Metta Where It Matters

Before she was a mindfulness teacher, yoga instructor, and author, Oneika Mays was a bookseller, spending nearly two decades in the industry. Mindfulness was something she practiced but not yet something she relied on.

When a personal tragedy struck, something shifted for Mays. She became a certified yoga and mindfulness teacher and became interested in ways to offer those practices to marginalized communities that lacked access or felt unwelcome in traditional wellness spaces. After volunteering at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, she became the first full-time mindfulness coach employed there. She moved on from that position in 2023 but continues to be a no-nonsense champion of making practice accessible to all.

In March, Mays released Sit With Me, a memoir and guide to mindfulness that strips away pretense in favor of something more direct and lived-in. Tricycle contributor Alex Tzelnic spoke with Mays about accessibility, metta, and what it really means to practice amidst the day-to-day richness of our lives.

The subtitle of your book promises a “no-BS journey to mindfulness.” What’s the biggest piece of BS around mindfulness culture that you wanted to push back against? There’s a lot of dogma that can make people feel like they need years of experience before they’re “allowed” to practice mindfulness. Or that they need a fully established routine before they can even begin.

We tend to overintellectualize mindfulness, especially when it’s tied to Buddhism. There’s often so much theory before people even start practicing. That can be really intimidating for people.

When I was studying meditation, I noticed there was a lot of discussion before we even got to actually doing the practice. As a teacher, I want to take those concepts and make them tangible and practical. That’s what I mean by “no BS.”

So how do you actually make mindfulness feel real and accessible for people? It starts small. There’s this idea that practice has to be grand or structured—like sitting for forty-five minutes a day. I don’t think that’s necessary for most people. If you’re a busy parent and the only mindful moment you get is while washing your hands with your kids banging on the door, that’s enough.

We also have to be realistic about where people are. Sometimes I don’t even feel like sitting because there’s just so much happening in the world. So how do we meet people where they are?

And there’s accessibility too. Not everyone can sit upright or be still. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I’m fidgety. So how do I work with my body and access stillness internally?

That’s the question I’m always trying to answer when I teach.

So it’s more about intention than the activity itself? Exactly. It’s the approach. If I’m walking and listening to a podcast, that’s not walking meditation. Walking meditation is intentional. Meditation is training the mind.

So we have to acknowledge what we’re doing. When people start to feel empowered—like, “I practiced mindfulness for twenty seconds while washing my hands”—that builds over time.

I saw this a lot when I was teaching at Rikers Island. Finding a quiet place to sit isn’t going to happen there. So how do you work with the circumstances you have and recognize that you are practicing in that moment? That’s where the shift starts.

Did working at Rikers Island act as an amplifier for ideas like suffering, metta, and liberation? It put a spotlight on my own stuff immediately. I volunteered there for about six years, and then I worked there full-time for almost five. Those were two very different experiences. As a volunteer, I learned a lot about suffering, and a lot about myself.

And this is a little embarrassing to admit, but I had a savior mindset. I had found yoga and meditation, and they changed my life, and I became one of those people who thought everyone should do it. I was insufferable. You can ask my friends and family.

But then I went inside and realized it wasn’t about that. I read an essay called “Helping, Fixing or Serving?” by Rachel Naomi Remen, and it completely changed how I saw the work. It talks about how helping can come from seeing people as broken, while serving comes from seeing people as whole. That really woke me up. 

There was a moment that stayed with me. I was in a unit with someone who had allegedly done something that most people would consider terrible. And I felt my body tighten when I heard that. Later, during a class, I saw his humanity in a way that I couldn’t ignore. And I felt shame. Here I was, thinking I didn’t judge people, and suddenly I was caught in judgment.

I realized if I believe in unconditional love, that has to include everyone. Otherwise, what am I doing?

That moment shifted something in me. It made me realize people are more than what they’ve done. But I had to confront my own discomfort and my own judgment to get there.

When I started working there full-time, things got more intense. There were people I didn’t like.   But that didn’t mean I didn’t love them.

You write about metta helping you to hold multiple truths without flattening people into either good or bad. How has that shaped how you navigate conflict? Rikers was a training ground for that. People want to label others—this person is a murderer, this person did this or that. But when you sit with someone, they’re a person. They have hopes and fears. And I don’t know that I wouldn’t do something similar under certain circumstances.

Metta helps me hold that complexity. Right now, I can feel joy about what’s happening with my book, and at the same time feel devastated about what’s happening in the world. Both are true.

There are also moments where I feel guilt that I’m not still doing the work I was doing at Rikers, because that felt like a very direct way of contributing. That’s another truth I hold.

Metta allows me to ask: What’s the one thing I can do right now to cause a little less harm?

Before, I was very attached to the things I was fighting against—racism, homophobia. That became part of my identity. And when I started to loosen that attachment, I realized I was afraid of who I’d be without it. Metta gave me space. It helped me invite in tenderness instead of constantly holding on to what I was pushing against.

You also describe tension around working in that system and engaging with people who’ve done harm. How do you respond to people who struggle with that? I’ve heard that question a lot—how can you work with people who’ve done terrible things? My response is usually: How do you know your neighbor hasn’t done something terrible and just hasn’t been caught?

We all do things we’re not proud of. Some people are just caught. Some people live in overpoliced environments. That’s part of the reality. But beyond that, if I say I believe in unconditional love, then that has to include everyone. Otherwise, I shouldn’t be doing this work.

I think we’re quick to label people as good or bad, but that’s often rooted in how we judge ourselves. If we can sit with the parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of and hold them with some tenderness, we create more space to see humanity in others.

You make a distinction between enlightenment and liberation. Why was that important for you? I’d seen a lot of the love and light from the spiritual world and the yoga world. Yet enlightenment is talked about as this thing that you want to attain, and it’s focused on the individual. What things can I do to get myself to this place, rather than how can I be free?

If we’re truly connected, then my freedom is tied to yours. It becomes less about me and more about us.

If we’re truly connected, then my freedom is tied to yours. It becomes less about me and more about us. And if I become free, I have a responsibility to make sure you have what you need to become free too.

Your teaching style feels very grounded and human. How do you square that with more traditional or rigid Buddhist spaces? That’s why I call myself “Buddhish.” Because those spaces have often felt triggering for me. These practices helped me love myself and embrace my life and feel OK being childlike again as well as appreciating wisdom. So I teach in a way that reflects that. I’m not trying to sound scholarly; I’m trying to be real.

I still feel insecure sometimes in more academic environments. I may not be a teacher for everybody, but my practice has also made me OK with that. This is the only way I know how to teach, and I’ve learned to trust that.

As a Black queer woman entering spaces that are often predominantly white, how do you think those spaces need to evolve? We need to allow people to teach from who they are. There’s often this idea that teachers shouldn’t be “political.” But what does that even mean? My identity is politicized the moment I step outside. What you’re calling political, I just call Tuesday in a Black body.

If we’re truly talking about this idea that we are all one, then my experiences need to matter to you. You may not relate to them, but you need to acknowledge them. That’s the place from which we can truly appreciate what these practices are for.

I felt really empowered when Lama Rod Owens talked about how mindfulness should help us tell the truth of who we are. Mindfulness should help us move toward justice and liberation, not away from it.

You’ve said the book isn’t about giving answers but helping people ask better questions. What kinds of questions do you hope readers begin asking? I’d like people to ask themselves: Why do I think the way that I do about certain things? Do I love myself completely? Do I love other people? What stops me from doing that?

If questions come up after a practice, can you answer them? What are you going to do about it? Because you have to do something. We can’t just think and think and think. It’s like bell hooks tells us, love is an action word, and we have to be doing something.