Compassion in the Law

I have been reading a lot of Lissa Rankin’s writing recently. You may remember me discussing her before. She is the one who wrote Mind Over Medicine, the book I wrote about back in June (has it really been that long?).

Her most recent writing to inspire me is a blog post called, “A Call for Greater Compassion.” Read it. You will thank me. Her main point is that we all have our faults, we all have our sins, and that is what makes us able to share our compassion with each other. She even asks, “Who are we to judge?” And she ends with a challenge:

Think of one person you’re judging today, one person who isn’t living up to your standards, one person who is disappointing you or doing something you don’t like. Would it be possible for you to tune into the part of that person that is hurting? Can you see that part as a little child who just needs love? Can you open your heart to that little child and reach out to that person with that kind of love?

It is not an easy challenge, for sure. We live in a world where we are taught to judge, even if we are not lawyers. At some level it is biological – we need to be able to tell safety from danger if we are going to survive as a species. But the judgment she discusses, and I think is the bigger issue, is the judgment we place on our fellow human beings for being human, for struggling with life, for making mistakes.

I notice this most in myself when I’m driving. When people do things I am not expecting on the road, I get really riled up. If they slow down to turn without a signal, cut me off, or anything really that does not fit with my ideal of how they should be driving in that moment, I freak out. Guess what? I do all of those things as well. Probably more than I would like to admit, in fact.

This sort of judgment does not serve us at all. But even that judgment can leave us quickly. It is judgment almost more at a situation than at an individual person. After all, we rarely know who cuts us off in traffic, and short of breaking into serious road rage, none of us then go discover their identity. But what about when we judge our friends for their choice in partner, or we judge our parents for how they eat, or we judge our neighbors for struggling with drug addiction, or we judge our soldiers for their mental health issues? What happens to these people when we judge instead of offer compassion? The best-case scenario is we lose someone close to us. The worst-case scenario is that we end up with something similar to the shooting this week at Ft. Hood.

And yet, lawyers are asked to judge all day, every day. It is, literally, in the job description (whether or not you are actually a judge). And think of the people the law judges – rapists, murderers, child molesters and abusers, and thieves. But as odd as it sounds in modern America, these are the people who need our compassion the most. And so do their victims. In parts of the world, the rape victim is the one put to death while the rapist walks free. I think I can say this pretty freely – that does not fit within this picture of compassion either. But I think I have more people on my side for that one. What about the perpetrators of these horrific crimes? Can we find compassion for them while still finding a way to keep other members of society safe from their actions?

When I was a camp counselor, we were taught two things that have stayed with me for the past 17 years: 1) we do not punish, only discipline, and 2) the child is not bad, only their actions are a problem. While my camp did not use the word compassion, we did talk about respect and caring. I have carried these ideas with me, and I try every day to separate the person from the person’s actions. After all, I work with the children who usually love their parents regardless of what they did to them.

But there are days when it is really difficult. There are days the lies become too much, the pain the children face becomes too much, and it is just easier to judge. After all, that is our learned response from a young age. But my yogi heart knows differently. My yogi heart says to ask the questions Dr. Rankin suggests. One day in particular I vividly remember offering compassion to someone who was screaming at me. It was not the first time he did it. The next day he wrote me an email apologizing for his actions. My compassion toward him was silent, but it worked. Never before had he written such an email.

There is no question the legal system is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of compassion than where we were even 20 years ago. We talk about rehabilitative courts, and we utilize alternative dispute resolution where available. We offer people services to help them on their way. But we still have so far to go. The big step, the really difficult step, is changing the attitudes of those of us who work there. The big step is changing the attitudes of society from judgment to compassion.

So, my fellow lawyers, can we find compassion in the law? Can we bring a lens of compassion to our work and still protect society from actions that harm? I had a conversation today with someone whose initial response to my discussion of being a lawyer was saying that the law teaches us not to be compassionate. I disagree. I believe we can do both, and I know so many people who do so on a daily basis. But can we do it all the time? Can we take judgment out of the picture? Can we come to the law with compassion for the people who sit across from us? Are you willing to take Dr. Rankin's challenge?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, Compassion in the Law, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Subtleties of the Bigger Picture

Yoga teaches us to trust our intuition. Some days it is a really good idea to go to a vinyasa class and move. Some days it is a really good idea to relax into a calming, restorative class. But every day is going to be different, no matter who you are. One of the only parts of each of us that is the same is that we change on a daily basis.

And yoga not only allows this, but it encourages these differences. It encourages us to look at our subtleties and understand them more fully. We can move into our bodies each and every day and understand its needs that day. We can use different modalities to calm our minds and calm our nerves every minute. We live in an age where there are thousands of modalities, and we just need to find the one that works for us.

The “real” world, however, still has not quite caught on. Law schools still seem to think the right answer for every student is a law firm life, the bigger the better (and yes, I know not all schools do this, but the underlying culture still does). Professionals specialize more and more such that simple answers outside their specialty evade their understanding. We live in a world where we try to make every situation the same because then it fits a pattern that is familiar to us.

When I was studying in New Zealand, there had recently been a change in New Zealand requiring lawyers who represented children to actually see their child clients in person. Prior to that, many lawyers just assumed all children were the same, so they did not actually have to meet their particular client in this case. And that was in family law, where seeing the child with each of the parents and more fully understanding that child’s relationship with each child was even more important.

I do not mention this to say these lawyers did not care. They simply did not think through the fact that every single person is unique and has individual qualities. When I went to see a surgeon, he really only looked at my MRI. The physical therapist and another doctor said, “I want to see you before I look at the images.” When we get into too much specialization, we lose subtleties of each and every person.

And this does not only affect the professional world. It affects our everyday lives. If we stop expecting people and situations to be different, we start making assumptions about how certain situations are going to happen. And with that, we have the potential to stop trusting ourselves in the moment of those situations. But yoga helps us tap back into that intuition in the moment. It helps us see that each and every day our body and mind are different.

For example, we learn to tap into the subtleties that make up our every day lives. We learn to find new meaning in what we might have otherwise thought would be a mundane situation. This is really the next step in gratitude. Not only can we be grateful for what we have, but we can start to see how nothing is really as it seems, and our lives are richer and more interesting than we might otherwise imagine.  But first, we have to learn to look. We have to learn to step outside of our focused vision and see the bigger picture. But in order to see that bigger picture, we have to learn to notice the small differences in each and every person, encounter, and situation.

I guess the big question is, “so what?” My 8^th grade English teacher used to ask us that on our writing assignments. Why am I mentioning this? How does this affect our daily lives? Some people believe that one of the underlying reasons for unhappiness in our world is when people believe they are not fully seen for who they are. If we believe that everyone of a certain characteristic (whether race, occupation, age, etc.) is the same, we fail to see the person before us. It is not easy to do. It is much easier to put everyone in a box and go from there. It takes less mental effort . . . on the surface.

But in the long term, what takes less mental effort is not keeping people in those boxes, whatever they are, but allowing yourself to fully experience life. Just like we do not usually need the fight or flight response in our daily lives, though it is great when we do, we do not need to box people into categories anymore. We live in a different world than we did 10,000 years ago when there were reasons not to trust anyone but our clan.  Now our world will be better served by tuning into the subtle differences of each and every person and situation. For me, I have found the ability to start doing that through yoga.

Do you find yourself caught up in assumptions? How do you get out of that mindset? How do you see each person as an individual?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, The Subtleties of the Bigger Picture, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Good Guy Bad Guy

I just returned from attending another conference, and this one was focused almost exclusively on child abuse and maltreatment. It took place in Las Vegas. Let me just say that a conference with a focus on such difficult and heart wrenching topics really needs to be in a place where people can escape for some quiet time. Vegas is not that place. They blast music onto the streets. There were so many people we had to wait in line to get out of the Bellagio. It was an incredible conference, but I’m happy to be home!

On the last day of the conference, I attended a 3-hour presentation on child sex trafficking. Of course, as the speaker reminded us, we should really be calling it child prostitution. That is what it is. Trafficking sounds less bad, but it’s child prostitution, and yes it happens in the United States. And there is nothing ok about child prostitution. But something struck me during the presentation that made my yoga mind hesitate.

The speaker continuously referred to the perpetrators as bad guys. He often referred to himself as the good guy.

I want to reiterate that I find nothing good about child prostitution. But I also cannot wrap my head around this good guy vs. bad guy scenario. We all know it is child abusers who get treated the worst in prisons. There is something different about child abuse, particularly about child sexual abuse, than just about any other crime.

I have written about this issue before – “When we Dehumanize the Dehumanizer.” That post was also written after attending a conference about child abuse (a different conference, but both were great). And 1.5 years later I still find myself struggling with this issue. I still cannot find myself buying into the good guy vs. bad guy mentality.

Last time I mentioned Gandhi’s quote, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” But I think there is more to it than that, something deeper and more profound. We are all connected. I have known this my entire life. It was not until I started doing yoga, however, that I realized there were other people who realized it as well. Thus, if I consider someone else a bad guy, what does that make my connection to him or her? Because whether I like it or not, I am connected to that person even if we are never in the same room.

I still think we do better by addressing the actions as the problem rather than the person as the problem. We may be able to make the actions stop. But if instead we speak ill of people, then we begin to say there are people who are less than. That is dangerous because it has no end. At what point does our judgment stop? Perhaps child sexual abuse is the “easy” example, but if we start there, where does it stop?

I still do not have the complete answers to this. I struggle with seeing the way humans treat other humans, whether as child abuse, war, or bigotry. It hurts to see on any level. But I wonder whether we accomplish any good, or whether we create far more harm, when we talk about good guys and bad guys.

When I was a camp counselor many years ago, I remember in our training on discipline, we were told never to tell a child he or she was bad. We could say the action was not right or even bad, but the child never was. I know there are a lot of people who think that sort of parenting/discipline is not strong enough, but I can say I never had to call parents on my campers. It worked. I do not know if it works everywhere, but it worked for me there. I see no difference with any action, no matter how abhorrent.

And now, because of my yoga training, I can understand why. As soon as I begin to judge others, I judge myself. We are deeply connected, and whatever I say and do will definitely come back.

What do you think? Do you talk about people as good or bad? What are the repercussions if we do?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Good Guy Bad Guy, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Gossip Effect

Two posts ago, we talked about the issues associated with negativity at work and ways to move beyond it. But there was a glaring elephant in the post I neglected to mention – Gossip! Ok, the truth is that I wanted to give gossip its own post. I think it warrants that. 

There is little question the modern workplace is a bastion of gossip. The water cooler is more than just a metaphor for hanging out and not actually getting work done. Gossip has hit the places I work in ways that have truly opened my eyes to how we choose to communicate with each other and about each other.

While teaching English in France, I heard the teachers gossiping about the students and their families. Long before yoga became a daily practice for me (though I had already started practicing), those days in the teachers’ lounge were painful. While working at another job, I was struck by the amount of gossip that permeated the office. It was painful to hear and even more painful that I found myself getting caught up in it.

I have found it very, very difficult to escape the gossip mill anywhere in life. It is an easy way to connect with people – to talk about mutual people we know or to whine about someone who has harmed us. But gossip is harmful to us. It brings negative emotions to the front of our consciousness, and for me, it always leaves a nasty feeling in the air.

And yet we continue to gossip despite the plethora of teachings “against” it. As kids we are told, “if you cannot say something nice, do not say anything at all.” The Golden Rule teaches us to “treat other people as you would like to be treated.” These are great ways to think about gossip, but perhaps we need something more specific.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba tells us to ask three questions before we speak, “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” This is a general teaching about speaking, but it is especially important when talking about other people. First, so much of what we repeat is what we hear from others, and we cannot verify whether it is true. Lawyers, especially, must think about hearsay and whether a statement is reliable. We should, at the very least, consider that when speaking about other people.

The second question is, “is it necessary?” Something we say about someone may be true, but it may not be necessary to share with others. I do not need to tell everyone everything that happens between another person and myself. It probably will not solve anything, and it could just make me more upset. And finally, we should ask ourselves, “is it kind?” This gets back to the two teachings above, if we have nothing nice to say, or if we are treating someone less kindly than we would want them to treat us, we probably should say nothing.

This is not easy to do. In fact, we live in a world where gossip penetrates every aspect of our lives. We live in a world where every mis-statement made by a politician is reported for days, and often the statements are taken out of context and made to sound worse than they really were. We live in a world where People magazine and the National Enquirer are million (billion, perhaps?) dollar industries existing solely on gossip about people most of us have never met.

Gossip can only occur because we think the person about whom we are speaking is somehow different than us, and we can say something about them without affecting ourselves. Gossip happens in the moment and is rarely factually complete. By the time the story reaches a point where the facts are known, it has left our attention. It is a reaction to a moment in time that disappears when something more interesting comes along. But its effects on our consciousness remain, and like everything else in life, they get stuck in us until we let them go.

Yoga is about reflecting before reacting. We learn to ask ourselves if something hurts before we do it, and if it does, we find a better way. In that sense, yoga is the perfect opportunity to break free of gossip. Instead of reacting to the partial facts, we can stop and reflect and ask ourselves the pertinent questions – is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? We can have a yogic response to the gossip we hear as well as the gossip we may wish to speak.

If the answer to those questions is no, and we still speak it, how are we harming ourselves. How does gossip affect our beings? How does it affect the person about whom we are speaking? What if we only listen but do not partake? In all of those scenarios, negativity breeds negativity. In other words gossip only harms everyone involved.

I wish I could tell the world I have broken free of the gossip hold. I have not. But more and more I am conscious of the effect my words have on others and myself. It is a first step – a small one, but a first one. Do you notice yourself getting caught up in gossip? What do you do when you notice that happening? Are you willing to walk away? Are you willing to change the conversation? How has gossip affected you?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

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.

Our Duty to One Another

The last several posts have all been focusing on vicarious trauma, and today’s post sticks to that theme, and looks at why our social community is one of the ways to navigate out of vicarious trauma. I was reminded recently that we have an ethical duty to one another as lawyers. We have a duty to tell the State Bar when another lawyer has violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. As far as I know, that duty exists among many professions. That may not appear to be a duty to each other, but that is because it only becomes a duty when the situation has become unethical. What if we had a duty to help each other before we ever get to that point?

One of the reasons I think lawyers are so affected by vicarious trauma, perhaps more than other helping professions, is because being a lawyer is a lonely endeavor. Law school, unlike business school, is a place to be alone. There are no group projects. There is little collaboration. If anything, there is an intense sense of competition among classmates. After all, class rank defines our future, we are told. We are asked, nay required, to hide our emotions and think “rationally.” We have duties of confidentiality that prohibit us from debriefing our difficult situations, as do many other helping professions. Even if we could talk to someone, who has the time? 

Vicarious trauma rears its head when we pull away from our social net and turn inward. Humans are social animals, and we need one another for survival, but when trauma takes over, the pull is away from that safety. Rationally it makes no sense, but the outside world becomes too difficult when we are living in a state of vicarious trauma. So we do the one thing we absolutely should not do – we pull away, deeper into that loneliness.

Should we only look out for one another when the pull away is so strong someone commits malpractice? Part of the reason I wanted to create this blog was to bring people together to have discussions. As of today, that has not happened. I have met some very interesting people, but the discussions among other strangers do not appear to be happening. But there is another way to connect. We can reconnect with those we already know.

Look around at your coworkers. Look around at opposing counsel. Look around at the other people with whom you interact. Who is acting differently? Who is pulling away? Who yelled at you this week for no apparent reason? Who has not returned your calls? Who made a snarky comment as you walked out the door?

That person may not be so terrible. That person may need your help.

What if our Code of Professional Responsibility included a duty to reach out a helping hand? What if our Code included a duty to bring each other back before we become just another statistic about how awful the legal profession is? Would that not serve all of us, and our clients, better than waiting until the conduct becomes so reprehensible that we have to report it to the State Bar?

Vicarious trauma is made worse by the fact that we have to hear traumatic event after traumatic event without ever processing the trauma ourselves. Instead, we have to look at the person talking about their awful experience and try to rationally find a way to deal with it. We cannot react to the trauma. We simply have to listen, express no emotion, and move on. Or worse, we have to be the ones to tell people that it is not as bad as they think. Usually we move on to more trauma.

We need to be able to process it. We need to be able to talk about it. And this is where someone else comes in. This is where our duty to one another becomes so important. We need to debrief. And we need to do it together. And we need to do it before these experiences become true vicarious trauma.

So, look around you again. Imagine your interactions over the past week. Who may need your helping hand? To whom do you owe a duty of reaching out? And are you the one who needs the helping hand? Reach out to a friend. Ask for the support you know you need. Let us take on this duty to each other today rather than make the dreaded phone call to the Bar tomorrow.

Have you ever reached out with a helping hand? Have you ever asked a friend for help when you needed it?

Namaste!

"Our Duty to One Another" is part of the series, "Overcoming Crisis Mode," in which we discuss the second-hand trauma associated with being a lawyer and specific ways to overcome it.

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Props, Support, and Paradox

"Using props means I am not as good of a yogi, right?" "Only people who are not flexible need props." "I can touch the floor, so what good does a prop do me?" These common myths about props in yoga correlate fairly directly with our common myths about support in our lives generally.

We live in a world that is moving more and more toward the individual, away from support structures. We are told, whether consciously or unconsciously, that we need to be able to make it on our own. I am reminded of the scene in “American Beauty,” where the mother informs the daughter, “the only person you can trust in the world is yourself.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. The notion is out there – looking to others for support is, at best, a sign of weakness, and at worst, detrimental to our survival.

Yet, deep within ourselves, I would bet that most of us know this is simply not true. As has been mentioned before, the yoga paradox shows us that the more support we have, the deeper we can go, support also allows us to to further in our lives. In addition, humans are social creatures who not only crave societal interactions but rely upon them for survival. As hunter-gatherers, if we did not have each other, large felines probably would have destroyed us as a species. Creating societies of togetherness has its downfalls – we see those outside our set worlds as “others” – but it also ensures our survival, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

And yet so many of us are afraid to ask for help.

I was at a yoga class this weekend in which we spent most of the class using props, following an Iyengar approach. It was not, however, a restorative class, where I am used to doing that. During teacher training, we learned some techniques for using props in non-restorative (as well as restorative) postures, but I had never attended a class structured around the use of props. It was a small class, and it worked great! The support from the props did not necessarily make the asanas easier. In some ways, they were more difficult. But they were also more “correct.” And the props allowed me to go into postures in ways I never had before.

With the support of the props, the focus could be on ensuring the postures were opening and strengthening properly and safely, instead of struggling just to hold the pose incorrectly. With the use of props, we could fully open up instead of cutting off circulation by pushing ourselves into positions are bodies are not ready to accomplish. In turn, the body can eventually go deeper into the poses quicker and more safely than it ever could have done on its own. The support gets the mind out of the way and allows the body to open up to its fullest potential.

Once again, the body is a lesson for the rest of life. Asking other people for support does not mean we are weak. It does not mean we cannot do it on our own. It may not even make life easier overall. It will, however, help remove the internal struggle we have with ourselves, the struggle that tells us to go further than we are ready. That is how we injure ourselves. That is how we create harm. But with the appropriate support, we can hold ourselves up and move forward in ways that would otherwise take much longer or even cause us harm. With proper support, we can soar to new heights and new ideas without worry.

Props in yoga can be used for all sorts of reasons. They can protect our vulnerable knee joints from taking on too much strain. They can lift the floor to where we can reach, so we can create space in the body instead of constriction. They can be gentle reminders to bring attention to particular parts of ourselves that need attention in a particular pose. They can also be used to keep us from literally falling over in balance postures. When we know how to properly use props, our practice can soar to new heights.

Support off the mat is similar. By finding the proper support, we can protect our vulnerabilities, ensure that our goals are within reach, focus on areas we may have overlooked without the help of outside sources, and ensure we stay as balanced as possible along the way. But the first step is recognizing we need the support and that asking for it will take us further in all our endeavors.

Where do you find support most helpful? How has support changed your yoga practice? How has it changed your life?

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.

Being a Yoga Lawyer

"I am a lawyer." Those words used to be hard for me to say. They are especially hard around yogis and those who tend to shun mainstream definitions of success. For a long time, I would answer the question, "what do you do?" with "I work for a judge," but that is no longer true. I am now, officially, a lawyer.

The other day, in a yoga class, someone asked me that question, and I said it, "I am a lawyer." Her response was simple, "I don't like lawyers." She then went on to clarify that I am not THAT kind of lawyer, but I got her point. It has been made to me many times.

Lawyers are simply unloved to many people.

This is unfortunate on many levels. First, I do not believe that because I represent children I do good law and those who represent corporations do bad law. We all do law, and there is a place and need for all of it in the world. I worked at a commercial law firm one summer. I learned two very important lessons: the people working there were great people doing their best for their clients, and that was not my path in life. It just did not speak to me, but I enjoyed my summer there nonetheless. I enjoyed seeing how corporate law works, and it fundamentally changed my view on the world in which we live.

Second, it is difficult to be in a profession so despised by so many. There is a reason lawyers have the highest incidence of substance abuse of any profession. The work is stressful, but even more stressful is constantly defending what you do to other people. It gets tiring to keep repeating, “not all lawyers are like that,” or “I’m sorry you had a bad experience with a lawyer. That should never happen.” I find myself ignoring people who say that, or worse, becoming defensive. And that brings me to the third point.

Third, the assumption by so many people that all lawyers are awful actually undermines the profession’s ability to deal with those who truly are problematic. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is actually basic human nature. When we feel attacked, our first response is not to say, “you’re right, there is a problem.” Instead, we turn on all defenses. We enter into the emotional fight-or-flight response, which similar to the physiological fight-or-flight response, shuts down all “non-essential” processes in us, and in this case, that means rationally recognizing there are problematic people in the legal profession. Instead, we go into defense mode and just want to find a way to survive.

This is not to say that is the response of all lawyers. By contrast, most lawyers would probably tell you there are some people in the profession who do not play by the rules, or who manipulate the rules to always work in their favor. The truth is that most lawyers are good people and good lawyers, and they exist in all types of the law. But with each rational conversation about how there are honest and less-than-honest members of all professions, it becomes more difficult to have the long conversation knowing it is probably just going to end with the person saying, “yeah, but I still don’t like lawyers.” It just becomes easier to say nothing or get defensive about the work. And as the criticism comes from all sides, it becomes more difficult to filter the true criticism from the hyperbole.

This week, for the first time, I signed a document under my own bar number. I have done a lot of law before this week, but I have always been able to get around the phrase, “I’m a lawyer.” Not anymore. I want to be able to be proud of what I do. I want to be able to tell people I am a lawyer without the look in their eye, or the response, “it’s good to know there are a few lawyers doing good work.” And yes, I want the lawyers manipulating the system to stop. But those are actually separate things.

I started this blog because in the yoga world I was embarrassed to be a lawyer, and in the lawyer world, I was embarrassed to be a yogi. Two and a half years ago (has it really been that long?), I thought it would be easier to be a lawyer in the yoga world. Funnily enough, this blog and other connections, have introduced me to the vast, and I do mean vast, world of lawyers who not only have an asana practice but who practice yoga on many levels. The yogis, however, have been harder to convince. And it does not stop with the yogis. It has been the discussion with so many people.

But with all that having been said, I am glad I chose this work. If nothing else, I finally understand how our political structure became so polarized - on both sides. It is unfortunate because we all have a lot we can learn from one another.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, 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.