Is it possible—how is it possible—that I have written a weekly blog for years now, and not even mentioned, not even whispered, that four-letter word, “food?”

I have written about childhood, about aging, about transformation, about fear and faith, about hope and heartbreak, about trusting the process and railing the f___ against it.

I have not talked about food.

I find this extraordinary, considering how my relationship with food is such a shiny mirror, such a profound and painful forever-teacher of mine, considering how many of my clients, over the years, struggle with food, considering how so much of my work, both personal and professional, has been about learning the gift of patient, kind, self-nourishment?

Fascinating.

I, at times, am fascinated by the power of both my denial and my willingness, and the extraordinary tango that these two parts of me together dance.

Food!

What is there to say?

Let’s do a little checklist.  

Do you:

• Know a lot about nutrition but eat whatever your mind wants, anyway?
• Eat good, healthy whole foods, but eat too much of it?
• Dive into the fake, Fraken-Foods (think, Frankenstein) when the emotional shit hits the fan?
• Want your body to be different?  Thinner? Stronger? Younger? Tighter?
• Eat to numb rather than nourish yourself?

If you have answered yes to any one of these questions (I just made up), then welcome to the human dilemma.

If you have answered yes to more than one of these questions, welcome to life in a body.

If you answered yes to all these questions and any other unspoken questions about food, take a deep, long breath of self-kindness.

You are not alone.

Our bodies know what we need.  When we are younger and more authentically connected to them, we are better able to nourish, to give our bodies what they need to grow and strengthen.  Yet, as our minds continue to grow and we inevitably fade from a more connected relationship with our physical selves, our minds tend to take over.

Our mind overrides the wisdom of our body.

Bummer.

The words of that great sage, Tillie Futuronsky, my dear mother, nailed it: 

“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”  

How I railed against her knowing me that fully, in ways I couldn’t imagine knowing myself, as I sat at our green Formica kitchen table, working my way through a mass of food, a thousand years ago.  

And how incredibly insightful she was.

How to realign?

How to recommit?

How to take a proactive stand, as that danger zone, the “holiday season” hovers?

Here is my bottom-line formula for realignment and rebalancing, the ongoing practice of eating with mindful choice; radical self-acceptance plus the right use of will.

NOTICE WITHOUT JUDGMENT.

Notice without judgment.

Without making your choices wrong, without blaming yourself, just watch.  See what you eat, what you want, what you are and are not able to give yourself.

Notice how the food feels once you have eaten them.  

Are you energetically strengthened?

Or are you diminished?

Watch and breathe and acknowledge—there is some lingering comfort in these old patterns.

And from the groundwork of that radical kindness to yourself, lean in the direction you choose.

LEAN IN THE DIRECTION YOU CHOOSE.

Put down the fork, the cake, the massive chocolate croissant that wouldn’t fit in the bag (I’m speaking from a current personal moment).  Whenever you can and as you can, breathe deeply, filling yourself up with kind breath and presence.  

And practice—practice leaning toward your choice, your choice of health, of balance, of that which ushers into your life vitality.

Here is a track on mindful eating, from my CD, Life~Works—Meditations for Mindful Living.  (I know, it’s antiquated, indeed—guys, I am old.)  Here it is:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1lh7mhv73houys1/05-Eating-Practice.mp3?dl=0

One bite at a time, may we practice kindness toward ourselves.

One bite at a time, may we lean toward vitality and nourishment.

One bite at a time, may we honor wherever we find ourselves on our journey.

One bite at a time, may we continue to practice,

Again

And again

And

Again.

Friends,

Oh, life in a body.  The never-ending saga of practicing nourishing ourselves, not through the hungry ghosts of our mind, but through the wisdom and the clarity of our brilliant bodies.

I say, let’s be as kind as we possibly can with ourselves.  Let’s be beyond-kind.

Let’s be beyond-accepting.

Let’s be beyond-loving.

Why would we not? 

And, in the earth of that radical self-kindness, let’s plant the seed of this question:  What am I really hungry for?

Dear Friends, please keep in touch.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings,
Aruni

P.S. Oh, you can download several other tracks from my CD of guided meditations on my website, visit  http://coacharuni.com/lifeworks/. My gift to you. 

Hi, everybody.

I drive by Theory Wellness daily.  For these last months, despite the weather (rain, snow, ice, heat), lines and lines of people curl around the block, waiting to enter the cannabis store, which grossed 10.3 million dollars in its second quarter here in the very blue Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I smoked pot daily for twenty years.  The first time I met my soon-to-be-best friend, marijuana, I was a freshman, sitting on the floor of my college dorm room, towel under the door, heart thumping, black light flashing on the poster that said:

WHAT IF WE GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME?

The last time I smoked pot, twenty years after that, I was standing under the full moon on Disappearing Sands Beach, Kona, Hawaii, sobbing and swearing and screaming out my pain.

Just for today, I’m not getting into the line at Theory Wellness.  I smoked all the pot allotted to me this lifetime, and for several other lifetimes.

Squared.

Times several dozen.

I smoked pot to quiet the silent screeching of the hungry ghosts inside of me, to use Gabor Mate’s brilliant image.

I smoked pot to feel good enough to walk down the steps and into the world, literally and figuratively.

I smoked pot to be brave enough to touch another woman’s body.

I smoked pot to run from my own.

I smoked pot to amuse myself at the mundane ridiculousness of life.

I smoked pot to assure myself I was better than the ridiculousness.

I smoked pot to run—to hide—to appear cool—to not appear at all—to show up—to fully enjoy (Ha!  That didn’t work) all that I was given.

I smoked pot to assure myself and you (whoever you were) that I was different, more connected, less bought in, more alive, more marginal.

I really wanted marginal.

I smoked pot because I wanted something more than the mundane.

I smoked pot because I wanted to be with god.  

(Small letter intended here, folks, stay with me…

Fill in the blank, that god-blank, with whatever works for you:

God, spirit, energy, something else besides ourselves, higher power, name of a teacher, chi, nature.
Whatever.)

I smoked pot because I wanted to rest in the arms of something comfortable.

To hear the spinning of the planets.

To see the perfection of the squirrel with the giant acorn in its mouth, scampering across the road.

I smoked pot to find god!

Here is the deepest truth I know,

In me there lives a deep, deep spiritual longing.

I am writing this blog to confess, to admit, to declare:

I need something besides my own humanity to be comfortable.

I need something besides my own mind to find my way.

I need something besides my own agenda to age with integrity and vitality.

I need something besides my own will to see the beauty around me.

I need solace.

I need perspective.

I need help.

I need reassurance.

I need connection.

I need love.

And there is zero—nada—no human being or—zero—nada—no external thing that can offer me this.

I need the solace of Grace.

I need connection to that which is greater than us.

I always have.

I always will.

Today, as a tiny yet impactful example, due to uncontrollable technological issues, my total Achilles heel, I felt frustrated and scared and helpless.

I am unable to send outgoing mail!

The world shook.

My world shook.

Seriously.

I might die.

It did feel momentarily life-threatening, truly.

That’s where I go, to that extreme.

That is why I need something else.

That is why I need, 

To imagine,

To remember,

That I am not alone,

That we are not alone,

That this, too, shall pass.

That it’s coming to heal me

To heal us,

This human moment,

That it’s coming to bless me,

To bless us

This human moment,

No matter how we are feeling about it.

That’s what I need.

That’s the god I need,

The god of assurance,

Of perspective,

Of tender silent

Inspiration.

I need the god of the sunrise in the picture from outside my house,

The god that lives inside the trotting of my senior dog’s legs.

I really want to see god.

I really want to live in solace, in trust and faith.

I do live there, in slivers of time.

I do live there, in moments of breath,

Moments of reunion.

Much of the time, I worry.

Some of the time, I am quiet.

Pretty consistently, I do realign.

Always, I practice coming home.

Always, I practice coming home.

Here is a song from the brilliant, the wonderous, taken from us, oh, too soon, George Harrison.  This song I played at different times in my life, over and over and over again.

This song, I played today over and over again.

To remember

I really am not alone.

I really want to know you.

Dear Friends—
I see us

Leaning toward
The fragility
Of 
Our
Faith,

Trusting
The 
Evolution 
Of 
Our
Souls,

Honoring 
The aging
Of
Our
Bodies,

I see it happening
With 
Humility.

 

Dear Friends,
What about you?  Do you need something greater than your mind?  For what do you long? How might you describe your spiritual urge? 

This blog feels like a coming out of the closet, a declaring—I need Grace.

What do you need?

How do you access it?

Please come join me for the Yoga of Recovery, November 22-24.  We all qualify with our compulsive minds, behaviors and relationships to others, with compulsive minds and behaviors!  

Link to Yoga of Recovery http://bit.ly/2JoJEP7

All voices welcomed—please let me know.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings—
Dear friends—
With prayers,
With 
Humility,

Aruni

You know that feeling?

That fluidity.

That immersion.

That freedom.

That place where everything just clicks in, seemingly by itself.

We’re there, we’re in the activity, we’re in the moment, of course, but we’re there differently.

We’re there, but we aren’t efforting.

We’re there, but we aren’t pushing.

We become the activity.  The activity becomes us.

It’s a delicious and spacious place to be.

Perhaps it’s the best of all places to be.

I had such an amusing experience with this concept the other day, in readying this blog.

I wanted to create a video of myself leading a guided meditation for you.  

I lead meditations all the friggin’ time; this cannot be hard.

(Might this be the first time friggin’ and meditation are used in the same sentence?)

Since teaching gives me access to the flow state, I knew this video self-shoot would be super-simple.  

Guess what?

It was not.

I set up the chair, arranged the music stand to hold my oh, so efficient smartphone (that I know is smarter than I am but please, don’t tell it).  

I turned on the video.  

I recorded a sample few seconds.  

I hit stop, took a breath and watched the 12-second sample video.

OUCH!  

It was painful.

My eyes looked so beady.

My face filled too much of the frame.

I moved the chair, moved the stand, I re-ordered the “shoot”.

I did it again:  Play—Stop—

OUCH AGAIN!  

My eyes looked beadier.

My face looked saggy and yellowed.

Delete!

My friends, I repeated this cycle for twenty-two minutes, moving the chair from place to place, setting up the perfect angle for this video shoot, arranging background, moving a plant for ‘scenery’.

Again, the process was a repetitious Play—Stop—Delete.

This wasn’t working.

I had zero access to the flow state.

My mind became louder.  (I’m laughing as I think about the multitude of 12 second, 22 second, and 31 second videos I filmed, momentarily previewed, and instantly deleted.)

In the middle of this debacle, a friend texted.  I told her what I was doing, and how fully unsuccessful I was at accessing the flow state.

She cracked up, and sent me for condolences, the little laughing emoji, my fav—and said,

Why don’t you just do audio, she suggested.

Instant internal shift.

Keep it simple?  Who would have imagined that?

I took a breath, rearranged the chair, got comfortable, hit record, and, in eleven minutes, had the audio recording.

HA!!!

It was effortless.

What a great experience of feeling both the non-flow state and the flow state.

I didn’t realize I created an unconscious experiment about the topic of this blog.

Friends—

We get all of it.  We get the moments of frustration, of ego, with the inner-whiner running the show.

We get the inner-rebel, our internal ten-year-old-with the car keys, driving wheelies around town.

We get the flow and the non-flow.

Life just asks us to keep returning.

Yoga philosophy teaches us about that flow of positive life energy, the flow of prana.  To enter that flow, to cooperate with it, to become it—these are all the gifts of living a mindful, conscious life.

Positive psychology defines a flow state, also known as being in the zone, as the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

Here is my gift to you today, 11:03 minutes/seconds of my flow state experiment.  Enjoy:

Click here to listen

Dear Friends,

It is beyond- imperative that we quiet our minds, that we allow ourselves to enter and reenter that zone of ease and effortlessness.  It is a timeless zone, when an hour of gardening might seem like a few minutes.

Time expands and bends.

The zone is different for everybody.  For me, five minutes in the garden would occur as days of misery.  Yet, I could mow myself into bliss, and not know if a few minutes or a few hours have passed.

It’s different for everybody!  

We each get to discover, to cultivate, to bathe into that energy, that space of unity.

Where do you find flow?

What do you do to drop into it?  What do you adore doing so fully that your mind softens, the wisdom of your body and heart emerge, and brilliance flows?

What did you love to do as a kid?  Those memories might hold information relevant to today; those ancient activities might be doorways back, today, for the adult that you are to quiet, to ease, to relax, to become one with, to flow.

Here’s to the flow!
Let’s honor the constriction.
Let’s celebrate our willingness to 
Return,
To always return
To those places 
Of expansion
And
deliciousness.

Here’s to savoring!
Best, Aruni

Let me know—oh!  Please let me know.  What works for you? I am aruni@rnetworx.com