The Inner Quest Intensive: A Kripalu Journey

• Awakened Living

Enter the embrace of your own love.

It was 1989, and I heard those words while sitting in Kripalu’s Main Hall, surrounded by strangers, about to embark on my first Inner Quest Intensive.

The words vibrated through me. I knew exactly what they meant, and I knew they were meant specifically for me. They were confirmation, affirmation, of the changes that I was struggling with—to leave my teaching job in New York, to leave my first sober relationship, to come to Kripalu and pursue my spiritual journey. This was the deepest longing I have ever experienced, yet I was frozen.

Until the Inner Quest Intensive. This program of living yoga; this program in which I was able to safely look at myself, seeing the ways I blocked my own happiness and my own freedom; this program that helped me to develop a strategy to take home—this program changed my life, and became the springboard for 30 years of teaching and service at Kripalu.

Early on, I began volunteering as a staff member for the Inner Quest. Seeing how the program worked behind the scenes and participating in the team effort to hold this container of experience was profound and powerful. Years later, I was given the gift of leading the Inner Quest, and had the blessing of leading the program for the next 20 years, three times a year, until 2015, when the program took a hiatus. The experience has been one of the greatest teachers in my life, allowing me to observe the remarkable transformation that happens when we relax into the legacy teachings of Kripalu.

Kripalu’s very first program, the Inner Quest Intensive is rooted in Swami Kripalu’s core teaching of self-observation without judgment as the key to changing the brain, the body, and behavior. The program offers experiences for the body/mind that activate the energy blocks, those inevitable internalized patterns that keep us from joy and authenticity. Each guest is their own curriculum, bringing exactly what they need to see about themselves. At the program’s end, we utilize all the things I have learned as a mindfulness coach, supporting the guests in creating a sustainable plan to take home as they continue their journey of compassionate transformation.

Gentle and powerful, simple and profound, effortless and remarkable, this program is uniquely the heart of Kripalu.

Never in my life have I see faces more open, hearts more available, community more readily formed.

Never in my life have I experienced the bonding of a group, as I have in the Inner Quest.

Never in my life have I felt hope for us, individually and collectively—hope for the healing of our bodies, the quieting of our minds, the opening of our heart, and the mending of the tears in the fabric of the world.

After a few years’ hiatus, the Inner Quest returns this spring. I am eager to greet a new group of seekers, and to invite them to relax into the energetic arms of the thousands who have come before—and to relax into their own authentic self.   

In doing so, we join together with one another. And, in joining together, everything becomes possible.

Aruni Nan Futuronsky is a Kripalu Yoga teacher, life coach, and faculty member for Kripalu R&R and Kripalu faculty-led programs. 

Find out more about the Inner Quest Intensive at Kripalu.

© Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. All rights reserved. To request permission to reprint, please email editor@kripalu.org.