Welcome to the online home of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law, an innovative new center at Berkeley Law exploring the benefits of meditation to legal education and law practice.
We are working to build a vibrant community in which students, faculty and staff can integrate the insights of meditation into their work and studies in order to foster a more just, compassionate and reflective legal system. You can find more background on our philosophy and history here.
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Students in Charlie Halpern's class "Effective and Sustainable Law Practice: The Meditative Perspective" practicing Qi Gong beside the law school
Mindfulness Initiative News, March 2013
Recent events
On March 5, Professor john a. powell presented "Mindfulness & Social Justice: Reflections on the Self," a fascinating talk situating mindfulness as a tool for solving the alienation and disconnection at the root of many modern societal problems, particularly racial injustice. You can view the video on YouTube and download Professor powell's presentation here. Click here to purchase his book, Racing To Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other To Build An Inclusive Society.
On February 22 the Mindfulness Initiative hosted a Working Group on Mindfulness & Criminal Justice, featuring a number of leaders in bringing a meditative perspective into criminal justice work. Read our report here. Later in the day, the Mindfulness Initiative screened "Dhamma Brothers: East Meets West in the Deep South" a documentary about meditation programs in an Alabama maximum security prison. Working Group members Sujatha Baliga, David Onek and Jonathan Simon led an engaging discussion after the film (YouTube) with a sizable audience of students and faculty.
Mindfulness Initiative News, February 2013
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Recent events
On Feb. 4, Shauna Shapiro, Ph. D., illuminated the psychology and neuroscience behind meditation and its applicability to law. The Santa Clara University professor presented the Art and Science of Mindfulness in law to a group of law students and professors in a well-received lunchtime talk.
Please click here to view the video on YouTube.
To follow along with the PowerPoint presentation, you can download it here.
Upcoming events
Join us on February 22 at 1:30 p.m. in Room 132 at the law school for a public screening of The Dhamma Brothers, an acclaimed documentary illustrating the power of meditation for men incarcerated in a high-security Alabama prison. For more details click here.
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On March 5, Professor john a. powell, currently the
Executive Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive
Society, will deliver a talk on the intersection of mindfulness and
social justice, "Social Justice, Mindfulness and the Law: Reflections on
'the Self.'" Tirien Steinbach, Executive Director of the East Bay Community Law Center, will provide comments. 12:45-2 pm in Room 240, Boalt Hall. Lunch will be served. RSVP is appreciated at BIML@law.berkeley.edu.
On March 8, the Mindfulness Initiative is proud to co-sponsor a day-long conference in Richmond, CA on Practicing Mindfulness and Compassion in partnership with the Greater Good Science Center and Mindful.org. The event will feature a keynote address by Jon Kabat-Zinn and presentations by Shauna Shapiro, Kristin Neff, Paul Gilbert, and many others. Please visit the Greater Good Science Center's event page to register and learn more. The event will also be webcast for those who cannot attend in person.
Registration for the Spring Berkeley Law meditation retreat (March 16-17) is now open! Click here for more information.
Mindfulness Initiative News, January 2013
Sujatha Baliga and restorative justice featured in the New York Times magazine.
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A recent article in the New York Times magazine examines a restorative justice process facilitated by Sujatha Baliga, a local restorative justice practitioner and friend of the Mindfulness Initiative. Her clients were the Grosmaires, the parents of a young woman shot and killed by her boyfriend. It is believed to be the first case in the U.S. to apply restorative justice to a capital offense.
Announcing our spring calendar! (all events are free and open to the public)
The Mindfulness Initiative Spring Calendar includes a variety of engaging speakers and other events. Please join us!
February 4: The Art and Science of Mindfulness in Law with Shauna Shapiro. Dr. Shapiro, associate professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University and author of The Art and Science of Mindfulness, will offer scientific research and meditative practices for those in the legal profession interested in awakening the mind and opening the heart. Drawing on current research in psychology, medicine and cognitive neuroscience, we will investigate the effects of mindfulness meditation and its potential applications in law. We will explore specific pathways of applying mindfulness personally and professionally to cultivate greater compassion, clarity and well being. This is a brown bag lunch. 12:45-2 pm in Boalt Hall, Room 12.
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February 22: We will host a public screening of The Dhamma Brothers, the acclaimed documentary about vipassana meditation courses in a southern Alabama prison and their profound effect on inmates, their families, guards, and policy-makers. The screening will be followed by a moderated discussion, including comments by a panel of restorative justice and criminal justice experts including Sujatha Baliga, David Onek, and Jonathan Simon. 1:30 p.m., Room 132.
On March 5, Professor john a. powell, currently the Executive Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, will deliver a talk on the intersection of mindfulness and social justice, "Social Justice, Mindfulness and the Law: Reflections on 'the Self.'" 12:45 pm in Room 240, Boalt Hall.
March 16-17, the Mindfulness Initiative and the Berkeley Law Mindfulness Group co-host an overnight retreat for the Berkeley Law community (including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and significant others) at NatureBridge Conference Center, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Please click here for more information.
Mindfulness Initiative News, October 2012
Recent event: Sujatha Baliga on mindfulness and restorative justice
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Restorative justice
expert Sujatha Baliga came to Berkeley Law on Monday, Oct. 22 to present "Law's Middle Way: Mindfulness and Restorative Justice" as part of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice's Ruth Chance Lecture series. Click here to access the video from Sujatha's talk.
In her talk, Baliga addressed the value of mindfulness practice in both her prior work as a criminal defense lawyer and in her current role as the Director of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s Restorative Justice Project. She discussed the parallel paradigm shifts invited by the practices of mindfulness and restorative justice, as well as the place of forgiveness in restorative processes.
More than 70 people turned out for Sujatha's talk, and engaged in a rich dialogue after her prepared remarks. As a reminder to students with a deeper interest in Restorative Justice, you may wish to consider registering for Professor Mary-Louise Frampton Restorative Justice seminar (Law 231.8), which will be offered in Spring 2013.
Introduction to Mindfulness in Law draws 10% of 1L class
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In
its inaugural run, the new four-week, non-credit Introduction to
Mindfulness for 1Ls course designed by the Mindfulness Initiative drew
27 students in two sections, nearly 10% of the incoming class.
In the weekly, two-hour course, Charlie Halpern, criminal law professor Jonathan Simon and Dan Carlin ('13) taught students a foundation of mindfulness techniques and their relevance to law study and law practice. Students maintained a daily meditation practice and were paired with a partner for support and dialogue. The students were highly engaged in the course, which culminated in them drafting a "road map" for how they plan to integrate mindfulness into their law school experience.
The students in the course are also part of an ongoing pilot study, designed by the Mindfulness Initiative's scientific advisor Emiliana Simon-Thomas of the Greater Good Science Center, which will track indicators of focus, awareness, stress, and other traits over the course of the students' law school careers.
Mindfulness Initiative News, September 2012
New Introduction to Mindfulness for 1Ls course
The Mindfulness Initiative is offering a new four-week, non-credit course for 1Ls taught by Charlie Halpern, to help them integrate mindfulness practice into law school for greater focus and effectiveness. We are working with the Greater Good Science Center to conduct a pilot study of the effect of meditation on the students in the class. Click here for an overview of the course and logistics. Email BIML@law.berkeley.edu with any questions.
Google's Meng Makes Gift to Mindfulness Initiative, Joins Advisory Council
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We are pleased to announce that Chade-Meng Tan, a well-known philanthropist, speaker, and Google engineer has made a generous gift of $20,000 to the Mindfulness Initiative and joined the Mindfulness Initiative's Advisory Council. Search Inside Yourself, the seven-week mindfulness course Meng created at Google in collaboration with the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, has trained more than 1,000 Google employees in mindfulness skills. Meng has since launched the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) in order to bring SIY to more companies and organizations around the world.
The Mindfulness Initiative is also excited to be co-sponsoring with the Greater Good Science Center a free talk by Meng on Tuesday, September 18 at the David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley on his new book, "Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Happiness, Success (and World Peace)". Please click here for more details. We encourage you to attend!
Mindfulness Initiative News, July 2012
Highlights of 2011-12
Throughout the year, the Mindfulness Initiative presented speaker events featuring some of the outstanding teachers and scholars in the field, including Jack Kornfield (below, with Tirien Steinbach), Jon Kabat-Zinn, Norman Fischer, Angela Harris, and Tirien Steinbach. All of these events are available in audio, video or both on our Events page.
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Charlie Halpern, Jennifer Edlin and
Jeff Selbin presented to clinical students at the East Bay Community Law
Center on using mindfulness to more effectively work with
traumatized clients and to cope with the emotional stresses of clinical work.
In the spring semester the Mindfulness Initiative, co-sponsoring with the Berkeley Law Mindfulness Group, presented an overnight meditation retreat at Nature Bridge Conference Center in Marin County attended by more than 20 students, faculty and staff. Attendees reported returning rejuvenated and refocused for their work and studies.
Plans for 2012-13
- New mindfulness-based courses: Building on Charlie Halpern's seminar "Effective and Sustainable Law Practice: The Meditative Perspective," the Mindfulness Initiative is coordinating as many as three new courses grounded in mindfulness, including a skills course focused on effective relationships in law practice, a 4-week no-credit introduction to mindfulness in law for 1Ls, and a negotiations course with a prominent mindfulness dimension;
- Meditation space at Boalt: Since the law school lacks a regular meditation space, we have proposed to transform an unused area behind the old library circulation desk into an “Impermanent Meditation Space” (IMS), soliciting designs through a student competition;
- Clinical work: We plan to expand our work with clinical students serving low-income clients, to bring mindfulness into their work in order to build trusting relationships, to manage stress, and to be more effective advocates;
- CLE/CJE programs: We will continue to present mindfulness-based CLE/CJE programs. We will give particular attention to lawyers who are doing social justice, civil rights, and environmental advocacy;
- Law professors’ retreat: We will hold a retreat/workshop in the summer of 2013 for law professors from around the country who have already launched mindfulness-based courses or are considering doing so;
- Law school retreats and weekly meditation: To introduce new members of the community to meditation and support those with an established practice, the Mindfulness Initiative will co-sponsor a retreat each semester, as well as a weekly lunch-time meditation. To receive notices about these and other events, please email boaltmeditation@gmail.com.
Featured media
Lawyer-meditator spotlight: Thelton Henderson
Judge Thelton E. Henderson on his Meditation Practice from Center for Contemplative Mind on Vimeo.
2010 Mindful Lawyer Conference
More than 180 lawyers, law professors, and judges gathered at Berkeley Law in 2010 to discuss the impacts and possibilities of meditation for their work and the legal field. Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley introduced the conference. Audio and video from the event are available free on the Mindful Lawyer Conference website
Dean Christopher Edley opening the Mindful Lawyer Conference