Combining Yoga and Catholicism with Denise Vernieri

Rebecca:

Before I get started on today's interview, I just wanted to let you know
that there is a new freebie on my website, go to rebeccatervo.com and you
can get a guide to how your specific energy works through your human design
chart. So it's a quick written guide, but it will tell you four different
areas to look at on your human design chart, to see how your specific
energy can work better and more efficiently. And I created this guide
because what I noticed is a lot of business owners were coming to me with
questions about how can they work more effectively and efficiently in their
business? And also, how can they have time to rest? How can they balance
out their work and rest?

Rebecca:

So this actual guide is for anybody. You don't have to own a business. It
just tells you how your body is designed to use energy. So you can go to my
website, rebeccatervo.com and the right on the homepage there's a spot
where you get a download of that guide.

Rebecca:

Welcome to Beautifully Bloomed, the podcast where we explore how to break
you out of the box of rules and beliefs that are holding you back from the
life you are meant to live. I'm your host, Rebecca Tervo, join me as I
share mindset tools, coaching conversations, and human design, to help you
uncover your unique gifts and create the life, relationships, and business
you desire.

Rebecca:

So today, my guest is Denise and she's a fellow life coach school coach,
and she's a business coach and helps other online business owners to make
their business their full-time work. That's what I got from you, Denise,
when you sent me your summary, correct?

Denise:

Yeah, absolutely. It's something I'm deeply passionate about. I was a New
York City teacher for 17 years and after a while in the classroom, I just
felt like, yeah, I don't think this is the place for me to ride it out. And
I'd had a side business as a yoga teacher and a wellness coach for many
years that I just treated like a side business. And I slowly started
growing that more and more and more because I really was very passionate
about that work. And I was able to go full time. And I had a lot of people
who saw that transition and started asking me if I could help them do the
same. And so that's how I got here.

Rebecca:

Awesome. Thank you so much. So today we're not going to talk about business
stuff, but it's fun to find out where you are in your business. Today, I
had you on because you responded to a post that I did concerning faith
transitions. And so really what you're here to talk about is what kind of
faith transition you had, how you grew up. I want to start with, I think,
so you told me that you were Catholic or you grew up as a Catholic?

Rebecca:

I'm curious, so I had friends that were Catholic when I was in school. So I
have some knowledge of the Catholic church, but how did you... So I think
there's different levels of Catholics from what I've come to believe, but
how did your, growing up, your spiel, were you born into the Catholic
church or?

Denise:

I was.

Rebecca:

Okay.

Denise:

Yeah. My father was born in Puerto Rico and my mother was one of seven and
she happened to be, the fourth child happened to be born here, but the
earlier three were born in Puerto Rico. So that's where my family comes
from. And I grew up, I was born in the church. I was baptized, the
communion, confirmation, got married in the church and yeah. So that's
where my roots were. It's what I grew up studying and ever once a week we
went to CCD until we made our sacraments. So very much connected to the
Catholic church.

Rebecca:

What does it mean making your sacraments?

Denise:

So being baptized, making communion. So it's every so often you're going
into religious instruction, pretty much from the time I'm trying to
remember, this is so long ago, but maybe from like kindergarten or first
grade, you start going to religious instruction. So if you don't go to a
Catholic school, if you go to a public school, as a Catholic, you have to
go to school afterwards, once a week and they teach you lessons from the
Bible and it's religious instruction on how to be a good practitioner of
the Catholic faith.

Denise:

And so every so often when you get to a certain age, you're kind of
committing to the faith, you're committing to Christ. And so there's a
sacrament and it's essentially, you are committing that you're going to
also continue on this path. So even marriage is considered a sacrament.

Rebecca:

Okay. So what does it mean to be a good Catholic? You said you learned how
to be a good Catholic. What does it mean?

Denise:

Yeah. Well, I think when I was younger, it was very, I don't know what the
words are for it. It was so simplified. The basics were the 10
commandments. I remember that being the guiding tool, it all kind of went
back to that. And within those 10 commandments, really all lessons could go
back to those. So even from going to church every Sunday, remembering the
holy days, going to church on the holidays, you have to be there at a
certain age, if you recognize that there are things that you have been
doing or the way that you've been behaving or feeling, and there were
things that were kind of out of alignment, you could go and sit with a
priest and confess your sins and to basically be humble enough to be able
to go and confess that. And then often the priest would give you some set
of prayers to do, to absolve you of those sins.

Denise:

So it meant being a good person. It meant being good to thy neighbor. And I
think the lessons were beautiful lessons. I don't think there was anything
wrong with that, but that's pretty much what it meant.

Rebecca:

Yeah. It was like the Bible lessons and the 10 commandments and then go, it
sounds like, if you feel really like you've sinned, go tell the priest you
sinned. Right? And then there's something to do to absolve the sin?

Denise:

Right.

Rebecca:

Yeah.

Denise:

It was like a penance almost, depending on the degree of your sin, you
would get here's your penance, go home, make sure you do this for X number
of days and you'll be absolved.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So was there certain things that, as a teenager, were there rules
that you had to follow as a teenager that didn't seem like other people had
to follow, for instance?

Denise:

I don't think I was aware of that as a teen so much. I think most
teenagers, we get to an age where we just start to question everything. We
are questioning all the rules, we're like, Why can't I stay out late? So
and so's staying out late and why can't I wear makeup? This one gets to
wear makeup. And I think we just naturally start to question everything. I
taught high school for 17 years. So I saw this with a lot of my students
too. And even being in a high school reading literature that came from
different faiths, was exploring different cultures, it gave me lots of
questions. And I think I became a little apathetic with going to church
every Sunday. My parents didn't really like, they didn't push it per se.
They kind of became a little laxed around it.

Denise:

So I wasn't pushed either. I think where I really started to question more
was later on when my brother ended up marrying a Jewish woman. And so I
learned a lot about the Jewish faith through her and it raised a lot of
questions about their marriage and then their children. And that's really
when I started questioning things, because like you were saying earlier
that, if you don't follow these roles, you're not going to go to heaven.
You're going to go to hell. And I had a real problem with that when my
niece was born because my brother was Catholic, his wife is Jewish. Her
mother wanted my brother to convert. And he said, no. He said, I won't be
converting. He goes, I will let the children be raised more Jewish because
he wasn't as faithful either. He just felt like she was, that was really
important to her.

Denise:

And it made me really think about these things. My niece was a baby at the
time and she's 21 now, but she was a baby and I just thought about like,
there's something not right here with, if this is the only way, how can an
entire faith of people be wrong too? And I was 17 when he got married, he's
a little bit older than me. So I think that was really the age that really
left me with a lot of these, what are all these rules and why aren't some
of them sitting with me? To this day, I don't buy into, oh yeah, of course
they're going to go to hell because they're not Catholic. That makes no
sense to me.

Rebecca:

Right.

Denise:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

There's that thing where our church is the right way and you guys are in
outer darkness. They're okay people, but they're just not... It's like we
have some knowledge they don't have. So it's interesting because the Jewish
faith, I feel like, well there's different levels there too, but right. I
don't know if she's Orthodox Jew or just regular Jew or Hasidic Jews, but
it's like they have these other rules to follow. Right. That are very
specific.

Denise:

I would say she's pretty regular Americanized version of it, not her kids,
but her sister's kids went to synagogue. They go to temple, they got
married in the temple and her sister's kids went to Yeshiva school. I don't
know too much about it, but yeah, there are different, and I think that's
true in the Catholic faith too. There's different denominations. And
depending on the denomination that you're part of, there may be a more
strict interpretation of the Bible, the same way I think that with, and
again, I don't want to misspeak on the Jewish faith because I don't know as
much, but I think that there's something along the lines of where's the
interpretation coming from and how strictly that interpretation is being
followed or embodied.

Rebecca:

Right. Right. So how old were you when your brother married his-

Denise:

So I was 17. I think I was 17 or 18.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So the perfect time to have a lot of questions.

Denise:

Yeah. And interesting at that time too, I was in a car accident when I was
17, 18 years old and I had been going to a local gym and the gentleman at
the counter was like, oh, where have you been? And I told him I was in an
accident, but I'm back at the gym and he goes, you should do yoga. He goes,
go take her class. I's like, ah. He goes, no, you'd love it. He says, go,
go, go. And he pushed me to do it. And I was like, all right, fine. I'm
just going to shut him up. I'll take one class, fell in love with it. And I
started practicing yoga, which opened up a lot of other questions about
other philosophies around life. And it gave me a lot of other questions
that, it didn't give me as many answers as maybe I was looking for at the
time.

Denise:

But it added a lot more depth to my understanding of how there's so many
different cultures. There's so many different people. So many of them are
claiming that theirs is the right way. And I found something in yoga that,
it never said that. Yoga philosophy never says, this is the only way,
there's still some room for, and it's not a religion. Right. So it's a
philosophy. And I think that that was something that I was really drawn to.
My master's degree is in English literature. So it's all pre 18th century
lit is all biblical really. So I have a very extensive understanding of the
Bible and the more I studied all of these things, I'm like, there's so many
more similarities than there are differences that to me, there's just room
for everybody.

Rebecca:

Yeah. There's a thread that runs through all religions, right, in all
belief systems. Somebody else who is on my podcast said that she studied, I
can't remember if it was Greek mythology or some other kind, no. It might
have been Hinduism where there was a God, where there was a Virgin birth
and there was, and I'm like really? So these core stories are in different
ways. So this wasn't Christianity, but there was still like a Virgin birth
that they believed in. And I'm like, that's so fascinating. So what if this
is just stories, if this is just mythology?

Denise:

Yeah. The more I open my eyes to it, it just seems like there's just so
many more similarities. I'm like, what is everybody fighting about? That's
kind of my... There's a trinity in almost every faith and philosophy.
There's a God. And there's in the yoga philosophy in Hinduism, there's gods
and goddesses. And if you were to read some of their energies, it sounds a
lot like some of what the Saint and saints represent. You would go to one,
if there's something you want to have more of in your life, you can pray to
a Saint. In the other traditions, oh, you can pray to a goddess. Right. So
it's like, there's so much overlap. And I think that's beautiful. I wish
that more people took the time to really like, not that you have to follow
all of it, but to at least open your eyes, to see how similar the message
is.

Denise:

Often one of peace and grace. Right. And I can't remember, I'm trying, my
memory is escaping me if it was [Roomie 00:12:19] or Ram Dass, one of them
says, there's many paths, but they all lead to the same place and I believe
that.

Rebecca:

Right. What if there's just not one straight and narrow path? Which is what
I was taught to believe, there's only this one straight narrow path. So you
were 18 and then you started yoga and you had this Jewish sister-in-law and
you were still in the Catholic church.

Denise:

I was. I wasn't going every Sunday. And I wouldn't say that I was... I went
on the holidays. So I know that a lot of Catholics complain about the
people who only show up on holidays. So I'm just kind of laughing about it.
And I did that for many years and then I met my husband. He actually
happens to be very faithful to the Catholic church. And so that was
interesting. And I guess, because I wasn't as fervent about it, I just was
like, yeah. We can get married in a church. And I would go to church with
him and we did all the things and I don't have a problem. I can still, I
can go to church on Sunday. The message is beautiful, so there's nothing
wrong with it. Right. But we've had to navigate some things in our
marriage. And we've had a lot of discussions actually about it. And
sometimes we don't see eye to eye. So it's kind of interesting, but I think
we do a really good job of respecting that this is just where we both are
in our journey with our faith.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So, I'm curious, were you encouraged to marry a Catholic-

Denise:

No.

Rebecca:

... man. Really? That's so interesting. So it doesn't sound like your
parents were really so-

Denise:

Yeah. My parents were very much marry a good person. Someone who's going to
love you and we don't care if it's a man or a woman, we don't care where
they came from. They were very, very, very open minded, my parents. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Now, if you had married a woman, would you have been able to get
married in the church?

Denise:

No. Not the Catholic church. No, not the Catholic church, but there were
some, even my brother and his wife couldn't get married in a church, but
they found an interfaith church where there was a priest, there was a rabbi
and they both came and did the ceremony. So there were people even 20, 30
years ago that you could find that would perform that the ceremony for you.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Yeah. It is. I feel like our society is going to go more and more
this way of like, can we accept and be open to other people's beliefs and
not think there's something wrong with them, or judging, right. The
judgment in the religion I grew up in was so harsh. The judgment of, well,
no, this is the only way. And we might not be able to talk to you if you
don't believe this way, and if you don't do this thing. And we were really
encouraged to marry within our church. It's very much encouraged.

Denise:

Oh, I wouldn't say it wasn't. Of course, it was encouraged. It was in the
teachings. And it was, I think in certain families that were a little bit
more strict and in line with that, I grew up in New York. And so we had
these pockets of groups of people. So there was like the Italian area, the
Irish area, and very much growing up in that community, it was, yeah. You
marry within your, even within your race, even within your nationality,
even within your religion. So there were lots of other layers to where I
grew up. My parents just weren't like that and I thank them for that. My
husband's Italian Irish and I'm Puerto Rican. So...

Rebecca:

Your husband sounds open too then because he didn't try to find an Italian
Irish person.

Denise:

His mom, I think I laughed because his dad actually broke away from it
because they were Italian and his mother really wanted married an Italian
girl and he comes home with an Irish woman and then, so yeah.

Rebecca:

Right, right. So your husband feels still pretty strongly, right?

Denise:

Yeah, he does.

Rebecca:

So what about the children? You have children.

Denise:

Yeah. Yes. We have three children and they're being raised Catholic, but of
course I let there be room for questions. My children know I practice yoga,
they know I meditate. I have a deep meditation practice that involves
chanting sometimes and whenever they ask questions, I answer them. And
there's this open dialogue, but I wouldn't say we're pushing anything, but
because I'm not so like, oh it has to be this way, it's totally fine. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Well what would be wrong with yoga? I'm curious because you've said that a
couple times. So did the Catholic church not encourage yoga or what was it
about yoga?

Denise:

So, because I've been practicing for a very, very long time, now it's more
trendy and it's more popular and it's more like of a physical practice to a
lot of people. It's like, oh you go do yoga and you get flexible and it's
like relaxing-

Rebecca:

That's what I think.

Denise:

Yeah, most people do. But the traditions and the roots of yoga are in
Indian philosophy. And at the core of yoga is the Bhagavad Gita, which is a
Indian spiritual text and the Yoga Sutra. So there's a lot of spirituality,
Indian spirituality, traditionally with yoga, it doesn't come from here. It
comes from another culture and other people and other spiritual practice.
And so it does butt up against a lot of the Jewish tradition of the
Catholic tradition. But here in the states, they've kind of pushed a lot of
that out in favor of just the physical practice, the poses being a strength
or flexibility piece of it. But 20 years ago, it wasn't like that 20 years
ago, I joke all the time. You were weird if you did yoga. It was kind of
like you do what? What's this yoga thing? Nobody knew it. And there was one
yoga studio for 20 miles. Now, you can't drive down the street without
seeing a yoga studio.

Rebecca:

So there was actually not only the stretching when you started, it was more
there is like a spiritual feeling about yoga. So interesting. Yes, no I've
heard of this. However, I've never really dug into yoga that much. I've
tried it a couple times, but that's interesting. So as an 18 year old,
you're like, oh, this is a different thing and I'm going to dive into it.

Denise:

I did. And then when I moved, I moved from New York to New Jersey. That's
where I live now. And I found a yoga studio and the woman was way more
spiritual than the teacher I had in New York. And she would say these
things and I was like, what is she talking about? This is so interesting.
And she would talk about these gods and goddesses and energy. And she was a
Reiki practitioner too. And so I just got really interested. I said, I
think I want to learn more. And I signed up for yoga teacher training and
my yoga teacher, this yoga teacher, I did the training with has been my
teacher now for 10 years. And she is a monk, she's taken vows. So when
first was in that teacher training, she owned a yoga studio. Now she has an
Ashram and she's a monk and she's in Pennsylvania.

Denise:

But it was very interesting because I always joked that I was like, I'm
such a little shit to her because she would teach these things. And I would
have all these questions because my conditioning was coming up and I did
have moments where I felt like this is wrong. I shouldn't be learning this
and I remember asking her questions, well, what if somebody Catholic takes
your class and they have all these questions, but it was really me. And she
had such loving space for me. She can be very curt and blunt to the point,
as good teachers often are. But I remember distinctly being in those
earlier days, 10, 11 years ago being uncomfortable because it was like
alarm bells going off like, Ooh, I shouldn't be learning this.

Rebecca:

Yeah. This seems wrong. Right. It's so interesting because we're just so,
and we might not even recognize how indoctrinated in a belief system we
become when we're born into a religion.

Denise:

Yeah. Hindsight's 2020. So now I can look back and think like, oh my God,
I'm like, how did [Suda 00:19:55] even put up with me? She didn't kick me
off the program.

Rebecca:

I had way too many questions.

Denise:

I had a lot of, and I did. I'm an inquisitive person by nature and I can
have a little bit of spice to me sometimes, little fire. So I had lots and
lots of questions, but she just held the space. And I think with this sort
of thing, I think with a lot of faith, I mean, I'll speak for myself. I
don't like to speak for other people, but I do see this frequently with my
own students who study with me is, we gravitate towards a teacher or a
religious figure and then we pull back. Right. And then we gravitate and
then we kind of pull back. So there's this like ebb and flow of we walk off
the path, we walk back on the path. And so there was a period of time where
I was having children and I kind of backed away, but I still continued to
study with her over 10 years. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Wow. So she's been significant, it sounds like in your life.

Denise:

Oh absolutely. I'm much calmer of a person these days than I was, 15 years
ago.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And I think something came up for me when you said about anybody you
study with or under and you pull away. The thing that I found to be
interesting for myself is because I grew up in such a black and white
thinking type of world, where it's like, this is right, this is wrong. This
is right. This is wrong. So then, the problem I found and something I was
very aware of is when I started studying under business people or life
coaches or people like Brooke Castillo, right. I would just get all on
board. I am so trained to just follow the rules of whatever it is. Right.
And I'm like, that is so fascinating that you can become totally
indoctrinated in anything. In my opinion, if I was trained to be
indoctrinated, I am so, not intentionally, but I easily could become
indoctrinated in something else.

Rebecca:

And I noticed that about myself and I'm like, oh, I'm just going to be
aware now that I want to have a variety of teachers. I want to have a
variety of things because I can see now how open I am because of the way I
was taught to believe about things. It's right or it's wrong. It's black
and white, there's no gray. Right. And in order to be the good girl, right.
You have to follow the rules. So fascinating. I don't know why that came up
from some, because of what you said, right. People come ebb and flow. I'm
like, well, for me, I'm not sure there is an ebb and flow. It was like, I'm
all in. I'm going to follow all the rules.

Denise:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

I'm going to be the girl because that's where my value has come from. Like,
oh she does so good, she's following in the rules. Right. And I think this
is some religious indoctrination that I'm trying to break free from.

Denise:

Yeah. And I think that that happens on a lot of levels, not just with
religion. I know that we're not talking about business, but as a business
coach, a lot of my clients come and they want the right way to do
something. They want the like black and white outline of how to do it. And
so a lot of, yes, I have a process and we coach on mindset. I do a lot of
energy work with my clients. But one of the biggest things I coach on the
most is that there's no one right way to do this. There's no rules. So it
shows up in a lot of areas of our life. And I think that if you've never
been taught to question things from a place of curiosity, really, just the
place of curiosity, a place from I want to know what's true for me, not
just accept what was true for you.

Denise:

Let me explore that. And if you've never had a teacher offer that to you,
Hey, I still teach yoga and I still, I actually do a lot yoga teacher
trainings and I teach sequencing and the postures and I teach anatomy and
energetics and I have students ask me questions all the time. And the
minute I feel like they're putting me on a pedestal, I'm like, Hey, this is
what was true for me. I want you to find what's true for you. You can pick
up what I'm throwing down or leave it because I'm very cautious of when
people have that very black and white thinking where they think I'm the
oracle, the answer. I have all the answers.

Rebecca:

I don't want to be that.

Denise:

And I don't know. And I want, because it's really this unraveling of like,
who are we at our core? When you back the layers of conditioning, you might
end up right where you started, but at least, you know why you're there.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And this is what human design does. And this is why I use human
design as a tool, right. Because I've had a lot of those business owners
come to me. Well, I tried the rules, so and so said I had to do this, this,
this and this. And I did this and it didn't work. I'm like, oh well guess
what? We're all designed differently. And so what's your path? It's
different than somebody else's path. And that's okay. But see, yes. And I
think maybe it's a culture thing too. We believe there's a right way or a
wrong way. Right. We tend to believe that. And I think a lot of that, our
culture is based in Christianity. I think America is based in that.

Denise:

Oh, well we were founded by the Puritans.

Rebecca:

Right.

Denise:

Right.

Rebecca:

So it's like there is, this is the whole-

Denise:

They were very, very, very strict. There was no, like I know we spoke a
little bit maybe before the podcast, but-

Rebecca:

Yeah.

Denise:

Our culture just has tons of remnants of puritanical thinking, right? There
was no dancing, there was no skin showing. There was no, you couldn't... To
laugh or to cry was to be hysterical, to be out of your emotions. Right. It
was the complete opposite life coach was like, feel all your emotions.
Meanwhile, it's like butting up against this cultural thing. That's like
generational. Like, no, it's not safe to have of emotion publicly. That's
like, you're hysterical. So yeah. They had lots of rigid rules. This
country was founded upon a lot of rigidity.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Right.

Denise:

And then I think-

Rebecca:

Where we're coming from then right. As business owners, we're like, there's
the right way. There's rules. What are the rules?

Denise:

Yeah. And if you look at even our school system, if you look at our
corporate structure, it's set up very much the same way. Right? In order
for you to pass through this grade, you have to have X, Y, Z, and then you
can get your certificate, your degree. The bell rings and you get up and
then you move and it's like, everybody's like Pavlov's dog. Right. So
there's a lot of rigid structure to that. And then so if you think about
it, we're still getting primed for it to follow rules, to look and seek
external validation. Oh, when I do this, I get praise. Someone's going to
give me the A.

Rebecca:

On my paper.

Denise:

Right.

Rebecca:

Yay. Yes.

Denise:

Yeah. And it shows up in the employee world too. Right.

Rebecca:

Yeah, no. And so for those students who don't learn the same way, and this
is something that I've thought about a lot, because it's like, there's
students that cannot learn the same way as other students. Does that mean
that they're bad because they can't get an A because they can't learn this
specific way, they need to learn a different way? No, but yes, that's a
whole nother discussion. But anyway-

Denise:

I know. I know we went off on a little bit of a tangent, but I still feel
like it's related.

Rebecca:

But it's all related. Yes. There's this structure, it's just like religions
are an organization. They have a structure. There's a reason. Yeah. It's
all the things. This has been such a fun discussion, Denise. I really
appreciate you coming on. Before we leave, can you tell people where could
they find you if they want to learn more about your coaching or your yoga?

Denise:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

Your yoga.

Denise:

Yeah, absolutely. So I am on Instagram at @DeniseBernieri, and I'll spell
that last name. It's B-E-R-N-I-E-R-I. First name Denise. My website is
www.denisebernieri.com. And I also have a podcast that's called making the
shift and I absolutely love hanging out on all my platforms. So yeah. Drop
in, say hi, that's where you can find me.

Rebecca:

And I'll put some of those links in the show notes too, so that-

Denise:

Oh, perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Rebecca:

Thank you so much, Denise, for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Denise:

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca:

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notified of all the future goodies that are coming along. While you're
there, please leave me a review and let me know what you think. So excited
to share this with you and can't wait to talk to you next time. Bye.