This SXSW panel began with an exercise. Shutoff your phones, plant your feet flat on the floor, loosen up your shoulders, and keep your hands down at your sides, panelist Emily Doskow, a mediator from the San Francisco Bay Area, told the audience. We were about to meditate. For two minutes, the entire room was silent as people kept their attention on breathing in and out. Only occasional sounds would break through the silence—the air conditioning kicking on, a cart with drinks thumping against a wall in a room next door—but not enough to disrupt the calmness of a deep meditation. And perhaps that’s the point—getting to a place where stress and outside noise have little effect if any.

“As attorneys, we are under a lot of stress,” said panelist Judy Tint, a music attorney and college professor at the New York University Music Business program. “We need to focus; we need discipline.” Continue Reading