It’s funny.  I remember drafting some first posts on this blog where alignment was an organizing force for my writing.  To stay focused, I used anatomy drawings I sketched during my yoga teacher training years ago.  I had actually never been able to draw anything in a literal way before that training.  Anything I created artistically tended towards the abstract.  And for those who know me well, this is not surprising.  Yet, the concentration I was able to develop through my yoga teaching course allowed me to explore what it meant to have my body, including my brain, aligned.  Not just my thinking mind.  Not just the physical parts of myself.  But everything.  And amazingly, this allowed me to grow patience.  It allowed me, as I said, to focus.  It allowed me to draw figures realistically, and to express myself in a way that felt balanced (not overly expressionistic, but not frustrated in a sea of technicality).

So I used those drawings I produced in such a balanced state as inspiration in law school.  I remembered what it felt like during yoga teacher training in order to connect with a state of mind/state of being that allowed for both the technical skills to come through and the emotion, the self that needs spaces of freedom in order to create.  I had to find that within myself because it’s not how I was taught to function in school, but I have to say it allowed me to take ownership of my studies in a way that both felt authentic for me and that resulted in grades I could live with (striving for As in everything regardless of how the process of preparing for those As feel has never been something I’ve been willing to accept, that’s just me).

The summer is moving right along and my to-do list is getting longer.  How does that happen?  The more I work, the more there seems to be to do.   

The core of my summer work is preparation for my next stage, starting in January, 2016, the big transition when I will cut my travel to half of what I've been doing.  I will establish a home base and I will be able to finally do some of the projects that have been on a back burner because they're hard to do from the road.  I often get suggestions from you, my dear friends, who think I ought to be doing particular activities. Yes, it would have been nice to accept that invitation from Huffington Post from several years ago.  Yes, focusing on more cross-pollinating of the community would be nice.  Yes, classes on how to be an integrative lawyer would be nice.  Planning a dozen conferences a year from the road is already an impossible task. I have dozens of projects on my to-do list. Though worthy, many projects are more time-consuming than they look and require a level of focus that is beyond me when I am moving from one country to another every week or two.   That is about to change.

We're at a new stage in the movement.  Not surprisingly, you are all ahead of the curve and you've been needing to go to the next level. Thank you for waiting patiently while we've been creating a critical mass of enough lawyers to make that feasible.  Stay tuned for what is next, but here are my interim steps.