Speaking recently on The Lawyers Weekly Show, she said the first and most important lesson from pole dancing is how powerful both perseverance and consistence reflective practice can be.

“I wasn’t not athletic [as a kid], but I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic in my athletic pursuits either. But, with pole dancing, I realised that it’s never too late to start to work on your fitness, start on working on your flexibility and strength goals that a lot of people, I think, even starting from their 20s start to sort of think, ‘Oh, it’s too late for me’,” she mused.

“There’s a self-belief that pole dancing gives back to you, because – as has been the case with all my students who’ve started pole dancing, they’ve all realised that you can continue to improve. You can continue to work on a goal, fitness goal, and nothing is really impossible as long as you're willing to try.”

Professional benefits for lawyers

The myriad benefits that come from pole dancing are becoming more and more known, Ms Yui said, with professionals such as lawyers particularly recognising the holistic utility in taking up this activity.

“There’s actually a lot of pole dancing lawyers that I would often bump into at court, and I’ve seen them in the studios that I’ve trained at. There’s sort of an underlying understanding [whereby you say] hello but you don’t say anything about it in court,” she described.

It’s almost like a secret club, she agreed, that offers so much for those in law – and not just for female lawyers, she added.

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“A lot of my good friends who have reached high levels in the pole dancing industry are male. There’s a lot of men that are actually dominating the industry competitions at the moment, giving the women run for the money,” she said.

In addition, it is a “very heavily athletic endeavour”, Ms Yui continued, that has unintended flow-on advantages for one’s professional realm.

“It doesn’t look like it, but it is very beneficial to your upper core strength. So, I think in that aspect, it does get your cardio up, it gets your strength up. For your overall physical wellbeing, I think it’s very beneficial as well.”

From observation of her lawyer clients, she reflected that most if not all of them are very adept at mastering the techniques required in pole.

“With pole, there’s obviously the dancing aspect, but there’s also the acrobatic movements, and in that aspect, lawyers are very good at picking up the techniques that underlie them and analysing or using their problem-solving skills developed in their day-to-day professional capacities to master the pole class as well,” she hypothesised.

“They do tend to get quite good at it because they are driven individuals who tend to persevere and reach high levels.”

Wellness benefits for lawyers

The wins from pole aren’t just professional, Ms Yui submitted: it can also do wonders for your health and wellbeing, she said.

“I do think there are many benefits to pole dancing in that first of all, it is quite meditative in that, when you do sort of moves for, if you take a dance class, you really have to focus on those moves and those specific dance moves or strength moves,” she said.

“That, in itself, is beneficial. It just allows professionals to switch off and have an hour or so where they’re concentrating entirely and physically on something else that is completely out of their comfort zone. And I think that would benefit anyone.”

Further to that, it allows one to meaningfully detach from whatever grief might have been experienced on a given day.

“I definitely found – both during law school and during my time actually practicing as a lawyer in the legal profession – pole to be very helpful by being meditative and, yes, you can definitely let go of your daily sort of stresses and anxieties as well.”

How should lawyers view pole dancing?

In the same podcast episode, Ms Yui was asked about perceptions of pole dancing and whether certain pockets of the legal profession might attach stigma or shame to such an activity.

Perhaps pragmatically, she ceded that “I think that is the reality”.

“That’s partially why – when I started pole dancing – I decided to create a stage name Astral Days. There definitely is a stigma, [which may differ depending on] the area of practice in the legal profession. I know a proud human rights lawyer who just attended the Human Rights Council and has returned, and she’s a proud and open pole dancing lawyer. And all her colleagues know about it. Other friends who are in the more perhaps corporate sectors tend to be a bit more sensitive about hiding the fact that they do in fact pole dance,” she said.

“As for myself personally, I’m not entirely sure whether I hid it because of what I expected my firm [to say] but I just assumed the industry itself, starting from when I was a law student, wouldn’t be open to hiring someone that would be so openly, on social media, posting things about their pole dancing hobbies and perhaps revealing more skin and being more open to, not sexualised, but more sensual dancing than what I guess the public norm would be willing to accept.”

But, she added, pole dancing helps persons from all walks of life become more open-minded.

“You meet people of all walks of life who come together to train and work on the same moves, and you get a wider audience of who you interact with, compared to what the legal profession and meeting clients and going to court may allow,” she said.

“And, also, I think, along with the psychological and the physical benefits, I think it also teaches you – as a female, anyway – to embrace your sexuality without shame. That reminder, in a profession such as law, is important for female lawyers or students to also keep in mind. To embrace their sexuality.”

To listen to Jerome’s full conversation with Dianne Yui, click below: