Dominique Perkowski Has A Cure for Overthinkers

In One of One, Coveteur spotlights unique, interesting people carving a niche for themselves in the world—their hyper-specific passions, backgrounds, dreams, and inner lives.

Dominique Perkowski doesn't look like your typical meditation teacher.

For one, the New York-based coach is more likely to be coaching fashion editors, founders, and C-suite executives through her programs, The Muses and The Embodiment Method—or doling out advice on her Instagram—than sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop somewhere. A former self-described "fashion girly" who started her career at Saint Laurent, Perkowski has built a devoted following by translating Tibetan Buddhist meditation into something that feels surprisingly modern: practical guidance for ambitious people who want to bridge the gap between who they are and who they want to be.

In many ways, she's become a Carrie Bradshaw for the self-development set—blonde hair comparisons aside, she's both introspective and aspirational, with an uncanny ability to articulate the anxieties, ambitions, and internal narratives that so many high-achieving women quietly carry around. She knows her clients aren't looking to escape their lives—they're looking to feel more present within them.

And according to Perkowski, the answer isn't necessarily a better morning routine, another productivity hack, or mastering time management—it's learning how to sit with yourself, whether it's for five minutes a day or a full 30 (her preferred method). "I don't think people understand how powerful meditation is as a daily consistent practice," she tells me. "Rewiring your mind requires repetition."

Below, Perkowski opens up about the quarter-life crisis that led her to meditation, the practice that helped her stop believing every thought she had, and why caring for your mind might just be the coolest thing in the world.

Take me back to pre-Dom Perkowski, meditation coach. What did your life look like? 

Dom: I had experiences in childhood that made me really fascinated with how the mind creates our reality at a very early age. I started reading self-help books as early as eighth grade; there was a lot of Deepak Chopra. And then in college, I started to study communication theory; I wanted to be a fashion girly.

What happened after college?

Dom: My last internship, which is where I should have really listened to my intuition, was my “dream” internship, which was a PR intern at Saint Laurent. I was like, “No, I can force myself into it,” but it ended up not being a fit.

When did you start meditating?

Dom: I had been meditating since I graduated college. I had my existential crisis, picked up a book about meditation, and just started meditating. I had a crazy experience then. I remember it being like, “Oh, this is intense.” For me, it was very opening. Some of the experiences that I have in meditation now, where it's very heart-opening, very emotional, very connected—that was my first experience with meditation. Somewhere along the way, while I was doing my corporate life, I would do the guided apps, I would go to MNDFL every once in a while, and I had a practice that I would go on and off. I would go on for a month or two and life would feel amazing, and then I would fall back off and be like, “I don't need this anymore because it feels amazing.” And then I'd be like, “Why does everything feel like shit?” Little did I know.

What changed the cycle? 

Dom: The pandemic hit. I was going through a family crisis, I had just started to go to a spiritual therapist, and I was working through repressed childhood trauma that I hadn't acknowledged up until that point. Me and my boyfriend had broken up, and I was working as an event strategist at a time when events weren’t going on.

I had felt like such a person who was in control of their life. I had been meditating, I was doing all the wellness stuff right. And my mind was banana land. I didn't know what else to do except meditate as much as I could. I started meditating three times a day. I would meditate, be sobbing over the heartbreak of my ex-boyfriend, have a meeting, meditate, and then get on the meeting so I could just be a normal functioning human being in the meeting.

Was the meditation helping? 

Dom: I had been doing all these meditations on YouTube. It was like, ultimate love and abundance, ultimate gratitude. It was great. In the meditation, I'd be like, yes, I'm opening my heart. Amazing. And then I would feel that for five seconds off the cushion.

I was telling my spiritual therapist about this on a call. He said to me something different than anything I had heard in both the meditation space and the manifestation space. In manifestation, they talk a lot about being super positive.  I had been doing that unknowingly my entire life. I've been emotionally bypassing myself. I've been repressing my emotions, and I think a lot of us live in this way now.

I thought my spiritual coach was going to be like, “This is amazing. Yeah, repress your feelings. Think positive.” And he was like, “Instead of seeing meditation as a practice where you're forcing yourself into emotion or you have to be relaxed, why don't you see it as a practice of awareness?”

Because it was a pandemic and I had more time and space at home, I started to do that. He said to do this thing called, when you notice that, just say, “Oh, it's interesting.” Oh, it's interesting that my mind went there. Oh, it's interesting that I'm overthinking this. Oh, it's interesting that I'm spiraling about this.'"

You talk about this in your Muses course—calling it Loving Awareness.

Dom: Yes. I started to do it. But I'm a double Capricorn. I try to practically apply everything. I overdo everything. I would notice my mind going that way and I would catch it and journal on it. Very quickly, I started to personally notice how my thoughts were completely unreliable. I would just be doing something, and then my mind would go into this hypothetical experience of the future, or even an assumption of something that was happening in the present moment that wasn't actually happening.

What I started to do from that space was instead of trusting what was going on here, I started to think instead about—who is the person that I want to be in this situation? 

I realized that I had wanted to be more of a vulnerable person, and I had never done that because of the massive subconscious fear that I had around it—that I'd be rejected, that people wouldn't love it. I was like, holy shit. It felt so small, but it was so big. 

In a very short period of time after realizing that, within a month, I started to be more vulnerable and I started to see how much connection it started to bring into my life. I was speaking up for myself.

Wow. So you rewired yourself. 

Dom: When I saw that, I was like, why are more people not talking about this? I had been living with this burden, this heaviness, this energy. It's subconscious blocks. That's what it is. They literally feel like a burden. When you realize them and bring them to light, they lose their power.

You can catch them in meditation, you can work with them in meditation, and you can regulate your nervous system to actually take the action to see the outcome that's different.

Then from there, I got certified through a 200-hour Tibetan Buddhist meditation coaching program here in New York City at this place called Three Jewels. It was the most incredible.

What makes Tibetan Buddhist meditation different from other forms of meditation? 

Dom: Tibetan Buddhists had really figured out, in my opinion, neuroplasticity before modern science figured out neuroplasticity.

When it comes to modern ambition and goal setting, it's one of the most important things to creating the kind of life that you really want to live: understanding how your mind and how it's been shaped until this point is projecting on the present moment, and how you can shift that intentionally towards the person that you want to be.

Practically, how does someone even begin to start to rewire their mind?

Dom: Meditation, every day. I don't think people understand how powerful meditation is as a daily consistent practice. Rewiring your mind requires repetition. It's almost like going to the gym and expecting yourself to lose 10 pounds going to the gym once a day.

Meditation becomes that practice where the insights that you're learning about yourself can actually be repeated.

Especially in a city like New York, finding a consistent meditation practice can feel near impossible. What are some things people get wrong about it? 

Dom: The first misconception is you're supposed to be good at it at the start. You're just supposed to be able to shut your brain off and think about nothing.

What I say to my clients is, in this modern age, of course the thought of sitting with your thoughts and focusing on something feels impossible, because when we look at how much is clawing at our attention on a daily basis—from emails to social media—and the fact that the mind wires and repeats what it does most often, no wonder we're all distracted. No wonder we're all anxious. No wonder we all feel like we have ADHD. 

Coming from a person who had high-functioning anxiety, and sometimes often may still think she has ADHD, the fact that I can actually stop my thoughts when I want to is incredibly a gift that I would never give up for anything. We do that within my program,The Muses, because that strengthens your attention and focus. It's really important to train that focus so you can actually tap into those visualizations deeply, because even those visualizations you can get distracted from them.

How did you first start sharing your knowledge with people?

Dom:  Practice. I started sharing on social. People were reaching out to me and they had questions and they were thanking me. I had not expected this because I had thought that I would start sharing this part of myself and people would be like, “What is she talking about? She's weird.” But my friends started to come up to me at parties, people who I never would have expected to have interest in this, and be like, “Oh, it's really cool. My mom meditates.” And I'd be like, “Sick. This is amazing.”

Do you remember your first post?

Dom: I remember my first post. I did it on my own Instagram account. My teacher had this beautiful speech where he was like, “What would you do today if you knew you were the teacher that you wanted to be?”

I got moved so heavily by that and I went straight on my Instagram and I made the most awkward, painfully awkward video ever. I was stuttering. I had never spoken into the camera before. It was a video about me talking about how I'm starting this meditation teacher training, how I'm so excited about it, how I've been meditating consistently for the full year, and how it really had changed my life. My friend Paige DeSorbo reposted it. It got like 36,000 views. People loved it and they reposted it. It was painfully awkward, but it was genuine. It was really real. You gotta practice using your voice painfully awkward until you get to use it confidently. You can't find your voice without trying to notice what it sounds like.

How would you, in a nutshell, describe what you do right now and your purpose?

Dom: I blend meditation mindset work with modern ambition. Everything within this work is about getting aware and intentional about what's actually going on within your life. Because of the way that our mind is fired and wired together, we are so used to looking at everybody else for the answers instead of ourselves. There's magic that happens in these practices that, until you experience them within meditation, you don't really understand that this part of yourself exists. Your own inner voice, your own inner guidance exists.

What’s your current daily spirituality practice like? 

Dom: I like to wake up in the morning and usually I've gotten into this habit of saying gratitude in my mind from the moment that I wake up, usually around 8, 8:30 in the morning. I'll make myself a coffee because habits are important, and I'll drink that coffee. Then depending on what I need during the day, I have certain practices that I pull out. A 30-minute nervous system regulation meditation is one that I'm really leaning on right now, especially as I expand into new areas of my life and things that I want to create for myself.

Can you share some books that have made the biggest impact in your life and practice?

The books that have made the biggest impact on my life and that I recommend to clients are:

What are you manifesting for this year?

Dom: Honestly, my main intention this year is to treat life like the miracle it is and allow that to impact my work, creativity, relationships, love life, and everything in between. From a practical perspective, it’s to keep creating and sharing work I love with more people (which already has happened with The Embodiment Method, podcast launch, and this Coveteur feature, which was on my manifestation list!). 

Head to DominiquePerkowski.com to join The Muses, The Embodiment Method or to book a 1:1 session.