Coach Aruni

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Thanksgiving, 1979

by

Thanksgiving, 1979

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

The gifts I receive from the writing of my books are gifts that keep on giving.  

Since I have been reading stories to you occasionally as part of this blog format, I have revisited my earlier life, both as participant and as writer, through a different lens.  

Something happens for me when I read a story aloud, or one is read to me.  It offers me a different and deeper ingestion of….???  Energy?  Essence?

Here is a story from my first book, Recovering My Voice, written in 2006.

It tells the story of a Thanksgiving experience I had in 1979.  Yearly I read it aloud on this holiday.

Why?

To remember.

To hear 
The changes
In
My
Capacities,

In
My
world
view.

To appreciate the 
Tender
Closed heart
That 
Then
Beat
Inside me.

To honor
That young
Woman
Me,
42 
Years
Ago

To feel
Her 
True
Intention
So very
Mucked up
Messed up
Mushed
Into
The 
Self-referenced
Hell
Of 
 An insecure
31-
Year-
Old. 

To
See my growth.

To honor
My healing.

To remember
That 
I 
Have
Grown.

I 
Am
Growing.

That I have healed.

That I
Am healing.
~~~

Please enjoy 

~~~
What do I know 
today
That I did not know
Then?

I know that service
Cannot 
Be
About 
Me.

I know that 
To give
To another
Freely
Must
To 
Be 
Without
Attachment
To
The
Outcome.

I know that
I am an 
Addict 
And
Substances
Contort 
My ability
To
Be
Present.

I know that
One of
The greatest
Gifts 
In my life
Is 
The gift of 
Service.

I am learning how
To continue
To return
To
That
Frame.

I am learning to witness
The suffering of others
Without 
Injecting 
Myself
Into
The 
mix.

I am learning.
~~~
I honor this 31-year old’s intentions.
I honor her tender heart.
I honor her not-knowing-how.
I honor how much she wanted everybody to love her.

And I honor her growth.

~~~
Wishing you and yours a wondrous holiday season.

Love,
Light,
Laughter

To
Us,
All.

All Blessings,
Aruni

~~~

Announcements

Some wonderful program opportunities are coming in the next months.

Please see my Opportunities For Study website page.

Most immediately, please join me and dear Jurian Hughes, Kripalu teacher-extraordinaire, in a half-day workshop on Saturday, December 18th.

Even So, Celebrate: 
A Holiday Retreat with Kripalu Friends

Saturday, Dec 18, 9:00 – 11:30 am ET

Challenging times? Yes. 

Even so, we long to open our hearts to the spirit of this sacred season. 

Join Jurian Hughes and Aruni Futuronsky for a nourishing mini-retreat of gentle and joy-filled movement, meditation, relaxation, and gratitude. 

Together we’ll celebrate the season, ourselves, and our community. Appropriate for everyone. No experience needed. Join live or via recording.

$30-60—Register Here

For support in registering, go to Jurian’s Online Classes page at this link, follow the directions in the blue box at https://jurianhughes.com/online-classes/

~~~

With Gratitude, With Possibility, Perhaps Even With a Tinge Of  Hope

by

With Gratitude,

With Possibility,

Perhaps Even

With a

Tinge

Of 

Hope

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Right here
Right now
In the midst of
What is 
Happening.

Right here
Right now
In the midst of
Unknowns.

Right here
Right now
In the midst of
Uncertainty.

Right here
Right now,

The
Blessings
Live.
~~~
Thank you for everything 
You’re going to give me 
In this day.

Because I know
What You are 
Going to give me
Is going to be
Exactly
What
I need
To recover 
from this 
Disease of addiction,

To get closer
To You,

And to get
Closer
To those 
Parts of
Me
That
Are
You.
~~~
This was my morning prayer.
For years and years.

I used it,
It used me.

Reminding me.

Religiously
Committedly
With or without
Feeling 
The
Truth
Of it.

As prayers do
Over time
And
Over more
Time,

It
Dissipated, 

It faded
And 
Became
My
Life.

Today I hope
That,
As I am able,

That
I continue
To live
Into
This prayer.
~~~
Gratitude not as a wish list.
Gratitude not as a smug checklist of what is
Or
Of what I think
I deserve.

Gratitude—
As the flashlight
Shining light on
The 
Gifts 
That 
Live
Inside
All
Moments.

Gratitude—
As the belief
That
No
Matter
What is 
Happening,
That I am,
That we
Are
Equipped
And
Able.

~~~
“Barns burned down.
Now I can see the moon.”

By Mizuta Masahide

“`
For our minds, here is a four-minute summary of the power of gratitude—interesting and helpful, from Robert Emmons:

What Good is Gratitude 

~~~
For our hearts, here’s a special song of thanks, one that ends all our Inner Quest Intensives at Kripalu Center.  Sinead O’Connor, thank you.  And please do—as you listen to this remarkable song, offer it to yourself, to your heart, to your body, to your spirit.

Let this be a song to You, from You.

~~~
And for our spirit—here is a guided meditation on gratitude.  Give yourself these few minutes to relax and breathe and remember the doorway to relaxation and faith that gratitude opens.

Meditation on Gratitude, from my heart to yours.

~~~
Dear Friends,
Be well.
Be safe.
Let us
Celebrate 
The bounty
Of our lives.

Happy holiday
To you,
To yours.

All blessings,
Aruni

~~~

SPECIAL AND HAPPY ANNOUNCEMENT FROM MYSELF AND
DEAR JURIAN HUGHES

Even So, Celebrate: 
A Holiday Retreat with Kripalu Friends

Saturday, Dec 18, 9:00 – 11:30 am ET—Save the Date!!

Challenging times? Yes. Even so, we long to open our hearts to the spirit of this sacred season. Join Jurian Hughes and Aruni Futuronsky for a nourishing mini-retreat of gentle and joy-filled movement, meditation, relaxation, and gratitude. Together we’ll celebrate the season, ourselves, and our community. Appropriate for everyone. No experience needed. Join live or via recording.

$30-60—Register Here

The Whole World is One Family

by

The Whole World is One Family

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Dear Friends, 

I’ve been resuscitating an R&R workshop that I taught in yesteryear, during our pre-pandemic days, called The Whole World is One Family, which is a core teaching of Swami Kripalu.

I’ve dived into remembering what this practice meant to me before—before so many things we knew to be stable and unchangeable, splintered, imploding and exploding, tearing apart at their fault lines.

It’s a concept I understand intellectually and one that is hideously, almost ridiculously relevant in this, our moment of incredible divide.

How do we live into this practice today, now, in the urgency of these times?

Here are Swami Kripalu’s words:

The highest religious principle is
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam:
the whole world is one family.

No matter what religion we are following, 
if we cannot
love others
then we are not following religion, 
but the illusion of religion. 

Where there is no unity, 
No love, 
no harmony among each other, 
how can there
be religion?

If you are interested in more fantastic information about and rich teachings from Swami Kripalu, here is the Center’s link:
https://kripalu.org/content/our-history

~~~

Are the people in your life mostly just like you?

Do they look like you?
Do they think like you?

What keeps you apart from others who don’t.
Who are not
 just like us,
or
 just like you?

How can you imagine stepping across the divides that separate us?

What might that action 
look like
For you?

What would it look like,
To receive this message
as an invitation,
As a portal,
As a doorway back
To wholeness?

~~~

I’ve become a pre-blog-writing-internet-troller.  
I troll the Internet
A place that is not
A comfortable
stomping grounds
for me
At all.

What’s here?
What’s there?
What’s all
Around?

What touches me?
What doesn’t?

Somehow
(No accidents here),
I started listening to recordings
From Yad Vashem,
The World Holocaust
Remembrance Center
In Israel.

I was drawn to 
The 
Righteous
Among
Nations.

The Righteous
Among 
Nations
(an honorific used by the state of Israel)
Are

Non-Jews
Throughout the world
Who risked their lives,
and
The lives of their families
During the war
To hide,

and
To shelter
And
To save

Jewish lives.

The Whole World
Is
One
Family.

Please check out these links.
Perhaps from these stories, these testimonials, these brave lives, some light can shine onto our current moment:

information about the Museum, born and blessed by ongoing acts of love and unimaginable loss.
https://www.yadvashem.org/about/yad-vashem.html

~~~

Women of Valor, The Righteous Among Nations—These women touched me most deeply.
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/index.asp

~~~

Oscar Schindler Saved Her

~~~

As a little Jewish kid,
Then an older Jewish kid,
I was fairly obsessed
With the holocaust,
Especially since my
Best & monogamous friend’s
Family are survivors.

Their house and my house
Echoed with a similar
Emptiness,
Hollowed
Out
By 
Grief.

As I grew into a more mindful woman
I worried and wondered,
Who might I 
have been then,
There,
In that war.

As a Jew?
As a non-Jew?

Could I be strong enough to lean
Toward others?

Toward helping others?

Toward the suffering of others?

I don’t know.

~~~

I wonder about today.

Don’t get me wrong—

I’m not saying,
This is Hitler’s Germany.

I’m simply asking myself
As I ask you:

When we knew 
what was happening, 
What was really happening, 
What did we do?

Did we help?

Did we touch others?

Did we allow ourselves to be touched?

Did we allow ourselves to experience
The suffering of others?

Do we allow ourselves
The gift
Of 
Others’
Suffering?

Can we live with
Our actions/lack of actions?

Who do we choose to be,
In relationship to each other?

Who do we choose 
To be
In relationship
To ourselves?

~~~

I leave you with this glorious ending from Playing for Change, the multi-media music project made up of musicians from around the world.

United—Live as One
Please listen through to its end.

~~~

Dear Friends,
We are so much 
more powerful together.

Company of heart
Is so much stronger
Than
Individual willpower.

Together
Everything
Becomes 
Possible.

With love—
Aruni

Blessings to Problems? Problems to Blessings!

by

Blessings to Problems?

Problems to Blessings!

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Life happens.
Reality is relentless.
It wins.

We cannot
Absolutely cannot
Control it.

IThappens.

However,
We can
Amend,
Tweak,
Become aware of,
Our response
To what’s happening.

We can
Relax into
What’s happening,
Which
Softens
The
Moment.

For me, this practice started with:

Shit to compost.

I remember so vividly,
This refrain
From the woman
In one of my first 12 Step groups.

Shit to compost.

She would repeat it weekly 
at our Monday night meetings,
gathering above the Youth Center.

Rickety folding chairs.
Plaid frayed couch.

Shit to compost.

My response always began with
An internal giggle,

Almost understanding,
Almost practically 
but not quite able
to wrap my mind around it—

Just— not quite.

Shit to compost.

Time passes.
Time passed.

Life continued to give me—
(WAIT!  PRESENT TENSE IS NEEDED HERE)

Life continues to give me

So many opportunities
To practice this.

At some point I heard this good one—
Probably at a 12 Step meeting—

Surrendering is
Getting on
The winning side.

HUM.
I wondered.

Really?

More time passes.
Time passed.

At some point in my unfolding
I came across this profound haiku:

“Barn’s burnt down –
now I can see the moon.”

Written by Mizuta Masahide, 
a 17th-century Japanese poet and samurai, 
he totally captures
The journey 
We are on.

Somewhere in it,
Somewhere in
The moment 
Lies
The
Blessing.

~~~

I find myself 
Surrounded
By blessings.

Niki the Dog
Asleep 
Upside
Down,
Opened to the
World.

The cool
Dark
Night,
Silent.

Two geese
Left
On the pond,
Their families
Already
In
Flight,
Leaving
Deep
stillness
Behind.

My issue?
I seem
Eager
to make the blessings
Into problems.

To—overthink.
To—search for potential snags.
To—prepare for the problem

Before
It
Emerges.

Before 
It
Even
Is
A 
Problem!

To get ready
For that which
Isn’t
Even
Real,

That’s how
I 
Was
Emotionally
Trained.

My practice today?

To 
Remember.

To 
Bless
Even 
My
Forgetting.

To 
Keep
Returning

To
The 
Practice.

Looking for the 
Blessing.

~~~

One more
Foothold,
Tether
Of inspiration
This week,
From
A 
12 Step
Book:

“Optimism is the natural result of my finding myself 
gradually able to make the better, 
rather than the worst, 
of each situation.”

Daily Reflections
Page 315

I love the word “gradual”.  
No shit, Sherlock.
Gradual, it is.

And I appreciate how this quote
Implies
A practice,
An action,
A mindful
Commitment.

I love that concept.

Well, maybe not always.
But I do believe that—
Always.

~~~

This week I was inspired by two Jewish dudes, mensches, indeed, who wrote themselves (and us) some kick-ass songs.  Here’s one I totally forgot about.  S&G., thank you, from 1967, Live from Central Park:

Why have you forsaken me? 
They ask.

The reframe, here and now
For me, for us—

Forsaken means
To abandon 
Without return.

Human nature,
We do abandon—
OF COURSE WE DO.
That’s the human dilemma—
We abandon ourselves. 
But, we return.

That’s the practice!

It is all,
All of it,
All 
Of
it
Is
blessed.

~~~

Post-traumatic stress
Transformed 
Into
Post-traumatic
Growth.

~~~

Friends, please remember,
I don’t offer any of this
So we can transcend
The feelings.

I offer it
To give 
Us
The 
Willingness
And the
Courage
To keep breathing,
To keep
Moving, 
To 
Keep
Growing,

Forward.

~~~

I am always inspired by Roshi Joan Halifax, from Upaya Zen Center.  In the turmoil of our today, she offers such grounding.  Here she is, from 10/31/21,     A Strange and Wonderful Vision of Hope:

~~~

Dear Friends,

Here’s an invitation.

Now—right now—
Name the blessings
You see
Around you
Now/right now.
Here/right here.

Breathe into them.
Write them down
On a piece of paper.

Keep that paper
Deep in a pocket
Tucked on your altar
Under the candle.

Remember.
Blessings
Exist
In all.

To you,
Dear friends,
You are
My
Blessings.

Aruni

 ~~~

P.S.

MANDATORY PRACTICE BELOW

I double-dutch dare you.  Play this song NOW and dance around, jump around, hop around, with or without an animal.  I DOUBLE-DUTCH DARE YOU to use this song as a transition, a trampoline, to reframe.

From problems…..to blessings.

Inspiration- To Breathe In & A Sudden Brilliant, Creative, Timely Idea

by

Inspiration-To Breathe In
&
A Sudden Brilliant, Creative, Timely Idea

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Dear Friends, 
I hope this finds you well and safe.

Dear Friends, 
that you and yours might be well.

Dear Friends, 
that we continue, one step at a time, 
to move into this new world of ours.

Dear Friends, 
that this moment be the portal 
to softening, to relaxing, to surrendering.

Dear Friends,
It has been a grey week.
It has been a rainy week.
It has been—a week.

So much goodness wrapped in many different wrappers.

Dear Friends,
Inspiration seems further away
In the darker mornings,
The earlier evenings,
The greying sky.

Dear Friends, the holidays hover.
Dear Friends—do you remember
where you were last holiday season?

Literally, where were you?
Figuratively, where were you?

I—don’t remember.

Dear Friends, we are not alone.
Dear friends, we have each other.

Dear Friends, we are community,
Dear friends, we are sangha
Of heart.

Dear Friends, inspiration in me
This week 
Was buoyed.

Buoyed this week
By others.

I am relieved, touched
And
Privileged to share them
With you.

Here they are:

~~~

Rumi, the ecstatic poet, offers me inspiration.  One of my favorite poems is part of the UU hymnal!  This invitation into practice, into returning again and again, has always opened my heart.  

Thanks, June, for offering it.

Just notice—did this song touch you?  Where?  Why?
How might it inspire you, up ahead?

~~~

Roshi Joan Halifax, my teacher from Upaya Zen Center, stands in the reality of our suffering while offering us the doorway to wise hope.  As I think of Roshi, my heart softens.  She is an inspiration to me.

Here she is in, “Yes, We Can Have Hope”:

Read here

Does this touch you?  Where in your body?  Why?  
How might you bring any part of this into your life?

~~~

And the most beautiful cover I have heard, of Leonard Cohen’s fabulous Anthem, by Kate McGarry and the Keith Ganz Ensemble.  I am not sure why it opened my heart so fully.  Here it is—Please enjoy.

What did you notice, what did you feel, while listening?  
Where in your body did you feel it?  
Where does this song take you?

~~~

Let’s end with Pema Chödrön, with these words of simple, profound wisdom always cuts through my mind and land in my heart:

Dear Friends,

What inspires you?
Dear Friends
Let’s continue 
to share our hearts.

Dear friends,
Be well and safe.

Dear friends.

We are equipped
And
We are able.

Dear Friends,
Let’s be
Each others’
Inspiration.

Dear Friends.

All blessings,

Dear friends—
From Aruni

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