Turkey! How Being Honest With What's On Your Mind Opens the Door to Growth
Surprisingly, “turkey” has now become one of my favorite responses I’ve ever gotten to the “what’s on your mind” question I pose before vinyasa.
Last Tuesday, being Thanksgiving week, obviously a lot of us were thinking about turkey, at least in some nominal regard. But when a situation arises where we are questioned: “ok, what’s in your mind? what’s in your heart?” — I think we tend to wait, inviting doubt, peek out the corner of our eye at our neighbors, who are similarly frozen, and try to think of something profound to say so we don’t look foolish in the pseudo-spiritual context of a yoga class. We want to be seen as someone who’s really ‘doing the work’….when really what we are truly thinking about is ‘normal’ shit, like food.
So thank you for saying “turkey”, even if it was mainly meant as a joke.
Truly, the best way to begin inviting these kind of subconscious elements into a yoga practice is by being brutally honest with what’s present in your space as you arrive to your mat. That IS ‘the work’, in so many senses, as far as I’ve been taught.
The problem is that we tend to externally report things more as we wish them to be, rather than as they are.
I believe Carl Jung was the first to conceptualize of human beings like icebergs, with only a small portion of the whole being what you see, and the majority hiding just beneath the surface.
Now imagine that iceberg is rotating around based on unseen currents in the water, so that at any given time a different part of the whole might be seen as the tip. THAT’s more like the human experience, as far as I’m concerned.
But maybe some of us have become more or less stable in the water so that there isn’t as much flipping going on. Twenty years in the same job, trying to set a consistent example for our kids, or simply the inertia of living out routines can result in that small part which pierces the surface generally being there all the time. So much so that perhaps we think all we are is this smaller surface portion, and diving into the icy waters to see what’s beneath becomes quite an imposition.
In any case, it can be easy to misinterpret what’s down there. Or to imagine it to be something other than what it is. We don’t have the same senses available to us as usual (sight, etc) when examining these things.
That’s why ‘turkey’ is such a brilliant reply.
Picture yourself at the top of a staircase.
The lights are off, it’s completely dark.
You’re staying in the loft at your aunt’s house.
It’s the morning after Thanksgiving, everyone’s asleep.
You have a full bladder at 3am (of course).
Light switch is at the bottom of the stairs (of course).
How do you get down there?
You definitely aren’t going to try and jump to the fourth or fifth step, right?
Your body will likely clatter down the flight, make a ton of noise, and wake everyone up.
So you shimmy your foot down onto the top step.
Just feel your way down, at least to there.
From that step, you can find the next step, and the next.
What need have you of eyes?
Each step leads to the next.
So to get to the bottom, start with the first.
Start close in, right? I’ve referred to that poem from David Whyte before.
The point is to just begin with what’s most present. To be honest in your evaluation of the state of your mind / where your attention is going.
It might seem like a waste of time (or unnecessarily frustrating) to try and notice how utterly distracted you are during most of your conscious experience.
But in mindfulness practice, it’s really that act of noticing itself that can guide you back to awareness of the moment.
That first step is where we find the footing to begin integrating the subtle and subconscious aspects of our being into our day-to-day understanding of ourselves and the world at large.
—
Sit, and pay attention to the breath.
Count them out, 1…2…3…4…
TURKEY!
What?
Where the hell did that come from?
Oh crap, I forgot to set the turkey out to thaw!
I’ve never cooked turkey before, I hope it doesn’t come out dry.
Well whatever, so long as I give everyone gravy they won’t mind…
Wait, what was I doing again?
Shit! I was supposed to be paying attention to the breath,
I’ve been thinking about turkey.
Guess I have to start over.
1…2…
It’s tempting to believe that the goal was to pay attention to the breath all the way to 10, and that thinking of turkey constitutes failure.
But let’s say you make it to 10. So what?
Keep counting and see what happens. You can go on to infinity (or at least 2.5 billion if you counted every second of an 80 year lifespan).
The true opportunities within mindfulness practice arise when you notice that you’ve been distracted.
The surface level thought is like it’s own iceberg.
Once you’ve broken the spell and realized that the thought carried you away from the breath, you can begin to unravel the mystery.
Where did that thought (turkey) come from?
How did I feel while thinking about it?
Did it arise from the anxiety I’m feeling about cooking Thanksgiving dinner?
Why am I feeling anxious about cooking?
What expectations am I quietly holding about the results of my cooking?
Why did I form the expectation that I produce a perfect Thanksgiving meal?
Maybe it’s because you think highly of yourself and prefer that others do as well based on your performance. Maybe it’s because your mom always made perfect Thanksgiving meals, and you feel inadequate doing it in her stead. Maybe your dad criticized you as a child, and you want to earn his approval.
Pulling on those threads is where infinity truly lies.
There are so many ways to go deeper with just one simple thought. There’s certainly quite a lot of useful self-knowledge to be found tracing those lines back into the depths of our psyches. But I think truly the more we work to unravel those ropes, the more I think we can realize the gossamer nature of all mental formations.
Hm, I thought of turkey.
That’s weird.
Ok, whatever! Back to the breath.
By being honest with what’s truly present in our minds, hearts, and bodies, we give ourselves the opportunity to work from where we are at.
You might prefer to be the person whose nose touches their shin in pyramid pose, but to become that person first requires recognition of the one you actually are, right now.
When you bend forward, keep the torso long and hinge from the hips without letting them shift up or down. The place where you feel the stretch, is exactly where you need to feel it.
So don’t skip steps!
We all walk before we run, and crawl before we walk.
In quite a real sense, we are all just rookie cooks desperately trying to throw together the perfect Thanksgiving feast for all our friends and family on our very first try. Nobody is born an expert on being human.
We have to learn as we go.
Start with what’s actually there, and see where it leads.