The Last Human Freedom

Freedom is an interesting word. It can mean physical freedom, such as not being in prison or enslaved. It can mean emotional freedom, as I wrote about three years ago. It can mean political freedom, which we are watching unfold around the world, but particularly in Egypt and Syria right now. And that is what we in the United States celebrate on July 4^th every year.

There are all sorts of arguments we are not free in our lives. We are expected to work and pay off debt. There is no country in the world without a government. And certainly there has been a lot of discussion about freedom when our phone logs are being watched by government agencies. But as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, governments “deriv[e] their power from the consent of the people.”

But as I have said many times before, I am not publicly political. What I think of the revolutions happening in Syria and Egypt, and what I think of Edward Snowden and the NSA, is not really important. But I think all these situations reflect perfectly what Jefferson said. We have to consent to any limitations on our freedom.

And that includes limitations on any type of freedom. Our deepest freedom, however, is one that we should never consent to limit, though many of us (including myself) often do.

Viktor Frankl, who was a holocaust survivor, said, “The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.” We get to choose how we respond to any situation. We can respond with anger and revolt. We can respond with acceptance. We can respond with fear. We can respond knowing we have joy and contentment within ourselves, and nothing external can change that. But we have to remember to consciously choose that response. Frankl further stated, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

I think it is important to look at the larger, political freedoms, not only for ourselves but for others. We live in a world where child prostitution and human trafficking occur. We live in a world where Google and Facebook are not allowed to exist in certain countries. But even if we had all of our political freedoms, how many of us consent to our own lack of personal freedoms? How many of us forget that space between stimulus and response to get to our last human freedom of attitude? 

Lawyers can be great at helping people obtain political freedoms as well as keeping people out of prison. But law does little to help us break free of our personal freedoms. Yoga, however, helps us there. It is not always easy. These are the limitations that are much harder to see. There is no whisleblower inside us to tell us when we are limiting ourselves. We have to learn to listen. And in that listening we have to ask if we are reacting or responding.

I notice when I am getting caught in my limitations when I am driving. Even after more than a decade of yoga and trying to learn to let go of my anger, when someone cuts me off on the road, I sometimes go into a fit of rage. Some days I can let it go quickly, but other times it boils inside of me even when I know it serves no purpose except to drain my energy. I know I am not alone in this. Road rage is a pretty serious issue and sometimes leads to death. Thus, driving is my teaching time as well. And I do a lot of driving.

Another common area of limiting freedom is our response to our physical bodies. We often feel defined by them rather than our higher Being. I cannot tell you how often I hear people say, “I’m too fat,” “I’m not flexible,” or “I’m in too much pain.” We let our bodies limit our souls. There is no doubt that our bodies have limitations at times. But look at the amazing examples of people who have done so much despite their limited bodies. Stephen Hawking, Roger Ebert post cancer, and all the stories you have hopefully heard of people on their death beds with a smile on their face and love in their hearts.

Our Being is bigger than our bodies and bigger than our road rage. No matter how limited we feel, we have to consent to giving up the freedom to choose our attitude. We can also choose not to consent. We can choose to feel that freedom regardless of external consequences. So, while people are celebrating a revolution over 200 years ago with barbeques, parades, and fireworks, how are you celebrating your internal freedoms?

Are you remembering to breathe deeply? Are you taking the time to ask if you are doing what you were put on this planet to do? Are you letting yourself forgive others as well as yourself? Are you finding gratitude in moments that at first are difficult? Are you choosing an attitude to serve your highest self or one that makes life more difficult? As Viktor Frankl said, this is the last of human freedoms. Nothing external has the power to effect us without our consent. It may seem difficult, or even impossible, to choose a different attitude in the face of adversity, but the choice is always there. What attitude will you choose?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, The Last Human Freedom, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Being Proud . . . or Free

A lot is written about freedom on the Fourth of July. Two years ago that was this blog’s topic. But all National holidays also bring up another issue for me – pride. When I was living in New Zealand, a friend asked me if I am proud to be an American. She comes from a country where America is not well loved, and so the question took me by surprise.

I never know how to answer that question because it has so many levels. First, it assumes I had anything to do with being American or America being as it is. I vote, but I am not particularly political. I have my beliefs, but I tend not to share them outside of my group of friends.  In short, my way of changing the world, so to speak, is through my daily life, not through any political process. Therefore, I have little say in how America is shaped. I had even less say in being born here.

Second, the question asks about arbitrary boundaries we, as humans, have created. I recognize that humans have been group focused since our species began. It is a protective mechanism. Intellectually, I understand that then led to city-states and eventually our modern countries. I “get” that is why people go to war. 

But on a deeper level it makes absolutely no sense to me and never has. I have been blessed to have traveled through many countries and met people from many more. I have been even more blessed to get to know many of these people. And while I see that people have different views and ideas and beliefs, I also see how similar we are. While I always believed this on a deep level, yoga has helped me truly see it and express it. Yoga, by helping me turn inward, has helped me clear away all the barriers we create between ourselves and “others,” and now, more than ever, I know in the deepest and least deep parts of myself that we are really so much more similar than some would have us believe.

Finally, the question asks about pride. This is a concept I have never fully understood. Its definition is not flattering, and synonyms include conceit, vanity, and and arrogance. It is defined as either a simple sense of pleasure from achievements or an “inordinate sense of self esteem.” Should we be proud of our academic achievements? Should we be proud of raising a family? Should we be proud we have a nice house and a nice car? Should we be proud we saved someone from a raging fire? Should we expect others to be proud of us? I have never fully come to terms with answering any of these questions.

I have noticed the issue of pride a lot recently, but the best example is on one particular listserv to which I subscribe. Suffice it to say that it is a listserv for lawyers who work in the child welfare arena. I subscribe because sometimes the information is invaluable for my work. I have come close to unsubscribing numerous times, however, because people on the listserv not only often disagree with one another but do it in an accusatory, and frankly mean, fashion. They actually accuse each other of not caring about children. These are people who subscribe to a listserv and take the time to write on it amidst incredibly busy schedules. While I sometimes, perhaps often, disagree with their beliefs, I never question their dedication and commitment to children and families.

But it is easy to question other peoples' commitment and motivations when pride gets in the way – pride in our own belief systems. Pride can be what blocks our ability to see how others see the world. Pride can stop us from taking those yoga moments, breathing, and asking if we can look at life from a new perspective.

So, on this Fourth of July, I want to look beyond this question of Pride. What if we could be free of pride?

Today, the world is more interconnected than ever before, and that interconnectedness continues to grow exponentially nearly daily. If we continue to draw these lines between ourselves, we will keep ourselves from that interconnectedness. When we see how similar we are, when we understand how much we all want what is best for the world, we need not resort to name calling and petty disagreements. Today, we are faced with problems never before seen, but our deep connection to one another, when we tap into it, can help us overcome those problems. And that is where the real freedom lies.

What if pride were measured by how connected we were today? Would that not make us freer than ever before? Would that not be the best way to celebrate that "all [people] are created equal?"

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Back to basics . . . Again

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” – Suzuki Roshi from, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

I found the above quote in an article about Steve Jobs’s connection to Buddhism. The point of that quote in the article was to illuminate how Steve Job's genius manifested. He never let what was already in existence deter him from finding something better. The article, of course, also discusses how a student of Buddhism treated his employees as Steve Jobs did, but that is not the point of this post.

As I have mentioned before, there is something special about the beginner’s mind. When we let go of the need to know everything and open our eyes to all the possibilities, what previously seemed impossible becomes possible. If we think we know everything, then there is no opportunity to learn more, and our world-view becomes limiting.

The last post discussed what the Easter/Passover season means, and along with those themes, it is spring -- the perfect opportunity to start anew. It is a time to let go of any of our preconceived notions about the world and see the possibilities that exist. To me, this is the interesting piece about where the Passover story ends. It ends with the escape from Egypt. It does not go on to talk about the 40 years wandering the desert.

But those 40 years are where the learning takes place. Those 40 years are the beginner’s mind and an absolute expanse of possibility. The Middle East desert is nothing if not an expanse of possibility. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been . . . and I lived in New Zealand for 10 months.

A view of the desert from the top of Masada at Sunrise.

 It is very easy for all of us to think we have the answers. It is easy for us to think we are experts, especially about our own lives. Being sure is safer than questioning and being open to possibilities. Choice can be paralyzing (link to a TED talk on the paradox of choice). But it also holds the key to that which we may never have deemed possible.

Yoga helps us remember that each moment is a chance to learn something new. There is always a new muscle to discover, a new technique to learn, or a new posture to practice. And it is called a practice for a reason. People have a meditation practice; they do not master meditation. Similarly, doctors and lawyers have practices. On some level, they understand that if they believe too strongly in their “expertise,” they will miss the full story.

I find that the most exciting part of being a lawyer. Every day is different, even if from the outside it looks like I am doing the same thing. It is easy to generalize and lump cases together, but the truth is that every individual client is just that . . . an individual. Their story is a clean slate, and I know nothing about it before walking through the door to meet them. Sometimes that is literally true, and while frustrating at times, in many ways it allows me to be completely open to possibilities. How can I be an expert on a person I know nothing about?

Thus, there is a story beyond the excitement and freedom of breaking free of slavery. To me, the story suggests something bigger. We are slaves to our “expertise.” It is when we let our minds be blank slates like the sun rising over the expansive desert that the greatest possibilities for our lives emerge. It is easy to lose track of that sense of emptiness in the modern world, and yoga provides the tools to bring us back. Meditation and asana are about calming the mind and coming back to the present moment, the moment when anything is possible.

Are you ready to break free and be open to the possibilities that await?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Slavery, Freedom, Death, and Rebirth

This is an intense weekend. Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, marks the day Jesus died on the cross. Friday night is the first night of Passover, the Jewish holiday during which we remember the Exodus from Egypt, from slavery to freedom. Sunday is Easter, that when divorced from bunnies and chocolates, is a celebration of Jesus rising from death.

When a large number of people think about the same ideas, those ideas permeate the world in which we live. I discussed this before in regards to the Christmas spirit.  Passover has always been one of my favorite holidays. In part, it was because it was our “family” holiday, the time we all got together. But it also symbolizes an escape from slavery and the jubilation that comes with freedom. 

Exodus is a big word. It is not just an escape. It is a grand departure. Death and rebirth are not small topics. They are, perhaps, the deepest conversations we can have. It is not chronologically a coincidence that Passover and Easter are usually close together; Jesus’ last supper was a Passover Seder. It is also not a coincidence these events happen in spring, the season of renewal, the reminder that there will be sun and warmth ahead (even with a little wind and imbalance) after the cold, dark winter (unless you live in Arizona in which case it was a mild, sunny winter).

But more importantly, it is not a coincidence with their themes. In order to break free from slavery, we have to let our old selves die, and wake up to a new world and to new possibilities. We have to be willing to see the world through beginner’s eyes. But that is a scary prospect. Letting go of who we are today, even if we know that tomorrow will be better, can paralyze us with fear. And yet, at this time of year, we hold these themes in our collective consciousness, and we ask ourselves how we can make them part of our daily lives.

Today, we hear the slavery metaphor a lot. We talk about being enslaved by work, addicted to our electronic devices (crackberry, anyone?), and torn between time for ourselves and time for other people. But we only have to see it as enslavement if we choose. What if we were able to see our freedom of choice in every single moment? What if we decided to start today?

Yoga gives us the perfect opportunity to teach ourselves how to wake up as new people. At the end of a yoga practice, we do savasana, corpse pose (apparently this Easter/Passover theme about savasana has appeared before on this blog). That prior post does not, however, get into what savasana really is. It is meant to be a death. It is called corpse pose for a reason. It is where our old self dies, and we can be reborn. We can come out of savasana a new person, open to possibilities. We can have an empty mind.

Savasana is the reminder that we will wake back up after the fear of letting our old selves go. We can let go of beliefs about ourselves and others. We can let go of our fears and hindrances. We can let our old selves disapear knowing that we will emerge. Passover, of course, ends with the jubilation of the escape. It leaves out the next 40 years wandering in the desert. It is a brief moment in time to be thankful for the freedom, but it leaves out the fear that comes next, sometimes immediately. Each moment we overcome a particular individual enslavement, we feel a moment of jubilation . . . and then the fear sets in, and we remember we have to wander the desert, whatever that is in our life.

Yoga is the foundation to remind us that we can continuously come back to our practice and make our choice each and every day. We can let it got, we can wake back up, and we can find our own freedom in each moment. While Passover and Easter teach us the big themes and bring them into our collective consciousness, yoga gives us the day-to-day tools to remember that each moment is a choice, and we can carry these themes with us throughout our days, weeks, and months. I hope you all have a happy and healthy holiday weekend, whether you celebrate or not. 

How do you carry these themes with you throughout your daily lives?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

Freedom to . . . be what you "might be"

“Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to.” Anonymous

In the last post, we discussed what it means to break free from our modern lives of slavery. A friend sent me a long response asking me to consider the difference between freedom from and freedom to. So I have. What I found is that it fits nicely with this week’s theme on the Is Yoga Legal facebook page, where the Monday Intention was, “thinking outside the box.”

The notion that we must break free “from” something insinuates that where we are is not where we should be. While it is important to recognize the parts of our lives that are causing us more harm than we might like, we can also see these “problems” as teachers. They can provide us with the baseline to see where we might go.

We often hold onto our ideas of ourselves so hard that we forget why we started in the first place. We think of ourselves as lawyers, as yogis, as mothers, as fathers, as Americans, as Jews, etc. We let these labels define us instead of defining our labels. And we stay there. We believe what these labels expect us to believe, and we live our lives accordingly. For lawyers, this often means doing legal work long past the moment when it no longer works for us. As yogis, this means getting upset when we do not live up to the yogic ideals we believe we should.

But we have the ability to have freedom, freedom to think outside the box created by these labels. As Lao Tzu said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Choices we make along the way as to who we are need not define us the rest of our lives. We can think outside the box and be creative about who we are. But it requires letting go of our preconceived notions.

The quote at the start of this post questions whether our preconceived notions are worth it. How do we know until we try something new?

Yoga provides a great means to explore new ideas and new ways of seeing ourselves. Through yoga, we begin to understand our bodies and minds in new ways. We start to understand how the smallest adjustment in a posture can lead to a completely different experience. We learn to listen to the breath and notice when we are holding onto tension. Finally, as the same friend pointed out, savasana (corpse pose) remains a great asana for moving through these different ideas of freedom. It is in savasana that we have that moment to let go of the past, breathe into our present, and open our minds to what and who we “might be” in the future.

This path is not always, and perhaps never, straight and easy. I went to law school to help children, and along the way I did asylum law, worked at a law firm, and clerked for two judges. Now I am getting an LLM. Interestingly, I am more convinced now than ever that I want to work with children. But I had to let go of those ideas to ensure that they truly were worth holding on to, and yoga gave me the courage to do that. It gave me the courage to turn inward.

Most importantly, yoga gave me the courage to step outside of the box. The lawyer world would have put me at a law firm. And there was a lot of pressure to go, including the pressure of student loans. I read other law blogs where people lament their lives to no end but say, “I have to pay off the loans, so I am living my life at a job I hate.” That is the box. But yoga gives us the courage to have freedom to . . . step out of that box and be the person that we “might be.”

Who might you be? Are you ready to be free to find out?

Namaste.

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Breaking Free through Savasana

It is one of those years when Passover and Easter coincide. Together these holidays represent breaking free from our bonds of slavery and being reborn into something better. For many people, they represent far more than that, but I am going up the abstraction ladder on purpose and mean no disrespect to anyone who believes in the reality of these stories. 

Going up the abstraction ladder, Passover is about breaking free from the bonds of slavery in our lives, whether in Egypt or the ones we create for ourselves. The Last Supper was a Passover Seder, when Jews come together to tell the story of the Exodus. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, finding new life. Taken together, the idea is that when we choose to break free of our bonds of slavery, we may lose our old selves, but we are reborn as free people.

This is not a blog dedicated to religion, so where is this going? Lawyers and yoga are perfect examples of how to integrate these ideas. Lawyers, as a whole, exemplify the slavery of modern life. Yoga, through savasana, reminds us how to let go of those bonds and find new life. 

There is no question that slavery in the traditional sense still exists in the world, but most people able to read a blog about yoga and lawyers probably do not encounter it on a daily basis (though we might take a moment to reflect on that fact and ask ourselves what we can do to counteract slavery around the world). So, what is modern slavery in the “free” world?

Individuals have many different aspects of their lives that enslave them: Family members who excel at guilt trips, relationships that spiral out of control, and beliefs entrenched since childhood that you are not good enough tend to dominate the list. On a macro level, however, there is another type of slavery, and one that keeps so many people miserably waking and going to jobs they hate. Student loans and families and wanting the BMW and iphone convince people that the only way to survive is to work at any job that pays them enough to have it all. Check out the comments on any post written by The People's Therapist, a BigLaw lawyer turned psychologist. We become slaves to blackberries and deadlines, forgetting the real reason we went into our profession – whatever that reason is. Our personal enslavements of fear and living up to expectations dominate our decisions in life. This is modern slavery in a world where we consider ourselves to be free.

Just like Passover and Easter, Yoga reminds us that there is a way out of this. Savasana means corpse pose in English. It is that moment at the end of yoga classes when the only instruction is “lie down and relax.” And yes, it is the hardest pose for many, many people. (For some people, it is physically difficult because of particular body types or injuries, but here I mean difficult in an emotional and psychological sense.) Savasana is literally where we lie down allowing our bodies and thoughts to “die,” and at the end of it, we are reborn full of the knowledge we gained throughout class and hopefully a little more relaxed.

Physically, savasana is where our bodies integrate the physical aspects of a yoga class or session. While we go through postures, we are teaching our muscles to work in new ways, and we are learning to stretch and grow. During savasana, the body integrates that information, so the next time you “do” yoga, you have the muscle memory to do it.

Psychologically, savasana is where we let go of our enslavements. For the 5-10 minutes we are in savasana, we need not worry about Outlook or the boss. We need not worry about dinner or the weather. We need not worry about whether we are doing the pose “right.” We get to just be. We get to let go of everything that enslaves us and breathe.

Thus, through savasana, those parts of us that hold us back and enslave us can die. Then we can begin to wiggle our fingers and toes (one of my favorite things to say as a yoga teacher) and awaken without all that baggage. Of course, it does not go away immediately, and we must come back to savasana each time we practice. But if we could learn these lessons immediately, we would not celebrate Passover and Easter every year either.

What holds you back? What do you do to enslave yourself? What do you do to break free? I hope this time of rebirth, in whatever form you choose to celebrate, help bring you peace. 

Namaste.

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Are you free?

So, this post is a bit late - it was supposed to coincide with July 4, but I was in California helping my mom move out of the house where I grew up. What better opportunity than cleaning out the past to consider freedom in the yogic sense?


I subscribe to many legal blogs, not the least of which is Above the Law. For those of you who are not lawyers, or those of you who have not been graced with ATL, it lovingly refers to itself as the legal tabloid. More than anything else, it focuses on BigLaw - in non-lawyer speak, this means large law firms, the international ones that drive the legal market. To be honest, I subscribe in order to keep tabs on what lawyers in BigLaw are thinking, as I find that I am very disconnected from that reality in how I view the world.

I do not think it would surprise anyone that the legal job market is grim - so grim that lawyers are fighting over unpaid internships with county attorneys in California. Unlike many people who are out of work, recent law grads are often in debt far in excess of six figures. Another legal / psychological blog I follow is The People’s Therapist. An ex-lawyer, turned psychotherapist, comments not only on psychotherapy, but also on how lawyers can benefit from it. He writes often about the belittling life that many BigLaw attorneys (Especially associates) lead. When I take the time to read the comments on his blog posts about how crippling the legal profession can be to the psyche, the most common response is akin to, “I want to give it up, but I have too much debt, and I must work.”

Translation: “I’m trapped!”

These comments reflect a world in which people cannot see their freedom. All they see is the oppression caused by the need to have a good job, make money, have possessions, and pay off the debt. There is no doubt I have felt this way. In many ways, I feel that way now. As of August 20, I am out of a job until January when I leave for the Fulbright in New Zealand. But while the daily ups and downs come, deep down I know that I am free to move beyond these limitations. Even my debt and society cannot imprison me. This santosha, or contentment, has only come through yoga.

But how does breathing and stretching with intention create such freedom? Yoga helps us see the bigger picture. I tend to be more logical than emotional, like many lawyers; if I am in debt, I better make money to pay it down. In that sense, I am trapped by this society and not free. But yoga has helped me see that my Being is always free even when external forces might predict otherwise. Yoga has opened my eyes to the world that obligation cannot reach.

In addition to seeing a bigger world, yoga can give us the tools to be free within our daily lives. We can go to work grumpy and upset. We can go to work upbeat and happy. That is our choice. I can work at a law firm because that is what lawyers do, especially after clerking for two judges. Or I can do what makes me most interested - help children in the law and bring yoga to more people, especially lawyers. Neither is right or wrong. What we have to ask is, are we making the choice from a place of freedom or a place of obligation/oppression?

By taking us out of the world we traditionally inhabit, yoga allows us to look beyond and find that which makes us love life. It opens our eyes to a deeper connection, the one to ourselves and to each other. It is not about money or prestige or possessions. On a yoga mat, the only things that matter are breath and movement. We are able to see that these are the guiding forces of our life. We take the moments to stop and reflect, ask ourselves whether the traditional path is the one for us. In these moments of reflection, we can find that the traditional path is our path, and that is wonderful - or we can discover that we need a different path.

Yoga creates the space to ask these questions. What makes you free? What gives you life? What opens your eyes?

Namaste and Blessings!

Do you know what's coming?

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path." -- Joseph Campbell 
Lawyers like to know what is coming. Jobs that students take after their second year in law school often remain homes for years, if not an entire career. Interviews for judicial clerkships are in September for jobs beginning the following August. In interview preparation, we are coached to ask what the partnership track is for a law firm - often 7-8 years. Salaries and bonuses are posted on national websites for all to see. In other words, lawyers do not like to take chances.

Then why does the average lawyer today change jobs 5 times in his career? Why does the average lawyer leave his first job within three years? Why are so many judges people that have done both criminal and civil litigation? Certainly, part of the answer is the economy. When there are fewer jobs, people move around more. But the bigger answer, I think, is that lawyers are wising up to the importance of not knowing what tomorrow will bring. While scary, there is a certain feeling of anticipation and excitement that such an opportunity creates.

The law is about providing answers. We look to the past, see old cases and statutes, and we decide, based on that, how the case before us should resolve. Yes, I mean resolve. Because, at the end of the day, there is a resolution. One side "wins," and the other side often goes home empty-handed. In complex civil litigation, juries are often asked to determine how much at fault each party is and then calculate to the penny how much each party should be awarded. Some cases take years, but what each step will be is usually easy to determine. 

But we all know that real life is not like that. Life throws us for loops all the time. We can plan out every minute for the next thirty years, but tomorrow, we could be without a job, our best friend could die, or we could be hit by a bus. Of course, tomorrow, we could win the lottery (only if you play), meet a new best friend, or discover that someone we love is pregnant. In other words, life changes. Lawyers, like all of us, must learn to navigate those changes, and the first step is accepting that we cannot determine how life will proceed tomorrow, let alone next year.

This is why I love the Joseph Campbell quote so much. His point is that you can think you know what tomorrow, and the rest of your life, will bring, but you will be wrong, no matter what. Even Yoda said that the future is difficult to determine - always changing. (Now is probably as good a time as any to out myself as a super Star Wars geek. I will try to spare this blog from that, but sporadic Yoda quotes will prevail, I'm sure.) 

Yoga provides us the tools to confront these changes. Yoga is the reminder that our true nature does not change, even if we move across the world, change jobs, or start a new family. I have been lucky to travel the world, and live in various places for long enough for people to get to know me. What I find is that while my outward way of being has changed (I used to make Mac-and-Cheese with a friend everyday after school, and now I'm a health nut, and I used to be a percussionist prepared to study music in college, but now I'm a lawyer-yogi), people tend to react to me the same way. I hear the same things about me from people I met in France to people from Michigan and Arizona, to my friends growing up in California. This includes that which I like about myself and that which drives me nuts about myself. 

When I was growing up, many people told me I would be a lawyer. I said it would never happen. Ooops. And guess what? I'm proud of it! When I did not get the "good" jobs my third year in law school, I was upset. Then I got the best job I could have ever asked for, followed by a second amazing job, and together they gave me the time and opportunity to apply for a Fulbright and get my yoga teacher certification, neither of which are traditional plans for post-law school. I certainly could not have told anyone at the beginning of law school that I would be moving to New Zealand for ten months and teaching yoga during my lunch hour at work.

So, we can plan all we want. We can think we know what tomorrow will bring, but we waste our energy. The legal community is slowly shifting towards a system of change, of breaking the status quo, and being okay with not knowing. Yoga teaches us to always come back to our breath, whether sitting in meditation or doing a hot yoga practice (which I do not actually practice, unless you consider Phoenix hot yoga). The breath never changes. Our essence never changes, no matter how much the external forces try to change us. We can work to better ourselves and society, but the point is that there is nothing these external forces can take from us, only give us more opportunities for growth.

The funny thing is that I learned the same thing in law school. We are taught over and over again in school that it is perfectly acceptable, even honorable, to answer a client's question with four simple words, "I do not know." Of course, those words should be followed with, "let me look into it and get back to you." That openness to the unknown is a step toward the freedom that yoga can provide as well as the recognition that when we do not know, there is always an opportunity to learn. .

Namaste and Blessings!