meditation. Megan shows us how to experience those benefits when we meditate with purpose. You’ll find yourself underlining words of wisdom such as, “It’s not in the effort and ‘trying’ that we find the greatest success. It’s in the consistency with which our micro-actions align with our truths and intentions.” Megan’s must-have guide to encouraging consistency of practice to find this meditative inner alignment is a welcome addition to the contemporary literature of meditation instruction.
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.