SPORTS
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 27
Blue jays
a great start but it’s not as good as incorporating
life skills education into law school curricula itself.
Some schools, such as the Schulich School of Law at
Dalhousie University, have begun to include full term
“Mindfulness in Law” course offerings. This too is
inspiring, but mindfulness-based stress reduction
(MBSR) differs from the life skills education proposed
in this essay in two ways.
First, MBSR involves selective applications of focus
to bring users into the present moment, through body
scan techniques for instance, rather than freeing the
broader awareness in which all things are apparent,
for what they really are, in real time. The subtle
difference between them is this: in MBSR participants
learn to ride the wave of an ever-changing reality
without being attached to the changes, whereas in
this transpersonal approach, they learn to identify
with a changeless center amidst our ever-changing
reality, while also developing the ability to recover
from life’s ups and downs and the wisdom to know
when and how to intervene therein. In other words,
MBSR is but one facet of right brain education. While
its impact has been profound, the true work of
transformation is even more so. Law students, our
clients, and societies deserve nothing else.
Paramedics, firefighters, and nursing students
across the province seem to agree. Members from each
group are participating in a professional development
initiative offered by Fodor, in partnership with
universities and teaching hospitals across South
Ontario. Fodor’s facilitators guide participants
through a self-realization process — i ncreasingly at
the undergraduate level and for academic credit. The
program has 4 pillars: self-acceptance, self-care, selfresponsibility, and self-change.
Law schools should draw inspiration from such
projects and from administrators who’ve dared to
re-conceptualize patient centered care as a process
that begins with provider centered growth.
» continued from page 17
A Way Forward
Lessons in quieting the mind, deep reflection, and
being accountable to ourselves, must be explicitly
present in the curriculum, rather than offered as
optional programming for those with time to spare.
What law students need are seminars that engage
their right brain faculties, alongside first year
criminal, property, tort, contract, and constitutional
law. Rather than shortening law school to 2 years, as
some have proposed, let us use the immense time and
money students presently invest in their third year of
school toward a whole brain education.
“It’s an act of rebellion to show up as someone
trying to be whole and I would add, as someone who
believes there is a hidden wholeness beneath the very
evident brokenness of our world.” Parker Palmer
Cynicism is a popular affectation, as is false hope.
Both are emotional responses to the knowledge
that justice, freedom, love, and happiness exist in
the world, but are absent from our own lives. These
responses function as a kind of learned helplessness
that impedes our ability to evolve and innovate.
Realism on the other hand, precludes neither a
heart-swelling belief in how we might live, nor a
heartbreaking understanding of how far away we
are from doing so. It asks only that we hold both
the wholeness and brokenness of the world in our
conscious awareness at the same time.
When we do, it is apparent that we have a choice
between practicing law in ways that amount to
fighting over the broken bits of dying systems, or
creating holistic solutions to complex problems by
drawing on the design thinking necessary to resolve
twenty-first century challenges. Complex problems,
however, tend to have paradoxical solutions. And
living in paradox requires using both sides of our
brain.
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