Mindfulness for Dispute Resolvers: Lawyers, Mediators, Negotiators, and Managers
Leonard Riskin and Rachel Wohl
Dispute resolvers aspire to provide high quality service and to derive satisfaction in the process, but often face barriers to fulfilling such aspirations. One major barrier in our fast-paced lives is stress. Stress often causes us to have trouble concentrating and listening. And stress is associated with a welter of thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and habitual modes of reacting. Mindfulness -- a systematic method of paying attention, deliberately, in the moment, without judgment -- can help us gain awareness of our mental and emotional processes, our habitual reactions, and their manifestations in our mind, body, breath, and voice. Such awareness opens the door to developing ourselves in ways that will enable us to perform better and to get more satisfaction from our work. [For further information, see Riskin, The Contemplative: On the Potential Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation to Law Students, Lawyers, and their Clients, 7 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. 1 (2002) and www.law.missouri.edu/csdr/mindfulness.htm.]
What you will learn
- To better understand and deal with your own reactions to conflict.
- The relationship between internal and external conflict.
- Mindfulness meditation, a highly-refined, systematic method of moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness, which develops both calmness of mind and body and deep insight into an array of mental and physical conditions.
- How to access the power of your breath and yoga stretching to be more grounded in your body.
- How to be "present" in various negotiation and dispute resolution roles and thereby avoid getting lost in habitual and ineffective reactions.
Leonard Riskin is C.A. Leedy Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri – Columbia School of Law. A practicing mediator, he has taught both mindfulness meditation and dispute resolution across North America and in Europe and Asia. . Professor Riskin has a J.D. from N.Y.U. and an LL.M. from Yale. He has published several books and numerous articles on dispute resolution (some dealing with "grids" of mediator orientations – facilitative-evaluative/broad-narrow) and several articles on the potential contributions of mindfulness to law and mediation practice. For further information, see www.law.missouri.edu/mindfulness.htm.
Rachel Wohl is the Executive Director of MACRO, Maryland's nationally acclaimed Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office, and received the Association for Conflict Resolution's 2001 Award for innovation. Rachel was a litigator in private practice for many years and served as one of Maryland's Assistant Attorneys General. She has published articles and led workshops across the country on a variety of legal and dispute resolution topics. Rachel is a mediator and collaborative process designer. She has practiced meditation and breathwork for over a decade.