Why Yoga Matters

My life has been a bit of a roller coaster these past several weeks. I went to another AFCC conference and taught yoga there. It was my first time teaching a “regular” asana class in over 1.5 years. It was so fitting to be back there teaching again. As very long-time readers may remember, the AFCC conference in 2010 was the first class I taught after teacher training. It is such a special place for me.

And it reminded me, yet again, what I love about yoga, and why it is so important for professionals. It also reminded me some of the problems with the modern yoga culture. For example, there were several people in the class who thought they had to look a certain way to be in the “right” asana. Although I tried to say over and over again how important it is to do each pose with integrity for your own body, so many people just looked uncomfortable in what they were doing. And often, the adjustments fell on deaf ears. That was partly because I was out of practice, but I think it sadly said far more about our culture than my out of practiceness (though there is no doubt that was part of it).

What I see so often both in and outside of yoga classes are people who are completely disconnected from their bodies. I see this in how people sit, stand, and move. I see it in how people talk about breathing. I see it even in how people talk about pain. They push and push and push, take something to intercept the pain, and then they push some more. Then finally the pain or dis-ease is so intense they cannot take anything more. We are asked to ignore the pain and push through it, or there will be no gain. And if there is any sort of pain, for a long time before doing anything serious about it, we are told to just take a pill. We are told to just numb the pain, not heal it.

But yoga can bring us out of that place of numbing before the pain, whatever it is, hits us so hard. Yoga brings us into our bodies. It brings us into our emotions. It brings us into our souls. I was at a yoga class this morning, and at least three lawyers were there. I remember when I started this blog I had no idea how many lawyers actually do practice yoga. But what amazed me even more is that it was a Mindfulness Yoga class.

What I have noticed is that most of the lawyers I know who practice yoga practice styles like Bikram, Ashtanga, and the more intense varieties of asana-focused practice. Some are moving into a more meditative practice, but the truth is that is what so many of us need. We need to slow down. We need to learn to listen to our bodies and what they are telling us.

This need to constantly push ourselves and feel that we need to look a certain way is destroying so many people. We are asked to push and not listen and then to numb away whatever ails us. This is certainly not the only thing happening in the world, but I see it so often I wonder what the antidote can possibly be. I worry that yoga has become as much of the problem as the solution. Today in class, the teacher said he recently read a study where 70% of yoga injuries come from forward folds. This number would have shocked me before, but now that I know more about the body, more about the way people push, and more about the stress the modern world puts on the low back, this number actually now seems low to me.

And yet, as I look to other ways to find solace and peace, I always come back to yoga. I love yoga. It saved me once, and deep down I know it is the answer to my own and so many other peoples’ pain. But that means that we actually have to do yoga as it was intended to be done. The modern asana practice is nothing more than gymnastics. But yoga is an ancient system that heals on every level – physical, emotional, and spiritual. And for that reason, yoga matters. It matters that we learn from its teachings. As I look around and see how depleted society is, how tired everyone I know is, how pained they are (physically or otherwise), I know that yoga may be a path out of their misery.

These thoughts have been percolating for quite some time. As my own practice has ebbed and flowed, I feel this need right now to come back to it with full energy. But the irony, of course, is that full energy means less energy. It means slowing down and tuning in. It means finding the yoga that brought me here originally. And I want to offer that to others. I am finally going to have a regular class – two Sundays per month I will be teaching a Calming and Connecting yoga class. It will not be any specific type of class, but it will focus on breathing, meditation, restorative yoga, and mindful asana practice.

There is no doubt that yoga can heal us from so much. It still matters even when sometimes it feels it has been stolen by the fitness community. That can never diminish that yoga is something far older and something far more powerful. I am curious to know – how has yoga changed you? What has it brought to your life?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, Why Yoga Matters, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

All We Have to Give is Ourselves

Once again, I attended my favorite conference of the year – the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference. This year was the organization’s 50^th birthday, and it was amazing to see and learn how far family law has come in the past 50 years. Even when I think about all the work we still have to do, it is sobering and awe-inspiring to realize exactly how far we have come as a “system.” 

As longtime readers may remember, this is the conference where I first taught yoga after my yoga teacher training finished. I was scheduled to teach again this year, but my back made that impossible this year. But as hard as it was for me not to teach, I felt great that someone else took up the reins, and the tradition continued. While I know yoga is taking the country, and professional settings, by storm, it was extra special to see that this particular community, the one to which I am so grateful and owe so much, loves the idea enough to continue the tradition even when I am not involved. I just hope that next year I get to teach again!

But this conference, and a discussion I had following it with a friend, really got me thinking about how we offer ourselves to our communities, our jobs, and our “systems.” It fits nicely with the theme of the last post - Facing Our Powerlessness. These conferences are always inspiring. They remind me why it is I do the work I do, why I choose to be a lawyer. But there is an underlying notion that we can never do enough. I work in family and juvenile law, and the truth is that divorce, custody fights (I don’t like that word), and child welfare are always going to be difficult for families. The truth is that we may never be able, as professionals, to do enough to make these systems completely non-traumatic.

And some of the systems are more broken than others. Sometimes I wonder if the legal system does more harm than good. Deep down, I am pretty sure it does not, but I wonder. But it is in those moments of concern for the children and families that I realize the most important lesson – I may work for the rest of my career to make the systems better. I may attend conferences, learn new techniques, and perhaps one day even create new programs. But at the end of the day, I cannot offer the perfect system for every child and family. None of us can.

But that is where the yoga becomes the most important. And no, I do not mean asana, though that has its place as well. I mean the internal yoga, the compassion we learn each time we stop and take a breath. Yoga has its benefits in terms of stress reduction. Some people use yoga as exercise. But the greatest gift we get from yoga is relearning how to engage with ourselves and others.

Yoga teaches us to be truly present. One of the common themes of conferences is that we must remind ourselves as professionals that even though we see case after case every single day, for the individuals we serve, this is their only interaction with the court system. While stories may sound familiar to us, to the people telling those stories, they are unique and personal. And how we respond to that is how we help these children and families.

And if I have learned anything from the yoga teaching situation at the conference, it is that we never know where our influence will end. Even when the system is not perfect, every piece of research I have seen is that people feel there has been due process if they have had the time to tell their story – if they feel heard. Through yoga, we learn to listen to our bodies, begin to quiet our minds, and feel some sense of calm in the face of storms. Translating that to listening to the people we serve, regardless of the situations in which we find ourselves – even the grocery store – means we are serving people in the best way we can.

Changing systems that need work is a great goal. It is work that must be done. But in the meantime, when the waters are rough, and the end is not clear, we always have ourselves to give. And for that, yoga is the perfect opportunity to learn to offer ourselves.

How does yoga help you in your daily interactions off the mat?

Namaste.

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, All We Have to Give is Ourselves, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Stories We Tell

As I mentioned in the last post (quite some time ago), there are certain ideas that seem to follow us everywhere. I have been trying to think of what to write for this post for awhile. I have been traveling, and the main reason for the travel was to attend the 6th World Congress on International Children's Rights and Family Law in Sydney, Australia. There is a follow-up conference specifically dedicated to children's views in Auckland on Monday (NZ time). It is no secret I love conferences, but I felt like I had run out of things to say about them, especially considering I was not teaching yoga at this one.

But then the answers came, as they tend to do. Generally speaking, when I travel, I am one of those people who wakes up early and gets out of the hostel before most sights are even open. I prefer to walk cities, partially to save money, but really, so I can see everything there is to see. I am one of those people who attends conferences from morning until the close of the day and hates being late to sessions, let alone missing them. (That might be because I have been the final presenter on more than one occasion, and I like when people stay for my presentation, but I actually think it has more to do with wanting to gain everything I can from my time there.) That has always been my story about my travel and conference experience, and I wanted that to be my story on this trip.

So what does this have to do with this blog? That story is nothing like what I experienced this time. My story had to change. And the universe has been feeding me information about stories and their effects on us all week long.

First, there was this TED talk called "The Danger of a Single Story." I have watched a lot of TED talks while I have been here because I have hurt too much to see the sights and been too exhausted to do too much work (though I have, of course, done some). Then there was this blog post about whether we listen to our body's stories or our mind's stories. And then I saw that one of the first Western-recognized African storytellers, Chinua Achebe, had died, and I read a wonderful tribute to him here (full disclosure - a dear friend of mine writes that blog). And of course, there is yet another yoga teacher sex scandal involving none other than Mr. Bikram himself, sort of the antithesis of the popular view of yoga, but sadly becoming more and more common.

It seemed the universe wanted me to look at the stories I have been telling myself. Lawyers are taught that stories are our bread and butter. Stories are how we win cases. If we cannot tell a compelling story, we cannot make our clients human enough for the court, or in many cases, the jury. Stories are what I love about conferences as well. I have my story of the work I do, but it is through conferences, particularly international conferences, where we can expand our stories. We can learn from one another and see the work we do from different perspectives. We can learn from one another and begin to do our work with more focus on the fuller picture. I cannot say full picture because I am not sure we ever get that, but expanding our stories brings us a fuller picture. In some ways, we can learn to improve what we do, and in others, we can actually learn that what we do is pretty good. But we can never know which it is going to be until we hear the stories from everyone involved.

And this is what we learn on the yoga mat. In the yoga blog post linked above, the author talks about listening to her body instead of her mind. It is when she listens to her body that she makes decisions she does not regret. I have written before about learning to trust the body and not the mind, but I think it always bears repeating. We live in a society focused almost exclusively on listening to our minds. Our minds often tell us what we "should" do, not what will actually help us in the long run or even the short run. But how do we learn to listen to our bodies? As a yoga teacher, for years, I thought it was about quieting the mind long enough, and the body would give us easy answers. Most yoga traditions are focused on quieting the mind. While asana is the physical part of the practice, listening to our bodies is not only about listening to our bodies. It is really about listening to our intuition as opposed to what the mind wants us to hear. It is just that our bodies are often the medium through which our intuition comes to us when we are on the mat. Thus, listening to our bodies is a metaphor for listening to the deeper, and fuller, story of our lives.

That is, however, much easier said than done. Sometimes the answers come immediately. We have all had those experiences where we just know we have to do something. But sometimes when we want the answers the most, it is when they are least likely to come. And that, perhaps unfortunately, is when the mind goes into overdrive. It tries to examine all the possibilities. It listens to all the advice there is. And of course that advice is often contradictory. Psychologists who work with children often say that if we do not tell children the truth about what is happening in their lives, the story they make up is going to be much, much worse. Our minds are sort of like those children. Our intuition knows the truth, but it is not always accessible, just as adults often hide the truth from children to "protect" them. But then the stories we tell ourselves are far worse than the truth.

I wish I had an easy answer here. Sure, it's easy to say, "just ignore the mind, and listen to the body/intuition." But sometimes that simply does not work. The mind continuously gets in the way. Something is blocking our intuition. We continue to tell ourselves the same stories over and over again instead of reaching out for the new story, the one that can actually lead us where we need to go. At this conference, I left sessions early, and I missed the last three. I just could not sit there any longer. I barely saw any of Sydney, and I had never been here before. But that is what my body told me to do. It is not the story I expected to live, and there was quite a bit of disappointment is not living the story I expected. But there was also a sense of knowing it was right and necessary. And the rest of the story is that there is always next time.

What stories do you tell yourself? Do you get upset when you cannot fulfill them? What do you do to expand on your stories, to hear others' stories?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

Conferences and Gratitude

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." -- Albert Schweitzer

My love of conferences is no secret. After all, it was an Association of Family and Conciliation Courts conference where I first taught yoga outside of my teacher training. But more importantly, conferences are about coming together and learning from one another. They are an opportunity to be inspired over and over again to continue to do the work we do. It is at conferences, especially good ones, where that spark can be ignited by others.

And this being November, the Is Yoga Legal facebook page has gratitude quotes and reminders every day. I am using this month as an opportunity to focus on gratitude and being grateful for the amazing life I am blessed to lead. Some days are, of course, easier than others, but I do not think it is an accident for my life that this year’s AFCC mid-year conference started on November 1. It was an opportunity to bring together the yoga world where gratitude has been one of the greatest teachings and the professional world. 

In many ways, I had no business going to this conference. It was a child custody symposium. With my current job, I have nothing to do with child custody evaluations. But I knew I had to go. I knew I had to be there amongst these amazing and inspiring people. And I am forever grateful I was there. Sure, I actually learned a bit that is beneficial to my work. I learned a bit more about children’s memories and processing as well as more statistics about child sexual abuse, but as important as that is to my work, the real gratitude came from just being amongst some amazing people.

I finally was able to articulate what I love so much about this group of people, and I finally was able to realize how important having a solid support is in our work. First, why I love this group of people. They are some of the most brilliant people I have ever met. I learn more at these conferences than any others. This group of people are at the cutting edge of the research and the innovations. But that’s not what I love most.

What I love most is the type of people attracted to AFCC. It is an interdisciplinary and international organization. This means we learn from each other in ways that are simply not possible in other organizations. But more importantly it means we have to leave our preconceived notions at the door. Lawyers have to be a bit less adversarial, and psychologists sometimes have to give answers (just to throw a few unproven stereotypes into the mix). 

But it even goes beyond that. This organization is full of people always willing to help. It does not matter if you are a student or a psychologist or the chief judge of a country, your name badge has your first name on it, and that’s what people call you. And every one of them seems willing to talk and be a support. One of the staff members said that when members call the office looking for help, she knows she can find the right person to answer, and that person will always answer. That’s just the way people in this organization are.

And no, I’m not being paid to promote AFCC. I am just that grateful. When I was in law school, people always said the most important thing to have in a career is a mentor. In yoga, people always talk about finding the right teacher (or sometimes use the word guru). There is no doubt that we cannot do anything alone, whether it is a legal career or yoga. The most important step is finding a supportive and inspiring community.

So, another conference has come and gone. But with it a deep sense of gratitude. I am not only grateful to the amazing people at the conference, the wonderful conversations, and the never ending support from people no first year lawyer would usually have the opportunity to meet. I am grateful for the reminder to be grateful.

Yoga has helped me understand how to bring gratitude into my daily life. It has softened my heart to be able to simply say thank you when that is what is necessary. And this conference falling as it did at the very beginning of November was an opportunity to stop and think about that gratitude, to think how lucky I am to have found this family (ok, for those who know, to have grown up in this family). As I said above, some days are easier than others to find that gratitude in every moment, but a nice refresher every now and then is just what is necessary. Happy November!

How are you celebrating gratitude this month?!?!

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Making Work Positive

Last Friday I attended a one-day conference where we discussed better ways for the juvenile law system to respond to the needs of children and families. Not surprisingly, it got me thinking about community again, and what a great opportunity conferences are. But something else struck me as well at this conference; they can also be breeding grounds for negativity.

This conference was not that, but there were moments of complaining about how things are today. There were moments of distrust between people who work in different aspects of the system. Overall, the conference was a look at the future and how we can create better systems but those moments made me realize that even when we try to be positive, sometimes negativity pushes its way in.

Those few moments of negativity amidst this amazing coming together got me thinking about how we can breed negativity amongst ourselves, especially in the workplace. While I have lauded the idea of community, I began to realize that being around people who are negative can have a negative impact on us as well. Both Confucius and Harvey MacKay have been attributed with saying, “Find something you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” The point of this quote is that when we truly love what we are doing, it never feels like work.

But we are fighting some pretty heavy odds. In the modern world, there seems to be an underlying notion that work is difficult and stressful and just something we do to get enough money to pay the bills, or buy the nice house and nice car, or buy the yoga mats and yoga clothes. But work is not supposed to be something we do for love. Even when we love what we do, we are bombarded with a culture that believes work is not supposed to make us happy. Lawyers, I think, get this more than others, particularly in BigLaw. I see it less in the government sector, and even small practices. But the societal notions about work remain prevalent regardless of how you earn a paycheck.

But what are the implications of that?

How many people spend time complaining about their jobs? How many people find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning because they dread the thought of another day at the office? How many people sit at their desks all day staring at the clock just waiting for it to be time to go home? How many people notice everything wrong with where they work but have no desire to make it better? Are you one of those people? And if this does not describe you, do you work with someone like this?

I have never worked in such an environment. I have certainly had my days, even at jobs I have loved, but I have been incredibly lucky to never have a job I absolutely dread, and for the most part, I have always enjoyed the people with whom I have worked. But I have still noticed the effects of negativity, whether I am having a bad day/week, or someone else just likes to complain a lot. What I notice is that negativity eats away at my ability to block it out. And as it creeps in, it begins to consume. And negativity can manifest as pain, insomnia, or even dis-ease. I do not remember where I read them, but I know I have read several studies about the health benefits of companies having a positive working environment. We are healthier when we are happier.

So what do we do when we feel this negativity beginning to affect us? What do we do when it has entered our being so deeply that we begin to live it? Some people love affirmations. For whatever reason, the thought of doing affirmations has never really resonated with me. But yoga and meditation have given me a lot of other tools to let the negativity slip away.

First, asanas are a great reminder that no matter how difficult something may seem today, tomorrow it may be simple. When I started yoga, I could barely touch my knees in a forward fold. I remember the first time I did Downward Facing Dog and thinking I was going to die. Over time, both of those poses became relaxing and deep. And this is a lesson for off the mat as well. When negativity strikes, we can simply remember that tomorrow, it may not be there, and we will learn to work through it and let it roll off our shoulders.

Second, meditation is a great way to just allow the negativity to release. Many people think the “goal” of meditation is to have an empty mind. While some days I think that would be lovely, what I really think we need to gain from meditation is the ability to watch our thoughts and let them go. Whether we are thinking about how beautiful the sunrise was or how much we hate our situation, a thought is just a thought, and we can let it go. It is much easier to let the negativity go if we notice it and acknowledge it rather than pretend that it does not exist. Plus, in meditation, we may notice how it affects our being, and we can see the benefit of letting it go.

Finally, we simply do not have to buy into the mindset that work is supposed to be a downer. Sometimes getting rid of negativity is as “simple” as looking at a difficult situation as an interesting challenge. And we can also be grateful over and over again for all the little joys that happen at work, whether your coworker filled the candy bowl (or the hummus dish) or a client said thank you. And we can remember that whatever the latest television show is saying about how much we are supposed to dread our jobs, we actually are allowed to enjoy what we do.

At the conference, we talked a lot about how to make the system in which we work even better. We could have focused only on all the current problems. But where would that have gotten us? Instead, we looked past the negativity and worked on creating solutions. And that is only possible when we are healthy and happy. How do you see your job? Is it work, or do you jump out of bed every morning excited for the day ahead?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

Coming Home to Yoga and the Law

I have been back in the United States exactly six months today. That is more than half as long as I was in New Zealand. This past week, however, was the first time I truly felt like I was back at home. It was, once again, where law and yoga mixed for me. It was the annual Association of Family and Conciliation Courts conference. This conference has always been my inspiration in law, but two years ago it became the first place I taught yoga after my teacher training had ended. Teaching yoga there this year was a coming home of sorts - a reminder of why yoga and law are so interconnected in my world.

I have written often about the power of conferences. I cannot say it enough. I love them. I love the energy, the community, the learning, the discussion, and the connections. This year, I talked to people from the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Israel, and New Zealand, and there were people from many other countries with whom I simply failed to engage (there were 1300 people at the conference). I learned about topics as diverse as attachment theory and mediation guidelines. I presented a workshop about my thesis. And I taught yoga.

About the only thing I did not do was sleep . . . but more on that in another post.

Two years ago when I taught yoga at this same conference, I had to teach one day in a suit. I was meeting a judge for breakfast immediately following yoga, and it was the day I was presenting, so I had to look nice. The point I made to everyone there was that yoga can be done anywhere. At the time, that was my symbol of the interconnectedness of yoga and the law in my life. This year, I did not have to be in a suit, but we were on the bottom floor, in the back corner, on the other side of the hotel from the rest of the conference. The first part of the practice was staying calm finding the room, but the rest of the practice was a reminder to me. This year, the interconnectedness was about coming home to who I am, and honestly, the reason this blog exists at all. 

Once we all gathered together, we had a family. We practiced together and then shared the conference.  For me, that is the entire point. Each morning, we set an intention. I offered one for the class each day, and I hope each person set their own as well. The final day’s intention was to open our hearts and take all we had learned over the past few days back to our own communities. It was about taking the home we had created at the conference to the homes in which we live each and every day.

For me, the intentions did not end in the yoga class. They permeated the entire conference. They continue to permeate my reentry into lawyering. For me, this is why I practice yoga in the morning. I have gone to evening classes, and I enjoy them, but rarely, if ever, do I practice on my own in the evenings. The mornings are an opportunity to set an intention for the day and for our lives. They are about coming home to ourselves before setting out for the day.

This conference was a reminder of all of that, a reminder of the power created when yoga and law intersect. Together, they can inspire each other, and together they can help each be reinvented. The inspiration and the rejuvenation of a conference, complete with yoga, cannot be beat.

Yoga at a conference is the moment when, for me, life makes the most sense. I got my legal professional start through AFCC, and I love the organization and the people involved in it. As I mentioned above, it is also the first place I taught yoga. These two aspects of who I am began with AFCC, and coming back to them this year helped me understand that once again. The people in AFCC are friends and colleagues, and their presence and brilliance inspire me daily. This is a moment of gratitude to the people who made this past week possible. Not only were their ideas amazing, but teaching yoga is something I have missed doing. It was great to be back and great to share it. I was reminded how important it is to me.

Thank you for the homecoming AFCC. Until next time . . . 

Where do you go when you need rejuvenation? Does your profession rejuvenate you? How do you incorporate yoga into that process? Is there something missing from your life you know would help bring you home?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

When we Dehumanize the Dehumanizer

I think there is one thing upon which most people with whom I interact, and probably you as well, can agree: child abuse is bad. We may not always agree on what point discipline becomes abuse, but I am willing to bet that when a child arrives at a hospital with retinal hemorrhages and brain hemorrhages, the line has definitely been crossed. The conference I attended this week focused on such injuries, and it forced me to confront an issue that has been boiling below the surface for me for years. 

Where I tend to disagree with most people with whom I work is what we think of the person who caused the abuse.

Working in child welfare again has reminded me how quick we are to judge, how quick we are to throw people under the bus when we think they are monsters who can dehumanize innocent children.

But why does that give us the right to dehumanize them? Dehumanizing others, while convenient, takes its toll on your own humanity. That, however, is a topic for the next post.  Here I want to focus on what we do to others.

I am the last person who is going to say that it is okay for someone to harm a child. I am the last person who is going to defend actions that lead to hospital trips and very often the morgue. The actions, yes, are abhorrent. But my first response to that is, what happened to the person who did it such that he or she got to the point where abuse occurred? What was his or her life like? Someone like that needs our compassion, not our judgment.

I know there are people in the world who believe that someone who can abuse a child cannot be rehabilitated. I know there are people who believe they are monsters who should be locked away forever. But how is there any chance of someone changing if the rest of us believe it is absolutely impossible? I refuse to give up hope. Many people have told me that more time working in this field will knock that idealism out of me. They think that with enough time seeing the horrifying nature of some people, that I will go to their side.

But they do not understand the power of the yoga and all it has taught me over the years.

Just like the last post, I am not sure I have an answer to this dilemma, but I do know that I refuse to dehumanize anyone. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” None of us are perfect, and if we attack each other, we destroy life and go blind. We are all connected, and destroying anyone in that connection destroys a piece of us. I want to ensure we can all see clearly.

Law school tried to beat the humanity out of many of us. We are asked to be “rational” and think about how evidence is relevant to the law, ignoring how it is relevant to people. We live in a world where corporations are considered people. Our concept of humanity is skewed. I have little doubt of that anymore.

But yoga gives us the space to come back to that sense of humanity. Perhaps you are not ready to see someone who abuses a child as a fellow human being, albeit one who needs some serious help (and to stay away from children until receiving that help), but are you willing to see opposing counsel as a fellow human being? What about the client on the other side of the case? What about your political rival? What about someone who disagrees with you about gay marriage or taxing the rich?

I know these ideas are controversial, but I strongly believe that if we do not have these discussions, we are going to continue down the road to destruction of all of us. And I think it is one of the most important lessons yoga can teach us, especially those of us being asked through our jobs to dehumanize, whether that dehumanization is of a child abuser or just the lawyer across the street. 

And what if your act of humanizing someone else allows them to pay it forward? What if we all treated each other with humanity? Could that eventually stop the abuse? Could that eventually allow us all to see clearly? I believe it can.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

When the Truth gets Lost

I am currently at a conference unlike any I have ever attended. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions before, I love conferences. Not only are they a plethora of information, but they are a way to meet the experts, network, and see what people around the world are doing in the work I do. I also love interdisciplinary conferences to learn about other fields. But they also can provide so much information and bring up issues we have in our practice that we did not even know existed. This conference took that issue to a completely new level for me. 

Lawyers are expected to find the “right” answer, the “truth.” I have struggled with these issues on this blog before, but this conference is throwing them in my face like never before. The conference is called the “San Diego International Conference on Child and Family Maltreatment.” The participants include lawyers, law enforcement, doctors, forensic interviewers, social workers, etc. My first day consisted of presentations on differentiating birth trauma from abuse, the importance of acknowledging bruises, and learning about methamphetamine’s effects on the brain. I never thought learning about meth would be the easy part of my day.

This morning started with suggestibility and recantation during forensic interviews about sexual abuse. Good morning to you, too! What are we expected to do with this information when there is no physical evidence? How are we supposed to make sense of it? How do we hear everyone's story and find "the truth?"

The lawyer in me wants to know “the truth.” The yogi in me knows we all see the world through our own truths. The lawyer in me knows that child sexual abuse happens, and it must be taken seriously. So, what do we do in this situation? How do we hold the entire story and follow the law?

For the past decade, my yoga path has encouraged me to see and hold the entire picture and to understand people from their points of views. At the plenary session today, the speaker said she has discovered over her career that when we truly listen, we find there are truthS, not one single truth. That can be very liberating, but it can also be paralyzing to the person listening.

What do we do with that? What does the law do with that?

I try to always have some sort of answer in these posts, some lesson I have learned from yoga or law that concludes. Today, I simply do not have that. I refuse to let go of the years of yoga that have opened my eyes to trusting people, humanizing people, and seeing the entire picture from everyone’s point of view. I cannot do this perfectly; I doubt anyone can, but the yoga makes it easier each and every day.

But we (the system) have to make decisions. We have to determine what is in the best interests of children. And this is not just true of child welfare lawyers. All lawyers, and anyone who sees trauma, disaster, etc. on a daily basis, must find a way to hear it, make some sense of it, and find a way to move forward.

At the beginning of law school, we were told that there may never be an answer in certain law school scenarios. We were asked to “embrace the ambiguity.” When discussing abstract situations involving constitutional law principles, I not only can accept that, I enjoy it. But when we are talking about real life and real decisions, especially those that involve families and children, that ambiguity becomes painful.

But the good news is that people are talking about these issues. People are trying to find some answers, even if we cannot always have the “right” answers. That gives me hope. And the yoga, most days, keeps me grounded. Right now, that is where I am. I look around this conference and see people who have been doing this work for years, and I wonder whether they think they know the answer every time. My guess is not, or they would not be here. That also gives me hope. Knowing we do not have all the answers is the first step. We just keep moving along and hope each day we are doing our best. 

How do you notice these ambiguities in your life? What do you do to respond to them? Do you ever feel like you can know the truth?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Finding Community Across the Pacific

This has been an intense week. A week ago, I was in themiddle of nowhere, without internet, without a phone, even without showers (though strangely the huts had electricity during certain hours of the day). This week, I have been in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city at around 1.3 million people. The contrast was stark and not altogether easy for me to handle. To be totally honest, the thought of going back to the huge United States is a little overwhelming right now, but I am excited to be heading “home” soon. Just 2.5 more weeks in New Zealand. I cannot believe it.

I could not have asked for the New Zealand Family Law Society to have its conference. I was lucky to be able to attend, and it was incredible. I hold a special place in my heart for conferences, and it was at afamily law conference in Denver where I first taught yoga outside of teacher training. Conferences are about learning, but more importantly, they are about networking. Actually, I do not particularly like that word. Conferences are about coming together. They are about community.

And conferences on the other side of the world are about realizing (or perhaps realising) how similar we all are. In some ways, especially in a major stretch of metaphors, conferences embody everything I think yoga has to teach us as professionals. On the surface, conferences seem almost the antithesis of good yoga. They are intense, people rarely sleep, and at least at the conferences I have attended, people eat and drink far more than they should. I am, of course, the exception . . . or not.

But deeper down, conferences allow people to step outside their daily lives and take some time to reflect rather than live in a world of constant reaction. For a few days, the “other” lawyers become your friends again. Debates that sometimes devolve into zero-sum arguments in practice become opportunities to ask questions of each other, engage together, and discuss all the possible issues. No final decision has to be made. Everyone gets to be confused together. Hopefully, we can also be inspired and reinvigorated together as well. And this happens because we get away from the downward spiral of email and see each other’s faces, and talk, laugh, and debate together. We get to step away from daily life, and in doing so, we can put daily life into perspective.

But the best part is about building new community and reminding ourselves of the community in which we already exist. In that vein, I saw some friendly faces, both people I first met here in New Zealand, and people I have met in the US from both New Zealand and Australia. I also met many new people. Yoga is not just about asana and meditating and learning stress management techniques. It helps us step outside our lives long enough to realize how much we all have in common, how connected we really are. Conferences give us the same opportunity. This week, I am grateful for having had that amazing opportunity on the other side of the world. What an incredible beginning of the end of my time here. Now I just might need some more “traditional” yoga to recover from the conference.

What do you do to step outside your daily routine and find community?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.