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The Resilient Lawyer podcast is inspired by those in the legal profession living with authenticity and courage. Each week, we share tools and strategies for finding more balance, joy, and satisfaction in your professional and personal life!

You'll meet lawyers, entrepreneurs, mentors and teachers successfully bridging the gap between their personal and professional lives, connecting the dots between their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual selves.

This podcast is about ordinary people making an extraordinary difference.

Sep 11, 2017

In this episode, I interviewed Jack Pringle. Jack Pringle is a partner with Adams and Reese in Columbia, South Carolina, and focuses his practice on privacy, information security, and information governance; administrative and regulatory law; public utilities; land use litigation; and class action litigation. Jack and I discuss the important connection between a healthy mind, spirit, and body and how to achieve a balance in such a turbulent field of work.

Topics covered:

  • How he started and maintained his yoga practice and helped him become better at his career.
  • Understanding the importance of a nimble mind.
  • Defining yoga and how to begin practicing.

You can learn more about Jack at http://www.adamsandreese.com/jack-pringle/

Find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jjpringlesc

And read some of the things he writes at https://pringlepracticeblog.blogspot.com/ or https://medium.com/@jjpringlesc

 

Questions? Comments? Email Jeena! hello@jeenacho.com. You can also connect with Jeena on Twitter: @Jeena_Cho

For more information, visit: jeenacho.com

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Transcript

Jack: In order to be effective, whether it’s oppose and holding oppose or going a little bit farther, it can’t be accomplished by having every muscle in your body being tensed. You’ve got to figure out how to relax.

Intro: Welcome to the Resilient Lawyer Podcast, brought to you by Start Here HQ -- a consulting company that works with lawyers to create a purpose driven and sustainable legal career.

In this podcast, we have meaningful, in-depth conversations with lawyers, entrepreneurs, and change agents. We offer tools and strategies for creating a more joyful and satisfying life.

Now your host, Jeena Cho.

Jeena: Hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Lawyer Podcast. Today, I am so happy to have Jack Pringle back on the show.

For those listeners that’s been listening to this podcast for awhile, you’ll remember that I interviewed Jack Pringle while I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon. Jack Pringle is a partner with Adams and Reese in Columbia, South Carolina and he focuses his practice on privacy, information security, and information governance.

But the thing that I really love about Jack is that he has this really interesting balance between his law practice and also, perhaps, what I would consider to be a more of a spiritual practice. He has a regular meditation practice and a yoga practice. In this episode we’ll chat about both and how those practices actually helps him to be a better lawyer.

But before we get to the episode, I want to share a couple of exciting upcoming event. The first is a retreat. I’ve been having this daydream about having a retreat, just for lawyers, where we can truly unplug, restore, and rejuvenate. So I put a link to a quick survey in the show note. If you’re interested in joining me for a weekend retreat, it will be sometime next year -- most likely in the April or May time period -- please complete the survey and I will be in touch with you.

The other program that I have coming up will start on October 9th and this will be a 6-week mindful pause program. This program is really designed to offer you bite-size actionable tips and tools and practices that you can do every single day. So the challenge is to spend 6 minutes really focusing on yourself and your well-being.

The intention behind the 6-week program is that we’re really going to look at our life a little bit more closely, with a little more introspection. And actually think about how to structure it so that we can find more ease and joy and actually have more satisfaction in our life.

Again, if you’re interested in the upcoming retreat or the 6-week mindful pause program, just look in the show notes.
With that, here’s Jack Pringle.

Jeena: Jack, welcome back to the show. I am so happy to have you back.

Jack: It is my pleasure to be back talking to you, Jeena.

Jeena: I think it was just about 2 years ago when we first met each other at the World Domination Summit.

Jack: That’s exactly right. As I’ve described that experience, and no disrespect to the conference and its organizers -- it’s interesting name, great experience because that name was off-putting to some when they heard it. I can’t believe it’s been 2 years.

Jeena: I know, yeah.

For the listeners, you can go back to episode #21. It was released on July 24, 2015. So it’s really fun to have you back on the show. Of course we’ve stayed in touch through all the various social media and we even got to do a presentation together for the Canadian Bar Association so that was really interesting.

Jack: That was and that was about a year ago. And then, of course, you were kind enough to come and speak to a overflow room at the South Carolina Bar Convention in Greenville earlier this year. That was tremendously well-received and I was proud to mention to everybody that I knew you before you got all famous.

Jeena: Maybe for those listeners who didn’t hear the first episode, you can just give us a little bit of an introduction to who you are and what you do.

Jack: Sure.

Well, I am a partner with the firm of Adams and Reese LLP and I’m located in Columbia, South Carolina. Our firm is located throughout the southeast, generally speaking, plus Washington DC. My practice day-to-day, in large part, is information technology and information governance which includes a fair bit of privacy and information security. I also do what can be best characterized as a lot of regulatory law.

And, as we’ll talk about, I’ve had the benefit of having a pretty consistent yoga and mindfulness practice for a number of years which, as we’ll also discuss, has been pretty helpful in my law practice day-to-day.

Jeena: Let’s just jump right in and talk about yoga. How did you start your journey to practicing yoga? How long have you been practicing it and why did you get started?

Jack: Well, oddly enough, after I graduated from college in 1990 -- which, I guess, is really beginning to date me -- I moved up to Washington DC to look for a job on Capitol Hill or in government affairs. A number of my friends were moving up there with me. As a lot of people were in that timeframe, I was pretty, pretty anxious and pretty much in my head worried about getting a job, not so happy to be out of college, and thrown in to the world.

I actually saw in the back of the -- what was then the Capitol Hill paper/newspaper called Roll Call, there was an ad asking if I was stressed or anxious or wanted to try something that might help deal with day-to-day stresses and anxieties. It was a insight mindfulness class that was taught in Northern Virginia by someone named Tara Brock who went on to, and has gone on, to have quite an active and notable practice.

It was, at that point, that I had the opportunity to begin the movement of yoga and service, at that time, of actually trying to do vipassana insight meditation to use some movement in order to help me and others in the class sit for long periods of time. And to practice the mindfulness and focus practices that now seem to have come into the culture a little bit more fully.

That was, and ever since then, and it sort of waxed and waned at times, law school, professionally and with children. But have developed a fairly regular practice that combines some amount of yoga along with sitting, trying to sit still for a certain amount of time every morning. Again, it hasn’t been… certainly hasn’t been consistent and unbroken since 1990 or 1991 but at least, as of right now, it’s become a pretty regular part of my routine.

Jeena: I think that’s such an interesting point that yoga isn’t or wasn’t started as sort of an aerobics or an exercise practice that really where yoga stems from is to actually ready the body so that we can sit and meditate.

Jack: Absolutely.

I come off sounding like a scold when I mention that from time to time because someone will tell me these things are all true and are all reasons to do yoga by themselves but they’ll say, “Wow, I’m so relaxed” or, “It makes me feel so flexible” or, “I feel three-quarters of an inch taller” or, “It really helped me deal with some anxiety.” I then respond and say, “Well, it really makes sense to do it as a prelude or as preparation for sitting still.”

Because I remember when I started sitting and as with Tara’s classes and things, there were actually sittings that took place for… sometimes even several hours at a time. I remember, in that timeframe being so painful to -- it’s still even for a few minutes -- and recognizing the benefits of some of those postures and practices and service of being able to sit still or still enough in order to start to try some of those mindfulness practices was really helpful and, without being too clichéd about it, eye-opening or enlightening in terms of…

Because, the truth is, sometimes if your body is too rigid and if you’re holding too much pain, it can be a very, very hard row to hoe to ask somebody “Well, just sit still.” That can be too difficult, in some instances, and so it’s another one of these wonderful paradoxes about doing some movement in order to be able to sit still. But it’s pretty profound.

Jeena: What does your day-to-day or, let’s say, an average week of yoga practice look like for you?

Jack: Well, sometimes it involves actually going to a studio, City Yoga, here in Columbia, Stacy Millner-Collins’ studio. But, I guess, ever since children came along and professional obligations become more and more prevalent, I’ve developed a daily practice on my own that involves waking up and having some coffee and then really doing a series of poses or series of movements not set amount of time. And then followed by, actually sitting using, say, headspace or sometimes just my own stopwatch to try to be still and then you use any number of those types of sitting techniques whether it’s counting the breath, or visualizing, or just letting the mind wonder.

Jeena: How does yoga help you to be a better lawyer? Does it help you be a better lawyer?

Jack: Well, I think it certainly does. Purely on the physical plain, I think it’s being shown over and over again that regular movement and, specifically in yoga, being able to sort of be a little bit of a student of your own body is extraordinarily helpful in managing the aches and pains and difficulties that tend to happen as one agent. Or, frankly, just as one as you exist.

Jeena: Yeah.

Jack: Learning to notice where you’re holding tension and, as you’re aware, there’s a fair amount of tension that can exist and build up in the law practice or in any profession where there are high steaks, ore there are raw emotions, or there are deadlines. In the first instance, learning to recognize that and a way to deal with it; to be able to, frankly, know where your core is and know how you’re moving. The way you can hold yourself and stand and sit, move in order to kind of minimize the stresses that inevitably come.

In terms of the mind and the thinking, you and I have talked about this before, the ability to see, or to get a little bit of a sense when you’re being set off, or when you’re becoming distressed, or when things aren’t going well and to use the breath as an anchor. Something you can just come back to notice that you’re getting a little bit upset or you’re getting distracted. Or someone or something is throwing you off your game is extraordinarily important and extraordinarily useful in terms of, “Well, what am I doing?” Come back to what’s important here. “What are my themes? What’s going on with me and how can I come back to the focus on where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

That sense of whether you call it insight, or perspective, or context and seeing the way your own brain and mind work, I think is invaluable when you’re dealing with other people, dealing with decision-makers, dealing with the myriad tasks and challenges that you have in a given day. It’s hard to measure it but I would say that just that ability to be somewhat flexible and the way you think and the way you respond is very important in this business.

Jeena: Yeah. Do you think there’s a correlation between having the body be more flexible and the mind becoming more nimble?

Jack: Without question. That’s one of the ways that yoga is such a good metaphor. You can see this in athletics too. I used to play a fair amount of sports and still try to although it looks a little comical as I get grayer and older. But is recognizing that in whether -- and yoga is a good example of this. In order to be effective in whether it’s oppose and holding oppose or going a little bit farther, it can’t be accomplished by having every muscle and your body being tensed. You’ve got to figure out how to relax in order to really focus and extend.

Likewise, I think it’s taking it to the professional realm. I can’t remember if it was David Allan who said that if you want to be effective, truly effective, you have to relax and figuring out how to have a relaxed mind that is receptive and nimble.

The other way that I connected back to technology where I spent a lot of my days and this… I happen to see this. I read Kevin Kelly’s book which is called The Inevitable. It’s about the technologies that are going to change our world. He said that because of the pace of change that we’re all going to have to be and we are going to be perpetual newbies meaning always learning things for the first time. Always having to have the ability and that just… you make a direct line between that and the idea of beginner’s mind. Being able to see things without undo bias, or prejudice, or routine and to see things with a fresh outlook that you’ll need to solve problems when you’re seeing new things for which you don’t necessarily have a framework to evaluate them anyway.

So, I think, it really does help with that idea of a nimble mind that can be, certainly, somewhat fresh, somewhat rested, and somewhat capable of seeing things for the first time or in a way that’s not blundered or too encumbered by other things. Whether those things are the past, or the future, or the stresses of your life, or making America great again, or whatever might be…

Jeena: Sure.

Jack: …on your mind.

Jeena: Yeah, so true.

One of the things that I often hear in yoga classes, or even in a lot of meditation teachers, is that the body has a wisdom and that by practicing yoga we can tap into that wisdom that’s contained in the body. Talk a little bit about that.

Jack: Well, I think that’s absolutely true and it sort of helps me remember or recognize that the… just how connected the mind and the body are. As somebody, and lawyers aren’t the only… or the law isn’t the only profession that has this but you end up spending a lot of time in your head and thinking about a lot of things over and over again. Starting to tap into the body and recognize what the body does in certain situations and what you’re thinking can affect the way you act and the way you hold yourself and vice versa is extraordinarily important.

Your body will often tell you lots of things about the kind of day you’re having. I don’t know whether I’ve told you about this but -- and this is a pretty simple example but it’s telling to me, if I manage to notice, that if I’m on a phone call or if I’m even in a courtroom or in a deposition and I’m standing there with my fist balled up, there’s definitely some wisdom in that, at least in terms of where my body is going or where my mind is telling my body to go. We can have a conversation for days about that chick and egg process but learning to recognize.

Another area where the wisdom of the body or where either body propels mind or vice versa is -- and this is something I’ve been tremendously focused on is trying to become or improve the act of listening; this concept of active listening and actually leaning in.

I’ve spent a good part of my career and I’m a little bit sheepish to admit this but it’s not just my career but in my life I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for somebody to finish their sentence so I could start talking again and talk about how smart I think I am and recognizing that. The body’s a big part of that. Really learning to listen in a way that involves your body, not just turning your ear but leaning your body in. The body language that you bring to listening to somebody and really trying to understand them rather than as just a means to an end is
extraordinarily important.

And particularly important for lawyers, for clients, for people on the jury, for judges. If you’re not listening to questions, if this is just your ball game and you’re trying to get your oral argument out or say what you want to say, you’re going to miss a whole heck of a lot in not understanding your audience or the person who’s going to be deciding your case. Learning to cultivate those practices that give you a little bit more awareness of your surroundings and the context in which you’re presenting or interacting is extraordinarily important.

Jeena: Yeah. I think mindfulness really teaches us to be better listeners. I think lawyers, in particular, do this and we’re trained to do this is that we listen so we can respond or react but we’re not very good at listening just to simply understand or to sort of open ourselves to what the other person is saying. Like kind of absorbing what they’re saying. We’re very hardwired to kind of check out as the other person is speaking, at some point, so we can prepare our response and kind of becoming aware of that, right?

And I think the body is a great place to notice is because the other person is speaking and you can almost feel that tension building up in your body where it’s like “Oh, I want to speak. I have something to add. I want to contribute. I want to interrupt.” And then noticing that and going “Oh, isn’t that interesting?” Rather than just sort of almost automatically reacting to that impulse to interrupt or to interject or just sort of that natural, habitual pattern. How we communicate with each other all the time.

Jack: Sure, without question. Part of that is because I think about it in the appellate argument context. You’ve only got a certain amount of time that you’re before a panel of judges or justices. So part of you wants to make sure that you say as much as you can, that you get through your argument, that you don’t leave anything out.

The other part of that in wanting to respond quickly is that there’s some sense of “Wait a minute, this thought just came in my head and if I don’t respond immediately, I might forget it. This is urgent. This is urgent.” But the problem with that, as we’ve already discussed, if you’re not paying attention to the question that you’re getting and the nuance that might be involved in that and reading the cues of those around you, it really does become all about you.

I hate to break it to everybody but it’s not all about you or me. That’s one of the things, you know, you and I have talked about this before is when you see the way your mind works, you can’t help but be a little bit humble and recognize that you’re not the only game in town and that there’s things to be learned from those around you, especially by listening and taking in a scene or a context.

Jeena: Maybe we can back up a little bit and talk about kind of starting to practice yoga. When they talk about practicing yoga, particularly to people that aren’t familiar with the practice, they immediately think of sort of contorting your body into these impossible positions through doing handstands.

What advice would you offer to someone that’s brand new to yoga and doesn’t have any exposure to it?

Jack: Well, I think the first point, and that is to as what just about anything, is to take it easy and to start fairly slowly and to avoid biting off more than you’re ready to chew. It’s somewhat a can to the kinds of things that happen when you make grand pronouncements about beginning and exercise program or that you’re going to start running again and you remember that you ran regular 15 years ago and you go out and run 4 miles for the first time after you haven’t been running at all. You get too tired and you get too sore.

The good news is there are many different studios and places to practice yoga, offering yoga at all levels. There are also YouTube and all of the other video platforms are full of tutorials. There are different ways to figure out how to dip your toe in if you’re not ready to march down to the studio and stand in front of other people and sit in front of other people. I think it’s important to recognize that you’re always going to stay within yourself and start slowly and figure out how to do it in a way that is comfortable to you and to where you can learn somewhat gradually.

I think the other thing I like to tell people is that when somebody says he or she is good at yoga, that’s a dead giveaway because it’s… Again, there certainly are people who can do amazing poses and do things and showing off but that’s not what it’s about. It’s all about having the opportunity to watch what’s going on in your own body, to learn or to practice that breathing and to see how that works, and then proceed at your own pace.

Having said that, it did take me a long time to stop looking at everybody in the room to see, “Oh gosh, am I doing this as well as or more poorly than someone else?” But I think too easy does it and to find somebody from whom you can take a class, somebody that you trust, and maybe as with lots of these different practices and routines to maybe have a buddy that you go with that will hold you to that decision to go from time to time.

The other piece of advice and, again, without biting off more than you can chew, is to see if you can make something a daily practice. I’ve read or seen that 5 minutes a day, 7 days a week might be more beneficial than one hour on Saturday and not on any other days.

I’m a huge fan of routines and practices, especially in the early morning, and I think there’s something really to be said for doing some movement in the early morning to prepare you for your day; to get your body moving and your brain or mind still. If you can, even for a very short period of time do that, I think it will pay big dividends and enable you to incrementally do more if you want to. There’s always more that you can do if you want to get into serious backbends and acro yoga and bikram and all of these things now. Those are always there. But you need to have those core practices where you get to be a student of your body and to see what you’re capable of.

Jeena: Yeah. I think it’s so important to find a teacher that you resonate with. Also just… maybe finding a teacher whose philosophy sort of aligns with yours.

I love going to yoga classes where the teacher really focuses on Savasana. So it’s not just like 30 seconds of Savasana but we actually have maybe 5 to 10 minutes of like cooling down and just kind of paying attention to the mind. I’m also like just immediately turned off by any teachers that kind of pushes you to get into a form that the body is just not ready for because I think that’s also a way that you can easily injure yourself. Also, it doesn’t make the practice all that fun. Like I had one teacher say “Well, if it’s not hurting, you’re not doing it right.” I was like, “No, this is not for me.

Jack: Right. That makes perfect sense. Again, there are ways -- and it all depends on your preference. There are ways to ease somebody and to pushing out beyond their edge a little bit that isn’t necessarily, you know, no pain, no gain, or if you can walk you can pose. I’m not sure that Vince Lombardi was a yogi and I’m not sure mixing those two things but I agree with you.

Likewise, you have to decide, for whatever reason, in the West not everybody is necessarily comfortable with chanting Sanskrit or those kinds of things although… I mean from my perspective, I don’t see any problem with that at all but you can find your level of that plus the extent to which a teacher is doing some talking or some inspiration throughout the class. That’s, like I said, that’s the good news. There are so many different disciplines and ways of approaching this that you can find your level. But you most certainly should not take your wanna-be-a-hero sort of approach that you might have had in sports into that. Because just like any other physical exercise, there can be injuries if you’re not paying attention and you’re not being guided properly.

Jeena: Yeah.

I want to go back a little bit and talk about the judging mind. So you were just talking about being in the studio and seeing everyone else in the room and comparing your posture, comparing your practice to others. What are some ways of sort of working with a judging mind?

Jack: Well, there’s any number of them. I mean one, of course, is just having the capability to notice when you’re doing it. To see that it’s happening. It certainly doesn’t just happen in a yoga class. For me it happens on the basketball court, it happens in court. Let’s be honest, there’s nobody who’s better looking than I am. But if there were, I might look at somebody in kind of a jealous way.

I think the first is to recognize that it’s happening and to see if you’re rationalizing it in some way. That’s why, going back to the kind of humility that comes with these practices, is that overtime you see that, yes, everybody has silly thoughts and things that would not be so flattering, for example, if they were being shown on a video screen as you were having them. But recognizing it and seeing that, well, everybody has thoughts like that from time to time. Whether you decide at that point, if you’re on the yoga mat to, well, go back to your breath, focus on what you’re doing or just recognize that it’s something that happens from time to time.

And then if you can understand why you might be doing it or that’s what’s so fascinating is to see, well, why is this person setting me off? Or why does this person appear to be pressing my buttons? What is it about that behavior or this context? It doesn’t mean that you don’t respond or it doesn’t have some effect but recognizing it a couple of times when it happens can lead to, I think, a fairly substantial amount of insight into why it happens and what you do to try to just keep moving and recognize that if you just let a little time past that thought, by and large, is going to go its way and then you’ll be thinking about 1975, or 2022, or this brief you have to finish or how you’re going to meet your goal or what you’re going to have for dinner at night.

It’s just one of many thoughts that presumably will come and go and that’s part of this practice is recognizing that that does happen and trying to avoid where you can getting stuck on certain thoughts or ideas or emotions.

Jeena: Yeah. I was a very dedicated bikram yoga student for probably about a year.

Bikram for those folks that aren’t familiar with it, are 26th postures done at a really hot room. I think it’s like 110 degrees with something like 56% humidity. But the interesting thing about doing the 26th posture over and over and over again is that you can really see where you’re at and see the improvement, the incremental improvement overtime.

But what I found to be so fascinating is that there were days where I can just nail the posture. Where I can actually get my head to the ground while I’m sort of standing there with my legs spread apart. And then the next day, I couldn’t nail that posture again. At some point, I realize, “Oh, my body is different every single day.” That was so eye-opening for me and, I think, that’s one of the things that yoga teaches us is to sort of accept ourselves as we are. That’s not an easy practice to do by any measure.

I think that’s such a beautiful practice because it helps us to just see where our body is, where our mind is. I mean there’ll be days where I get on the yoga mat and my mind is going 150 miles per hour -- I have the monkey mind -- and I spend the entire hour thinking about my to-do list, right?

Jack: Oh yeah.

Jeena: There are other days where I get on the mat and it’s just like this blissful experience.
Not to judge those experience, not to say “Oh that one was so great and this one is so terrible” but just kind of using it as like data gathering.

Jack: Right. That’s being in somewhat of the same set of postures or the same situation on a fairly regular basis does give you the insight. What’s a little bit different today? Where am I feeling this a little bit differently? Or why am I having these thoughts over and over again that I can’t necessarily resolve?

You and I have talked about this and we probably talked about it last time but I think it was Kelly McGonigal and the Willpower Instinct who said that that’s one of the main benefits of meditation, oddly enough, paradoxically is that it shows you where your distractions are. It sort of helps you key in on those things, to some extent, that you can’t necessarily resolve or that are cycling over and over and over again in your brain. And maybe you can get a little bit of an objective since of, well, what’s going on here and why is this bothering me so much? Or why is this taking so much of my attention.

Jeena: Jack, you’re telling me that you are now teaching yoga which, I think, is really exciting. Tell me about teaching yoga. What has that experience been like?

Jack: Well, let me frame it a little bit. I’m not doing any formal teaching. I don’t have any teacher certifications other than the numbers of years that I’ve practiced. But I did have the opportunity recently to get ask to lead a class over at the University of South Carolina Law School. We have a brand new law school that has a big courtyard which is a perfect place to practice yoga, with the possible exception of how hot it is here in the summer. I agree to get in the sun which maybe experience a little bit bikramesque for me.

Jeena: Yeah.

Jack: It was a tremendous experience in part because -- and I notice this when… now that I’ve had the opportunity to do some speaking and to teach on certain subjects and other context whether it’s information security or any of the other number topics is the act of teaching is very, very difficult. This is, I guess, is fairly obvious but the act of standing in front of people and actually leading the class as oppose to just going long for the ride as a participant is very challenging but as is often the case, the flip side of that is extraordinarily rewarding because of the opportunity to see, well, how well do I know this and how well can I convey these concepts or these ideas in an hour-long class?

So I came away from it having been really challenged and also feeling some sense of satisfaction as well as that humility of, “Well, I talk a big game but maybe I don’t know this quite as well as I thought I did. Maybe back to the mat, back to the drawing board.” But extraordinary and what I think was a pretty meaningful experience, I hope the folks that were there learned a little something or at least had a decent time. But it’s something that I’m happy to have the opportunity to do and we look forward to doing that in the future.

What was interesting about it, and I told several of the participants this in preparation and the run up to it, I was having the same sort of stress that you’d have before an oral argument like “Oh goodness, I need to make sure I don’t leave this out. Am I going to be able to get it all in there? I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to look silly. Let’s add this or let’s add this.”

Just as with PowerPoint presentations or other oral argument outlines, I realize that I packed way too much information in there that I needed to just take the foot off the gas and recognize that, at some point, you just have to have a little faith in the process.

It was not going to be about spouting off every pithy line I’d ever read about yoga or something like that. But it’s interesting to see that pattern manifesting itself again when you get nervous and when you feel like you’re going to be assessed or judged. It does lead you to the “Well, I want to look good. I want to make sure that I impress” when that’s not really the aim at all.

Jeena: Yeah. So you had an opportunity to practice mindfulness.

Jack: Absolutely and to recognize, “Look, I’m doing it again.”

Jeena: Yeah.

Jack: I’m going overboard with this when I really just need to take a step back and call on the mind and body’s wisdom to just lead. Because, honestly, if I didn’t have that stuff well before the class, it was not like learning it in the last 10 minutes before I talk in the class was going to make the light go on for me or anybody else. It was really eye-opening.

I like having experiences like that that either push me or force me sometimes into situations that are uncomfortable and that are new and give me a chance to take that challenge on. I think that’s going to continue to be important for all of us as the world keeps changing and to find ways to get out of our comfort zone and do things that help us grow and learn.

Jeena: Yeah. I think that’s the perfect place to wrap things up.

Jack, thank you so much for joining me. It was so much fun to chat with you and I hope to have you back on the show soon.

Jack: Well, anytime and I really appreciate the opportunity and look forward to seeing you soon.

 

Closing

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