Back to School: Managing Stress, Controlling Anxiety, and Getting Enough Sleep

Focus and be well-rested?  Every law student's elusive desire. 

For today's class on test taking strategies and test anxiety, I asked our new 1L students to read M.H. Sam Jacobson's article: Paying Attention or Fatally Distracted?  Concentration, Memory, and Multi-Tasking in a Multi-Media World ( 2010).  She skillfully digests the science behind her thesis that students cannot be successful in law school if they do not manage distractions.  She also recommends getting plenty of sleep.

Yesterday, as I was cleaning up my email box (and trying to avoid distractions), I found a web interview of Dr. Richard J. Davidson, co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain.   The interview (53 minutes) talked about the plasticity of the brain and how mindfulness meditation can help people manage distractions and shape the brain in helpful ways. 

I knew some of this science from my own experience, training, and reading.  But, in one of those odd moments of synergy, this information came together in time for today's class.  As noted in an earlier posting, I have taken our new law students though three guided meditations this week.  

Today, they experienced a body scan meditation designed to help them relax, get calm, manage anxiety, train the brain, and perhaps fall asleep when desired.   You can find samples of these meditations all over the web. I like this one, by Greg de Vries, frankly because it was not too hokey.  

Overall, students appreciated these tools, and I am so very happy I had the forum in which to teach them.

Yes, the Appalachian School of Law is a very different kind of law school.

P.S.  I just found this blog posting on improving sleep quality and quantity using a "cool little app called SleepCycle."  Interesting.  Again, self-awareness gives you power to change.

Back to School: Imagining Your Future in Law School and Beyond

A tunnel, an archway, and the view beyond.  

I used these images in a guided meditation with our new 1Ls to help them capture their subconscious dreams for their law school careers and their future as lawyers.  

Here's the text I used.  Before launching into it, I took the students through the Getting Vertical Meditation described here. 

Again, I want to thank my business coach, Christine Kane, for inspiring this meditation. 

Tunnel, Archway, and View Beyond Meditation

Inspired by Christine Kane (as remembered by Paula Marie Young)

Now imagine yourself at the mouth of a passage-way or tunnel

You cannot yet see the end of it

But you take a step into it

You are entering three stages of your career at law school

The first stage represents your first year in law school, where you begin to learn the jargon, and the ways of thinking, and analysis, and begin to develop the professional relationships you will have for the rest of your life

Now imagine taking a step into the second stage of your law school career – the second year. 

Now you have more confidence, more knowledge, and more comfort that you can master whatever comes your way.  You focus more on skill building.

Now take a moment to focus on the passage way.  What does the floor, walls, and ceiling look like to you at each of these stages?

Now take a step into the third stage of the tunnel, your final year in law school.  Now you are busy with co-curricular competitions, and applications to take the bar exam, and leadership positions in student organizations, and law review editing, as well as course work.

And then ahead of you, you can now see a large archway.  What form does it take?  What is it made of?  What are its contours and adornment?

Now take a step towards the archway and look out on the view beyond.  What unfolds for you there?  

What is the future you imagine for yourself, your family, and your career?  What does your heart tell you about that future?

Now bring your attention back to your breathing.  Feel the calm that exists throughout you.  You have the path in your mind to your success as a law student and as a lawyer.  Return to that image when you need to.  It expresses the open, courageous, generous, and loving servant’s heart of a lawyer.  It represents the source of your power.  It represents your true self.

Gently open your eyes. 

Back to School: Guided Meditation for Law Students

As I noted in an earlier posting, we welcomed our incoming 1L students to the school on Friday.  They are really quite wonderful people.

I taught two sessions of the Introduction to Law course.  I ended both of the sessions with a guided meditation.  I want to acknowledge that my business coach, Christine Kane, introduced me to this meditation.  I'll post the second one tomorrow.

Getting Vertical Meditation

By Christine Kane (as modified by Paula Marie Young)

Close your eyes

Take a deep breath in your own rhythm

Take another breath

This time see if you can inhale on the count of 4 and slowly exhale on the count of 6, using this Yoga breathing technique to calm the parasympathetic nervous system

Continue to breath in this way, and

Slowly bring your attention to your tailbone

Imagine a cord running from it through the floor to the center of the Earth

Imagine it as a gold cord

It’s beautiful and radiant

And, at the end of it hangs a gold brick

That swings gently like a pendulum

This cord and brick connects you to the center of the Earth

It’s an anchor

It grounds you to the weight of the dense center of the Earth

You are settled

Calm

Take another deep breath

Move your attention to the top of your head

Imagine a shaft of bright, white light emanating from the top of your head

This light connects you to the heavens

It connects your own divinity to the heavens

Take another deep breath

So, now in your mind’s eye, you have this golden anchor to the Earth and this divine bright light to the heavens

In between these vertical lines, you are connected by your spine

Sit upright so you can very clearly feel the line from the earth to the heavens through your spine

Take another deep breath

With your eyes still closed

Move your attention to your heart

Again, think of it as a fiery, bright light

That radiates from the heart out into the world

Feel that your heart is open

Courageous

Generous

Loving

This is your true self

This is your source of power

Take another deep breath

Remember that the vertical line you have created between the Earth and the heavens, as it runs through your spine, does not relate to the horizontal world of cell phones, and text messages, and emails, and Facebook postings, and YouTube videos, and Netflix programming, or the demands on your time of your studies, work, family, or lovers. 

When that horizontal world begins to overwhelm you, remember that you can tap the source of your true self and your power by envisioning that vertical line. 

Gently open your eyes.