Playing by the Rules

Rules. Law. Some people might argue they are synonymous. Lawyers, therefore, are usually really good at playing by the rules. The more attention I pay, however, the more I realize how all of us follow the rules, often without even realizing it. This unconscious affinity for the rules that run our lives interferes with our ability to connect to our fellow human beings and causes us to go down the spirals that result from believing in “the otherness” of those outside our “in” crowd.

Recently, I went on a weekend vacation. The thesis writing was getting difficult, and I just needed to get away from my desk. So, I booked a bus ticket and headed an hour north to Oamaru. This post is not about the penguins who restored my sanity; it is about the rules I noticed and what they signify to our lives.

Before I get there, though, let us travel together – in an elevator. How many times have you been in an elevator alone with just one other person? How many times have you talked to that person? Chances are, at least from my experience, that instead of talking to that person, you stand together in that awkward silence, one of you pushing the “Door Close” button hoping to end the awkwardness that much faster. Rule for elevator: no talking to those you do not know.

So what does a weekend bus trip have to do with rules of small talk in an elevator? The bus driver. I booked with one of the smaller bus companies in New Zealand, and along with that came a really chatty and friendly bus driver. As we were driving along, I noticed that there were certain people he acknowledged, those to whom he waved. I also noticed the people he seemed to ignore. So, who was in the “in” crowd? Two main groups: other buses and truckers. Cars got ignored. Rules on the road: acknowledge those whose job it is to drive but not those who are just driving to get from point A to point B.

I have noticed this phenomenon before. My first experience living abroad was in Aix-en-Provence, France. A group of 10 Americans were placed on the other side of the world together. One day, while I (the band geek) and the “other” (a sorority sister) were chatting, we joked that we were like a bunch of kids thrown into a room together; we just got along because there was more that connected us in that foreign place than made us feel different. At home, we would have ignored each other, but on the other side of the world, when we were lonely Americans, we got along great.

While living in France, if I heard anyone speaking English, I would start a conversation. It seemed like a connection, so why not? We could create our own club in an environment where we felt “outside.” Here in New Zealand, almost everyone speaks English, yet I still find myself attracted to the North American accent, or even sometimes any non-Kiwi accent. Over the weekend, I stayed at a hostel, and there I interacted with all sorts of people, including some random French people. Everyone can talk together in a hostel; everyone is officially an outsider in the country. Rule in a foreign country: find other foreigners with whom you can connect, regardless of their home.

After the February earthquake in Christchurch, I was hugging people I had never met. With each aftershock, we held each other closer. Disaster was at hand, and we had little to make us feel steady. Just yesterday, Christchurch suffered another terrible jolt (another 6.3, the same magnitude as the one in February), which I felt over 200 miles away in Dunedin. I was in a room full of people. We all looked at each other, discovered there had been another terrible blow to Christchurch . . . and then went back to our desks, to our work. Rule for non-disaster situation: get back to business as usual.

So, what are the rules? Where can we engage people and where can we not? Where can we look to each other for stability, and where do we push people away? Where do you let yourself interact with strangers? Supermarket? On a plane? Walking down the street? In traffic? Have you ever hugged a stranger?

But, if all these “rules” tell us anything, it should be that the divisions we create are arbitrary. What if we chose to break them? What if we chose to make everyone an insider? What if we consciously chose to find our common similarities rather than awkwardly push the “Door Close” button on our interactions with others? What if we made these decisions before disaster strikes? After all, lawyers prepare for disaster.

Are you willing to break the rules? Are you willing to push “Door Open”? Are you willing to engage with "the other"?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

The Light Within

Namaste. It ends every post on Is Yoga Legal, and it often ends a yoga class. For some people, it is the only Sanskrit word they know . . . or at least can say. But what does Namaste mean? And why does it grace the end of these posts? The last two posts (here and here), focusing on turning inward, are perfect segues into a discussion about the word and meaning of Namaste.

At its most basic, Namaste means “Greetings,” and it is accompanied by anjali mudra, a hand position where the hands are at the heart in what many consider a hand position for prayer. More specifically, Namaste translates as “I bow to the spirit within you.” A modern, western yoga translation I often hear is, “from the light within me, I honor the light within you.”

Heading up the abstraction ladder, and the reason the word ends each post, Namaste is the recognition that we all have the same light within us. In the modern world, this is easy to forget. As lawyers it is even harder. The law places a small v between one side and “the other side.” A little letter, perhaps, but it has huge ramifications. It distances us from others, makes us believe that there is a wall between us and others, and allows us to dehumanize others, even just for the moment of the case.

But how does that affect our lives generally? How does it affect non-lawyers?

We all now communicate on email, and probably use some other form of social networking such as facebook or twitter. Even this blog puts a wall between you, the reader, and me, the writer. Our constant email communication is the best example of the reduction of our concentration on our internal light / spirit. Our email culture has gotten so fast and cut off from our connection that someone once actually thanked me for saying hello at the beginning of each email and signing each one with my name.

Moreover, our constant stress keeps us from even seeing our own inner light. In other words, we lose sight of ourselves, and we lose sight of the fact that we are more connected to others than we often think. We place these walls because they make life quicker. They do not, however, make it easier. They cut us off from our very essence, and as the last two posts have discussed, that internal presence is vital to our survival.

Namaste is different. It is a conscious greeting, a conscious decision to connect with another person, even just to say hello. But it requires recognizing that we have our own internal light. It is a greeting, but it is also a connection. It is a slight bow, a gesture along with a word (sometimes people actually leave out the word) that is a simple statement of, “I recognize that you are a fellow human being, and for that reason, I honor you.” It is a way to bring together rather than to push apart.

But this recognition requires going within. It requires taking some time to turn inward and getting to know your own inner light. And this is what yoga teaches us to do. It helps us bring humanity back into our lives. It reminds us that we are more than our blackberry emails that inform people there might be typos because we do not have the time to fix them, just like we do not have the time to say hello and goodbye. Instead, we learn to take the time – for ourselves and each other.

So, Namaste! From the light within me, I honor the light within you. I honor and appreciate the fact that you take the time to read these posts. But most importantly, I hope you are taking the time to honor yourself, that you are taking the time to turn inward and recognize your internal strength and light. Some days are more difficult than others, and on those days, the sharing of Namaste is all that much more important. Simple yes, but just as that little “v” between the sides of a case has huge ramifications, so too does the word/gesture Namaste.

How do you honor your internal light? How do you share that with others?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Being upside down

While this blog does not specifically focus on asana (yoga postures), I am trying to put more explanation of asana in as a way to ground the blog in some various ideas. Thus, I have talked about Vrksasana (tree pose) and Tadasana (mountain pose), and today I want to talk about inversions and being upside down.

Today is the Autumn Equinox in New Zealand, yet in the northern hemisphere, it is the Spring Equinox. This is the first change of seasons I have experienced on the underbelly of the Earth. What does this mean for yoga? For law? For life?  It means that once again my life feels turned upside down.

Being upside down forces us to see the world from a different point of view. It helps us understand that our way of seeing the world is not necessarily right, but sometimes we have to “look right” to realize that. The other night, I took a walk to see the glorious full moon, and as I looked up at the sky, it looked slightly different – I could see the Southern Cross constellation, which is only visible from the southern hemisphere. This is really the only visual reminder of being in the southern hemisphere, but it is stark, and that is why it graces the flags of both New Zealand and Australia.

In a typical yoga class (aka not too advanced), teachers will often teach two different inversions – salamba sarvangasana (shoulderstand) and sirshasana (headstand). Technically, though, an inversion is any pose where your head is below your heart, so even uttanasana (standing forward bend) is an inversion. Thus, inversion postures are not necessarily physically demanding, and their health benefits are almost too numerous to recite. By forcing blood to flow upstream, so to speak, we aid our immune systems, improve digestion, calm the nervous system, relieve back pain, improve circulation, and perhaps most important for lawyers and modern westerners – reduce dis-stress. To put it bluntly, inversions are good for the body.

Inversions are also good for the mind, and much more so than just relieving the chronic stress that runs so many of our lives. Inversions are one of the best paths to learning empathy, to learning to understand others and their points of view. As previously noted, empathy is “Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.” Contagious yawning occurs as a result of our ability to empathize, and a recent study found that children do not begin to yawn when others around them do until about age 4. Empathy, therefore, is something we learn, something that we can cultivate within us.

Inversions help us cultivate empathy by literally forcing us to see the world from a different perspective. We step out of our comfort zones and look at the world through a new set of eyes, often with blood rushing to our brains making us feel for a moment like we might lose our senses, but then realizing that we are safe, and we can just be there. When we breathe into inversions, they are calming, and we can learn that even when life seems like it is going to rush to our brains and kill our sense of understanding, we can be calm within it. We can breathe, and we can even find empathy.

Looking up at the night sky and seeing the Southern Cross is a great reminder that sometimes life throws you upside down without you expecting it, but cultivating the ability to hold that space, breathe, and then using the time to understand how others might react is a step toward increasing our mutual understanding and limiting the occurrences of the downward spiral of email.

What have inversions taught you? What is your favorite inversion?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Creating Stability

"Our American friends were absolutely petrified. We were all as one in a moment under the table." -- Auckland Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive talking about the Americans he was with at lunch on Tuesday in Christchurch as part of the NZ-US Partnership Forum

As I said in the last post, I was in Christchurch during the huge earthquake that hit. Here is a link to another, more personal, look at what we can take away from that experience, and what I took away. But here I want to focus on the world of professionals and modern life.

I love the quote above as much because of who said it as what he said. I think the first sentence is almost humorous, having been with several Americans who did not know what to do in an earthquake and all of us trying to get them under a table (I grew up in CA), though I was not with the man who said that at that moment. But the second sentence is what is really important.

It seems so long ago that I posted about "The Downward Spiral of Email," but it was less than two months ago. That post was about an article in the American Bar Association e-Journal about lawyers attacking one another by email to the point where one attacked the other’s child and his intelligence. 

Since that post, Gabrielle Giffords was shot, I moved across the Pacific, and a major earthquake led the Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive in the largest NZ city to say, “We were all as one in a moment under that table.” In the not-to-recent past, such a comment would have been only heard from a hippie and ridiculed by the business/legal community. But then stability was lost and a new paradigm opened.

Lawyers and other professionals have a tendency to work very, very hard, at the expense of their health, their families, and their happiness.  The stress and need to win, especially for lawyers, leads to the ability to see the “other” side as somehow lesser, as someone to whom you can send nasty emails. The stress also leads to disease. Sometimes people get very, very sick.

How many times have you heard about someone who worked 60-80 hours per week, got a deadly disease and realized that life was not about the work? How many times have you heard about people being in a natural disaster and realizing that life is worth more than all their possessions? How many times have you heard about tragedy and disaster and sickness bringing people and communities together?

Disease, disaster, and tragedy are wake-up calls. They force us to see life in a new way, and we realize, perhaps without acknowledging it, that the definition of yoga, “to yoke/unite” is really what matters. We must all come together as one. We must live our lives to help each other. The US-NZ Partnership Forum was, in many ways, a trade conference. The main delegation consisted of business and political leaders from both countries discussing how to increase cooperation between the two countries.

It took an earthquake, however, for one of those leaders to stop and say, “we were all one.” But he went on to say, “for a moment.” Why? Do we only wake up to our oneness in disaster? Do we only learn to care for ourselves and others when disease and tragedy strike?

No.

We have an opportunity, with all that is happening in the world, from Gabby Giffords to Christchurch, from Queensland to Libya, from Egypt to Wisconsin, to carry our unity and oneness forward. In fact, we have an obligation. We can choose to go down the spiral of nasty emails, or we can choose to recognize that our health and our lives and our togetherness are far more important than anything that can happen in the courtroom or the boardroom. It might be petrifying for a moment, but once we are all under the table together, we are one, and we can hold each other in that space and grow together, in business and in life.

After all, it is always about community. What can you do to increase your community today?

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Through the Eyes of a Child

Fulbright orientation has begun, and we have had a wonderful introduction to Maori culture. Part of that orientation included a story about a Maori child learning to read English. The child’s first language was Maori, but when she was about 5, she attempted to learn to read in English. There is an electronics store here called Dick Smith, and the logo has a picture of Dick Smith’s head in between the words of his name. The young, Maori girl stared at the sign and then grinned largely, stating, “I get it – Dickhead Smith!” Her parents laughed out loud, and her response was, “that’s what I saw.”

As adults, and especially lawyers, we are good at tuning out the entire story, and seeing only our own story, our patterns. Instead, we read only what we want to see. In this case, we ignore the picture of the head between the words and just read it as Dick Smith’s electronics. A child, by contrast, sees the entire picture, and here the child read the entire picture as dickhead smith. What a great reminder that changing our patterns makes all the difference!

When we get too caught up in our own filter, we run the risk of not understanding the world in which others live. We run the risk of not being able to see the world from their point of view. But if we are able to train ourselves to see the entire picture, we not only become more empathic human beings, we become better lawyers. But how do we do this?

Yoga teaches us to be aware. From the smallest movements in our bodies to the thoughts that constantly flood our minds, yoga is about awareness of all that is happening. This awareness does more than just allow us to see the world from different perspectives, it actually increases our brain functioning power. There have been many, many neuroscience studies on monks who meditate several hours per day, as well as studies asking people to start meditating a certain amount of time per day. These studies show, over and over again, that those who meditate have longer attention spans, are able to concentrate better, remember more, and switch between tasks faster and better.

Thus, there are “palpable” benefits to learning to be aware, but the story of the Maori child is a great reminder of the less well-studied benefit, but perhaps the one that is more important. This is the reminder that we all see the world through our own eyes, our own biases, our own agendas, and learning to recognize that everyone does this is the first step to understanding ourselves and each other.

There is nothing inherently good or bad with how any one person sees the world, but when we think that our way is the only right way, we stop being able to interact as well with others, or "the other," as lawyers tend to see the opposing party. When we recognize that our views are only our views, and not right or wrong, we begin to be able to hold the perspectives of others. Increasing our ability to be aware of all our surroundings, seeing the entire picture, even if it results in seeing Dickhead Smith, helps us understand the ways others function in the world as well.

This notion of awareness and personal thinking is a constant theme on this blog, especially since my time has begun here in New Zealand. The reason, though, is because I think it is vital to our lives as lawyers, but also to our lives as human beings, especially in a world in which we interact so constantly with people who have beliefs that differ from our own.

What instances have reminded you that you have gotten stuck in your way of thinking?

Namaste and Blessings!


© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

The downward spiral of email - Part 1

Today, the American Bar Association’s email had a link to an article entitled, “Lawyers Sanctioned for E-Mail Insults, Including ‘Scum Sucking Loser’ Comment.” There is a lot about being a lawyer that I like. This is not on that list. Interestingly, it is this very situation that yoga can help.

How do we get to “Scum Sucking Loser” and “Retard” (in the article)? There are two common culprits - lack of attention and misinterpretation. Of course, they are two sides of the same coin.

People today are busy. Somehow, we live in an age where work can get done faster and more efficiently, and yet, we are busier than ever. There are a lot of reasons for this, but that is not the point of today’s post. When we are this busy, many of us do not take the time to respond; we merely react, and we react based upon our immediate interpretation of an event. In this case, the event is an email. On top of a lack of time, it is all too easy to misinterpret what people say when all we have is a “cold record,” or typed words.

Over the past year, as I have spent more and more time having “conversations” by email and facebook, and other forms of written communication, this issue has arisen for me. It is also something I noticed a lot at the court of appeals. I have heard that as much as 90% of communication is non-verbal. Thus, when we read an email, we put in our own emphasis, our own tone, our own interpretation. This happens even more when we are too busy to consider the other person’s point of view and what they could have meant to say.

Not too long ago, I was emailing with someone I know well, a family member, and we communicate by email, phone, and in person when we are in the same state. In other words, I know her communication style. She wrote something that I interpreted as a jab, but really, it was her own excitement about something. Luckily, I asked. If I had not, I would probably still be upset about the email. And just a few weeks ago, another family member misinterpreted a joke I had posted on facebook, and she responded to it very upset. Luckily, I was able to explain myself, and we worked it out. But these are family members; these are people with whom I choose to work out these misinterpretations.

What about the “opposing” attorney? Do we take the time to reflect then? Or do we just allow the email chain to spiral out of control assuming we can ask for sanctions later? This is where the bigger culprit than time and misinterpretation comes in - anonymity. No matter how well you know the person on the receiving end of the email, you are “anonymous” behind the screen. You can be sure that you are “right,” and the other person is “wrong” because there is no actual interaction.

Yoga gives us the tools to step out of this cycle, not only with tools to help us stop and reflect, but also to stop getting stuck seeing people as “the other” instead of another human being. We can ask, “hey, what did you mean?” If the other person really was trying to be rude and obnoxious, we can stop the chain, respond by ignoring the jab and just replying to the actual issues at stake, and allow the spiral to start going back up.

In the next post, we will look at some different approaches yoga provides to allow us to step away from the downward spiral. In what ways have you found yourself in the email spiral? What tools do you use to stop it? Has it ever ended up before a judge?

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved