Health / Wellness

How Yoga Practice Helps You Keep Calm In Stressful Situations

Lawyers are starting to acknowledge the importance of maintaining our physical as well as our mental well-being.

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Ed. note: This post is by Jeena Cho, a Legal Mindfulness Strategist. She is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a book written by lawyers for lawyers that makes mindfulness and meditation accessible and approachable. She is the creator of Mindful Pause, a self-paced online program for creating a more sustainable, peaceful, and productive law practice in just 6-minutes a day. Jeena offers actionable change strategies for reducing stress and anxiety while increasing productivity, joy, and satisfaction through mindfulness.

When I teach mindfulness and meditation to lawyers, I often stress the importance of the body. Sometimes, lawyers will argue that the body has nothing to do with lawyering — that lawyering is something that’s solely in the domain of the mind.

I find this argument to be puzzling. Ever try to take a deposition when you have the flu? The mind and body are inextricably connected. Lawyers and even judges are starting to acknowledge the importance of maintaining our physical as well as our mental well-being.

I interviewed Jack Pringle on The Resilient Lawyer podcast. He is a partner with Adams and Reese in Columbia, SC. Jack talks about his yoga and meditation practice.

Jeena: How does yoga help you to be a better lawyer?

The ability to see, or to get a sense when you’re being set off, or when you’re becoming distressed, or when things aren’t going well and to use the breath as an anchor. Something you can just come back to notice that you’re getting a little bit upset or you’re getting distracted. Or someone or something is throwing you off your game is extraordinarily important and extraordinarily useful in terms of, “Well, what am I doing?” Come back to what’s important here. “What are my themes? What’s going on with me and how can I come back to the focus on where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

That sense of whether you call it insight, or perspective, or context and seeing the way your own brain and mind work, I think is invaluable when you’re dealing with other people, dealing with decision-makers, dealing with the myriad tasks and challenges that you have in a given day. It’s hard to measure it but I would say that just that ability to be somewhat flexible and the way you think and the way you respond is very important in this business.

Jeena: Do you think there’s a correlation between having the body be more flexible and the mind becoming more nimble?

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Without question. Yoga is such a good metaphor. In order to be effective — it can’t be accomplished by having every muscle and your body being tensed. You’ve got to figure out how to relax in order to really focus.

I can’t remember if it was David Allan who said that if you want to be effective, truly effective, you have to relax and figuring out how to have a relaxed mind that is receptive and nimble.

Kevin Kelly’s book ‘The Inevitable’ — it’s about the technologies that are going to change our world. He said that because of the pace of change that we’ll have to be perpetual newbies… meaning always learning things for the first time. The idea of beginner’s mind. Being able to see things without undue bias, prejudice, or routine and to see things with a fresh outlook that you’ll need to solve problems when you’re seeing new things for which you don’t necessarily have a framework to evaluate them anyway.

So, I think, it really does help with that idea of a nimble mind that can be, certainly, somewhat fresh, somewhat rested, and somewhat capable of seeing things for the first time or in a way that’s not blundered or too encumbered by other things.

Listen to the entire interview over at Jeena’s website…

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