The Mindful LawyeR®

Institute for Mindfulness Studies

Mindfulness Memo

To:      You

From:  Institute for Mindfulness Studies

Date:   July 4, 2009

Re:      Mindfulness, Liberty and Fireworks

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Question Presented

How can mindfulness practices help you unleash your potential -- as a lawyer and human being?

Answer

Two Jurisight terms are helpful in exploring this question. The first is Liberty. The second is Pain and Suffering.  You can view a video of this Mindfulness Memo by clicking here.

Liberty:

All of the Institute for Mindfulness Studies exercises involve the hands, see Chapter 9: The Six Minute Solution: A Mindfulness Primer for Lawyers (2009). A simple exercise involves placing your hands in front of you and looking at the joining of thumb and pointer finger in your right hand. What letter do you see formed? The letter “J.”  This is a reminder of how often we find ourselves trapped in the “Jail” of our mind -- flooded with mental chatter, judgments, doubts, and worries. Now, with intention and awareness take a breath and stretch your fingers wide apart. Look again at the joining of thumb and pointer, this time in your left hand. What letter do you see now? The letter “L.”  This is a reminder of how you can always move from Jail to “Liberty”, and how every moment offers this opportunity. With greater mindful awareness, you learn to make this conscious and deliberate shift. You can use this simple hand exercise -- the movement from “J” to “L” as a mind-body method of expanding your awareness. As you do, breathe and feel the stretch. Bring awareness to your intention. Soften your gaze.  Smile.

Pain and Suffering:

As you know, it is common for a complaint to include a claim for “Pain and Suffering.” People often assume that the more pain, the more suffering. What do you think?

A mindfulness insight you can begin to experiment with is that the more you allow yourself to feel the unpleasant experiences that arise from time to time -- be they unpleasant sensations in the body, unpleasant feelings, or unpleasant thoughts (all a form of pain) -- the less you will suffer.  The more you allow yourself to embrace as opposed to distract yourself, the more you will harness the energy arising within you and do something productive -- even courageous.

Because this memo falls on the Fourth of July, let’s take “fireworks” which serve as a reminder of freedom -- a beautiful burst of energy and activity -- and break it into two words:  “fire works.”

A poet once said, “If you want to feel the cooling cleansing quality of the water, you must be willing to walk through the fire.”

And so we remind ourselves that “FIRE WORKS.” Whereas you may naturally tend to turn from the pain or unpleasant -- for example delaying receiving news of a hearing, avoiding interacting with an adversary who you feel did you wrong, soothing yourself with TV or food when you feel the anxiety or worry about an upcoming event, procrastinating on a heavy assignment -- experiment with turning into the experience.

This doesn’t mean forcing yourself to receive the news right away, engage your adversary, or do the research.  The experience we are talking about it your mental experience -- the resistance arising in your mind.

This means allowing yourself to sit for a few minutes and check in with the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations arising as you consider or your thoughts move in the direction of those experiences and events. You can intend to do this also when these thoughts arise spontaneously.

Often, a deeply held assumption is that we cannot bear doing so.  In fact, most of your life’s experiences are quite bearable. And as you deliberately move into the fire of these moments, you emerge transformed as you enjoy the cooling, cleansing quality of the water.

 

Legal Resources

Books

Halpern, C., Making Waves and Riding The Currents:  Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (2008).

Rogers, S., The Six Minute Solution: A Mindfulness Primer for Lawyers (2009).

Articles

Riskin, L. Awareness in Lawyering: A Primer on Paying Attention, in The Affective Assistance of Counsel:  Practicing law as a Healing Profession, 447-71 (Marjorie Silver, ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2007).

Mindfulness Memo Archives

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