In this episode of the Bodyway Intuition Podcast, meet Oneika Mays, a meditation teacher, author, and former Mindfulness Coach at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, as she shares the experiences that shaped her relationship with mindfulness, the body, intuition, spirituality, and love. For more than a decade, Oneika brought trauma-informed yoga and meditation into Rikers, eventually working one-on-one with people navigating incarceration while learning what it required of her to bear witness to so much pain. Her debut book, Sit With Me: A No-BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation, explores metta, or loving-kindness, as a practice for personal and collective liberation.
Oneika reflects on growing up spiritually curious in a largely atheist family, unusual spiritual experiences she had as a child, learning through bodywork that she was sensitive to other people's energy, and developing the discernment to recognize communication from ancestors and guides. She shares hearing her father speak to her the day after his death, a profound meditative experience connected to the Door of No Return, and how she has come to understand her physical body as both the vessel through which she experiences this life and a receptor for information beyond the physical.
The conversation also explores the intuitive download that completely changed Oneika's book after 16 rejections, why she believes safety must ultimately be cultivated within ourselves, and how her years at Rikers affected her personally. Oneika reflects on finding meditation during a period when she was deeply unhappy, eventually recognizing the ways she had used spiritual practice to avoid discomfort, and why love, mindfulness, and spirituality are not ways of escaping the realities of life but practices that can help us meet them more fully.
What is Bodyway Intuition Podcast?
Listen to Stories That Changed the Relationship People Have With Themselves
The Bodyway Intuition Podcast, hosted by author Eboni Banks, features grounded conversations with everyday people reflecting on the lived experiences that shaped how they learned to trust themselves. Through stories of intuition, direct spiritual experience, healing, and the intuitive Clair senses, guests share how they noticed, questioned, ignored, or eventually learned to trust the guidance available through the body.
Each conversation offers a personal perspective on the experiences that changed how someone understood themselves, the world around them, and the choices they made. Together, these stories help us better understand experiences we don't always have language for or acknowledge while encouraging listeners to recognize and reflect on their own.
New episodes are released every Wednesday.
Learn more about Eboni Banks, her lived experiences with the senses, sensuality, intuition, and the services she offers at bodywayintuition.com.
Read Eboni's book, Your Intuitive Nudge: A Step-by-Step Guide to Connecting with Your Intuition, available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other bookstores.