Author Archives: Claire E. Parsons

Claire E. Parsons is a Member at Wood + Lamping LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has practiced for the last twelve years in the areas of litigation, employment, school law, special education, and municipal law. Claire lives in Union, Kentucky with her husband, Brian, their two daughters, and two dogs. Claire is an active leader in her community and in the legal profession. She has led innovative charitable programs in her community, statewide legal organizations, committees relating to the promotion of women professionals. Claire is also a frequent writer and speaker for these and other organizations. She has published and spoken about numerous topics, ranging from complex legal issues, to law practice, networking and marketing, as well as mindfulness and wellness for lawyers and other professionals. She writes regularly on LinkedIn and even co-authored a book this year with 19 other women lawyers about how they used the platform to network and pursue career goals during the pandemic. In 2013, Claire began a mindfulness practice early in her law career and as she was learning to be a new mom to her eldest daughter, Sophie. When Claire began the practice, she saw it gradually transform her life for the better by helping her to reduce overthinking, manage stress, and infuse compassion practices into her daily life. Over the next few years, she continued to study mindfulness practices and attend retreats. In 2018, Claire began speaking and writing on these topics and she quickly became regarded as a resource for professionals as someone who can explain meditation practices in an approachable and practical way. In 2020, she completed the online meditation teacher certification program with The Mindfulness Center founded by Deborah Norris, Ph.D., to refine her understanding of the science of mindfulness and its practical applications. In 2021, Claire also completed the 500-hour yoga teacher training from My Vinyasa Practice as well as numerous courses relating to compassion practices, including Mindful Self-Compassion and Compassion Cultivation Training. Claire enjoys sharing her experience with mindfulness in her practical, and often humorous voice, to help humanize the legal profession and to make life a little easier for her community.

When It Comes to Mindfulness for Lawyers, Self-Discipline Is Overrated

As you might imagine, I am a disciplined person. I’m a lawyer. I meditate regularly. I work out every day. And I have managed to keep this blog going for nearly three years. Strangely, though, I have not written a single post extolling the virtues of discipline when it comes to meditation.

I have written about the value of habits and made it clear that consistency in mindfulness practice is important to obtain benefits. I have talked about the fact that we can’t expect to build skills without learning to handle some discomfort. And I have agreed that we can’t expect to find time – but have to make time – for the things we love.

Even so, I have not outright talked about discipline itself. Why? It’s not that I don’t think discipline has a place in mindfulness practice or in life. Far from it. In fact, I love the thrill of building things over time through daily work and commitment. It’s the way I have built my law practice, mindfulness practice, this blog, and wrote my book.

To be sure, discipline is important. I don’t talk about it on this blog much, however, because this blog is directed at lawyers and professionals. Most lawyers and professionals have plenty of self-discipline. In general, my readers are motivated, self-directed, and hard-working. Therefore, if I wrote frequently about self-discipline, I would be preaching to the choir.

In doing so, I would not be offering what I think my audience really needs. Many of us who start exploring mindfulness do so because we want change or maybe balance. Quite often, when we start to seek like this, we have no clue what we really need. We start looking and we hope a new practice might expand our horizons.

You know what’s easy to do when you start a new practice? You bring your old mindset and mental habits along. So it goes with lawyers who start exploring mindfulness by first relying on their self-discipline. Over the years, most of us have fine-tuned our self-discipline muscles so well that we rely on willpower and muscling through in almost every pastime we take up. If we are honest with ourselves, we may even notice it showing up in our personal lives with the people we hold most dear.

If change is our goal, this doesn’t really make sense. And, if balance is the object, why would we keep leaning so heavily on a skillset that is already so robust? Now you may be seeing my point. This is why I don’t talk a lot about self-discipline. You have self-discipline. You have tons of it. Trust me.

Don’t try to tell me you don’t just because you haven’t been able to make meditation a habit yet. Based on my experience meditating for a decade and teaching mindfulness for five years, too much self-discipline is the impediment—and not the key—to a long-term meditation practice for many lawyers.

You read that right the first time but go back and read the preceding line again if you don’t believe me. Lawyers and professionals have loads of self-discipline. They explore mindfulness and meditation because they are looking for something else. They are looking for a new way of living life and practicing law.

This way of life doesn’t throw self-discipline out the window. Instead, what mindfulness can do for lawyers is counterbalance their self-discipline with wisdom, self-compassion, real honest to goodness rest, and a newfound connection to their bodies and emotions. Sure, to find these things, some level of self-discipline is needed but most lawyers and professionals have more than they need to get started with and maintain a mindfulness practice.

By now, though, your lawyer brain may be kicking in and you may be thinking that I’m full of it because isn’t deciding to learn a new skill and committing to it long enough to really try it out discipline? Sure, some of it is discipline. As I said, discipline is involved. But it’s not the most important thing you need to maintain practice.

Do you know why? One reason is that self-discipline (willpower) gets tired. It is easily worn out. That’s why people often struggle to get motivated to meditate. Because sticking to a plan takes energy and energy quickly wears out. This is why other human traits are more important for a solid meditation practice. These include an open mind, courage to face pieces of yourself you have long overlooked, and self-compassion.

Next you may be wondering why I bring this up at all? Why would I devote a blog post to tell you what you don’t need to start or keep meditating? I wrote this post because discipline or the alleged lack thereof is what many lawyers complain about when they tell me that they struggle to meditate. In reality, I don’t believe a lack of discipline is really the issue.

Instead, self-judgment and unrealistic expectations about a how a practice is “supposed” to be are more often the real culprit. Since discipline alone can’t be relied on to get you to the cushion or yoga mat, why not try something else instead? How about curiosity? Or kindness? What about hope for a better life or deeper connections with yourself and others? These are the real reasons many lawyers start meditating in the first place even if they don’t know it when they start.

Lawyers don’t start meditating to cultivate more discipline because they don’t need more discipline. They explore mindfulness in pursuit of a happier life with more freedom, deeper connections, and less stress. If this is your aim with meditation, then consider it as an opportunity to practice new skills and cultivate new habits. You get plenty of practice with self-discipline in your daily life. For greater peace, balance, and ease, let go of your grip on self-discipline a little bit and consider practicing skills like patience, self-kindness, the capacity to rest, and joy in your meditation practice instead.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Kesha Became Nobody on Gag Order but Found Her Voice

A few weeks ago, I saw that Kesha had a new album out, so I listened immediately. What I heard didn’t sound anything like the Kesha I knew, even though I hadn’t become a fan until her most recent albums. I was certainly familiar with her party girl anthems from a decade ago; honestly, how could you miss them? But it was the songs written after Kesha went public with her allegations against Dr. Luke that got my attention. Sure, they were fun and brash, but there was also hard-earned wisdom too and a stubborn refusal to look on the bright side even amidst so many shadows.

Perhaps I implicitly expected Kesha’s next album following Rainbow and High Road to get closer to her music from the past. I thought she’d follow the trend of so many other pop artists post-pandemic to offer something that sounded celebratory. The album title – Gag Order – and cover, which appeared to show Kesha’s face stuffed into a plastic bag, disabused me of that notion right away.

Even so, I still expected to at least hear Kesha singing in the opening lines. I didn’t. Instead, the first track “Something to Believe In” had the ironic mantra-like quality of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” from their genre-busting album Kid A.

Intrigued, listened on still expecting the Kesha I knew to reveal herself. I soon realized that she was revealing herself but in an entirely new way. The tracks never veered into her old party mode and they seemed directed away from typical pop beats featured prominently in her prior albums. Instead, on Gag Order, Kesha danced through genres, mixing and matching electronica, pop, country, and even hip hop as she pleased. Though the musical combinations may have seemed playful, the lyrics were dead serious.

The second track aptly likened her experience with Dr. Luke to a bad acid trip, another perfectly conveyed the sound of rumination and depression, and the tracks that followed expressed the difficulties of living in the public eye. The most upbeat songs on the album are “Only Love Can Save Us Now”, which sounds like a dire version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Peace and Quiet”, that sounds airy and fun until the lyrics hit you with the truth that love can be damn hard for women with histories.

Here’s the kicker: buried in the last half of the album is a clip from Ram Dass’s Becoming Nobody. As I wrote last year, Kesha isn’t the first popular musician as of late to sample a famous spiritual teacher. Kendrick Lamar extensively sampled Eckhart Tolle on last year’s release, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. Unlike Lamar, though, Kesha used only one clip from Ram Dass and slowed and distorted it to emphasize a single idea that is at the very essence of human life: that love and pain are intertwined so living a full life calls us to open to both.

This clip perfectly prepares the listener’s attention for my favorite track on the album, “Too Far Gone”. A simple reading would call it a song about lost love, but I call it the sound of the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth (humans suffer because of constant craving that arises from constant change). It’s a song about searching for safety and stability in life but not finding it because the nature of life is to be unstable.

Some may think this sounds depressing. Some critics have simply called it “angry.” I think both of those views miss a whole lot because I found it inspiring and uplifting. Sure, there are angry lyrics, there is a ton of sadness, and there are direct references to mental health struggles, the fact that the world is so messed up, and ended relationships. But sadness, anger, and pain aren’t the only themes running through Gag Order. The other themes are not giving up on life, the relentless search for peace, and the lesson that loving yourself is essential precisely because you can’t count on much in life lasting.

I also loved the album because it showed Kesha’s willingness to go beyond merely taking control of the narrative with her history with Dr. Luke. The variety of genres on Gag Order suggest that she’s willing to explore the limits of identity and isn’t beholden to anyone’s idea of who she should be or how her music should sound. In this respect, Ram Dass may have been selected to make this point. His sampled clip was taken from a lecture series where he specifically and (hilariously) lambasts how we humans cling to our identities.

Ram Dass’s history gave him the street cred to do this so well, since like Kesha, life pushed him to radically shift his identity. What better teacher could help Kesha cope with the unfairness and unexpected twists and turns of life than a man who went from Harvard researcher (named Richard Alpert) to counterculture leader (with Timothy Leary) to spiritual guru in less than a decade?

If Ram Dass can make the lemons of life into this unbelievable lemonade, why can’t Kesha too? And, hell, why can’t the rest of us? I listened to Kesha’s new album hoping to find more of what I liked about her other works, and I am thrilled to say I didn’t. While I’d love it for her if she at some point can write music again that is just fun and celebration, we also need music to help us get through life after the party ends. Kesha’s latest album doesn’t sound like the old Kesha at all, but it made me a huge fan of the new one.

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What Does It Mean to “Check in With Yourself”?

If you do guided meditations or yoga, you are bound to be instructed to “check in with yourself” at some point. Most commonly, teachers use this as a starting point for a mind-body practice because it makes sense to start the practice where you are. The only problem is, of course, that not all teachers offer additional guidance to tell us how to check in with ourselves. This post is offered to clear up that mystery.

For those who know about interoceptive awareness, checking in with yourself may be the norm. But if you have never heard the word “interoceptive” before, then some additional explanation may be needed. The term interoceptive means awareness of your inner experience. While this might be second nature to many of us, it may feel weird and new to those of us accustomed to living busy and worldly lives. When someone instructs you to “check in with yourself”, they are telling you to activate and note your interoceptive awareness.

This gives you a general idea about how to begin checking in with yourself, but you may still need to know specifically where to focus. Ideally, when you check in with yourself, you can scan your mental, emotional, and physical states. First, this would require a pause and then a simple acknowledgement of the physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts that may arise for you.

Now, if you are new to this process, it may be challenging at first to interpret what you note in your interoceptive awareness. You may not immediately be able to put words to sensations or clearly identify all emotions. That’s okay. The point isn’t to self-diagnose on a deep level, but instead just to touch in with your inner experience and see what’s there. If you stay open-minded and make the practice of checking in a habit, you’ll soon notice patterns that will help you understand more about what your mind, body, and emotions are telling you.

Why is checking in important? If you are using it at the start of your meditation or yoga practice, it may help you understand what kind of practice you need. Do you need a rigorous practice or a gentle one? Do you need to stretch yourself or give yourself a break? Do you need a specific focal point or can you just rest in open experience? When you can more regularly note where you are, you are more likely to give yourself what you need and have a better experience with practice.

In much the same way, making a habit of checking in with yourself throughout your day is a great way to manage your energy levels and needs so you can be proactive about self-care. This may help you head off emotional reactivity caused by fatigue or hunger or notice the signs of loneliness, anxiety or growing anger. You can do this by briefly pausing for a few breaths, scanning through your body, asking yourself “how do I feel,” and listening to what arises.

My favorite way to check in with myself is first to look for rushing or pushing forward. If I notice it, I try to pause or intentionally slow down. Then I do a quick body sweep by scanning for sensations in the most emotionally reactive parts of my body: eyes, brow, jaw, neck, shoulders, hips, and hands. If there’s tension, I scan my mind and emotions for clues about what’s going on with me. This usually takes about twenty to thirty seconds at most but it’s enough time to change the way I’m relating to my day and myself.

The important thing about checking in with yourself, however, is not the procedure you follow but the habit of checking in regularly. One of the reasons that mindfulness practices can be so transformational is that they create mental space to check in with your inner experience regularly. Now you know what the teachers mean when they tell you to “check in with yourself” at the beginning of your guided meditation or yoga practice. You can now use these steps to check in with yourself to improve your meditation experience and bring more awareness to your life.

If you want to learn more about the body sweep technique mentioned in this post, check out this two-minute video from our YouTube channel:

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Four Situations in Which Meditation May Not Be the Answer

On a blog about mindfulness, the title for this post may be surprising. I have touted the benefits of meditation for more than two years now and explained myriad meditation practices. Nevertheless, I seem to be admitting here that meditation is not a solution for all problems.

To be perfectly clear, I am not merely seeming to make this admission; I am freely and fully admitting it. Meditation is not always the answer. Over the last ten years, meditation has served so many purposes in my life that I probably couldn’t account for them all if I tried to compile a list. It was foundational to personal growth and healing and it has served as the hub for developing other useful habits, like exercise.

Even so, one of biggest power moves I made in my meditation practice was learning when meditation wasn’t the answer. Ironically, this happened because cultivating mindfulness helped me pay more attention to what I needed and what practices supported me best in different situations.

To help support your own discernment in this manner, here is the list of situations in which meditation is not my first go-to practice.

1. Too Much Energy.

If I am feeling physically energetic, the last thing I want to do is sit for an extended period of time. This could be because I am experiencing stress or anger or even excitement. When you pay attention, you may notice that all of these states create physical energy in the body. My experience has taught me that it works better to go with the energy rather than fight against it. For me, this usually means I need some form of movement.

So, when I feel too jittery, I don’t push meditation. Instead, I take it as an opportunity to get my workout done for the day. If I am strapped for time, I may take a brief walk or do a quick stretch. This is not a hard and fast rule, but using up energy when I feel amped up is using mindfulness as self-care even if I choose not to meditate in that moment.

2. Intense Spiraling Thoughts.

Movement may help when the body has too much energy, so it may stand to reason that meditation may be perfect when the mind is overactive. This can be true. I intentionally choose to meditate often when my mind has thoughts rattling around in it. When the energy level on this is noticeable but moderate, meditation is ideal because it allows the mind to calm down and sort itself out.

But when the energy is high–signified by the volume, amount, or quality of the thoughts–I don’t meditate first. Instead, I have experienced greater relief and clarity from letting the thoughts go in other ways. The option that is most convenient and fully within my control is writing. I will write or type out any thoughts that come to mind for a few minutes just to get them out. If you aren’t a writer, you can also just say the thoughts out loud or do a voice memo if you don’t like talking to yourself.

If you’re lucky, you may end up writing something pretty darn good. Regardless, there’s no need for you to show what you write to anyone or even look at it again yourself. The point here isn’t to create a perfect monologue but just to get some distance from the thoughts. When the thoughts are spiraling hard, I use this strategy first before I meditate.

3. Overwhelming Emotions.

Emotions will come up in meditation so I am not telling you not to meditate if you have emotional responses or to stop practicing if they arise. With that said, when your emotions are very high, you may be best served by not trying to deal with them all by yourself. In the case of strong emotions, especially ones that seem overwhelming, it may work better to seek social support.

I have struggled with this in the past because I had the seemingly logical but misleading idea that talking about a situation wouldn’t help. While sadly true in many cases, this thought is misleading. There is more than one way to address a problem. You can address the root cause or the symptoms. Even if talking with a confidant won’t solve the problem, it may help you handle the symptoms.

Meditators may also have the idea that they need to learn to handle their emotions by themselves. This too is misleading. While it’s empowering and commendable to develop skills for emotional self-care, knowing when to seek support from others is part of that skill set. Sitting in meditation is one great part of your toolkit, but when emotions approach overwhelm seeking social support may serve you better.

4. It’s Time for Action.

Meditation helps you get clarity about a lot of things, but the practice in itself won’t create any change unless conduct follows. Sometimes in mediation practice, you may experience difficulty because you recognize things that need to change. Perhaps you feel regret or guilt because of something you did. Or perhaps you notice real hurt or difficulty in your life that being busy in life had allowed you to overlook.

Meditation practice is intended to cultivate present moment awareness, but if we let it, it can also cultivate wisdom too. Sometimes that wisdom is trying to tell us we need to take action out in the world. If I recall a recent situation and feel strong feelings of guilt, self-compassion may help me in my meditation practice. But in my life, a conversation with the affected person and an apology will serve me better.

If you are reeling from a personal loss, mental health challenge, or major life decision, meditation may also not be ideal (at least on its own). For those new to the practice, trying meditation in such circumstances may just add stress to life. Even very experienced meditators may struggle with the practice in challenging life circumstances. In short, sometimes it makes more sense to focus on cultivating stability in our lives before or instead of cultivating mindfulness in meditation practice.

In short, though I stand by my years of proclaiming the benefits of meditation, I admit that the practice is no panacea. If you practice meditation long enough, you are bound to see that other supports may be more helpful to you in certain situations. Thus, as you work to cultivate mindfulness in your life, never forget to develop self-compassion and wisdom too. Meditation is there as a practice to support a good life and it’s a good thing that it’s not the only one.

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Five Things to Know about Meditation with Trauma

Though I am trained to teach mindfulness, yoga, and compassion and have undergone trauma-informed training, I am not a trauma healer. As a meditation teacher, however, I have had questions arise about whether meditation is right for a person who has been diagnosed with trauma or had a traumatic experience. To be sure, meditation is something that can help people who have experienced trauma because it can increase mental focus, body awareness, and self-compassion.

Even so, meditation could include some risks for those who have experienced trauma. The experience of meditation can allow traumatic experiences to resurface, whether in the body or mind, and this can result in adverse symptoms. Moreover, trauma is exceedingly common and researchers now understand that it can be caused by a broad range of experiences. Thus, the reality is that past trauma may be a concern for a large portion of people who explore meditation.

With this background in mind, my perspective as a mindfulness teacher and someone is that meditation practice can be beneficial for those who have experienced trauma. With that said, individuals who are experiencing symptoms associated with trauma may need additional supports to ensure that their practices help them heal. Here are my recommendations for those supports.

1. Take Your Time.

I recommend a gradual approach to building a meditation practice for all people. It makes sense to give yourself time to acclimate to the experience of mindfulness and it is much easier to find a few minutes of free time in your schedule. When it comes to trauma, though, this is even more essential. Trauma is more common than you’d think. Though less than 10% of people are diagnosed with PTSD, it is estimated that as many as 70% of people worldwide have experienced a traumatic event.

Traumatic experiences can occur for incidents that may fall outside of the incidents that give rise to a PTSD diagnosis, including medical procedures, auto collisions, work-related incidents, or interpersonal experiences especially when they intersect with issues of race, class, religion, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. This can even be true if we don’t have a clear memory of the traumatic event. Thus, the reality is that many of us may not know how a practice will affect us or what might surface in practice. Taking a gradual approach can allow you to monitor this more carefully and adjust or seek support if you need it.

2. Get Support.

Technology has enabled us to learn meditation on our own but this doesn’t mean it is necessarily ideal. Social support is helpful when it comes to meditation and can be essential for dealing with trauma. If you are working with a care provider to treat symptoms associated with trauma, consult them first and keep them updated about your progress. Likewise, skilled meditation teachers or meditation groups may offer social or technical support for your practice. Trusted relatives and friends may also be able to help you process your experience if you feel comfortable sharing your experience.

Even if you meditate on your own, you do not have to face whatever arises during meditation alone. Moreover, there is no reason for you to strive to use meditation alone to support your healing. Meditation is a powerful tool but it is most effective as part of an overall self-care regimen that may include therapy, medication, coaching, exercise, and robust social support. Getting support with your practice may help you find or learn the strategies that will work best for you and accelerate the healing process.

3. Protect and Use Your Own Agency.

Many people start meditation thinking that they must do exactly as they are told. This isn’t necessarily true and when it comes to trauma it is certainly not true. Trauma can create a variety of different symptoms for different people. Some have difficulty with mental images or scenes. Some struggle with intense physical sensations or sensory experiences. Some may not be able to relax because they don’t feel safe. And some people may not be immediately aware how an experience has affected them due to unclear or missing memories.

The good news is that you can modify most meditation practices just like you could any physical exercise. You can open your eyes or change the length of your sessions. You can incorporate movement into your practice, with light yoga, walking meditation, or practices like tai chi or qigong. You could even do interval training for your mind by, for example, meditating for intervals with periods of rest. You can use touch or smell or sound to offer support to your practice as long as you avoid the sensory items that may be triggering or problematic for you.

Since trauma is something that can affect the agency of the people involved, modifying your meditation practice to suit your needs is a way to build skills and personal efficacy. For more ways to modify and support a mindfulness practice in a trauma-sensitive way, I highly recommend the book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness by David A. Treleaven.

4. Find Your Window – Not Your Edge.

Some yoga teachers and internet gurus encourage people to find there “edge.” The use of this term has rarely been defined but I generally understand it to mean that one should toe the line of their personal limits. This may sound cool and there may be times when it is empowering to see what you can do. But when it comes to meditation, I strongly prefer windows to edges.

By this, I mean the window of tolerance, a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel. It refers to the optimal zone of arousal, where you aren’t bored and listless but not dysregulated. Segal wasn’t necessarily referring to meditation practice when he coined this term, but it applies. When it comes to trauma or any deep-seated emotional issue, going for the edge too fast runs the risk of overwhelm, repeating trauma, and demoralization. Focusing instead on finding your window of tolerance, however, is about building skills over time. You focus on facing what you can handle from a mental, emotional, and physical standpoint and you allow that window to gradually open.

For difficulty in life, most of us want the suffering to go away immediately. We want to feel like we can just push a bit harder and get over the mountaintop. Though mindfulness can help us get there, it rarely happens so quickly. While discipline is a part of the process, so is developing wisdom about what you can’t control. Identifying and staying within your window of tolerance in meditation paradoxically may help you learn to honor your limits and expand them over time.

5. Start with Kindness.

Many people who start meditating want focus and calm, but in the pursuit of that we find something much more important: self-compassion. People who are experiencing trauma may benefit from this because shame and self-judgment are common symptoms following a traumatic experience. Even though self-compassion isn’t automatic for many people, you don’t have to wait weeks and months to learn this lesson.

If you have past trauma or challenging life experiences, kindness should be a cornerstone of your practice. It may take some time to internalize this, but any meditation practice should reinforce the ideas that you are worthy, loved, and deserve to be respected, feel good, and have your wishes honored. Thus, in starting or structuring a practice, self-kindness should be a focal point. As one of my teachers aptly noted, meditation is a healing art instead of a material art. We shouldn’t be battling through every session, but instead learning how to take better care of ourselves.

Sometimes meditation gets tangled up with self-improvement because the practices can help you behave better out in the world. But one of the big reasons that is true is because the practices can help you understand and care for yourself better. The practices don’t fix you; they help you see without judgment. The way to achieve this is through self-kindness. As you proceed with your practice, kindness should be the focal point and the guide.

These are a few ideas to raise awareness about trauma in the context of mindfulness from the perspective of a meditation teacher and fellow practitioner who has used mindfulness as one aspect of personal healing. In the end, you and your care providers know best whether meditation can support a healthy lifestyle for you. Meditation can support healing for people who have experienced trauma but supports, including help from trained professionals may be needed. Whether you meditate or not for personal healing, know that your efforts to care for yourself are so important and will contribute to a better world.

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Companion Guided Meditations from How to Be a Badass Lawyer

It’s World Meditation Day today, a day to raise awareness about the practice of meditation and its benefits. To honor the day, I’m sharing four new guided meditations with a variety of practices and a range of times. These meditations are the recorded companions to the practices offered in my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer.

As the book explains in more detail, these practices are offered to help you build a regular meditation practice. They offer a variety of practices so that, over time, you can better understand your body, mind, and emotions. With this foundation, you should have the basic skills needed to do the dynamic and transformational practice of loving-kindness. In addition, they range in time so that you can gradually build up your tolerance for meditation practice.

Keep reading to learn more about and try each practice.

Breath Focus Practice

Most meditation practitioners and teachers start with the breath and there’s good reason for that. It’s always with you and the breath is the link between body and mind that can reliably help you calm down. This means that getting comfortable with your breath and being able to use it as a tool is not just helpful as a resource for meditation practice but also a good tool for life. If you need help finding your breath, read more here.

But if you are ready to go, check out this 5-minute practice to get started.

Body Scan

One thing that can get overlooked when it comes to mindfulness is that the body is an essential part. Mindfulness of thoughts is only one aspect, but the body is a link that can help us cultivate awareness even of thoughts. Why? Because contemporary life invites us so frequently to reside in our heads and ignore our bodies.

Body scan is a practice that can help us get reacquainted with our bodies. It is a simple practice that many consider deeply relaxing. You systematically feel the sensations in the body. This is a practice that can help you understand how to take better care of your body (i.e. recognizing signs of stress or physical needs), relax and rest, and understand your emotions better.

To try this 10-minute practice, check it out here.

Joy Practice

Now, I bet you are wondering why I would tell you to practice joy. I have good reason. Did you know that, from a stress standpoint, the body doesn’t necessarily differentiate between what we consider positive emotions versus negative emotions? Thus, if we get more understanding and tolerance for positive emotions, we can understand all of our emotions better.

For many lawyers and professionals, though, positive emotions are the easiest ones to overlook. We are busy and expect good results so we may gloss over accomplishments and peaceful times because we are habituated to handle crisis situations. When we focus on joy, we heal and nourish ourselves and we cultivate emotional understanding at the same time.

Try this 15-minute practice, which incorporates breath and body work as well here.

Loving-Kindness

The final practice in the book is my favorite: loving-kindness. It is a practice where meditators focus on the body, usually the area around the heart, and wish others well. Though you may not think wishing will do a lot, research says otherwise. This practice is associated with reduced stress, improved relationships, and may even lead to more ethical conduct.

You can modify the practice to support your needs and goals and I have a guide here that can help you do that. This 20-minute practice, however, includes the traditional people, groups, and phrases. You can check it out here.

To learn more about the practices and how they fit together, check out my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer. Good luck with the practices and please reach out if you have any questions.

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Do You Really Need a Meditation Cushion?

The American way to start any new healthy habit is to scour the internet for the best gear. When it comes to meditation, this isn’t really necessary. As I have explained before, you can meditate in any position that makes you feel safe, supported, and comfortable.

This means you can meditate sitting, standing, lying down, or even walking. You can use a comfy chair, your bed, the floor, some nice cushions you have around the house, including some you use for restorative yoga, a porch swing or rocking chair, a parked car, or my personal favorite, the bath tub.

Though I have meditated in a variety of settings, it has been supportive to my practice to designate a particular spot as the one I use for regular practice. My spot is a little corner in my bedroom tucked away behind a large wardrobe. In it, I have my meditation cushion, a light blanket, and access to an outlet so that I can use my phone for guiding or sounds when I need it.

If you look on Pinterest, however, you can quickly overwhelm yourself with images of decked out meditation spots chock full of Mandalas, smiling Buddhas, incense, and LED lights. To the extent that this makes your practice more pleasant and you enjoy decorating, go for it. But a meditation space that would make an influencer blush is not really necessary, especially if nobody will see it but you.

Assuming you are into utility like me, what you really want from a meditation spot is something that offers support, creates comfort, and engenders focus. In general, then, you’ll want a large, flat layer to provide warmth and cushion for your ankles and knees in the sitting position. Then you will want something on top to lift the hips and support the natural curve of your back. This is to ensure that you have a clear airway to make breathing as easy and restful as possible.

This is the point of the meditation cushion, which commonly includes the zafu and zabuton. The zabuton is the large flat cushion, typically filled with a cotton-like substance and the zafu is a smaller pillow (often round or crescent-shaped) that is usually filled with seeds, beans, or buckwheat hulls. If you feel more comfortable in a kneeling position, you can get a similar result from using a meditation bench with a mat or blanket under your legs and knees.

These days, it is easy to find meditation cushions and benches online in a variety of colors, materials, and shapes. If, like me, you hate scouring the internet for products, I bought my zafu and zabuton from Still Sitting about 10 years ago and I can report that their name is accurate: I’m still using it. I went for the crescent-shaped zafu with a buckwheat fill because it fits my body better. Due to an old knee injury, I also added an extra mini zafu for some support under my right knee.

Can you achieve the same level of comfort with items you have around the house? Very likely. A few layers of old blankets, a folded yoga mat, or flat pillows could double for a zabuton. A sturdier and smaller cushion, a bolster, or yoga blocks could work for a zafu.

In short, you don’t truly need a meditation cushion or bench to start a meditation practice. Ideally, meditation is something you bring into your life and don’t only use in one spot in your home. Even so, a designated spot is a great way to turn meditation into a habit and a quality meditation cushion can support the body to help your mind focus and relax.

Thus, if you are really new to meditation, I would not recommend spending a lot of money on new gear. Once your practice becomes regular and you can sit for more than a few minutes each session, a cushion may be a great way to support your meditation practice and invest in it long-term.

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The Voice of Compassion: Podcast with Psychologist and Public Speaking Coach Doreen Downing

Voice is really important to my history but I probably wouldn’t have recognized this so clearly if I hadn’t met Doreen Downing through the Mindful Professionals Network. Doreen is a therapist and public speaking coach, the author of The 7 Secrets to Essential Speaking, and the host the Find Your Voice Change Your Life Podcast. As I learned, she’s also a gentle but powerful soul and asks some really great questions.

During the interview, we talked about my history with perfectionism, overthinking, introversion, and doubt. But we also talked about how voice was a surprising lifeline for me. Unlike many people and despite my introversion, I had always been drawn to speaking because I loved teaching and explaining things to others As an auditory learner, I have found that teaching and speaking out issues helps me understand things better.

When I stated meditating, I learned to trust my voice and let it guide me. As I have discussed here before, the first step with this was to begin writing regularly. Eventually, though, I also began speaking and teaching mindfulness, meditation, and compassion too. As you can imagine, this was not an easy process and I had to learn to figure out what voice corresponded to this new piece of my identity.

And you know what I learned? It wasn’t a new voice at all. My meditation teacher voice was the same as my lawyer voice and my mom voice and my good friend voice. This new part of me had been there all along and what I needed to do was trust it and start using it more.

If you are someone who hates public speaking or wants to think about your inner voice, this is an interview for you. Doreen is also an excellent resource on this and I hope you connect with her and check out her book. As for the full interview, You can check it out here or watch the full episode on YouTube.

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Are You There God? It’s Me, Mom.

Editor’s Note: I was never a big Judy Blume fan but the movie Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret came out the week of my daughter’s 11th birthday. I quickly read the audiobook in anticipation and went to see it with my daughters, mom, sister, and niece. Needless to say, it had an impression. Whether you love Judy Blume or not, anyone who lived through or is raising a child in adolescence can understand. By the way, call your mom or mom figure and say “Thanks. I love you.”

Are you there God? It’s me, Mom.

I have an eleven-year-old now. God, how did you let that happen? I am certain that it was a mere few days ago when she was guzzling a bottle, learning to walk, or heading off to kindergarten. But suddenly, she’s almost a teenager.

I’ve been eleven before, God. I know you can survive middle school. But now there’s TikTok and AI and every kid has a cell phone. To say the least, I feel ill-equipped to handle it all. So, I ask again: how did you let this happen? And I’ll add: what am I supposed to do about it?

When she was little, I could guide her. I was her favorite person. She not only listened to me; she thought I was interesting and—dare I say it—cool and fun. We went on adventures. We explored museums and parks. Even picking flowers in the yard seemed like a big deal.

But now, in the blink of an eye, I am the worst. I don’t know anything. I’m always wrong. I don’t get it. I only want to block her fun and get her in trouble. If I told her the sky was blue, I’m pretty sure she’d supply some Google link to an obscure study that shows me I am wrong.

How do I help a child raised in this age of information learn some wisdom? How do you teach a kid humility when they feel like they can answer anything with a few keystrokes? And, by the way God, she already types faster than I do as a practicing lawyer, blogger, and book author. Can you tell me how to manage this?

I’ll wait, God. I’m sure your answer will be forthcoming.

Okay. This is ridiculous. I’ve been sitting in silence for a long time. I have a pretty good amount of patience by now. I sat. I waited. You didn’t tell me a thing. Seriously? You create this situation where I can make a kid and then offer no advice at all when that kid starts to look more like a grownup and needs some real help?

Fine. I’ll think this through since you so clearly don’t want to help. I’ll try silence again.

What comes up is a memory of how I was at eleven. I was smart and curious and scared and lonely and silly and creative and wanted to try everything. I made so many mistakes and did some things I regret. But eventually I learned by making mistakes. Sometimes my parents told me I made mistakes and sometimes they just loved me as I made them.

Oh geez, God. Is this your answer? I have to just be there to watch all of this? I have to watch her—my baby girl—make mistakes? I have to watch her—my first born—sometimes get hurt? I have to sit and try to stay calm and look like I know what I am doing as she starts to go out on adventures in this big crazy world without me? And just hope she runs into good and decent people along the way? Thanks for nothing, God. Really. Worst advice ever.

Now I’m mad. Better try some silence again. Breathe, Claire, breathe. It will be okay.

I’ve calmed down now and you know what’s coming to mind? It’s even worse. I’m thinking of all the things I say when I go out and teach mindfulness. I tell others we can’t control everything. I tell others the trick is to cultivate stability and bring in kindness and to rely on loved ones for help when we need it. I tell others to trust themselves and trust other people because people can surprise you when you give them a chance. I tell others that experience teaches us more than hearing someone tell us wisdom.

Okay, that last one hurts a bit. Experience teaches. I see what you’re doing, God. Even though you’re right, I don’t like it. I have to learn to let go a bit. I have to show what stability and kindness means, which means I need some support from my family and other mom friends. My daughter won’t listen to what I say (obviously), but she’ll remember what I do. And if she remembers that, maybe when she really needs it, she’ll let me help her.

I get it now. The answer is hard but I think I feel better. Thanks, God. Sorry I yelled. If you are there, keep watching because it’s going to be a fun ride. And if you don’t mind doing something about the Tiktok and AI situation, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m off to make birthday cupcakes. At least she’s not too old for that. Talk to you again soon.

If you need some extra help managing your experience as a caregiver, check our Guided Meditation for Caregivers here.

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It Was a Great Well-Being Week in Law

It was a busy week but a great week for me. I got to celebrate Well-Being Week in Law in several different ways.

First, I got to present on mindfulness and confidence for a law firm. The session was well-attended and the engagement from the audience was excellent. I shared how mindfulness can help build confidence because it can help you break down fear and doubt into component parts and learn strategies to care for each aspect. A

On Wednesday, I connected with Kristin Tyler, a founder of LAWCLERK Legal and a long-time friend of the blog, and coach and one of my co-authors from the book #Networked, Olivia Vizachero, to discuss mental health in the legal profession.

We discussed everything from strategies for time management and reducing decision fatigue to the practices that support our personal and professional well-being. It was a fun conversation and I was so proud that LAWCLERK chose my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, as a giveaway item to support lawyer well-being this week.

You can watch the recording of event here on YouTube:

For my last event of the week, I came back home. Specifically, I did a brief talk and guided meditation for my local bar association. I’m a proud member of the Northern Kentucky Bar Association Lawyers Living Well Committee. I talked about how to manage the early phases of meditation practice when you may not immediately feel calm and relaxed. In the guided meditation, I focused on ways to learn to practice relaxation and rest.

To listen to the talk and try the meditation, check out the recording of the event here:

Did you do any activities for Well-Being Week in Law? Leave a comment to let us know what you tried.

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