By Brian Cox
Legal News
The temperature in the dimly lit windowless room hovers around 80 degrees. It’s warm enough to sweat simply standing still.
But none of the dozen or so students in the yoga studio is motionless as with each breath they move from one asana to another.
“Explore the strength of your arms and the flexibility of your feet,” intones Regina Franco at the front of the room.
Her voice is rhythmic and soothing. She smoothly guides the class up from an arcing pose called “Downward Facing Dog” to a standing stretching pose known as “The Warrior.”
Franco has been teaching yoga for several years, just recently becoming certified after completing 200 hours of intense teacher training in San Francisco. Last year, she opened Serendipity, a yoga studio in Ferndale.
The practice of yoga is a way of life for Franco. But it’s not her only practice.
Her other is family law.
A divorce attorney who earned her juris doctorate from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law four years ago, Franco infuses her law practice with her love of yoga. Yoga, she says, is a natural antidote for the often harried, demanding lives lawyers commonly lead.
“Attorneys have a tendency to forget about themselves, that they need to have time to themselves,” says Franco. “Attorneys can be so busy. Just to have some time to yourself is a huge benefit.”
Immigration attorney Lisa Tehlirian also teaches at Franco’s Ferndale studio. Tehlirian has been studying yoga since she was a teenager and can achieve complex, graceful poses that approach contortionism. She was actually Franco’s first teacher. The women attended UDM together and Tehlirian encouraged several fellow law students to attend yoga classes she was teaching in Royal Oak.
“Yoga will keep you young,” she says.
Tehlirian took up yoga as a young teen. She actually went to law school at the suggestion of her yoga teacher.
“She guided me into the law saying it could be a noble profession,” recalls Tehlirian with a bright smile.
She touts yoga’s ability to lower anxiety and stress levels and provide a needed, rejuvenating break from the hurly-burly of day-to-day life.
“Yoga reminds you to breathe,” says Tehlirian, who at work has a note stuck to her computer monitor that reads “Breathe.”
“You can find some calm despite the chaos surrounding you,” she says.
That promise — and more — has attracted millions of followers to the practice of yoga.
Over the past 10 years, yoga has experienced an explosion in popularity. Once pigeon-holed perhaps as “hippieish” or New Age, yoga now has an estimated following of 16 to 20 million Americans. Its mainstream appeal is attributed to its wide-ranging benefits — benefits that are physical as well as mental. Even spiritual.
“People come to yoga for their own reasons,” says Nick Nahat, an attorney who specializes in labor and employee benefit issues.
He began practicing yoga more than a decade ago after he took a local community class. He’s been teaching it the past three years. Like Franco and Tehlirian, Nahat views yoga as an essential benefit to his law practice.
“By introducing yoga into your everyday life, you’re actually able to extend your practice and your ability to serve your clients,” says Nahat, who earned his juris doctorate from Wayne State University in 1997.
How you “introduce” yoga into your everyday life is up to you.
“It’s your own practice,” says attorney Matt Joswick. “There is no right or wrong way to do it.”
Joswick, a 2003 graduate of Wayne State University Law School, specializes in estate planning and elder law in Sterling Heights. He’s practiced yoga “on and off” for seven years, but began making it part of his routine about three years ago.
“At the end of a long day, yoga is a great way to decompress,” he says. “It’s a great workout, too.”
It’s a common sentiment among lawyers who practice yoga. Even among soon-to-be lawyers.
Twenty-four-year-old Jake Cunningham is a second-year law student at Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s Auburn Hills Campus who works part-time at LuLulemon Athletica, a retailer of yoga wear at Somerset Collection.
“(Yoga) calms me down,” says Cunningham the evening he finished the last of his end-of-semester exams. “It’s a nice break from the day. Lets you not think about anything.”
Yoga invites a practitioner to “not think about anything,” to dissolve his ego, while at the same time heightening his awareness, a state that Franco and Tehlirian describe as “mindful.”
“You learn that whatever I decide to do, there is a ripple effect,” explains Regina. “You’re more mindful of your speech, mindful of your actions.”
“You don’t act blindly,” adds Lisa. “Yoga teaches you to get rid of the ego so you can get to a balanced state of mind.”
A yoga enthusiast since graduating from law school, Carla Perrotta, a Miller Canfield attorney who specializes in drafting and negotiating information technology agreements, knows exactly what the two yoga teachers mean.
“You become aware that each activity you undertake has a consequence,” Perrotta says. “You become more aware.”
Perrotta hasn’t taken a yoga class in years, but she practices at home faithfully for an hour every other day.
“I find if I do it in the morning, I’m much more focused and centered for the day,” she says. “I carve out an hour. It’s my time to focus and center. It really put things in perspective.”
Yoga, she says, makes bad days more manageable and makes her feel better about herself.
“It’s definitely a part of my lifestyle,” she says. “If I don’t do it, I feel a part of me is missing.”
Expecting her second child in March, Perrotta is currently practicing pre-natal yoga, which is less intense and more focused on promoting endurance, meditation, and breathing. The program fosters the idea that your mind can help you through an insurmountable task.
Childbirth, for example.
Perrotta was in labor with her first daughter for 12 hours and believes yoga helped her through the delivery.
“(Yoga) makes you feel powerful,” she says.
Lawyers who practice yoga not surprisingly recommend the practice to their legal colleagues.
“Any preconceived notions you might have, just throw them out the window because you really might like it,” says Perrotta. “I think when people say they don’t have time, it’s definitely an excuse. You have time, it’s just a matter of what you choose to do with it. If you make that choice, you won’t regret it.”
“A lawyer’s mind is constantly racing, and yoga is an opportunity to slow that down,” says Franco. “You have to give it time, but once you do, you’ll never look back.”
In the shadowed studio as the class nears its end, Franco leads the students through a cool down.
“Every day is aggressive on our body, on our mind,” she says softly. “Sometimes we just have to take a break and breathe.”
This story first appeared in the Winter 2010 edition of MOTION Magazine.
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