Your Mindfulness Practice and The CASE Method

As you work to integrate a mindfulness practice into your legal practice, remember the case method.  By this, I am referring to the Jurisight term which sets forth the instruction on cultivating mindful awareness.

The “Case Method” offers an easy to remember traditional mindfulness instruction — one which also happens to be the subject of interesting neuroscience research.  “Case” can be broken down to CA and SE.  C.A. stands for “Concentrated Awareness” while SE refers to “Sensory Expansion.”  This two-part process is the basic foundation for many mindfulness practices.  In the next The Mindful Lawyer Newsletter, the CASE Method will be discussed at greater length along with with a guided instruction.

Concentrated Awareness

We concentrate awareness by bringing attention to an object and practicing holding attention on that object.  Tthe breath serves as the most popular object of attention though it can be absolutely anything. Because the breath is always present, and a body process, it is always accessible.  As you may discover, learning to aim and sustain awareness on the breath can be a powerful practice.   Below is a simple instruction on concentrating awareness.

1.  Have a seat.
2.  Lower or close your eyes.
3.  Bring awareness to your breathing.
4.  Follow your in-breath and out-breath.
5.  Allow your belly to move with the breath.
6.  Notice the experience — sensing the flow of air in and out of your nose or moth or the rise and fall of the belly.
7.  Practice this for a few minutes.

A few tips that may be helpful to you in practicing are: (1) find a quiet place to sit, (2) if you catch your mind wandering, notice that it has wandered and bring it back to the breath, (3) there is no right or wrong way to practice, and (4) you may find it helpful to count to yourself with each exhalation as you take ten breaths and then begin again.  In neuroscience circles, where this practice is studied in the laboratory, this practice is called Focused Attention.  The upcoming The Mindful Lawyer Newsletter will discuss this research.

Sensory Expansion

By concentrating awareness, you begin to establish a stability of mind and body.  The commotion arising both within you (e.g., mental chatter and agitation) and outside you (e.g., external events) becomes more manageable  and you anchor yourself more firmly in the moment and become a little less reactive to this commotion.  This readies you (though it need not be a prerequisite) to then expand awareness, lifting it from the single-pointed object of your attention to more of what is taking place in the moment.  Below is an instruction that continues where the instruction for concentrated awareness left off.  It involves the expansion of awareness to embrace on the the senses — sound.  This instruction ends here for purposes of this introduction.  The process of expanding awareness is intended to embrace all that arises and passes away  within your experience, which includes sound, along with the other senses — and also thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.   When researched, this process is known as Open Monitoring.

By mindfulness attending to what arises in the field of your awareness, and not reacting to it as stongly as you might were you not engaged in mindful awareness, you change the way you relate to your experience, gaining greater mastery over the events that arise duringt he course of your life.

8.   Allow awareness of your breathing to recede into the background.
9.  Expand awareness to embrace sound — listening to what arises, changes, and passes away as if listening to it for the first time.
10.  Take a few breaths as you attend to sound — not forming a judgment, or even naming it.  Just noticing.
11.   Allow awareness of sound to recede into the background as you bring awareness back to the breath.
12.  After taking a few breaths with awareness of breathing, open your eyes.

Law Students Attend Mindful Lawyer Conference

The Mindful Lawyer conference, which took place at Boalt Hall from October 29-31, brought together law students from a variety of law schools to discuss the role of contemplative practices in their lives and in their legal studies.  Three UM Law Students were funded by UM Law to attend.  Miraisy Rodriguez, Amanda Leipold, and Nicole Crabtree are three of the four UM law students who founded the Insightful Mind Initiative.   A link to the audio recording of the panel event (Mindfulness and the Law School Experience – Student Perspectives) for law students will be provided when made live.  Law Student, Amanda Leipold participated in the panel discussion.

Scott Rogers speaks at UM Law HOPE Gathering

Scott Rogers spoke at UM Law School’s HOPE meeting today to share information on exercise and the brain with law students who will be representing UM and the HOPE program in Miami’s 2011 marathon.  This HOPE project is being coordinate by UM Law Student Ashley Cooper.

The HOPE Public Interest Resource Center  has more than 25 programs for law students to participate in to work with various underserved and at-risk populations locally, nationally and internationally. HOPE also offers competitive programs that provide funding for public interest summer opportunities through the Miami Scholars and the HOPE Fellows programs.

National Mindful Lawyer Conference to be Tweeted and Blogged

Stephanie West Allen, who publishes the nationally recognized blogs Idealawg and Brains on Purpose will be live tweeting from The Mindful Lawyer conference.  The hash tag is #mlc10.  To learn more, click here.

Neuroscience Plenaries Kick off Mindful Lawyer Conference

The robust and exciting integration of mindfulness and neuroscience can be seen in the starting line up for the Mindful Lawyer conference plenaries.  Saturday morning plenaries will include Philippe Goldin and  Shauna Shapiro.  Goldin will speak on “Meditation and the Brain” while Shapiro will speak on “The Art and Science of Mindfulness: A Psychological Perspective.”  You can read more about their talks by clicking here.

Mindful Eating Workshop Begins at UM Law for Students

On Thursday September 16, a four-week mindful eating class began at UM School of Law, taught by Scott Rogers.  The class shares with students mindfulness insights about the arising of cravings and thoughts about food — both involving eating and not eating — and teaches them exerises for learning to relate differently to these experiences and joining intention with action.  The conversation includes tips on healthy eating along with basic neuroscience findings as they relate to these issues.  Click here to view a workshop flyer.

Saturday Seminar on “Exercise and the Brain” at UM School of Law

On Saturday September 11, 2010, the Saturday Seminar Series “Ask Not What Your Brain Can Do For You, But What You Can Do For Your Brain” kicks off with the first seminar of the 2010 Fall Term — Exercise Smart.  The seminar is conducted by Scott Rogers.  Click here to see an event flyer

Scott Rogers Speaks at Florida Lawyer’s Assistance Annual Workshop

On July 31, 2010, Scott Rogers spoke with more than 200 attorneys attending the annual FLA workshop in Orlando, Florida.   This two-hour program provided participants with an introduction to mindfulness, an exploration of the application of mindfulness practices in working with addiction, through its integration into 12 Step groups, and the development of Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP).  Scott also discussed how neuroplastic changes to the brain, mediated by mindfulness practices,  can be helpful in working with addiction.

Mindful Awareness and “Burden Shifting”

In the law, we are keen on legal doctrines that involve burden shifting.  Here is a simple and familiar example:  A plaintiff has the burden of making a prima facie case and then the burden shifts to the defendant to rebut the prima facie showing.

So often in relationships, personal and professional, things do not go as planned and we find ourselves feeling offended.  Instinctively, we erect our own version of the burden shifting rule.  We make the prima facie showing of why we are right and they are wrong and the burden shifts to them to explain or, better yet, concede defeat and then pay us damages– be it an apology, a promise never to do it again, conceding a point, or whatever remedy we think is appropriate.

The practical challenge to this approach is that it is often not made explicit.  That is, the rule is one we implicitly embrace but rarely communicate to the other yet expect them to comply with.  Another challenge is that often the “other” interprets the same event as if they are the plaintiff.  They erect their own rules and expect us to comply.

Mindfulness offers a simple insight that obviates the need for the burden shifting rule, and leads to relief.  The burden does not shift.  It rests and remains on us.

A defensive response to this insight is to reject it and comment that it hints of the “abused persons” syndrome where the abused feels the harm inflicted on them is their fault.   The simple reason why this application doesn’t work is that it has nothing to do with fault.

It has everything to do with realizing the true nature of experience and coming to deeply understand the nature of the mind.  Every affront you feel is an experience of your own making.  Yes, an event took place and it may well be one where someone else acted inappropriately and corrective action is to be pursued.  But the unpleasant feeling, that often translates into “outrage,” “resentment,” “anger,” “frustration,” or some other agitated state, is an internal experience.  It has no reality beyond the moment it arises as neurons in your brain fire and crackle, and then sputter, and then die down.  Yet, we can grab hold of that experience and wield a grand story around it.  This is where the burden shifting kicks in, the rules arise, and everyone sees things differently.

Mindfulness offers this simple instruction.  The next time the neurons fire and crackle and you feel agitated by the actions of another, pause and take a few moments to observe what is arising in your mind and body.  Breathe for a few moments as you pay attention to the thoughts arising, the emotions surging, and the sensations flowing through your body.

Just notice.  You don’t need to figure anything out.  You don’t need to make you case, or defend your case, or expect someone else to.  By paying attention, you insert a buffer between the momentary experience and your conditioned reactivity.  That conditioned reactivity in this case is the case-law you are relying on to make your case, win your argument, and receive a favorable judgment.  Because the momentary experience is just that — momentary — it passes.  If you succeed in allowing it to pass, you are left with the important visceral reminder that there may be something to address.  but you are no longer caught up in the whirlwind of affect.

You can see more clearly, your brain returns to a more integrated state from which better decision-making can take place, and you are more likely to obtain a just outcome.

But the burden is always on you . . . . to bring mindful awareness to the moment.

Just Published, The Mindfulness Memo: The Neuroscience of Defaults and Default Judgments

The Mindful Lawyer website has published the May Mindfulness Memo, titled The Neuroscience of Defaults and Default Judgments.  You can read the memo by visiting The Mindful Lawyer or clicking here.  The memo will be podcasted by the end of the weekend and will be available on iTunes.