Hi, Remember Yoga?

Let’s face it. Sometimes, it’s not easy to do the practices that uplift us. Whether it is prayer, treadmill, cleaning off our desk, practicing yoga, or sitting for meditation, making the effort can be tough at times. For me, when I’m on a roll, it is effortless to take care of my body, mind, and soul. It’s so easy, anyone could do it. Enlightenment is for the taking. Simple. See the Buddha did it and so can I.

However, when obstacles arise and I’m thrown off course for a bit, it can take days or weeks to get back to that place of feeling like a yoga rock star. Yet, even when I want to sit on my sofa, eat brownies, and forget all about yoga...it keeps coming back to me. Yoga keeps calling me. I see it on TV, in magazines, and on facebook! I can run, but I cannot hide.

For the last few days, I have been in that space of resistance. I did not want to even hear about spiritual practices. I was getting stuck in a funk. Then yoga tracked me down and came up innocently in a casual conversation. A man was telling me about his wife’s back pain. Bait. I could not resist. I said, “You know yoga is the only exercise that can heal the spine so quickly. I met a lady last summer that needed back surgery and after practicing yoga for 6 months, her doctor gave her the all clear. She was healed. What a miracle. I myself used to have back pain, but no more...” I went on and on. I convinced him and me too.

Being now so convinced, I had no choice but to go home and practice yoga. The post yoga endorphins coaxed me return to my evening meditation. And of course, I felt so fabulous the next day, I had to start my positive thinking practices back up as well. I was really inspired when I taught yoga. I found myself feeling like a yoga rock star again and could even blog about it. “YOGA works!!!!!” I’ll shout it from the rooftops.

Thank you, yoga for finding me again and again. I wish that I may always be easy to find.

About Us

Monique Toh first came to yoga in 1996. While teaching English in China, she met an Indian meditation master, received a powerful awakening, and began her spiritual journey. She moved back to Texas in 1997, married her soul mate, got an MA in teaching at Rice University, taught high school, and continued spiritual practices such as chanting, meditation, and selfless service.

After having two children, Monique knew that her own state of mind needed improvement in order to raise truly happy and confident children. She had the great fortune to begin working with positive thinking and Law of Attraction techniques such as “Strategic Attraction Planning™” developed by Perfect Customers, Inc. The attraction plan clarified her path to the ancient yoga teaching that “we create our own reality.” Impressed by the results of her happier family, her steadier state of mind, and her own improved confidence, Monique became a certified Strategic Attraction Planning Coach in 2006.

While living overseas, this time in Indonesia, Monique finished a Yoga Teacher Training program in the Sivananda yoga style. Having always struggled with her weight, she found the healthy vegetarian diet proposed by yoga, combined with regular yoga practice, to be an easier way to stay connected to her body, keep fit, and heal old food and body issues.

Monique has successfully taught yoga and coached clients, resulting in improved relationships, inspired career choices, and personal growth. In 2007, she taught the first Yogic Diet™ workshop. Everyone who participated in the workshop had major breakthroughs. They lost a significant amount of weight, gained confidence, and healed self-esteem and body issues. They created a long term plan for making healthy choices in their diet and lifestyle and found new passion. Monique knew she had found her calling.

With her background, qualifications, and 13 years of yoga experience, Monique feels blessed to be a yoga lifestyle coach. She is an inspiring healer and teacher. Her integrated approach to uplifting the body, mind, and spirit yields the best results, time and time again.

The Yogic Diet Program Elements

The elements of the Yogic Diet program that I offer are:
1. Yogic Diet
Enjoy energy, vitality, and strength as you incorporate a pure, wholesome, and naturally delicious yogic diet into your life. Tailor your diet to include more fresh and dried fruits and berries, pure fruit/vegetable juices, raw or lightly cooked vegetables, salads, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, wholegrain breads, honey, fresh herbs, herbal teas, and dairy products such as milk and butter. You may also want to reduce animal products, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, processed and packaged foods, tobacco, white flour, and fried foods which can adversely affect your body and mind. In addition to improving what you eat, the Yogic Diet offers suggestions as to how to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, and so on.
2. Yoga and Exercise
Be Active and Energetic! Make a fitness plan that you can stick to doing the exercises you love. Include hatha yoga into your weekly regimen to:
- Build strength and flexibility
- Lengthen muscle tissue
- Tone internal organs
- Flush toxins out of gland and endocrine systems
- Aid the flow of prana [vital energy] in the body like acupuncture/deep tissue massage
- Deeply relax your body and mind
* Some of the side effects of yoga are great health, abundant energy, proper weight, stress and pain reduction, and lasting feelings of tranquility, peace, and unconditional love.
3. Law of Attraction
We get back what we give out. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions must be focused on what WE DO WANT in order to attract it into our lives. Through the 4 step Bee-ing Attraction Plan(TM), you make an integrated attraction plan for your body, mind, and soul to ensure that you attract health and fitness goals, happiness, abundance, contentment, improved relationships, and a deeper connection to Source into your life. Having a plan is 90% of the solution.
4. Positive Thinking
Take a positive approach in all areas of your life. Practical tools such as contemplation, self-inquiry, prayer, and signs of land will help you release thoughts, feelings, and old patterns that hold you back and keep you feeling stuck in worry, anger, regret, and fear. A disciplined mind leads to steady wisdom and happiness.
5. Spiritual Practice
Make a plan for your spiritual practices. Whether you want to make time for prayer, meditation, scriptural study, formal worship, devotional practice, chanting, service work, or charity, the Yogic Diet will help you go deeper into your own faith. According to the philosophy of yoga, as well as the world’s religious traditions, the purpose of life is to know God and to serve others. Experiment and discover which practices resonate with you the most and make them a part of your life.
6. Selfless Service
Selfless service is a cornerstone of yoga philosophy and of good leadership. Discover what makes you tick, what you came here to offer, and how you want to serve your world. Be inspired and passionate as you improve and touch the lives of others in big and small ways. The Yogic Diet program will help you set achievable goals for finding and offering your path of service.

How I Came to Yoga - Awake, Now What?

Now that I was having huge metaphysical experiences in meditation and even on city buses regularly, what was to be expected from me? Was I supposed to shave my head, give them all my money, and live in a forest? Was somebody going to try to tell me what to do in my life? In May of 1997, I went to one of my teacher’s ashrams in New York to find out a little bit more. Honestly, I was overwhelmed with the energy of the place. Everything and everyone sparkled with light. My heart overflowed with happiness and love. The people were kind and funny. The food was delicious and vegetarian. The teacher seemed to be everything that she should be. I felt like I had come home. At the same time, I was still concerned of what was expected of me in return.

Over the next several years, I came to understand that a truly enlightened being wants absolutely nothing from us. If we give over a few dollars in offering or scrub the floors for free, it is actually for our own benefit and ultimate freedom. It is like in any other sector of life, the more you give, the more you receive. For me, that does not translate into money, necessarily, though I do give a monthly offering. Mostly, it has been about slowly, slowly giving more of my heart, trust, and time to God. It has been about becoming a more giving person in general. It has been about giving me the space to do the inner work to free myself of issues that block my potential. It has been about making time for a few minutes of meditation.

So, the spirituality of the yoga tradition appeared in my life first. Apparently, it was what I needed the most. Over the next 13 years, the contemplation and philosophy aspects of yoga led me to clean up my mental house more deeply and even become a life coach. Then, two years ago I took a hatha yoga teacher training, and the magic of yoga took the 10-15lbs I had always carried around (plus some self-esteem issues) away from me. For me, yoga totally works. Like my brother says, if it works you’ve got to buy the t-shirt.

How I Came to Yoga - An Awakening

How did I come to yoga? In 1996, I was teaching English in Beijing, China and my friend loaned me two books by an monk, or swami, from a yoga tradition.

The swami said to sit in a quiet and pure place and repeat the mantra Om Namah Shivah which means I honor God within me. I made time each day to sit this way for a week. I would arrange a little puja table with a picture of the teacher that my friend had given me, a flower in a vase, and a candle. I lit the candle, bowed, and sat for meditation. One evening as I meditated, my breathe began to steady and deepen and my body relaxed. Suddenly something happened. With my eyes closed, I saw the swami's face clearly looking at me. I felt an energy strongly move in my spine and then I actually left my body through the top of my head. I was hovering somewhere above my body looking down on it.

But this kind of thing didn't normally happen to me. I'm not a new age flake. I kind of believe in astrology, my parents were hippies, and I once ran through a forest with no clothes on, but I had not “left my body.” But here it was happening plain as day and it wasn't spooky. It was unusual yet it felt natural. Then the thought occurred to me...what if I just died? Oh @#%*, am I actually dead? Somehow that one fearful thought brought me right back down into my body. Feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time, I opened my eyes. I was sure something big had just happened to me. Maybe it was the awakening called Shaktipat which the swami had spoken of in his book.

Shaktipat awakening is an inititation that is given from guru to student and has been handed down this way, so the yoga scriptures say, since the dawn of time. For yogis, the body is made of more than flesh and bones. The body is a place in which one can reunite with God. There is a dormant spiritual energy called kundalini at the base of the spine in the muladhara chakra. Once this dormant kundalini is awakened by an enlightened teacher, one can begin his or her spiritual journey and know God in this body, in this life.

Right after my body leaving experience, the phone rang and my neighbor asked me to meet him at a restaurant down the street. So, I walked down the street in Beijing, China with a new awareness that evening. I was overcome as I saw that everything and everyone seemed to be bathed in light. Chinese people smiled and laughed with their families. I could feel their happiness in my own heart and see light shining from their eyes. I felt connected to them. I felt connected to the trees as they swayed with the wind. My senses were heightened with a sweetness. I was drawn to see the light, the best, in everything and everyone. I had received Shaktipat. I still have it. And thanks to my teacher and my ongoing practice, the experience continues to grow and deepen.

The next morning I had a glimpse of how this Shaktipat awakening had affected my life. I was not a depressed person before this experience, but I did awaken each day with a slight feeling of heaviness and a touch of worry. It had been a normal feeling for me and I never thought much of it until it was gone. I noticed that I was now waking up feeling a sense of happiness every day. Though still riddled with life's ups and downs, there was a newfound sense of lightness and joy about living.

One day shortly after the awakening, I was on a bus in Beijing. Of course, I was stressed from: having to fight the old ladies as we all had to customarily squeeze into the bus door at the same time, the screetching bus attendent demanding “Mei peow (Buy Ticket!)" at me as if I was going to try to not pay, and then settling into the noisy, dirty, bumpy ride to my destination. Despite the stress, my breath began to deepen and the mantra “Om Namah Shivaya” welled up from within me. ONS rose up on my in breath and descended on my down breath. The mantra had powerfully seized me and I found myself again shifting back into seeing and feeling the lightness in everything again. Over the years, I've come to feel that enlightenment is that state of experiencing the light, the good, in everything. With practice, this state can grow.

Your Body is a Temple

Did you know that your body is not the real you? You are not your body. You are the witnessing consciousness peering out of it. When you hold your finger out and look at it, the one seeing the finger is the real you. Your body is actually the temple that houses the real you.

However, you have been entrusted with the upkeep of this temple. How can you take care of this temple, this sacred vessel? If the temple is broken, you can fix it. If it is too heavy, you can lighten it and lift the burden from your organs and joints. If it has low energy, you can raise it with diet, exercise, and positive thinking. If it is not radiant and beautiful, you can love it, nurture it, adorn it, and accept it. Yoga teaches us to nurture our bodies and minds while at the same time giving up identifications we have such as: I am this body, I am these emotions and thoughts, I am this or that baggage/tendency/issue. Then we can begin to live more freely as our true light-hearted selves.

Many people have a contentious relationship with their bodies. I try to remember a simple equation: discipline in my yoga practices + detachment from the outcome = Contentment. When I do yoga with the focus of forcing my body into a certain shape/size/fitness level, I end up unhappy. And if I am too detached and footloose with my practices and intellectualize "I am not this body, I am the witnessing consciousness, my body doesn't really matter so much," I also end up unhappy because I lose fitness and focus. I practice and teach that THE GOAL is to aim to keep up a high level of yogic discipline. For me, that's ultimately the most effective way to be the caretaker of this temple. Detached discipline also builds self-esteem and self-power.

How can you start taking care of your temple? Start with what you know. Swami Rama said, "You don't need to know a lot of things, but you definitely need to practice what you know." If you've practiced yoga before, you love walking, you know that too many carbs are hard on your system, or you see the connection between your caffeine intake and nervousness, then start a daily practice which incorporates this knowledge. You already know a lot about how to take care of your temple...now it's time to put together a plan of practices. In my Yogic Diet coaching, I help students put together a Bee-ing Attraction Plan(TM) to deepen their focus and practices so that they can find harmony with their bodies and minds and healing for their spirits. Let me know if you're interested in creating a Bee-ing Attraction Plan(TM) of your own!

Ahimsa - Love Yourself

Ahimsa is one of the Yamas and Niyamas of yoga philosophy which were laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras as essentially a set of restraints and observances to work with as a foundation for spiritual progress. These Yamas and Niyamas are lightly dubbed the "10 Commandments of Yoga." The first Yama is Ahimsa which literally means practicing non-violence or non-harming toward oneself and others. Don’t hurt yourself or others with thought, word, or deed.

Once I was at an ashram studying yoga and I learned about the concept of samskaras. Samskaras are old and limiting patterns and tendencies that are known in modern times as our “issues.” One goal of a yogi is to identify, heal, and release our samskaras or issues so that we can be happy, serve others, and walk our spiritual path. During that stay at the ashram, I asked a swami, “What are the root of our samskaras?” He had obviously thought about this one because he sagely replied, “The root of ALL samskaras is self-hatred.” Wow, so it is ultimately self-hatred that keeps us stuck with anxieties, fears, all negative relationship patterns, self-destructive tendencies like overeating or drinking too much, self-esteem fluctuations, anger, sadness, and feelings of loneliness and disconnection from Source. But I thought it was their fault!

If it's true that all of our issues arise from a level of self-hatred, then the practices of loving ourselves and non-harming or Ahimsa are the logical solutions as the avenue of healing. This is why the Yogic Diet emphasizes nurturing and healing our bodies, minds, and souls. Each practice of the Yogic Diet, including nurturing the body with a pure diet and hatha yoga and mastering positive thinking techniques, are practices of Ahimsa.

What can I do today to practice Ahimsa? Start with making yourself a priority. Set aside some time each day to nurture yourself. Cook nice food, get your body moving, start to change your self-talk (no matter what the issue is) from negative to positive, and begin to see every obstacle as an opportunity for you to deepen your love for yourself. After all, God created you and is pleased with how you are manifesting. Now, become pleased with yourself.