OBA Mindful Lawyer Series PROGRAM | Original Program Date: May 13, 2020        

Mindfulness is the act of paying attention to our present-moment experiences with openness, curiosity and a willingness to be with what is. Meditation is a practice or technique to train and focus our attention and awareness.  Mindful meditation and related exercises can be particularly useful for lawyers to help achieve a sense of mental clarity, stability and emotional calm during times of stress or anxiety, and serve as an antidote to avoidance and reactivity.  We invite you to join one of your fellow lawyers, Ari Kaplan, who will lead us through a 20-minute mindful meditation that you can do from your computer.  Whether you’re new to meditation, or are experienced at practising mindfulness, this session will give you pause to detach from occupying thoughts and recharge your operating system.

PROGRAM SPEAKER

Ari Kaplan, LLM, Q.MED

Ari Kaplan, LLM, Q.MED is a mediator and principal of Kaplan Law in Toronto, dedicated to pension and benefits law and dispute resolution. Ari has been practicing mindfulness meditation for almost a decade and is a student meditation instructor in UC Berkeley’s teacher certification program led by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. Ari is the president of Makom: Creative Downtown Judaism and active in neySHEV (“we SIT”), a meditation circle led by Aviva Chernick. Ari is a founding member of the Family Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario (FDRIO), served as the Attorney General’s appointee to the Board of Trustees of the Law Foundation of Ontario and sat two terms on the board of the Ontario Justice Education Network. He is currently on the board of MAiDHouse, which assists patients eligible for medical assistance in dying.