It’s a long holiday weekend. If you’re lucky, that means some extra time for rest and relaxation and enjoying the last days of summer. Some of us have no trouble resting when we get the chance, but if you are anything like me it can be a struggle.
The other problem for lawyers, of course, is that even physical rest can feel uncomfortable because our minds don’t stop. As a long-time overthinker, I know that this struggle is very real.
I used all of these ideas in the new guided meditation I am offering today. In the practice, there is a guided reflection on rest and it’s role in our lives. This practice is not merely a mental exercise but also incorporates a classic restorative yoga pose: supported fish to help the body relax and rest. And third, it’s certainly a playful exploration of the intersection between meditation and yoga.
Labor Day is about honoring the American worker with a day of rest. I’m sharing this meditation with you today as an additional support in your quest to rest this long weekend. If you want to try it out, check it out here or on the YouTube channel.
If you like this practice and want another, you might check out my most popular video, the Legs Up the Wall Guided Meditation too. This one uses another classic restorative yoga pose: legs up the wall. You can use a cushion to support your back and hips but in truth no props are required at all. This meditation teaches a variety of ways to focus on the breath so you can learn while you rest.
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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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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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.
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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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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The ready availability of high-quality meditation apps means that most people exploring meditation these days are doing so with the support of guided meditations. This is a great thing and was, in fact, what I used to support my practice early on. Many guided meditations instruct and demonstrate, so the guiding may help you build skills and understanding even while you practice. It can also feel lonely and uncomfortable to start sitting in silence if you haven’t meditated much before or maybe just because that’s your personality. Thus, using guided meditations to establish or support your practice is excellent, whether you are a new or experienced meditator.
Even so, sitting in silence—meditating without guiding—offers a lot of benefits too because it offers freedom and flexibility that pre-recorded guided meditations cannot. Though I have no intention to dissuade you away from guided meditations (many of which are offered on this blog), you could be missing out if you never try meditating without guiding. To explain why, here are 5 reasons that you may want to explore meditating in silence.
1. You don’t have to pick a guided meditation.
I went to Catholic school from 1st through 12th grade. Some may think those school uniforms are restrictive, but I kind of liked not having to think about what to wear each day. Sitting in silence offers this benefit. One of the reasons I shifted away from guided meditations was that I got sick of scrolling through my app or podcasts to find the one I wanted each day. Rather than continue wasting time and exerting effort to try to control my meditation experience, I instead let go and started using the unguided timer on my meditation app. Now, the only decision I have to make before I sit is to go and do it. In short, sitting in silence saves times and cuts down significantly on the risk that decision fatigue will impede your practice.
2. Unguided meditation always fits you perfectly because it is you.
If you use guided meditations, it can be a challenge to find one that fits your current circumstances. Though good apps and teachers will give you an idea as to what the meditation is about, you won’t really know the tone and content until you are in it. Meditating without guiding avoids this because there is no guide. Your practice always fits you perfectly because your practice is just you. To be sure, this can be scary and difficult at times but so can meditating with the guidance of a teacher. Just like you must learn to trust your teacher in a guided meditation, you also must learn to trust yourself when you sit in silence. In this way, sitting in silence is the perfect meditation for whatever the circumstances are, and it can help you learn to take refuge in yourself in whatever circumstances that may arise.
3. Silence gives the mind space to relax.
What I really love about silent meditation is how it feels in my mind. This is esoteric, so I will try to explain with an analogy. Let’s say your mind is a basketball player. All day long, you have the mind running drills. It must do your work. It must record facts. It must listen to words and make sense of them. To put it another way, during most of your waking hours, your mind is doing passing drills, layups, and free throws. When you meditate, you intentionally stop some of these drills by sitting still and closing or lowering your eyes. If you use a guided meditation, at least one drill continues on as you focus on particular objects or visualizations to which you are directed. But, what if you just sat in silence and gave your mind permission to have open gym? What if you dropped the drills for a while and let your mind play HORSE, 21, or a pickup game or whatever else it wants to do? Sitting in silence is a way of giving space—all the space your mind has to offer—to your thoughts, emotions, and mental habits. This can feel really good and can help you see your patterns of thought a bit more clearly.
4. Meditation without guiding is more like real life.
While it would be awesome if your fav meditation teacher could sit on your shoulder and guide you as you go about your life each day, that’s just not possible. In real life, we have to make our own decisions in the moment. For this reason, meditating in silence is advantageous because it more closely resembles real life where there is no guide. In other words, sitting in silence allows you to practice the skills of mindfulness and compassion unprompted so that you are more likely to use those skills when you need them in life.
Silence, for many, is unsettling, unnerving, awkward, or just plain boring. For that reason, guided meditations offer support, comfort, and instruction to many meditators. As a result, I am not telling you in this post that you must or even should meditate in silence. I’m not saying that sitting in silence is the only “real”, “legitimate” or “valid” way to meditate because I believe meditation practices naturally shift over time and we all must find what works for us. My point here, however, is that meditation without guiding just might work for you if you give it a try.
If you want to work a bit with silence in your meditation practice but aren’t quite ready to do it for a full session, check out this meditation. In this practice, Claire will help you get settled and then offer three short intervals of silence for you to practice.
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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I don’t want to brag but my kids actually eat vegetables. It’s not because I have forced them to eat them (though I am not necessarily always immune from dinnertime battles) or have extolled their nutritional benefits. The reason my kids eat vegetables is because I really enjoy food. By that, I mean I love to cook. I get a lot of joy from making different things and experimenting and playing in the kitchen. When I do that, the girls automatically come in and want to help or steal veggies from the counter as I work. Meditation can be the same way. If you enjoy it and have fun with it, your kids are more likely to want to do the same. Let them see you meditate. Let them know you meditate and how it helps you. When they show interest, answer their questions and let them try it. If you push or demand or lecture, this will never happen. Meditation usually works best when someone chooses it for themselves so give your kids the same gift. In other words, just doing whatis best for you is a great way to offer the best to your kids.
2. Meditate with them.
When your kids show interest, another great way to encourage them to pick up meditation is to try it with them. You can make this a routine by meditating for a few minutes before bed. Many meditation apps have meditations made just for kids and you can just play one after the bedtime stories or goodnight hugs. That may actually be a good way to help them get ready to sleep. You could also try a meditation break with them in times of stress. When my youngest was small, she refused to take a breath if I told her to do it because she thought it meant she was in trouble. But, if I did the breath with her, I got a totally different response. While you may not think of a few deep breaths as meditation, these building blocks for little kids can grow over time and serve as the foundation for a practice later on, not to mention that they are just good coping strategies to have.
3. Make it fun.
Play is essential to any good meditation practice and that is doubly true for kids. If your kids show an interest in meditation, try to make it fun. Explore guided meditations with imaginative visualizations. Keep your approach light and energized as you talk to them about their experience. For little kids, it may even help them to have them sit in your lap while you practice together. Meditation doesn’t have to be intense to be powerful. Helping them have fun as they explore their inner life bit by bit will serve as a good foundation for a healthy practice later.
4. Keep it simple and short.
It is no surprise that kids can’t sit very long. Don’t make the practice complex and don’t make it too long. It is unlikely that most kids younger than 10 can sit for more than five minutes straight and young kids may struggle to be silent. Start where you kids are. This may mean starting with one or two breaths. Later on you may advance to having your child name her experience. Though this may not seem like mindfulness to you, it is powerful for kids to begin to understand their inner lives. And, as always, their abilities and practice can grow over time.
5. Talking might actually help.
Some kids may not like the feeling of being alone when they meditate. Little kids may lack the ability to avoid talking. That’s just life. You can make meditation a bit easier for these kiddos by talking them through the process. For example, if a guided meditation tells you to envision yourself on a cozy cloud, you might watch your child and see how they react. If they fidget or make a funny face, you could say “what kind of cloud are you seeing?” or “how does the cloud make you feel?” With these questions, you are asking the child to focus on their direct experience so it is mindfulness but it may be easier for them since they have your support in the process. You may also enjoy this since the answers can range from insightful to hilarious and you may learn some surprising things about your kids.
If you want to try meditating with your kids, give this one a try. It’s a simple body scan but I was inspired by the many times I have found my daughters covered in paint or marker or crayon or whatever. Apparently, kids enjoy coloring on or painting themselves. With this meditation, they can do that and make a mess in their minds but there’s no mess at the end for you to clean up. If only craft time was so simple . . .
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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Have you ever gotten all worked up about something and a friend or loved one says “hey, relax!” And then maybe you get mad about it because you think “I can’t relax!” or “I don’t know how!” I know I have.
While we often think our minds are the tools to use to calm ourselves down, that isn’t exactly true. When you get stressed, the mind detects it and the brain won’t calm down until your body tells the brain the “threat” is gone. If you are talking about an abstract threat or one you are worried about in the future, that may never happen. To disrupt the chain, you need to learn how to let go.
I guided this meditation for the ABA Young Lawyers Division on January 12th, day 9 of their Meditation Challenge.
One way of doing that, is by shifting your attention from your thoughts to the feelings in your body. With this brief meditation that I offered for the ABA Young Lawyers Division Meditation Challenge, we’ll shift attention from the swirling thoughts to the soothing and steady breath to rest–even if just for a few minutes. I bet you’ll find it helps. Check it out here.
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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2020 was a rough year for many of us. While we might like to rush as quickly into the future as we can, it is still unclear what the future will look like. As much as you might want to make progress and move forward after a year of what feels like sitting still, you have trouble figuring out how to do that after a year of such disruption.
I think meditation can help with this a lot because, when things feel like a mess, it can help you sit still for a moment to let things settle so you can examine what’s really there. But the special circumstances of 2020 call for extra help so I called for backup from my friend Laura Chipman. In addition to being a lawyer and mom like me, Laura is a life coach for lawyers.
Together, we offered this webinar to members of MothersEsquire where Laura led an exercise to help review 2020 and set intentions and goals for 2021. I then guided a meditation to help you acknowledge your reactions to the past and aspirations for the future and honor the emotions that arise in the process. As an added bonus, Laura created a great workbook from the event so you can work through this exercise at your own pace. Get your copy here.
Please enjoy and Happy New Year!
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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