Daniele Bossari smiles at me with a serene yet impatient look, as of someone hungry for life, someone who urgently needs to do many things. “That’s how I am, I get passionate easily and I experience situations with intensity.” Especially those situations that can be navigated with the mind, as he does: an established presenter and well-known face on television, born in Milan 50 years agopractices meditation, is interested in theosophy and has just published for Mondadori Crystala very personal journey into the world of stones. Not just any stones, but those rocks that many meditators know and touch to establish a connection. With what? With the light that refracts, with the shades of colors, with the consistency: they are all ways to “stay in the present” and Bossari has been training for decades. And it was right in front of a crystal that, in 2022, his life changed forever.
Can you tell us about it?
«I was meditating with a piece of shungite, a form of carbon. Suddenly I felt a resistance in my throat. I pretended nothing happened, but over the next few days, every time I sat on my meditation cushion, I felt that same resistance. A few weeks later, the result of the histological examination: carcinoma at the base of the tongue. It’s obvious that it wasn’t the crystal that “spoke” to me, but from the concentration on the body I was able to feel that knot better.”
And his life has changed since then.
«A cancer that is impossible to operate on, but treatable with chemo and radiotherapy, which I naturally did by trustingly relying on medical care. Milan represents excellence in this sense, I was looked after very well. I want to say that my passion for the contemplative sciences has nothing to do with official medicine, which is necessary and to which I have resorted. But I would like a message to pass on: the two things can go together, because meditating, looking inside and giving a name to emotions helps us to grasp the messages that the body sends us and which we risk not receiving if we always live “outside”, immersed in the things to do, enraptured by thoughts.”
When did you start meditating and working with crystals?
«I have been practicing meditation for years, also because I got there thanks to my passion for the stars. Since I was a teenager I trained myself to look at the sky. And even though I then embarked on a television career with many forays into the world of music, I have always tried to maintain my reflective roots. Initially I wasn’t interested in crystals, then one day I came across a seller near the central station of Milan. This city is surprising: it is pragmatic, it seems immersed in dead-end materialism, but then you discover that it is full of similar shops. “Look, if you start collecting stones, you’ll never stop”, was his prophecy.”
Which came true.
«Today I have so many at home that Filippa (Lagerback, wife of the host since 2018, ed) goes crazy because every now and then he finds one in some drawer. Crystals are light, history, the strength of the stone, a warning for our lives: they resist for a long time without moving, what we should try to do, always anxious to change place, partner, life. Nothing is enough for us, myself included, but from crystals I have learned that we can take root.”
And then each crystal cannot be “experienced” in a simple way, but there are rituals.
«And it is precisely those rituals that take us back to something profound, that make us understand that our lives are not at the center of the world or of History, but we are just moments that pass. And it is then, only then, that a furious love for life and for the people around is born within you, even when – as happened to me – you have to face an abyss like cancer. Filippa and I suffered a lot, both from the tumor and because at a certain point I sort of “shut down”, but this experience, the experience of the disease, made us even more united.”
How much has meditation with crystals benefited your romantic relationship?
«This is an important point, because those who are not familiar with contemplation think that these practices are aimed exclusively at those who adopt them, but this is not the case. Stopping, touching a crystal, breathing, meditating also means improving our relationships, because it’s as if we purify ourselves from everything that isn’t needed and we can finally present ourselves as newborn to those around us.”
You and Lagerback also have a daughter, now a young woman, Stella. What did he learn from her?
“Studying. Stella is a very attentive, disciplined woman, full of interests. Whoever reads this book will see that it is not the superficial and personal considerations of someone like me, who is not a specialist, but I studied to write it. Ancient texts, habits of shamans, milestones such as the writings of Mircea Eliade. And from a girl like my daughter I learned a further form of love, that of research.”
She exudes great energy. What’s the next goal?
«Get your glider flying license».
