The Muppets of Thought

I've been loving the abundant use of Muppet characters to personify the voices in our heads.

Earlier this month, Mindful Magazine used the Statler and Waldorf heckling duo from The Muppets to personify our Inner Critic.

My favorite animated movie Inside Out  presented its own adorable muppet-esque characters to represent five of Paul Ekman's six universal emotions: Sadness, Fear, Anger, Joy, and Disgust (leaving out Surprise).

I love this phenomenon because imagining these voices as muppets completely disarms them. In my head, there are more than a few voices who are often fully locked and loaded, ready to fire at anything that moves, like: 

The guy at the coffee shop who is laughing too loudly.
The woman at my panel discussion who wouldn't smile when I looked at her.
Anytime I get in front of more than five people to share something I know.

Any of these events can trigger the peanut gallery and the commentary rolls in:

There are other people working here, sir.
What happened to you this morning? Wait, what am I doing wrong? Why don't you like me? 
I don't know anything, and I need to get out of here before they figure it out.

These trains of thought can be incredibly powerful and completely derailing. They can impact how we respond to others (I've on more than one occasion glared at THAT guy). If we aren't careful, they run around without us even realizing it, driving us to do things that we wouldn't choose to do. We need to do some work to put them in their place.

Step 1: Notice you're having those thoughts. Creating quiet unstimulated space each day often brings thoughts to the forefront. They eagerly present themselves to your consciousness, filling any empty space you give them. This doesn't have to be anything formal. Keep your phone in your pocket for a few minutes of your bus ride, while on the loo, or while walking down the street. Get curious about what's going on up there.

So let's say we start gaining that awareness and noticing we are having those thoughts. Then what? 

My first instinct is always to fight 'em (I've got a bit of a fiery personality): 

Relax! It's not such a big deal.
Stop being so judgy and such a coward! You don't know what's going on with her.
Shut up.

There's a back, a forth, and before you know it, World War III is taking place in my head. 

Unless. Unless I...

Step 2: Imagine them as Muppets. This helps me in a couple of ways. 

One. It helps me remember my thoughts aren't me. That is, they are some separate beings that don't have to be taken too seriously, and I don't have to blame myself when they say something terrible or embarrassing. I've heard it said that the brain secretes thoughts like the mouth secretes saliva. Our thoughts are just going to keep spinning whether we like it or not, and they are going to be all sorts of crazy, so we best not get too attached to them. 

Two. Muppets are cute, and cute things are hard to take seriously. Even the grumpy ones are fuzzy and soft. So when I consider them as Muppets, I feel less annoyed at their existence. It is much easier for me to look upon them with compassion, which both defuses them and my sometimes overly aggressive reply.

This is easy enough to remember in my calmer moments, but how do I remember it during the more chaotic moments when they Muppets are on a tirade, and I can barely hear myself?  We need to train when things are relatively easeful if we most want to have access to that rational chill part of self that can laugh at our Muppets. 

Step 3: Train in the emotional off season.

Because of my more hot-headed nature, my teacher, Vinny Ferarro, prescribed me compassion meditation at a retreat last year. When I spoke of the silly annoyances I found arising through our silent practice— like the person who would walk through my mindful walking space, for instance— he suggested combating those "Muppets" gets you no where. Instead, I was told to try actively cultivating a compassionate voice. 

So I put aside my skepticism and have added repetition of the lines below into my daily practice. (Into the blank space you can insert "I", the name of a friend or family member, or even an enemy if you've filled your heart up first with some warm fuzzies.)

May _______ be happy.
May _______ be healthy.
May _______ be patient.
May _______ be peaceful.

You can adapt these lines to fill whatever quality you are trying to cultivate. When I speak them to myself in meditation, I try to notice what it feels like in my body. It turns out that even sending the wishes to others still has the bonus benefit of creating the sensation of warmth and expansiveness in myself.

That warmth and expansiveness help me keep perspective. The sensation helps me remember my thoughts are nothing but Muppets, and are best dealt with in good humor and compassion. Every now and then I can even laugh at myself and the ridiculous things they find to be worried, angry, and frustrated about. 

So to the Muppets: I hear you, loves. I hear you.

Am I legit?

When have you done enough— enough studying, training, practicing, experiencing, researching, retreating — that you are legit?

Which of us get to be the teachers of this world, and who needs to sit back and do some more learning before they even approach the front of the room?

I have been thinking a lot about these questions recently, as I step onto a new path where I am 100% a newbie teacher.

Am I legit?

The first thing I am tempted to do in the face of this question is list the experiences that "legitimize" my teacher status. My grandmother was a yoga teacher, so it's in my blood. I have been practicing yoga seriously for over ten years. I am a certified yoga teacher and did my yoga teacher training in 2010, then taught at various points for the next five years. I have been intensively studying mindfulness in schools these last few years. I have committed myself to a particular lifestyle, and practice regularly, so I have a wealth of personal experiences to draw from.

My initial reaction to this list is that it's a middle of the road to bottom of the barrel resume, by any spiritual practice standards.  I can hear voices immediately naming that "real" teachers have studied in India for decades, sat silently in ashrams for months at a time, and studied with a teacher intensively in order to enhance their knowing. Or, in the secular movement, legit teachers have created their own evidence-based programs associated with high-powered institutions and conducted years of research on their work.

There have been a number of criticisms lobbed against both yoga and mindfulness for churning out unprepared teachers who offer superficial experiences and understandings of deep and ancient traditions.  My own yoga teacher trainer, Devarshi Steven Hartman, recently disowned the term "yogi" on his Facebook page for the highly commercialized corporatized empire he self-admittedly had a hand in building. And I, too, have had that response to the Lululemon exercise yoga craze that sits on top of a deeper, more complex, whole practice. I understand much of the mindfulness I practice is distilled from a deep Buddhist tradition.  I am left to wonder where the line is between superficial bum strengthening affirmation exercises and meaningful practice?

Furthermore, I am very aware that I am still early on this path. I still struggle in the morning to stay off my cell phone from the moment I awaken. I still fight sitting on my cushion. I still say mean things and wish I didn't. So am I "allowed" to be a teacher?

A few things have helped shape my answer to this question.

As I was talking through this with a friend, she pointed out something a teacher of hers shared: Buddhists don't have a trademark on mindfulness. The same could be said for Hinduism. While Buddhism certainly created many of the amazing practices we apply to secular spaces, they are not the only one with a tradition of mind-clearing and focusing exercises. Every spiritual tradition has some element of that. I attended a Quaker college, and a major component of that school's tradition is sitting in silence until you feel moved to speak. It is quieting the body and mind to hear something deeper. That's something anyone can do, of any or no religious background, and there are a million different ways of talking about how to get there.

And yet, I still wondered if I embody my practice enough to facilitate experiences for others. Ankati Heather Day and I hosted a yoga retreat last weekend, and we had women come who had deep practices and decades of experience steeped in their own spiritual traditions, from yoga to Judaism. What happened at that weekend reminded me that sometimes the role of the teacher is simply to create space and get out of the way.

I did not teach these women anything they did not already know. I held space for them to explore that. They brought their own deep knowledge to the table and together we co-created understanding.  I was transparent about my intimidation around the wealth of knowledge around me, and then again about the deep gratitude I had for them bringing their whole selves forward. Part of learning to trust myself as a teacher is trusting others to get what they need from an experience.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, I sat on a wellness panel this past week representing mindfulness alongside women from Harvard, Mass General Hospital, and a prestigious independent school. We were there to share our knowledge with parents who wanted to learn more about wellness in schools. I found I had things to say. And my perspective was valuable. Even if I wasn't conducting research as my fellow panelists were, I had experiences of kids practicing mindfulness to draw upon, and could speak to its beautiful messiness and complexity. I had my data from years of reading and studying. I had personal anecdotes. I found my voice had value there, too, even if it wasn't from the top of a well-established institution. I didn't have to be able to say all of the things, just the things I knew.

We need yoga teachers who move us safely through asana and don't talk about flattening our bums or abs the whole time. We need mindfulness teachers who have sat with themselves and fully understand what it feels like to be in a space of equanimity. We need them both to be able to give us lots of metaphors, cues, anatomy lessons, and data, that explain these practices so we can find something that resonates for ourselves. We need well-trained practitioners who have committed to living their respective practices.

And we need them to be honest and humble, recognizing both their own strengths and limitations. We need them to be able to say when they don't know, and come out of postures when their backs hurt, and apologize when they make mistakes.  And we need them to trust us to take what we need from them and leave the parts that do not resonate. We need them to know they don't know everything about everything, and yet their experience and perspective still has value.

I strive to be that kind of teacher.  I am legit in that I can offer what I know and have learned, and admit there is much I still haven't experienced. I know there are teachers who have trained in their respective fields for much longer than I, and they offer a perspective from a different place on their path. But that doesn't mean that I what I offer is not valuable. So I continue on this path as student and teacher. But it is only through my honesty with what I do and don't know that I legitimize myself.

I aspire to the confidence of the sage MC Hammer's line,"Too legit, too legit to quit."

Gif credit to: Time Magazine