Go to Your Room

Did life just send us to our rooms, to consider our behavior?

Did life just give us a giant timeout, to ponder who we choose to be?

I believe this time can be one of renewal, rebirth and possibility.

I do not say that to take away our terror, individual and collective.

I say it to give us the courage to keep going.

Here’s what I am thinking about today:

Dear Friends,

We are equipped and we are able.

Through our Kripalu experiences, whatever they might be, we are blessed.  The teachings we have been given, the lifestyle we have experienced, the compassion we have shared are exactly what we need to find our way through this wild time of upheaval and re-creation.

Just as it happened in 1995, when the guru fell most spectacularly from grace and the ashram paradigm as we knew it blew apart, the core Kripalu values guide us forward today.

Presence.

To be right here, right now.

This for me is the kindest and most helpful of values.  When I am able to stay in this moment, to tether myself back from my racing mind scanning the news and trying to outline a new world that doesn’t exist, in the moment, in the presence of this moment, I am safe, I am protected, I am connected.

We are safe.  We are protected.  We are connected.

Right here, right now, no matter what happens.

The future thinking, the figuring it out—literally takes us away from the solution, the return-back.

Utilizing whatever tether works for you, breath, mantra, sound, music, keep coming back to the moment.  No matter how far away you travel, no matter how long you are gone, whenever you notice the galloping mind, with ultimate compassion, breathe back, come back—

Return-back to the moment.

Walking with prayer is my practice.  Moving my body and repeating mantra, affirmation, prayer is my doorway back.  This carried me through in 1995, when life had no form I could understand. I can remember walking down the Kripalu East Drive, each step a prayer.  Today it brings me solace, as we walk through the unknown, separate yet so profoundly connected to one another.  

Compassion.

Let’s remember that the word “Kripalu” means compassion, in its verb form.  To be compassionate. How kind can we be to ourselves? How relaxed can we be with our family members, our children, our friends?  Everybody does get to do this their own way.

How can I welcome my fear, honor it as an appropriate response, yet choose to not dwell within it?  

Self-observation without judgment, the core Kripalu teaching, gives us access to non-judgmental compassion.  By allowing the fear, by befriending it, without judging it, we are able to lean away from it and return back to the moment; we literally change our brain and create, again and again, a pathway to relaxed compassion.

What can you do for yourself today that is compassionate?

Today, unlike in 1995 in the ashram, I have an awesome bathtub.  Taking nightly baths with delicious, non-smelly bath bombs really comforts me.

What about you?

Service.

To be useful.  To be helpful. To live into connection with others, in this time of forced and essential disconnection.  To be part of the solution.

Reaching out to friends, calling folks I have not heard from in years, blessing people from my car as I drive past, offering a deep hello to the person walking six feet away—this is the time to bless each other. To serve the healing, the wellness, of the other. Life is asking us to do it in undefined ways, ways we must create.

How can you be part of the solution, with kindness and presence?

Perhaps offering loving-kindness to others, seeing family members wrapped in light, offering prayers.

Who do you choose to be in this?

I choose to serve.  As a Kripalu teacher, of course I do.   As a human being, alive at this unprecedented moment, I choose to be there for you.

Practice.

We don’t have to get any of these strategies “right.”  There is no right. We get to practice, to show up with kind compassion as best we can.  Practice to me means noticing the fear, without making it wrong, befriending it and releasing in.

In 1995, the Kripalu world fell apart.  We held the posture; we found our way. We practiced living from breath to breath.  It worked. We outlived the chaos and a new world emerged.

And now, here in 2020, we have a change to practice.

Practice to me means getting into bed by 10:00, releasing my steel grip on the remote control.

Practice to me means taking my pj’s off in the morning.

Practice to me means reaching out to friends, to family, blessing and loving us all.

Practice to me means praying for the wellness of us, all, praying for the healing of our glorious planet.

Practice to me means letting go of the outcome.

Letting go of the outcome.

Letting go of the outcome.

Letting go of the outcome.

And now we practice.

Be safe and well, dear friends,
Aruni