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Skillful in 2018

by

from the New Yorker

Over my years of residency in Richmond, Ma. (population, 1,475), I have joined, un-joined, and re-joined my local gym a record number of times.  If I do rejoin as planned this first week of January, I will be part of the wave of an eager 12% of new gym memberships in the country, who join during the first, post-New Year blush of commitment!  Data tells us that the second week in January is the biggest week in the year for gyms and athletic clubs, while an unfortunate 80% of those New Year’s Resolution-Folks will drop off by the second week in February.  Gyms typically sell membership with the expectation that a mere 18% of people use them.  What is up with that, America?

Bah-humbug and be gone with New Year’s resolutions, I say.  Let’s find a better way to utilize this turn of the year to recommit to ourselves, to realign our actions with our intentions.

I come and go to the gym seasonally and would rather walk, hike or bike as weather allows.  Yet my wavering and wafting membership does reflect my ambivalence regarding self-care in general and gym membership in specific, which registers at either 220% or 1.5%.

How can we best maximize our commitment to ourselves at this auspicious turn of the year? How can we support our commitment to wellness and practice, with more successful steadiness?

New Year’s Resolutions seem so ineffectively American, don’t they?  Goal-orientated, focused only on will, they rely on our mind’s forcefulness, and hover, at times, on almost-mean-spiritedness.  I’m going to do this, damn it!  Get outta my way—I’m off to the gym.  Who are we even talking to?

Bottom line: resolutions don’t most effectively support us in aligning our actions with our intentions.

Another, more helpful and organic paradigm of change is the yogic practice of intentionality, sankalpa, which bypasses the busy, wacky mind.  It starts, as yoga does, from inside, out, with the heart; it gives the heart first-dibs on intention, rather than the greedy mind which jumps into the fray and mucks around so pridefully.

Here’s a simple practice—check this out:

Breathe and relax.
Sit quietly for a few moments.
Notice where your body
touches against the chair.
Direct your breath right there.
Like a doorway,
Enter into those sensations.
Notice sounds;
relax into the rhythm of your breath.
Just sit.
From this place of self,
consider the turn of this new year.
What are you hoping for,
for yourself,
your practices, your wellness, your self-connection?
What are you wanting,
You with you?
If you could see yourself moving forward
into 2018
with more balance and alignment,
what would be alive in you,
what would be
reestablished in you?
See it happening.
Feel it unfolding.

And now consider,
what is one action you can take
just one thing,
that you can do,
for today,
just for today,
to support your bigger intention?
Consider.

What?
When?
Where?
How will you give
This gift
To yourself,
Today?

Invite your will,
Invite your mind,
to support
the longing
of your
own
precious
heart.

Beginning with our hearts and our internal knowing, and building, from inside, out, from heart then mind, we begin layering behavior to support our own sense of dharma, or right purpose.  Habitually we get so way-laid, so aggressively committed to the push of our own will.  The practice of sankalpa, yogic intentionality, supports realignment, rebalance, recalibration of body, mind, and spirit.

Dear friends, let’s open to the grace of this new year with gratitude, with possibility, and with hope.

Let us together intend to continue changing our brain, our bodies, and our behavior.  We can live the way we choose.

One breath, one step, one bite at a time—may we open to this new year with open hearts.

May possibilities unfold with ease and grace.

May we allow our true selves to emerge.

Happy New Year, dear reader-people-folk.  As always, please keep me posted as to the unfoldment of your journey.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings!

For the Children

by

P.S. 22 Student Choir

Winter seemed to sneak into the Berkshires and land, full force, these last weeks.  Along with her, tucked in her pocket, she brought Christmas.  I sit in our cool house in the pre-dawn quiet and ponder the passage of this year of years; I consider our descent into darkness, and the light that hovers, waiting to return.

My thoughts wander to the suffragette movement.  I remember that its brilliant, beyond-brave leaders, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, did not live to receive the vote, but passed the work on to the next generation of activists.

I think of the children.

I remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.

I think of the children.

On this Christmas, the celebration of the birth of consciousness, I think of the children, our children.  All shapes and sizes, ethnicities and colors and gender combos—I think of the children.

I think of our children.

May they stand on our shoulders with brave and open hearts.

May they despair not.

May they find their way forward.

May they believe in the possibilities of goodness, of justice, and hope.

May they live into the words of John Lennon’s anthem, Imagine:

Imagine all the people sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one


In celebration of this precious gift of Christmas, in celebration of our children, here is the P.S. 22 Choir from Staten Island, New York, to offer us a holiday blessing, Imagine, sung with gusto and remarkable heart.  Please do give yourself the four-minute-gift of this song and pass it on.

 

From my heart to yours, from my home, to your home, I’m sending hope and possibilities for a world in which we all can live as one.

Thank you for your presence in my life.  There are not words strong enough to convey the depth of my gratitude.  And keep in touch—I cherish your responses:  aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings,
Aruni

 

The Light Returns

by

These are the darkest of nights, the darkest of mornings.  Walking poor Zac Doodle the Dog by flashlight, both in the morning as well as the evening, shining a tiny circle of light in front of him, together we find our way.  The light squeezes out of the day so early.  I speed home from work, trying to beat the sunset, to walk in some last fragments of daylight, to behold the setting of our glorious sun, not from my office, not from my car, but from the earth herself.  In a race against the sunset I lose daily, as the days shorten, and my rushing intensifies.

And from the darkest of times, with no moon to guide us, come the Chanukah lights, just in the nick of time!  Our collective world has darkened as ethics and morality seem squeezed out of the very air itself, shaping and reshaping the world we inhabit.  Come on, Chanukah lights!  Remind us of the miracle, the relevancy of this ancient story.

I’ve had the privilege of participating in The Chanukah Retreat for Organizers and Activists, led by three remarkable rabbi’s, Myriam Klotz, Sheila Weinberg, and Rachel Timoner.  I don’t like teachers; I am uber-cautious about with whom I sit with, to whom I listen. Having been burned by a certain guru once, and having taught for 47 years while having (the illusion of) control of the metaphoric microphone, I have high and unwavering preferences.  When invited to assist in this program, somehow, I could not say no, although I did valiantly try, since it came at the end of my run of twelve- straight teaching days.

Like Chanukah itself, the program has been a miracle.

Here are a few insights that have whooshed open my aching heart, released tears from my exhausted eyes, and softened my stressed body, with profound gratitude to Rabbi Mariam, Rabbi Sheila, and Rabbi Rachel.  Notice if any of these Chanukah lessons from the second century, B.C. are relevant for you today, right here, right now.

It’s not about the good guys vs. the bad guys!

As a kid, both little and big, I always thought Chanukah was about exactly that, the bad Greeks against the good guys, the revolutionary Jews, the Maccabees.  In this current national moment, I find myself aggressively committed to this model of good against bad.  (How many times in the past year have I moaned, “The bad guys won,”?)  Yet, as I restrict my perspective to this paradigm alone, I am unable to see any goodness in the people over there and any badness in any folks over here.  In fact, the Maccabees were far from good guys, having descended into coalition politics in yucky and slimy ways. This paradigm over-simplifies the situation, while blocking connection and healing.

I’m not saying I know how to do this, nor am I saying I fully understand the concept.  But somewhere, something in me responds to this deep truth; only connection will carry us through.  By making somebody else wrong, I am denying the wrong in me.

I think of my childhood Chanukah memories; they all return to the candles dancing with delight, dancing with an abundance of light, if even for their few minutes of life.  I think of the cold winter outside the window, the warmth of my mother’s kitchen, the casual care she took in lighting the candles.  The gifts were small, yet their presence remains alive today.

The candles bring back to me the safety and touch of my mother’s caring.

Perhaps the most socially active and spiritually aligned thing I can do today, in the midst of the great unraveling around us, is to sit and remember, sit and feel, sit and breathe into my mother’s kitchen at Chanukah, the dance of the candles, the light of her love, the safety of her fully unconditional regard for me.

Perhaps the most socially active and spiritually aligned thing I can do today is to connect with myself from this place of internalized love and safety.

And from that place, may I move into the world.

And from that place, may I be present in the world.

May it be so.

May each of us find that place of tender loving light inside.

May we each sit wrapped in the love that has been offered us.

May we each breathe and relax, one breath at a time.

May we each carry that love and that light into the world.

Happy Chanukah—and happy Solstice.

The light returns.

~~~

Dear Readers, please share with me any holiday memories, Chanukah, Christmas, whatever, and their evocative echo in your life today.  Please do share, also, any strategies you have cultivated to walk through the darkness around us.

All blessings,
Aruni

What? Me Worry?

by

We Have a Choice

As I begrudgingly continue to renounce my title as The Queen of Worry, I think back to this posting from July 2016, and have a little self-snicker. It does seem like there is plenty to worry about these days. And as a life strategy, exactly how effective is that? Let’s ask Alfred E. Newman, the ageless King of Non-Worry:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those of us old enough, What? Me Worry? might bring back memories of Mad magazine, the satirical magazine launched in the 50’s that poked fun at everything around us.  A sort of Saturday Night Live for us kids of the 50’s, the magazine continued along, jabbing and snickering at life for many decades.  Five-hundred plus editions later, it lives, along with its ageless mascot, the indubitable Alfred E. Newman.  That goofy faced-guy represented the ultimate in carefree life attitudes.  Since carefree was not a state to which I was even vaguely familiar as a child, I couldn’t relate.

Although I couldn’t relate to much of the magazine, I loved it anyway.  I didn’t understand it but felt too vulnerable to ask anybody about it.  It seemed, in a 50’s kind of way, strangely counter-cultural, the direction in which to lean, to be cool.

What? Me Worry?, Alfred’s motto, confused me the most.  Although I was fuzzy about the concept “worry”, I certainly knew that bad things could happen at any minute and usually did.  (Welcome to my childhood.) My role, inside my head, was to prevent these bad things from happening.  It was, suffice to say, another exhausting and ineffective life strategy.

Let’s consider the efficacy of my major childhood worries. Here is a bulleted list of my childhood worries coupled with their eventual outcome:

  • My dad, who had his first heart attack when I was in fourth grade, was going to die any day.  This was my family’s silent contract, the air we breathed.  Massive, lifetime worrying. Outcome?  He lived to be 84 years of age.  I was 52 at the time of his death.
  • I had a pretty severe stutter.  Talking in any way—answering the phone, reading aloud in class—all were beyond-painful and terrifying.  Intense, hideous worrying. Outcome?  My work is my voice, spoken and written, my capacity to speak to people’s hearts, my blessing.
  • I wanted to kiss girls, especially Audrey Hepburn, with whom I was monogamous and fully committed until Mary Travers from Peter, Paul and Mary, stole my heart.  (Serial monogamy in my active fantasy life helped me to feel safer.)  This “longing” for girls was a life-threatening and terrifying secret.  Worrying about people finding me out drove me away from life and into hiding. Outcome? I’m legally and happily married to a girl—yes, she is a girl, we both are, older girls now, for sure, clicking down the decades of life together.

My point here is this—Alfred E. Newman was right!  What?  Me worry?  Why bother?  Look at the eventual outcome of these deeply traumatic, life-defining issues.  How ironic and fully pointless it is to worry.  Life works out.  I know this.  I believe this.  And I still slide into my ancient default of worrying.

Here’s the reminder: life is in charge.  No matter how It unfolds (whatever the It might be), there isn’t much I can do to prevent it.  The more relaxed I allow myself to be as a participant in my own life, rather than the illusion of directing it All, the more I breathe and relax and just simply allow the moment to be as it is—it unfolds with more ease and surely more grace.  The more I am connected to that which is not my worrying mind, the easier the path unfolds.

I could (but I won’t) make a list of worries about the future, ranging from how to manage my overbooked schedule and/or how to age and die with dignity and grace in this national climate of uncertainty.  But if my childhood list of three trauma/worries evolved with such inevitable grace, why wouldn’t my future worries also be lightened? Why would I be abandoned now?

For us, all, I pray for ease.

For us, all, I pray for relaxation into what is, and from that place of grace-filled presence, I pray for our ability to do the next, best thing.

For us, all, I pray for the willingness and the strength to just show up in the moment.

For us, all, I pray for peace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Reader-Folks, consider some super-worries from your past and their evolution. How did they unfold? What do you notice? What can you see? Please pass on your insights, all! I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

And I’m totally excited to invite you to webinar I’m holding with my dear friend and colleague, the brilliant Nikki Myer of Y12SR fame. Please The Yoga of Personal Integration page for more info for our March program, . Pass it on!

The Be-Witching Hour(s)

by

 

A Sub-Personality?

Like a tiny and unintentional Jewish curse, my mother spoke these words casually and, in my memory, to somebody else:

“The women in our family don’t sleep well.”

Did this even happen? Memory alludes me. Would my mother ever really say this? She would never, of course, intentionally jinx me. Yet when I think of her relationship to sleep, I can vaguely remember her struggles.

“The women in our family don’t sleep well.”

I have had decades of experience, especially during these last years, of opportunity after opportunity, night after night, of living, outliving, and then falling victim again to this ominous prediction.

Confession: at this present moment, it is now 1:58 a.m., EST.

I’m a faller-right-asleep-er, quickly and mostly effortlessly. And then, come 1:00, 2:00, and onward, I very likely may pop awake. When I say awake, I mean, awake. Awake and ready for the day. Except it’s not daytime quite yet, not for many more hours.

This blog is not about any of the natural sleep supplements with which I am intimate, from ashwagandha to Zyflamend, with visitations to every letter of the alphabet in-between. Nor is it about lifestyle strategies, bedtime rituals, orange glasses I have worn to block out blue light (fondly called, in our family, Bug Eyes). It is not about a historical analysis of sleep in the pre-Industrial Revolution, when people fully accepted the concepts of a first and second sleep. None of those things. It is about how I practice abiding the freaked-out human in the “AWAKE FOREVER” cartoon above, and, night after night, how I practice loving her back into a resting and relaxing person, no matter the hour.

I practice this transformation perfectly imperfectly, some nights/mornings being better than others.

Here are some of the lessons I learned in the middle of the night and in the bowels of the morning, lessons that keep cycling back into my body and being:

  • Relaxing counts
  • Sleep isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be
  • I have not yet died from lack of sleep
  • Sometimes I function better with less sleep, since I’m less defended (this lesson is becoming harder to live into as I grow older)
  • Worrying helps absolutely nothing at all on the planet
  • Worrying changes absolutely nothing at all on the planet
  • It’s okay to not want to breathe and “love myself” back into sleep
  • I can be pissed and annoyed if I choose to be
  • The morning will come

Pretty darn good lessons, right?

The bottom line: by making myself wrong, by making the awake-ness wrong, by trying to change it, the time becomes so much harder. Just like on the damn yoga mat, by relaxing into what is, everything softens and becomes possible. Resting and relaxing, breathing and praying are fine ways to pass a few awake hours. It surely beats worrying and freaking out. As I push against sleeplessness, creating friction with the moment, I am digging a deeper hole of suffering.

Have we heard this lesson before, like ten trillion times, in other arenas of life?

I’m here to bless my sleeplessness, as I am here to bless yours.

I’m here to honor my fear of being tired, and to you I extend that possibility.

I’m here to celebrate the Funky–Futuronsky-Women-Curse-of-Disordered-Sleeping.

I’m here to continue to practice allowing myself to be exactly where I am.

And from this place of self, may we continue to find the willingness to do the next, best thing, to lean toward a behavior, a strategy, and action that will bring balance. And when we are not willing, may we relax right there, with that, even with that.

Even and especially with that.

From 3:13 a.m., I say, goodnight.

May your evenings be filled with rest and sleep; may your dreams be of ease, love, and grace.

~~~

Dear Readers, I often think we should hold an insomniac webinar in these be-witching hours! Please send on your stories and strategies of sleep, sleep struggles and sleep victories. I would love to hear from you. You can find me at aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings!
Aruni

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