A friend of mine posted a great article on Facebook called,
“The
Downside to Down Dog” asking the question, “what is Yoga?” Her answer is
that it is the path of the heart. Then I was reading a blog post by Lissa
Rankin entitled, “Can You Hear
the Voice of Your Soul?” And next weekend, I am going to see a teacher who
starts his teachings by bringing people into their heart.
I think the universe is trying to tell me something.
The very first “alternative” medicine person I saw
(actually, he was not the first, but the first who made any sort of impression
and really started me on whatever path I am currently on) told me I am 97% in
my head and 3% in my body, and that it should be the opposite. Yoga has helped
draw me down from my head, but at the end of the day, I spend a lot more time
being a lawyer than I do practicing yoga. Thus, I spend a lot more time in my
head than my heart.
But what would the legal profession look like if more
lawyers lived from their hearts? I am not even talking about doing more
heart-centered work. I mean connecting to the heart in any capacity. Lissa
Rankin, the blogger above, is a doctor. I mentioned her book, Mind Over Medicine, in the post, The Power
to Heal (I find it hard to believe that post was from July).
In law school, lawyers are taught to “think like a lawyer.”
I am sure this means something different for everyone, but the Dean of my law
school at that time said it meant to her that we should be the last people in a
room to make up our mind about something. But she did not tell us whether that
should come from the head or the heart. Law school, for me, was amazing. I
loved it. But one piece of it always bothered me. We read cases in a textbook,
and we discussed the legal issues involved. That was great. But there was
always something missing, and I noticed it most often in my Torts class.
These were real people. These were real cases. Whether they
happened in 2003 or 1893, these people were harmed. We once read a case about a
man who was turned into, “a human cannonball” because of an explosion at a
construction site. But we discussed the negligence, not the person what was
seriously injured as a result. I know doctors have to go through similar
training. Instead of discussing the person, they discuss the symptoms. A person
becomes a diagnosis. In the psychological realm, people talk about someone
being depressed, not having depression, but otherwise someone has a mental
illness, such as schizophrenia.
I do not want this to sound like I prefer people to BE their
diagnoses. I am just pointing out how we talk about issues and people in
professions. So, in physical medicine, psychological medicine, and the legal
profession, we talk about criteria and elements. There are elements to a crime
just like there are criteria for diagnosis. But we never look past those
definitions to the person. We live in our heads and ask whether someone meets
that definition for, and then we act accordingly.
There is a pull between the legal world and the yoga world I
have never discussed. In some ways, it is the most difficult one to address. On
one hand, I live in the world of lawyers where everything needs to be relevant,
and nothing is true unless you can prove it. On the other hand, I live in the
world of yogis, in the heart, where we know something is true because we feel
it. At some level, this represents the ongoing battles between political and
religious foes.
But when I say “feel it,” I mean the deepest sense of
knowing. I cannot think of anyone I have met who would deny that intuition
exists. We all get “ick” feelings from certain people and situations. It is
those ick factors that sometimes save our lives. We sidestep situations that
just feel wrong. Although the 1990s were called “the decade of the brain,” we
still know next to nothing about how it works. Science has not yet helped us
understand this head we live in and the intuition that we cannot deny.
And I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. What I
do know is that this push and pull between head and heart is really a
non-dichotomy. They are really one and the same. The separation we pretend
exists simply does not. Reading those cases in law school, although we never
discussed the fact that people were hurt and maimed and harmed, our hearts saw
it and knew it, and it affected all of us. There is no way to separate. We can
listen more strongly to one or the other, but at the end of the day, they are
the same Being.
And so, I continue to wonder – how can we be more explicit
about the heart in more professional settings? There are so many ways, but I
have heard before that the first step is admitting there is a problem. If we
could recognize there is a lack of heart speak and understanding, perhaps we
could begin to see a way to acknowledge what is already there.
What about you? Do you listen more to your head or your
heart? Do you believe there is a difference?
Namaste!
©
Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.
The
post, The Heart and the Head, first
appeared on Is Yoga Legal.
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