Inner Advantage: Applying Mindfulness in Law Practice

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1 Vermont Bar Association Seminar Materials Inner Advantage: Applying Mindfulness in Law Practice June 1, 2016 Capitol Plaza Montpelier, VT Faculty: J. Patton Hyman, Esq. Carol Hyman

2 Lunch will be on your own! Vermont Bar Association Presents: Inner Advantage: Applying Mindfulness in Law Practice June 1, 2016, 9:30am 5:00pm Capitol Plaza, Montpelier, VT Credits: 6.0 MCLE General Credits This training will demonstrate how meditation-based mindfulness fosters creativity, courage, and flexibility in lawyering, enhancing professional and personal development. Periods of mindfulness meditation are interspersed with interactive contemplations, discussions, and lectures throughout the training. In this hands-on seminar, participants explore how these techniques help lawyers cultivate communication skills, maintain equanimity in challenging situations, find fresh approaches to dealing with difficult problems, and engage more productively in intra- and inter-group collaboration. The six components of the training include: Introducing mindfulness meditation as a method to enhance undistracted presence, self-awareness, and integrity. A simple practice for the office is also offered. Cultivating confidence and equanimity by learning how to relate to nervousness and fear in challenging situations. Transforming fear into an ally. Communicating and listening with undistracted attention, recognizing how habitual mindsets and nervousness color our perceptions and our ability to communicate. Inviting creative insights through a presence-based contemplation technique. Appreciating the wisdom of not-knowing and the technique of working with fear mindfully to foster continuous learning. Exploring collaborative engagement techniques to reach superior outcomes. The Four Principles of Mindful Communication will be introduced. Cultivating mindfulness dividends through diligent application: Balance, Clarity, Confidence, Adaptability, and Goodwill. Faculty: Patton Hyman, Esq., is President and Executive Director of Applied Mindfulness Training, Inc., a 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporation, presenting retreats and programs geared toward applying contemplative disciplines in the professions, business, and the arts. He has taught meditation, including teacher trainings, for over 30 years and is the author of The Mindful Lawyer: Mindfulness Meditation and Law Practice, 33 Vermont

3 Bar Journal 40 (Summer 2007). He is also the author of a book entitled The Inner Advantage: Applying Mindfulness in Business and Law and Everywhere Else! He regularly presents mindfulness trainings for leadership programs of the School of Public Affairs of American University, Washington, D.C. Patton practiced for decades in a large Atlanta firm and was a solo practitioner in Barnet, Vermont, specializing in estate planning and property and business transactions. For more: Carol Hyman is a writer, teacher, coach, and consultant. She has worked as a business owner, as a manager in social services, as the director of a non-sectarian meditation program, and as project manager in a wide variety of fields. A practitioner of mindfulness and other contemplative disciplines for almost four decades, Carol has taught these practices extensively throughout the United States and Canada and as far away as New Zealand, to groups large and small including professional organizations, non-profit boards, and college students. Having recently served as editorial project manager for a previously unpublished collection of the writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, she is presently working on her own book, Salvaging Sanity. Carol lives in Vermont with her husband Patton.

4 Presence: the Ground of Mindfulness by Patton Hyman Presence is an innate aspect of human experience which, for a variety of reasons, people fail to recognize. It s the state we re in when we re not distracted and are in touch with the direct experience of sense perceptions, bodily sensations, and emotions or feelings. The first step in recognizing it is seeing that we generally don t even consider whether we re present or not. Practicing mindfulness meditation, we can t help but notice that we ve created an ongoing narration or soundtrack to our life. Whatever we re going through is constantly accompanied by a stream of commentary, explanations, theories, and complaints. This mental chatter colors the world for us because we ve identified the two: we don t see the commentary as a separate phenomenon from the direct experience of whatever is going on around us. We see a coworker and automatically put a label on him or her as good guy or gal, jerk, undermining enemy, threatening boss. To up the ante, situations often push our buttons and we experience annoyance, irritation, or anger. Then the habitual tendency of mind is to construct a story line about the other individual or situation ( He enjoys trying to make it difficult for me or She s trying to make me look bad or I hate situations like this ). In this way we move from simple labels to a narrative. Stringing these narratives together, we weave our interpretation of life. Making sense in this way, life seems less disjointed. We feel like we re getting a grip and may even be in control. So we make for ourselves a reassuring comfort zone. This is the sense in which what people speak about as creating our own reality is actually true. It s not that the building, the car, the tree, or the other person doesn t exist except as a figment of our own thoughts; rather, we have mentally created the context in which we experience those things

5 or people as having meaning to us. The plot thickens, literally, until presence is lost in the fog of our storylines and interpretations. When we cultivate presence by practicing mindfulness meditation, we unravel those plots and uncover the ability to inhabit our lives fully. We don t interact with the world bound by the narrative or commentary in our heads, but we can open to life in a full and complete away. We recognize the experience of presence as well as its implications in the world. Mindfulness is a practice and experience of relaxed alertness. Applying mindfulness we learn how to be genuinely who we are, manifestations of presence. Then we live our lives as an expression of that. Applying mindfulness is not a prescription to register every detail of every situation that you encounter, but to approach all situations with an attitude of openness.

11 Helpful and Interesting links: Mindfulness in Legal Practice is Going Mainstream The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training on Multitasking in a High-Stress Information Environment

AWARENESS Being Aware. Being Mindful Self-Discovery. Self-Awareness. Being Present in the Moment.

FIRST CORE LEADERSHIP CAPACITY AWARENESS Being Aware. Being Mindful Self-Discovery. Self-Awareness. Being Present in the Moment. 1 Being Aware The way leaders show up in life appears to be different than