Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 43: Judge Jeremy Fogel, Using Mindfulness on the Bench

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

About 20 years ago, Judge Jeremy Fogel was serving as a superior court judge in California. But when he felt that it was causing him a lot of stress, he started looking for a way to center himself, and found meditation and yoga. Shortly after he started practicing, he was nominated to become a federal judge and said meditation became a refuge for him. Today, Judge Fogel continues to practice regularly and touts mindfulness as a powerful tool judges can use to help with their decision-making. He is currently serving as the director of the Federal Judicial Center. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

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Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things. And maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. I suspect that most of us spend very little time thinking about the emotional lives of judges. Even when we see them on TV, they're these kind of remote figures

sitting up on this elevated platform wearing robes, maybe wear-aware when judge Judy's in a bad mood, but they of course do have emotional lives and they're making incredibly important decisions. And I heard recently that there's a little bit of a movement in the Judiciary to adopt mindfulness. And one of the guys who's kind of at the forefront of that is Jeremy Fogel, who's a senior United States

district judge in the Northern District of California, who's currently serving as the director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C., which is an education wing of the Judiciary. They basically do education for judges. And he's a meditator and he's trying to get other judges to do it. And so I give you Jeremy Fogel. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I always ask everybody the same first question, which is, how and why did you start meditating?

Well, it was about 20 years ago. I think it was just my wife and I were both interested in developing more ways of of centering ourselves and making our lives more reflective. And so we actually got involved in mindfulness meditation and in yoga right about the same time we took some classes. So it didn't have anything to do with being a judge? No. Well, being a judge had a lot to do with do within the sense that I felt that my job put me under a lot of stress and that it required a lot of complex decision-making. And I was looking for a way of getting some space and centering myself. And I had studied,

actually, I had studied meditation in a different context. I was a religion, religious studies major in college. I was really interested in those subjects. I studied Eastern religion. So I was aware of, Zana was aware of meditations in that context, but I'd never done it. I mean, it wasn't a practice that I had. But the idea of having a practice that kind of gave me a way of getting space was something I sort of intuitively made sense to me.

So it was something that when we kind of decided together to do this, it was with some enthusiasm. And yoga really has, which I've also done pretty much since then, has had the same effect. And I've had chosen, I like Yenio, I like the restorative reflective, and not so much the athletic stuff and more the opportunity to really use it

for deep relaxation. So I took a mindfulness meditation class with the John Capitzin eight week program, thought it was great and continued doing it. It was just something that made sense. It came pretty naturally and has never have stopped. I mean, I think in terms of my consistency, that's really very depending on what else has been going

on in my life, but I've always found some time to meditate. Every day. No, not every day. That's why I say the consistency has been varied. I mean, there have been times where I've meditated every day. There've been times when I've meditated two or three times a week. I think I'm more in that that ladder category now, but that one of the things that's that's happened is that it's less formal and more like I'll find moments in my life,

like I'll be at work and and I'll notice them a little bit off center and I'll close the door to my office and I'll take five minutes. You know that I'm doing more of that rather than having a kind of a structured practice of sitting for a certain number of minutes a day. What do you say I'm feeling off center? What do you mean by that? Well I think one of the benefits of having meditated is that I have a sense of equanimity, I have a sense of where I want to be, I'm present, I'm in the

moment, to a fairly good degree, and there are times when things happen either I'm very tired or there's something that's happened in my life that's upsetting or distracting, and I just notice I'm not feeling that way. I'm not feeling the equanimity. I'm feeling more emotional than I normally do, or I'm feeling more anxious than I usually do. Or something doesn't feel lined up with where I usually am.

I mean, I think that's been one of the effects of having done this for a long time, is I have a place that I am most of the time that feels quite stable and where I'm happy being. And how, back in 1986, how long did it take for you to start feeling more centered to use your work? Oh, quite a while. Quite a while. When I talk to people about meditation now, I see it's very, very slow growth. It's not like you start doing it a week later. Your life is completely different. It's a very gradual process.

And there's a story that I tell when I talk about meditation to people. I think I had done a couple of eight-week classes and I was waiting at a red light near my home and it was a long light, you know, it was a small street leading into a big street and I was looking at the light and I was looking at the light and I said to my wife, I said, you know, that light is really red. You know, there was like some way that I noticed that I was just more aware of the situation

I was in. And I think that's when I started to notice that it was having an impact. But, you know, to really get to this, and I really describe it as a sense of equanimity, that's taken years. And I think it's just the process of constantly coming back to a place where I can feel things very intensely. It's not like I don't feel things, but that they don't stick. That I can just notice that they're there and let them go.

What was your, you said your job at the time was pretty stressful. I know you've kind of switched jobs a little bit, which we'll get into in a second. But your job at the time was you were on the district court in northern Detroit. Actually, it was right before that. Yeah, I was still on the state court. It's called the Superior Court in California. That's the general jurisdiction court for the state. I was doing complex civil cases, and I was also doing some fairly heavy criminal cases. And the state courts do most of the major felonies.

And so I had a number of cases in that job that really were quite demanding, and were emotionally demanding, physically demanding. And then right about that time, actually, right around the time I started doing meditation, I was nominated for the District Court. And that, you know, people followed judicial nominations. They know that it's a stressful process, a lot of politics, and there was then, there is now.

And so the process of being vetted for that position and being having my background check and coming out to DC, going to the Senate hearings and all of that, that was actually quite stressful. In addition to my day job, I had to deal with that. And it was great actually having something that I could use as a refuge from that. So in 1996, as well before, this became a corporate phenomenon, a cultural phenomenon, an athletic phenomenon. You were ahead of the curve here. So did you tell anybody you

worked with that you were doing this thing? I met another judge right around that time who, and I don't even remember how it was that we discovered we were both meditators. And actually she'd been doing it longer than I had. But I've always done a lot of judicial education. I mean, it's how I got to my presence job, which we'll talk about. But I was teaching state judges in California and they were primarily

dealing with judges who were doing family and juvenile cases, which anybody who's been a judge will tell you are probably the hardest cases to do. I mean, you think it would be a murder case or something like that, but they should, the ones that really demand the most of you in terms of emotional intensity and just trying to keep your head, if you get a contested child custody case or you get a juvenile dependency case. And I was teaching a class that was basically about coping strategies. You know, how to do cases like that and maintain your equilibrium, not impose your personal biases on them.

I mean, really try to handle them in a thoughtful way. And so people talked about how hard the cases were, how demanding they were, and who were saying, well, what can you do to deal with that? And they're various ways to reduce stress. And one of the judges who was in the class volunteered that she meditated. And I think it was part of her religious tradition. She was Buddhist, and she was part of her religious practice. But then we talked afterwards, and I said, well, I do that too.

But it wasn't something that went out in broadcast. It was definitely viewed as an alternative kind of practice, alternative way of living. And so how, now obviously you're pretty open about it. Yeah, it's what changed. Well, I think the world changed. I think people, you know, one of the things that I like about mindfulness meditation is that its origins are completely secular, that it was something that was discovered in kind

of helping people deal with chronic pain and not discovered, but the application was for people with chronic pain. And another sort of personal path for me is I used to have every spring I'd get really bad hay fever. I had I had was allergic to various kinds of pollen in the San Francisco Bay area where I lived and you know April and May were just tortured for me and I actually was able to desensitize my self-through meditation. I don't I don't get those allergies anymore. So it's you know it sounds like one of these miraculous things that really wasn't. It was just noticing that there was an emotional component to my allergic reaction and something to do with that and something to do with my, you know, how run down my immune system

was. And so I was able to notice that and then I was able to do things to take care of myself and over time it went away. So I think a lot of people have had experiences like that. I think a lot of people have either been able to deal with chronic pain, and have been able to deal with chronic stress, or various kinds of illnesses. And then there is all of the performance enhancement stuff that's happened, you mentioned in the corporate world and in the military, that people learn that actually centering yourself and calming your mind can make you work more effectively and be able to think more clearly and deal with

stressful tasks more accurately. One of the military folks I've been working with lately is a fire pilot, you know, and she trains people to fly supersonic aircraft, you know, and it's just really interesting to hear her talk about mindfulness because it's like, you know, nothing could be sort of a more immediate thing than having to, you know, navigate at that kind of speed and just having, really having some additional bandwidth, which is one of the things you get from, from meditation, I think, you know, and I think that's what, what's been discovered in the corporate world, you know, and that's why, and in athletics, that's the other I didn't mention that, but I mean, that's the other place where, I mean, there's been several professional sports

teams, successful ones that are where that's part of their trading. So it's been interesting to see that happen. And then there were the New York Knicks, not so successful, but they do meditate. And I was thinking of the Golden State Warriors. Yes, right, right, right. And also the bulls and the lakers who came before

the next kinds of Phil Jackson's career. But first of all, I love the term extra bandwidth if it's really cool. So you went from being a state court to a federal court district judge to now moving you now have moved from Northern California to Washington DC and this actually has a pertinence to meditation that we'll get to but just so that we can follow the the chronology here and so your current job is what? Well, so there's an agency called the Federal Judicial Center, which is actually a statutory

agency was set up by Congress 50 years ago and statutory agency was set up by Congress 50 years ago. And it has two primary purposes. One is to do policy research for the federal judiciary so that we can advise the policymakers, like the Chief Justice and the Judicial Conference of the United States on best practices in how to manage the courts, not what kind of decisions they should make, but how the courts

ought to be set up and managed and how the workload ought to be managed. And then the other major mission is educating all of the people who work in the judicial branch. So it's all of the judges at every level, plus all of the administrative staff, the clerks of court and the probation and pre-trial officers and everybody else who works for the court. So we actually have a fairly large constituency. And I think one way of thinking about the FJC, that's what we're known as, federal judicial center,

is it's kind of like a university within the judiciary, which has the traditional functions of university. We do a lot of research and we do a lot of teaching. And so I was selected to be the director of University, we do a lot of research and we do a lot of teaching. And so I was selected to be the director of that five years ago and that's what caused me to move to DC. And in that role you actually did an interesting thing which was you published, well I'll let you tell. Well so you know I've been the last five years that I've been there, I mean, I've been slowly trying to think

through a modern curriculum for judges. And I think when I talk to members of the public, they usually think, well, you're learning about the law. And actually, that's a relatively small part of what I mean when I talk about a curriculum for judges, because under our system, most of the people who become federal judges are very accomplished lawyers before they become judges and that's kind of how they get to be judges. So they know the law pretty well when they get there and what they need and that respect is updates and if they're new developments they need an opportunity to get that and if

there's an area they didn't get in their practice, then we need to offer that component. But primarily what people need is they need education about how to do the job. That you are in a very different position when you're a judge than you were as a lawyer. You're not an advocate. You have to be a neutral.

You deal with a very wide variety of cases. You might be an expert on environmental law and know nothing about criminal law. You might know something about one particular culture you're own usually, and not anything about somebody else's. There are ways to communicate. How do you write a good opinion? How do you make a good oral ruling so that people not only feel that you've been fair but they

that you feel hurting and understood. So there's a lot of skills that go with the job that people don't necessarily know when they come to the job. And then there are some parts of the job that are that are quite challenging emotionally. Sentencing is the one that people always mention that when you're sentencing people in a criminal case it sometimes can be very heart-wrenching you know when you're sending someone to prison for a long time and you know you see their their family in the courtroom and you realize you're not just punishing somebody for committing a crime but you're also separating them from their family and their spouses or their kids don't necessarily have

any culpability and yet they're suffering too. And you have victims of crime who suffer terribly and you have to deal with their situation. So, you know, there's a lot of emotional stress around sentencing. And so, a lot of what our job is to figure out how to help judges deal with those things. And at some point, after working on this curriculum for a long time, and I've been thinking about this over the years that I've been there, that mindfulness actually has something to contribute

in this area. And so I wrote a very short article about some of the ways that mindfulness could be applied to the work that judges do. And up till now, you might see this at a judge's workshop, it's a health and wellness thing. It's a way of reducing stress, just like running or other kinds of exercise. So there's been some mention of it there, but there hasn't been a lot of attention paid to how mindfulness practice could actually help you

with the job itself. And that's what I wanted to talk about. And you were a little nervous about that. It was definitely nervous about doing it because even though, as you suggested in an earlier question, I mean, mindfulness has become more mainstream. It's not so mainstream in the judiciary, and I've always been a little self-conscious of the fact

that I'm from Northern California, and I was worried that people would stereotype me as being from the land of the counterculture. And I really did not want it to be taught that way. I didn't want it to be perceived that way. It seemed to me that it's a tool, along with all the other tools we try to equip people with. But it's a tool that has some very specific applications to judicial work.

And so what I talked about, the article, were three things. One was that it helps you deal with repetitive tasks in a more thoughtful way. And again, for people who aren't familiar with the courts, one thing, I mean, all judges do certain things over and over again. If you're presiding over a criminal calendar, you'll take a certain number of guilty pleas every week.

If you are a bankruptcy judge, you will have so many dozens of hearings with debtors to confirm their plans every week. If you're a magistrate judge, you'll have bail hearings, many of them in the course of a week. And those functions actually are very, very repetitive. If you've been a judge for a long time, they start to take on a sameness to them. For the people who are in court, however, it may be the only case they have, and maybe the only contact they're ever going

to have with the court, hopefully, if it's a criminal case, it is the only contact they're going to have. And so it's a really big deal to them, but what happens to us with the repetition is it feels very routine. And I think one of the ways mindfulness can really be helpful is sort of the notion that you approach every moment a new. You know, you approach it with a beginner's mind. And that construct, I think, has been very helpful to me. And I think it's very helpful to others too. It's the idea that, you know, I, maybe I've taken,

and I haven't counted how many guilty pleas I've taken, but I've been a judge for 35 years. I've probably taken thousands of guilty pleas, but sort of the notion that this was, this is the first one I've ever taken, you know, kind of thinking about it that way or approaching it that way. And that that not only helps me see more and take in more, you know, can I go back to my red light example?

You know, I'm seeing more of a more texture and more in the whole situation. But what it's communicating to the defendant or to the other people in the courtroom is that I'm really there. And I'm really present that I'm not just sort of processing something. So I think that's one of the ways that practicing mindfulness can help judges do their jobs better. And then another thing, and it's a big deal these days because our country's becoming so much more diverse, is cultural awareness, that it's really easy to, especially if you're under stress and you're really busy, to just assume that when somebody does something it has a particular meaning.

And so the example I give in the article is making eye contact. And I think most of us in the US we kind of think eye contact is a sign that somebody's being truthful with us. I mean, that's sort of a way we're wired to see it that way. Well, I've learned from some of my international work that there are parts of the world where people just don't look at you. You know, looking at you is actually an act of hostility. And you wouldn't do that unless you knew somebody very well.

And so you can't fill in the gaps of culture if somebody doesn't know that there's a cultural difference, but what I think being more mindful allows you to do is not make assumptions about things. You know, that you see somebody relating to you in a particular way, and you don't just assume that what they're doing has a particular meaning, that you have a more non-judgemental approach to the interaction. What about unconscious racial bias? I mean, are there discrepancies here in the way sentences are needed out? Absolutely.

I mean, that's, unconscious racial bias is a huge topic in judicial education. It's a huge topic in the judiciary. And as I've said many times, I don't know that I've ever met a judge who didn't want to be fair. I mean, it's kind of like the, it's a basic job description, you know. But there are ways we can be unfair unconsciously. And it's a hard one to get at because, you know, what do you mean I'm being unfair unconsciously? If I'm trying to be fair and I'm, you know, I'm doing my best to be fair, what do you mean I'm being unfair unconsciously? If I'm trying to be fair and I'm doing my best to be fair, what do you mean I'm not being fair?

So there's a natural defensiveness people feel sometimes. And I think one of the things that slowing down your mind and being more mindful allows you to do is to allow for the possibility that you are looking at the situation through your own lens, which I think in fact we are, but it allows you to do that with less resistance. I guess it just comes with the territory.

You become more mindful. You realize that what I'm seeing, what I think I'm seeing is what I'm seeing. It's not necessarily what the other person is doing or experiencing. So you gain more space. I mean, I need to say here that it doesn't make up for lack of information. In other words, if somebody is from a very different culture from you and you don't know anything about that culture, you could be the world's most mindful person and you still wouldn't know what you don't know about that culture. So I think there is an educational element when you're talking about bias that mindfulness doesn't get at. But I think

it slows you down enough that you can allow for the possibility. One of the things that I really find helpful, there's a book by Daniel Coniman called Thinking Fast and Slow, and he talks about system one, thinking and system two, thinking. And you, system one is your sort of intuitive, reactive way of thinking. It's just, you, your habits of mind. And, and system two, thinking is reflective thinking where you actually think about the data you're taking and then you reflect about it. And what happens particularly when you're in high stress jobs is you almost naturally track into system one and we all do it. And to some extent, we need to do it. I mean, you don't have time

to think about, you know, whether, you know, you're going to get run over by a car across the street. I mean, you see somebody come and get a high rate of speed and you react to that. So our reactions serve a useful function. But sometimes they're wrong. And, you know, when you're in a job like I'm in, and my colleagues are in, where you're making decisions that really have impact on people's lives, slowing down your mind actually, I really believe helps you do your job better. And I think it's true in the area of bias

along with many other things. You just don't react so quickly. You give yourself a little more time to be reflective. And then I think if you add to that, the opportunity to get cross-cultural education, which we're really trying to do as well, just to get people to tell stories, learn more about each other's life story. Then you can combine those things and I think you really can get at racial bias and other kinds of bias, gender bias. It's hard work but I think mindfulness enhances it.

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Yeah, I'll be for you answer that question. I just want to say there's one other point I wanted. There's a third point which is important and I think it's important I make it before I answer your question because I think this is the one that people really relate to, which is the emotional, there's a psychological term for emotional regulation. So you know, somebody does something that upsets you. And so you talk with judges around the world, not just around the country, you talk with judges around the world. Bad lawyers upset us.

Unreasonable parties upset us. Dumb cases upset us. Unreasonable parties upset us. Dumb cases upset us. There are certain pet peeves that I think judges all have. And it's not uncommon that if it gets really bad, you respond to that. You show your emotion. You react. You are cross with somebody. You yell at them. Or you are discurdious to them.

Or you somehow communicate your displeasure in some way. And sometimes that's really not appropriate. I mean, you lose that sense of judicial demeanor that everybody hopes for when they come to court. So one of the arguments that I make in the article, and certainly has been true for me, is that having more bandwidth, as I said earlier, having more space allows me to have more equanimity so I can notice, it's not that I don't get irritated, I do. But I notice that I'm irritated before I express the irritation.

I notice it and I have a little more time to say, OK, you know, this lawyer is starting to make me mad. And then I can say, well, what am I going to do about it? Am I going to ignore it? Am I going to take a recess? Am I going to say something to the lawyer? But if I say something to the lawyer, I want it to be considered and dignified and modulated

and so on. So you have more room to do that, I think, as a result of a mindfulness practice. All right, respond, not react. We talk about it all the time. That's right. That's right. And I might mention, my wife has been a preschool teacher for many years, and she's worked with two-year-olds.

Is that harder or easier than dealing with lawyers. Well, I think it's their similarities. And I don't mean to disrespect either lawyers or two-year-olds, you know. But it's like there are real challenges in working with young children. And I think she would say that she gained a lot more equanimity as well, and just had a lot more patience. you know was able to to just take it as it came and you know I asked a question earlier that we didn't have to set aside because you wanted to list this third thing but so now I'm going to take a further down the tributary. It just

strikes me sitting with you that I don't know that members of the public empathize with or think much about judges. Yes, judge Judy's a huge figure in our culture, whatever. But I don't know like when I'm watching a courtroom drama, the person I'm least drawn to on the frame is the judge. I'm thinking about the lawyer. They tell about the lawyers in the defendant. Oh, that's right. And, you know, in fact, our chief justice once said, you know, the judges are the umpire. No one goes to the game to see the umpire. Right. I think in a trial, you know, that the umpire analogy is actually very good.

I mean, it's a little different for a palatius because they are making legal policy kinds of decisions. But as a trial judge, which I've been my whole career, you really don't want to be the story. But at the same time, you are in a way you're kind of a symbol of a legitimacy of the entire system. This is another thing I've written about. It's a different article.

But we don't have a state religion. We have a very polarized country politically, particularly now, but we have it other times in our history as well. But one thing that people generally accept is the idea of the rule of law. We accept the legitimacy of the courts. When the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court decided who was going to be president, in some countries there would have been a revolution.

But it didn't happen here. There were a lot of people who didn't like the decision, but people accepted the decision. And I think we're very fortunate. And I say this as somebody who's done a lot of international travel, we're very fortunate that our courts are as respected as they are. One of the reasons that the courts are respected is I think we have a very professional judiciary.

I think people really take it seriously. Most of the judges I've had the privilege of working with take the job very seriously. And so we're symbols of the institution. And I think in order to really do that job as well as we can, we need a number of things. I mean, it doesn't hurt to be smart. It doesn't hurt to be efficient. It doesn't hurt to be brave. It doesn't hurt to be compassionate.

But I think having the ability to be brave, it doesn't hurt to be compassionate, but I think having the ability to be self-aware is a very important part of it, too. And I think it's more important now than it's ever been because of the things I was talking about, because of the diversity of society. And in some ways, I think the courts are the glue that holds their society together sometimes. And so judges need to be, they need to be under game. They need to be thoughtful, reflective, as fair as they can be. And I really think mindfulness is a terrific tool.

It's not the only tool, but I think it's a terrific tool, and it's well suited to what we do. So you asked earlier what the reaction has been. Very interesting. I was nervous when I put the article out. And what I found was a lot of people related to it. I got a lot of unsolicited feedback from people and not just people on the coast. I mean, I got emails from people in Alabama and Indiana and places like that. I mean, there was just sort of the sense of a lot of people around the country either having a practice

or being interested in it and feeling something like that was something that would enhance their lives. So I just this summer spoke to, they're called Circuit Conferences. They're gatherings of the judges and lawyer representatives from the different regions of the country. So we spoke at the ninth circuit and the tenth circuit. Yeah, I think I was supposed to go to one of them.

And I got to visit a gig. Yeah, both of them are in the West. The ninth circuit is the West Coast and some of the inland states and then the 10th Circuit is the rest of the inland mountain states and Kansas and Oklahoma. And so we gave presentations and then at the 10th Circuit we actually had a voluntary practice session the morning following the presentation. And I had no idea what was going to happen. You know, I thought, you know, we might get three people. We got over 30 judges. Wow. Yeah. From from around the 10th Circuit. And and they were really interested. You know, they they they said, yeah, I can see where this would be useful to me or relevant to me. And so we actually did a little practice and we had some discussion afterwards.

And then this summer, another program that I was involved in was in Oregon. It was a national workshop we did for court unit executives. So it's like essentially the clerks of court, people who run the clerks offices and all of the federal courts and the chiefs of the probation and pre-trial offices around the country. And they work with the criminal defendants. And we had about 250 of those folks and did a mindfulness program for them and then had a practice session the next morning and had really good turnout as well. And I think people just, I mean, they find it relatable.

I mean, they say, yeah, I can see where one of the things I struggle with is just having moods, being distracted by emotion or being distracted by worries. As people say, you're either in the past or you're in the future. Your mind is somewhere other than in the present. And that having a greater ability to be in the present really does enable you to do your job better. I think the initial interest people had as it was a health thing.

It was a way of reducing stress, which it's great as a health thing. I mean, I was, how I got into it, but it has professional applications. And I think that's what's interesting. I mean, I think that's what's starting to be seen in a lot of different areas of life. I mean, you mentioned, we talked about them earlier.

I mean, medicine is another one. Yeah. And the legal community law schools are teaching this now. They're a lawyer, websites does mindful lawyer. That's right. I don't know if I'm getting that right. And in fact, I think I saw a website about dedicated to judges who are trying to spread mindfulness within the judiciary. I think I saw a website about dedicated to judges who are trying to spread mindfulness

within the judiciary. I'm not. Yeah, there's a, I think what you're, it's probably one of the ones for the state judiciary's. But yes, I'm aware that there are people doing that. And I would like to actually link up with them. The National Judicial College, which is in some ways an organization is similar to the one that I'm involved with, but it's an educational resource for judges of state courts.

And it's in addition, not all the states have really robust judicial education, just for budget reasons. And so this is a national organization, It's a nonprofit that does judicial education. They're having a mindfulness retreat in, I think in November, four days, that they're getting people to out in Arizona. So unbelievable. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting to see how

it's becoming more mainstream, people are less embarrassed about it, I guess. And I mean, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean, it's one of the things I always tell people is it's a totally natural process. And it's, I mean, some people are interested in whether it's got any religious overtones or not. And so, well, mindfulness, per se, doesn't se doesn't, but you can look at almost any faith tradition and you can find it, you know, that it's part of,

it's part of the practice in many of the great religions. Yes, but you know, there have been some laws that it's filed against school, public schools. Yes. Yes. Filed or threatened the argument being that there are sectarian overtones. What do you have a view on that?

I mean, it's gonna bubble up to the court. Well, I think so, and I think you have to be very clear that that's not what we're talking about. I've seen those cases. In fact, a couple of them were in federal court. They thought, I think that was a yoga class, you know, for in a school and the, the, you know, the salutation at the end of a yoga class, Namaste, was a

religious statement and you could make an argument, you know, because it comes from, from a Hindu tradition. But I think, you know, I think we're being, we're being very careful. I think it's funny how this comes up for me. It's not because to me, it's, it's a completely secular and always has been. But I have colleagues, judges will approach me who they themselves are, you know, they have religious affiliation. It's, well, how is this different from prayer? How is this different from the contemplation that I do as part of my religion? And then we'll talk about it and say, well, actually,

it's quite similar. It has many of the same elements. And so how you choose to do this is you really find your own comfort level. It's not like there's only one way to do it. But the thing that I think all mindfulness practice is having common is the being in the moment and it's fine It's having a practice that gets you in the moment, but you think there's a legally Acceptable constitutionally kosher way to get mindfulness into public schools

I Think so. I mean, I didn't you know, I don't know how a court would view it because it would depend on the particular of what of the program. Of the program. If the programs were correct, you'd think so. Yes, absolutely. Because I think if you do it correctly, it's got nothing to do with religion. I think the problem is that this is one of those areas where people have very strong opinions and very strong emotions. So someone could misread, I've been doing yoga for as long as I've been doing meditation

and has absolutely no religious significance to me at all and never has. But I suppose if somebody wanted to see that in that way, they could make that argument. So I don't mean to minimize the possibility that somebody might see it that way. But I think if you teach mindfulness to a diverse audience in the right way, that there is no reason why it couldn't be part of a curriculum in a public school. So give me a sense of what you're,

I know you say that sometimes you practice every day sometimes you don't, but when you do practice, what do you do? What's the's the what kind of meditation? How long what's the well? It's it's variable I mean my my optimal is 20 minutes I Just use bells Don't use any kind of guidance Like actual bells that you're ringing personally or actually I actually have a recording okay, I have a recording of bells And they're you know, they're kind of the very nice resonant bells that you're ringing personally or I actually have a recording. Okay. I have a recording of bells and they're you know they're kind of the

very nice resonant bells that you know have long lingering sounds. So it gets you do a bell to start to bell to end. Correct. Yeah. Okay. And other than that it's just breathing. So you mean you're watching you're feeling your breath coming in. Yeah. Going out and then when you get distracted you go back. That's correct. And that's it. That's it. So that is the classic MBSR technique. You can just say a word about that because you mentioned this was pioneered by John Capitz. I always forget if he was a micro or molecular biologist from MIT, somebody corrected me on this on Twitter recently and I obviously didn't take it in or wasn't being mindful when I read it.

But anyway, John, a phenomenal guy started basically, he was a Zen practitioner, but I was also studying in the TeraVod and tradition to it, the Insight Meditation Society up in up in Barry, Massachusetts and had a moment of insight while while practicing on retreat that, hey could teach this strip out all the Buddhist lingo and just teach it you know because yeah the Buddhist describe mindfulness well but they don't own it just the same way that algebra was described very well by the Muslims and what Baghdad or whatever back in the day but you know it is a fun universal phenomenon. That's that's exactly right and I I, as I mentioned earlier, I studied Zen, not as a practitioner, but as a student of religion. Many years ago, I actually did take a Zen meditation class.

It was, I think it was eight or 10 weeks. It's very similar. I didn't really know the much difference between that and what I'd been doing. It was interesting to see that. That is, you know, I mean, it's subtle differences, but it wasn't anything real significant. It depends on the form of Zen meditation.

If they're having to do co-ons, it might feel a little different, but Shikantaza, I think that's probably what they taught you, which is just kind of a way. Really? Yeah, I'm not a Zen expert by a long stretch. But so let me ask you one last question, and then beyond this, we can just either let you go

or if you feel like miss something, we can talk about that. How well does mindfulness is all about non-judgmental awareness, you know, seeing what arises in your mind without getting caught up in it, dispassionately, non-judgmentally, right? This is the skill that we can develop.

It's our birthright, but it's a skill that we can hone. How does that jive with your job, which is to judge? To judge, well, it's a great question. You're not the first person who's asked it. I think where I would make the distinction is that the judging of my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own reactions gets in the way of my being able to see the situation as it is. You know, what I'm kind of looking for is clear a view of what I'm being asked to think about as I can possibly get. And I want to get the clutter of my own stuff out of the way.

Once I've done that, I still have a job of trying to analyze what it is I'm seeing, and so will this have any legal significance? Or am I, if I'm evaluating who's telling the truth, you know, or I'm trying to decide whether a situation that I'm being presented with falls under a particular set of case law or something that I have to follow. So I still have to go through an analytical process. And if it's a situation where I'm being asked to exercise some discretion, like I'm trying to decide,

should I give somebody probation or send them to jail? Or should I how long should I send them to jail for, you know, or that kind of thing. I still have to do that. But, but I'm doing, I'm bringing less of my own baggage when I do it. You know, that it, just not to say, I mean, I'm still me, and I still have all of the strengths and weaknesses that I have as a human being, but there's less extraneous clutter. That's the way I would put it. I can look at it as a, wow, this case is really

hard. But let me try to think about this. Let me try to unpack it. I'm just much better able to do that if I'm not dealing with my own My own inner voices, you know, yeah, I mean I that was beautifully articulated And I think it really speaks to one of the fears that people have about meditation Which is that they're gonna be rendered into some lifeless non-judgmental blob They'll be ineffective. They won't have any edge But the point is not so that is not to make you Unable Incapable of making decisions the point is that you can make decisions,

you can have enough non-judgmental awareness of your emotional churn so that you can let it go when you come to make it decisions. Precisely. And I care I concerted it in that way before I'd ever done it. I mean, I remember thinking about it when I was college student,

because I was studying this stuff. And I said, you know, you can meditate, and you can be all, you know, blissed out and everything. But I mean, you know, what happens when, you know, there's an injustice going on in the world, or what happens when there's a situation that requires you to deal with it.

I mean, you need to be, you need to engage. You need to do something. And I think that was a caricature. That was a mistake on my part in how I thought about it. That it isn't about, I mean, some people want to go sit on a mountain top and then bliss out for weeks at a time. I love to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I'd like to do that too, but I'd like to do that by choice rather than that sort of being everything. I think, you know, I have two children. I mean, being a dad, you know, being a spouse, being a judge, being a grandfather. Grandfather. You know, all of that, the more presence I have, the more I can give of myself for those things. And, you know, there's still plenty of emotions, but it's, I think the idea that you can decide that you have some consciousness about it,

and you can think about how you want to express the feelings that you're having. Instead of it just being whatever imprint you have from your childhood or the promise that you had in your life, I mean, I think that's an important difference. It's an important kind of space you get from this. And so I think the idea that you're disconnected and detached is a caricature. I don't think it's true. Great. You're on or you've done a great job. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask anything you want to talk about? You feel I didn't give you the opportunity?

I think about that for a second. I guess the only thing I want to add and it's just something I'm careful about because it is my job. I have a national constituency. I have varieties of people who have many, many different viewpoints and many, many different jobs that they do and a wide variety of people that I serve. I always talk about these things as being a tool and a tool kit.

That it's not that everybody has to do APRC, that people come to different things at different points in their lives. I mean, sometimes people come to completely different things and other people, but I feel as an educator that it's very useful to put this tool out there, that it's something that can help people in the judiciary be better at what they do. If people choose not to do it, if people choose to do something else, if people choose to do nothing, that's their decision, that's something that I respect. And I think that's, I just wouldn't want anyone to have the impression that somehow there's

a intent here to spread gospel to people. Right. I just wouldn't want anyone to have the impression that somehow there's a, you know, intent here to spread gospel to people because I just don't, I don't think that's appropriate and I also don't think that's what we're doing. Well, you're on a podcast called 10% Happier, so we don't believe in silver bullets here. And you know, I mean, I think you stated well that this is a practice that is simple, secular, largely scientifically validated. It's not gonna solve all of your problems. But it's right there and available to you

and you could, it's worth considering, is I think I took that to be your message having read your article. Absolutely, no, I think you took the message correctly. That was exactly what the message was. So, I just wanna thank you very much. Thank you, I really appreciate as a pleasure to meet you.

Thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. Good luck getting this out there to some of the most important people in our society. Thank you. Okay, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I also wanna thank Hardly, the people who produced this

podcast and really do pretty much all the work. Lauren, Efron, Josh Koham, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery

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