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 traumati ..read more

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 ..read more

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 varie ..read more

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. Unl ..read more

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 w ..read more

It’s Well-Being Week in Law this week. If you are familiar with the mental health challenges in the legal profession, this may not be surprising. Even so, you may ask yourself what exactly does “well-being” mean? There are many ways to define this. Some take the approach of creating buckets or categories which ensure that the various aspects of lawyers’ lives are addressed. This includes everything from physical, mental, emotional, to spiritual and even financial needs. There’s nothing wrong with that approach. Looking at it from that vantage point may serve as a guide for firms or organizati ..read more

Q. Joel, tell us a bit about yourself, including your status now and a brief history of your work. Where were you in your life and career when you received your diagnosis? For the great majority of my career, I was a corporate attorney leading large groups of legal and contract management personnel.  I started off at Allstate Insurance Company and then was General Counsel of a Sears/IBM telecommunications and data processing joint venture. I then moved onto Accenture where I was the Deputy General Counsel managing the Americas legal team, global contract management team and COO ..read more

Friends tell me all the time that they like to go out for a “walking meditation.” My automatic reaction internal is this: “No, you’re not, but good for you.” Of course, I would never say this to someone unless asked but walking meditation is not the same thing as a walk outside. One reason I would never offer this advice unsolicited in normal social circumstances is that I will never discourage anyone from (a) moving; or (b) getting outside. Taking a walk outside is awesome for you in every way. It’s good exercise and being outside is good for your mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In t ..read more

When you start to indulge your creative tendencies, you become a connoisseur of ideas. Just like food or wine, you notice the variations in intensity. You instinctively understand that some ideas, like an avocado, have to be used immediately upon peak ripeness. But some, like dried mushrooms or good vinegar, can be stashed away to be used in small doses when the time is right. My first children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute (available for preorder now), was like the good vinegar that sat on the shelf of my mind until I had the right ingredients to turn it into something fantastic. I had though ..read more

As I’ve written here before, writing is one of my favorite pastimes. At this point, I consider it a mental health practice. Quite literally, it helps me clean out my mind, process life, and connect more deeply with my world and community. Even so, I had a lot of doubts when I started writing about things that weren’t related to my law practice. I had ideas that I should devote most of my mental energy to building my law practices and serving clients and than anything leftover should go to my kids. I’m no math genius, but anyone can immediately puzzle out the problem with this theory: it didn ..read more