Pilot Program Results

We recently completed a pilot program at San Mateo Juvenile Hall. All of the eight line staff/guards we have taught meditation have reported significant changes in their stress levels, with 80% practicing on their own.

Inmate students are electing to practice meditation on their own outside class without any prompting! They have improved their conflict resolution ability by 29.8%, decreased their anger/provocation levels by 10.5% and lowered their perceived stress levels by 28%. Approximately 50% of the students we have taught have not returned to juvenile hall or prison.

Learn more about our pilot program from the perspectives of two participating line staff:

Ossie’s Story

You have to change yourself before you can help others. You gotta love yourself before you can love someone else.

These words are from Ossie* (name has been changed), another regular student of my mindfulness/meditation class in San Mateo Juvenile Hall. Ossie is a big guy who wears glasses and has an intensity about him that is more than that of the average teenager. He is very keen on serving others as a meditation teacher someday in the future and, with Samir, has provided excellent ideas for how he and others like him can succeed in life after incarceration. In his own words:

“I’m from San Mateo. I’ve been locked up, in and out of here four times. I’ve committed serious crimes. Every time I’ve come into prison, I’ve learned new things that have helped me mature. I learned how to talk with adults properly and address them differently than I would my peers. The fact that I can have a respectful conversation with you is a big change from how I was in the past.

Meditation has taught me how to relieve my stress, how to release my anger without hurting someone else. It’s made me realize that others I’ve hurt have mothers, brothers and sisters and bleed just like I bleed. We’re all just human beings. I used to be stressed all the time. I wouldn’t show it, but I was always stressed. Lately, my cousin’s death due to gang violence has made me feel pretty down.

Practicing meditation in class and on my own has changed the way I see this place. I don’t see it as a jail anymore, but as a place where I can really see what I want to do in the future. I want to make my family proud, to be a good son to my parents, to go to college. I want my parents to say they love me and really mean it – instead of just saying they love me because they’re afraid it’s the last time they’ll see me. I don’t wanna be another Mexican dead, a menace to society. I plan to get my education. I want to play soccer and work. I want to help you start the Inside-Out Freedom Foundation to help me stay busy with something I care about, which will keep me outta trouble.

I am coming out of juvenile hall as a changed person thanks to meditation. I learned more things than I thought I knew about my own self. The first girl who would have come by me, I would have done what I thought I gotta do to her, but now I am calm about that. I would’ve called my PO (parole officer) constantly before, but I’ve learned how to be patient. If I can’t get out of here, I trust God knows why. There’s a bigger world than I knew – there’s college. And family. I never thought of them much before. Trouble used to be like a soccer game 0 every time I scored a goal, I came back to jail. That’s all I knew – how to gang-bang. Before I would’ve cursed at you. [Ossie was one of my most polite, motivated and respectful students.] I learned how to write job applications. I learned I could do poetry – when I had nothing to do, I thought what the hell? I could write poetry? It’s like discovering a new power, for poems. That’s another way I’ve learned to release my pain – let the paper catch it instead of fighting.

I see other options besides gang-banging now. Before, all I knew was selling drugs, but it didn’t feel right, even then. I thought it felt right, but now I realize there’s more out there. I’ve made it all these years. God wants me to do something. So many situations I’ve been through I could have easily found myself dead by now. The fact I’m still alive means I’m meant to do something great. I can’t change my friends, but I can change myself, do better things for myself, change my mentality. I want to be there for my little brother. I never want to see him here. My sister started kindergarten – I don’t want her to wonder why I’m not there to take her to school. Life’s too short to be in any facility. When I came in, I had family. Now my cousin’s gone. I’ll never see him again. Another cousin passed away recently. I’ll never get to say hi to or show my love for my cousins now due to my mistakes. There will be big rocks to climb, but I’m not going to turn back. I will find a way to make it over and around them.

I would tell other youth here to try meditation. Some people look at me hella dumb about it. Some people, like me, don’t understand what meditation is all about at first and how it can help. But it really can, if you sit down and try it. Cause it really has made a difference in my life. You just gotta be willing to do it. You will learn new things about yourself.”

Samir’s Story

Meet Samir* (name has been changed), a regular student of mine in the long-term Elm 7 unit at San Mateo Juvenile Hall. In his own words:

“My parents and everyone else in my family and community is an alcoholic. So I’ve always been around alcohol, ever since I can remember. I’m an only child and grew up around older kids, which meant I learned how to say the wrong things to the wrong people early on. I used to kick it in places where things go wrong all the time. I’ve seen people die in front of me. “Tell on 3, get out for free” didn’t work for probation in my case.

Meditation helped the difficult days being locked up go by more quickly. For a long time, I avoided dealing with my parents’ divorce. Practicing meditation has helped me go into it. Now whenever I have to deal with my parents fighting when they visit me here, I focus on breathing in the good they have to say and exhale all the negativity that comes up when I have to be around them both together. I used to want to help my parents get back together and thought there was a way I could do that. Now I realize the only thing I can really change is myself.

I often get mad when I think of my grandparents who died, as I wish I could be closer to them. I also get angry when I start to feel that my parents’ divorce was my fault. Instead of going off on someone when I’m mad, I’ve learned how to just be quiet for even five minutes, which puts me in a place where no one else can go but me.

As I’m leaving this place, I don’t want to be a threat to society anymore. I don’t want the police to recognize me as a troublemaker anymore. I can live, go to work and get paid the right way. I can take care of and support myself. I want to help others before I help myself now. My grandparents used to always say “if you do something right for others, you get that back.” I like to help kids. I want to be like your friend Laura, who goes to help others in countries where they don’t have food, clothes and shelter. I love to travel and plan to go to Haiti and New Orleans to volunteer if I have the chance.”

Samir also shared with me how he hopes to one day get married and be a committed, faithful husband. On the topic of love, he wrote this poem:

Love

Love isn’t perfect it isn’t a fairytale or a storybook. And it doesn’t come easy. Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go. It’s a short word easy to spell, difficult to define and impossible to live without. Love is work but most of all love is realizing that every hour, every minute and every second is worth it because you did it together.

Prisoner of My Mind

Help me! Please!

I am trapped.

Imprisoned.

Enslaved.

Inside the iron walls

of hatred

anger

fear

jealousy

and ignorance.

For ignore I have

the goodness that

is there,

seeking to free me.

Freedom is

the gentle fierceness

of a fearless

state of mind.

When the ego dies,

the soul awakens.

In silence and stillness,

the serenity of the soul

survives – and thrives.

 

In the Words of a Grateful Inmate

Daniel* (name has been changed) with head bent, hands in prayer (photo courtesy of MBA Project) 

One day, after co-facilitating a mindfulness/meditation class in San Mateo Juvenile Hall for the Mind-Body Awareness Project, an African-American teenaged boy whose skin always shone so brightly gifted me with a card. The card is blue, depicting the beauty and mystery of undersea life: turtles, fish, dolphins are all swimming about. The color of the coral is so alive I feel it is about to speak.

Inside, is a magazine clipping: THE MAKING OF A LEGEND, it reads boldy, edges all frayed. There is a kind of raw authenticity to the way his letters are all neatly formed, text moving upward, suggesting the dawn of hope and newly perceived possibility. It reads:

“Thank you so much for taking your time,

to give me wisdom and tools that will help me better my life.

I looked forward to meditation every week

I will miss it even though I’m glad to be getting out

I won’t forget what you have taught me.

You always bring a good Presents with you and good spirits.

Thank You. . .”

Sometimes I find myself at my end but

I always remember life goes on.

Some days are harder than others

but I have to remember life goes on.

We all experience hurt and pain,

sorrow and vein but

I must remember life goes on.

Through rainy days and stormy nights,

when I feel lonely and have no hope in sight

I must remember Life goes on

“The Joy That Dwells Far Within Slow Time…”

Was my favorite line from this poem. Slowing down. Quiet. Calm. Patience. Ease, Peace and harmony. These, to me, are the blessings of slow time.

I loved how Chris opened by connecting this poem to the breath. Without breathing, we would all immediately die – and yet we somehow so often take this basic biological function completely for granted while living. The way we breathe is intricately connected with the way we think. Rapid breathing is usually accompanied by quick, unfocused and often angry or fearful thoughts. Slow, deep breathing is associated with serenity of thought.

Fortunately, simply learning to breathe deeply, through the nose, can do wonders for one’s overall mental and physical well-being in any given moment. I remember learning in my yoga teacher training how the emotions are not stored in the mind, as we often think, but rather in the stomach. I notice how people hold in their stomachs when inhaling, and just in general in our culture, though the proper way of breathing is to expand the stomach when inhaling and let it naturally fall when exhaling. This is similar to how so many in the western world in particular hold in and repress so many emotions, whether they be negative or positive.

In my mindfulness/meditation class in juvenile hall, we have an activity that explores this. It’s called “Dropping the Water Line” and uses the metaphor of an iceberg for its expression and execution. Like in the case of Titanic, only 10% of an iceberg is visible on the surface of an ocean. 90% lurks below the surface. Like the iceberg, so much of our emotional states tend to be hidden from the outside world. For inmates, they say that it often feels like the only acceptable emotion they can express is anger. Imagine what it is like to project anger all the time! Fear, vulnerability, confusion, frustration, sadness, despair and even love and happiness are all the emotions my students identify as being hidden in the base of the iceberg.

After facilitating this iceberg exercise this week, I invited my young male students to ‘drop the water line,’ so to speak, and to feel free to express what they were going through on a deeper level. They accepted, and the stories and experiences they shared were truly touching.

One boy talked about the experience of losing his uncle to gang conflict and how sad and angry he felt that he never had a chance to say good-bye or attend his uncle’s funeral.

Another shared about the pressure and responsibility he had to shoulder in looking after his younger siblings when his mother walked out on his alcoholic father. About the pain he feels in not being in contact with them. The fear that they could follow in his footsteps and end up incarcerated as well.

Yet another boy opened up about recently discovering that one of his good friends had been shot in a gang shoot-out. How he wished he could cry about it, but, as the others attested to, the dangers of letting down one’s guard in such a place.

Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project Training Director Vinny Ferraro (photo courtesy of MBA Project and Tricycle Magazine)

All these young men are in San Mateo Juvenile Hall’s long-term unit, with quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding their futures. They are all sentenced, but could, at any time, be transferred to a group home, jail-like camp or even, in the worst cases, to the horrors of adult prison.

I have, up to this point, been co-facilitating these classes with my co-teacher Sam, an amazing person who has himself been incarcerated seven times as a youth! Sam is working on his Ph.D. in psychology and now transitioning into program management for MBA Project, the organization we both teach through. He is thus training me now to become the lead instructor at San Mateo hall.

One obstacle I have occasionally faced in teaching thus far has been talking too much and too fast, in an attempt to keep the youths’ attention (and due to some performance anxiety). In leading this session and last, however, I have found that placing myself, through mindfulness and meditation practice, in ‘slow time,’ has made a world of a difference. I have, as the poem suggests doing, drawn alongside the ‘silence of stone’ and let its calmness completely claim me. I think it is this calmness that enables the youth to open up and trust me with some of their deepest, darkest experiences.

I was really honored last week when the head of the hall joined the class I led. Prior to the session, he had warned me that I couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. By its conclusion, he was ready to come back again, start meditating and offered to support us fully and unconditionally, particularly in dealing with unsupportive staff. He commented on how just closing his eyes to experience the sensation of his breath at the tip of his nostrils enabled him to enter a space of the deepest tranquility he had felt in a long time.

After last week’s class, the youth all shared how they felt much closer to each other, having listened deeply to and holding space for moments of true sharing and vulnerability. We feel closer to one another to the extent that we are willing to put down our masks, it seems. I could relate to much of the sorrow the youth shared, in terms of shouldering adult-like responsibilities as a child and having lost close relatives who I never had a chance to say good-bye to or attend the funerals of. There was equally, however, a feeling of immense joy in being able to connect with each other on a deeper level, much as we feel in coming together at the Wednesday evening meditation sessions. The illusion of isolation and aloneness dissolves and we all indeed, feel and become as one.

This pervasive joy was particularly present after we closed the session by meditating on our breath, feeling our connectedness to ourselves and one another. One boy, who has struggled with a smoking addiction, excitedly likened the experience to that of a ‘natural high!’ I couldn’t agree more.

In Yoga, there is a Sanskrit word, amrita, which translates to the sweetness of the fruits, or nectar, of sadhana (spiritual practice), which my student experienced during this class. This teaching experience was, to me, one of the joy that dwells far within slow time.

 

“Make Me a Channel of Your Peace”

This Wednesday was absolutely magical. I was so happy I could not stop smiling. Even as I was trying to fall asleep, I had to try to signal my cheeks to relax, but they wouldn’t! The atmosphere of the Mehta (metta) family room was truly emanating with tremendous joy, vitality and love. Everyone could feel and connect with it. Quite a few people even commented on it.

Somikbhai set the tone of the evening beautifully by remembering a research advisor of his who had said he needed to do his ‘angel duty’ of the day. The idea of ‘angel duty’ or service rendered at just the right time, in just the right way, really resonated throughout the circle of sharing. Angel duty, as its definition naturally infers, is different for each person. For Somikbhai, his professor did angel duty for him by telling someone else that consulting was not in alignment with Somikbhai’s deepest values (even though Somikbhai had actually been looking for post-doctorate consulting opportunities).

It was a real treat to have Somikbhai’s parents join the circle from India. I really liked how his father shared my favorite passage from the Bhagavad Gita, about how feeling the joys and sorrows of another person as one’s own is to have attained the highest state of Yoga and spiritual union.

That Gita passage also reminds me of Niroga Yoga Institute founder and master teacher BK Bose’s description of a yogi’s life goals as being the twin pursuits of Self-realization and selfless service, and how he himself is a great model of that by teaching yoga in underprivileged schools, hospitals, juvenile halls and rehabilitation centers throughout the Bay Area.

I was really touched when Somikbhai’s father shared with me after the circle how Swami Vivekananda asked his teacher to guide him in attaining asamprajnata samadhi (the highest state of Yoga, in which one leaves beyond all concerns for the material world). His teacher said he would not teach him this. He told Swami Vivekananda that being in that state of samadhi (and thereby being, in a real sense, removed from the world) was not for him. Instead, he told Swami that his real purpose was to liberate others through his very presence.

Somikbhai’s father then went on to share with me how one hour of meditation was enough for me and to not ever wish to go meditate in a Himalayan cave, but to continue to serve people by my presence.

“You see, you are always smiling, which shows that you are a very happy person. Someone can be in the depths of despair, but just by being around you, they will feel uplifted. You have that strength to share your happiness and peace with others through your presence.”

Though I am certainly no saint and not sure if I deserved such high compliments, these very kind sentiments reminded me of what I have heard about St. Francis of Assisi, and how his mere presence used to serve people. Just him being there, even silently, had brought great peace and joy to those blessed to be around him. I loved singing St. Francis’ song “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” during my Catholic high school days at Notre Dame Academy in Toledo, Ohio:

“Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred let me bring your love
Where there is injury, your pardon Lord
And where there is doubt true faith in You
Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is despair in life let me bring hope
Where there is darkness only light
And where there’s sadness ever joy
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul
Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
It is in giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we are born to eternal life”

 

May we all seek to become channels of peace. I always resonated a lot with this notion of how it is in giving to all men that we receive. On the topic of giving and receiving, I am reminded of how Kiran Bedi’s (first woman police officer and warden of Tihar Jail) compassion (the source of her strength and power) was able to transform the formidable hell of Tihar into an ashram (a secluded place for spiritual development). She was determined to provide a healthier environment for her prisoners and to actually treat them as human beings. Even when a severe rainstorm threatened to dismantle the groundbreaking 10-day Vipassana meditation course she conducted for 1,000 prisoners (the documentary “Doing Time, Doing Vipassana” tells this story wonderfully), her compassion enabled all the tents to get re-sown and the course to resume as before.

The stories of the transformations of the prisoners are so remarkable and inspiring. They could go inside themselves (for many, for the very first time) and access self-love as a direct result of their having experienced her great love for them. Many prisoners referred to her as their mother and were devastated when she changed posts as they felt they were losing the only person who ever truly cared about them.

One prisoner in particular, who had shot and murdered three of his enemies in five minutes during a gang shootout in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, actually decided during his first 10-day meditation course to seek forgiveness from the family of one of the men he had killed. This, to me, is so amazing, as it takes so much strength and compassion to forgive someone else, to let go of the pain and suffering they have caused, but I think it requires tremendous humility to be able to ask for forgiveness, as well as the ability to forgive yourself first: another formidable task for most. The documentary shows how the relatives of this man’s enemy came to tie a rakhee (symbol of familial bonding) around his wrist and how the man accordingly looks after these women as though they really are members of his own family.

The power of circles and positive acknowledgment in healing and transformation was another theme throughout the evening. I really enjoyed how Pavidid shared about her experience guiding her younger family members at a retreat given through an amazing organization her family runs (called Aravind Eye Hospitals). She shared how, as one of the oldest members of the younger generation, she felt a responsibility to give advice to help transform the younger people’s weaknesses into strengths. This time, however, she and her husband Viralbhai decided to form circles as part of the retreat, like how we do every Wednesday.

They started the retreat by acknowledging and appreciating each person’s strengths instead of giving advice regarding their weaknesses. After doing this, everyone naturally opened up and shared about their own weaknesses. Pavididi said they knew exactly what their own weaknesses were without needing anyone to point them out and how she could see herself in each one of them and the weaknesses they shared. She reflected on how acknowledgement instead of advice was able to create a powerful and transformational experience for all the participants involved.

I really appreciated how Renudidi shared about how her and her husband did not get along well after entering into their arranged marriage. They went to live in a room owned by an older woman in Berkeley, who was able to show them both what was good in each of them, which thereby helped them see the goodness in one another, which transformed their marriage into a much more loving and harmonious union.

Arati talked about her experience starting a Wednesday-style meditation circle on Sundays at Harvard and how it was so difficult for her to get people to open up and share their reflections. She reached out to Viralbhai for advice and he replied by saying that silence is very powerful. So the next Sunday she decided to leave the circle in silence to warm up the food she had prepared for the meditators and found that they naturally opened up that way.

My co-facilitator and I have a similar experience with our long-term unit in juvenile hall, who can be reluctant to share due to the trauma they are going through of being incarcerated for long periods of time. We hold our circle in silence and often find that this creates space for some of the most profound stories and insights.

I loved how Dinesh Uncle (one of the Wednesday meditation hosts) shared about the power of circles and the inherent trust they provide to share and be whoever we really are. He also talked about how we must be at peace and whole within ourselves (which meditation returns us to), but that to experience joy, we need others. He shared about how Wednesday circles in particular are all about sharing our joy with others and how the joy of service in particular is the greatest we can know while alive. The joy of service is the meaning of life.

I had lunch with a couple amazing counselors for underprivileged, at-risk youth in Richmond, California yesterday. One of them, named Mitch (who frequently posts very thoughtful comments throughout this blog) put it really nicely when he shared how often in life, our greatest pains stem from our relationships, but so, too, do our greatest joys. He reflected on how just one person who loves and accepts someone unconditionally, is attuned to their emotional state and is a stable presence in another’s life can make a world of a difference in the life of another person.

That reminded me of my experience taking a replication training with the world-renownedDelancey Street Foundation, and how a little woman named Mimi’s great compassion for ‘the bottom 1% of society’ (criminals, homeless people, prostitutes and addicts) has transformed and continues to change the lives of so many. I remember meeting a couple of large, well-built African-American men who had previously been on death row and how they shared what an amazing second chance they had been given at life.

“We like to have fun and be crazy here, but when Mimi walks into the room, you won’t even hear a pin drop. We all regard and love her as our mother,” one of them shared.

All this and more makes me so grateful and excited to be able to serve others and hold space for them and their healing, in juvenile halls, prisons and corporations through Inside-Out Freedom Foundation. I am especially looking forward to teaching children methods of peaceful conflict resolution through the practice and application of the teachings of Yoga in their lives.

I think Gandhiji put it best when he shared:

“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to cary on a real ‘war against war,’ we shall have to begin with children. If they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle; we don’t have to pass fruitless, idle resolutions; but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering.”

 

In Response to: ‘Becoming the Change:’ The Practice of Liberation

Hi Ripa,

Thanks for your welcoming response to my comment on your excellent posting. The model of healing from trauma that you presented sounds like it is based on Peter Levine’s work. He calls his approach, in which he trains practitioners, somatic experiencing (SE). I’d like to add a few more reflections to this dialogue, and my focus will be on some of the subtle dynamics of interpersonal influence, as I understand the issue.

In the case of supporting a person’s healing from trauma, the helper needs to be attuned with empathy to the traumatized person’s feelings and to respect that person’s own natural resources for healing. The empathy and respect may communicated verbally, behaviorally, and energetically. The mirror neuron system makes it possible to sense what the other person is feeling, on both sides of the relationship. The helper who is well centered can influence through being present the healing person’s stress response system. The stress response networks in the brain are closely associated and interconnected with the networks that medicate interpersonal relationships. The energetic communication is especially subtle. The human heart has been found to transmit electromagnetic frequencies both within a person and between persons. The beating heart generates two and a half watts of electricity. The resulting electromagnetic wave is “…at an amplitude from 40 to 60 times greater than that of brain waves…” (Pearce, p.56), and the currents radiate from 12 to 15 feet beyond the body, while being strongest within a three-foot radius (Pearce, 2002). The strength of these cardiac waves is approximately a thousand times that of brain waves (Eden, 1998, p. 156). Because of its predominant power, “…the heart tends to pull the brain and other organs into synchronization or ‘entrainment’ with its rhythm…” (Eden, 1998). The heart’s electromagnetic field is configured like a torus that arcs out from and back to its source in the protective thoracic cavity. This torus is organized around a roughly vertical axis that extends through the torso from the perineum to the crown of the cranium (Pearce, p. 57). It has been found that the electromagnetic field generated by the heart of one person can even entrain the brain waves of another (Pearce, 2002, pp. 245-246). Linda Russek, a scientist at the University of Arizona, interviewed–as part of a study conducted with her colleague Gary Schwartz–individual men who had previously rated themselves as having been either well nurtured or not in childhood. Within a brief time, the brain waves, as measured by EEG, of the men who perceived their childhoods as positive became synchronized with Russek’s heart frequencies, as measured by ECG. “The EEG patterns of the subjects with negative childhoods showed a much slower-forming and weaker correspondence to the interviewer, if any at all” (Pearce, p. 246). This research has so many important implications, I believe. Similarly, Schore (2003) has integrated research that shows how areas related to social-emotional functioning in the right hemisphere of an emotionally healthy therapist’s brain unconsciously induce healing structural and functional influences in the right hemisphere of the client’s brain. The heart’s electromagnetic field may be one of the ways these changes are induced since there are unmediated connections between the human heart and the right hemisphere.

These considerations and the research of Russek and Schwartz shine light on one aspect of the tragic limits to the influence of a person rooted in ahimsa. Some people, such as Gandhi’s assassin, are impervious to that influence because they have disorganized attachment systems due to early, pervasive, severe, and enduring traumatic abuse and/or neglect. Their hearts and brains cannot become entrained to the peaceful emanations of the spiritual person who has cultivated ahimsa in his or her heart, mind, and behavior. It is so important, I believe, for humanity to awaken to the need to provide secure attachment to children from the beginning of life so that they can grow into adults who will be caring, altruistic, and nonviolent. Attachment researchers have indeed found that compassionate feelings and altruistic behavior is more likely to be found among securely attached people (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005).

I hope, Ripa, that some of these reflections and references will be of interest to you and other possible readers. I have not had as much time as I would have liked to develop these ideas as fully as possible. References are below my signature.

Namaste,
Mitch

References
Eden, D. (1998). Energy medicine. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P. R. (2005). Attachment security, compassion, and altruism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14 (1), 34-38.

Pearce, J. C. (2002). The biology of transcendence: A blueprint of the human spirit. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.

Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect regulation and the repair of the self. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

 

‘Becoming the Change:’ The Practice of Liberation

Habitual patterns of the mind were a strong theme of the Wednesday meditation session I attended last week. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“Sow a thought and reap an action

Sow an act and reap a habit

Sow a habit and reap a character

Sow a character and reap a destiny.”

The core of the yoga and meditation practices is arguably the work we do to purify and thereby transform what are called samskaras in Sanskrit, or sankaras in Pali (the ancient language of Gautama the Buddha). These samskaras are like habits, in that they constitute the accumulated impressions – scientifically speaking, the neuron patterns – that determine our character, ways of thinking and behaving and overall outlook on and approach to life.

I like Yoga Journal writer and meditation teacher Sally Kempton’s interpretation of samskaras as “some scars.” Kempton describes samskaras as energy patterns in the consciousness, mental grooves that are like rivulets in sand that allow water to run in specific patterns. She often talks about how samskaras create our ‘default’ mental, physical and emotional settings. The thought “I can’t do this” when faced with a new challenge is a negative samskara that can be replaced by the confidence you feel when you finally master something that was initially challenging.

Neurophysiologists who map neural pathways in the brain reveal how every time we react a specfic way, such as by becoming angry, or overeating, we strengthen the power of that behavior pattern. The yogic texts describe the same phenomenon; Master Patanjali (author of the treatise “Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras”) is often referred to as a master psychologist. The way we think, feel, react and behave at any time are due to samskaras, or neural connections that function in our subconscious minds. Once our samskaric pathways are molded in place, most of us run around in them, like mice spinning around endlessly in a wheel, going absolutely nowhere with great fury.

In between the poles of expression and repression, there lies a third option of mere observation. The real work of yoga and meditation, then, is to learn to develop equanimity toward negative samskaras, developing awareness to be able to observe as countless impurities arise in the mind (as thoughts) and in the body (as physical sensations) that will all ultimately pass away. Patience is key in this purification process, as is persistence.

A wakeup call is necessary to ignite this process of transformation. Often, we are not aware of the negative patterns, or wheels we spin around in until a moment of crisis occurs. We have a car accident. A severe health problem. A significant life relationship breaks up. It is difficult to be grateful for life’s challenges, but crisis situations truly provide the opportunity for the deepest healing to take place.

“In yogic lore, the lotus flower is a metaphor for how all past experiences, especially negative ones, can be used as fertile soil for blooming into a more awakened being, capable of giving graciously and profoundly to others.” – Sharon Gannon

Many people wonder how they can change the qualities in themselves that create suffering – anger, hatred, fear, jealousy and all sorts of addictive behaviors. Master Patanjali answers this question in the 21st verse of the first chapter of his Yoga Sutras:

Teevra-Samvegaanam Asana

This literally translates to:

“Liberation comes quickly when the desire for it is intense.”

The great early 20th century Indian spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo said that human aspiration beckons the force of divine grace, which fuels spiritual breakthrough. Grace often either comes within as inspiration or from without as the help and support we receive from others.

The essence of yoga and meditation is really the effort to accumulate as many new positive samskaras as possible to overwhelm and eventually get rid of the old ones. Developing a daily practice of yoga and/or meditation is a great way to build positive samskaras. One of the main benefits of these practices is the heightened level of awareness they develop, which enable us to consciously change our negative ways of thinking and behaving to more positive thoughts and behaviors. Every thought and physical sensation on the body (which are linked, at the deepest level) become opportunities for transformation.

Master Patanjali offers another aphorism for transformation in sutra 33 of the second chapter of his Yoga Sutras:

Vitarka badhane pratipaksha bhavanam,

This translates,

“When negative or harmful thoughts disturb the mind, they can be overcome by constantly thinking of their opposites.”

After practicing thought replacement for a while, every time you experience fear, for example, you will have developed an alternate set of samskaric grooves that will come up with your fear to remind you of more positive ways to address the fear. Over time, this set of grooves will become as strong as your fear and provide more choices about how to respond instead of just blindlyreacting.

I recently attended a very interesting trauma training with the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project, an organization I teach meditation in juvenile hall through. The presenter illustrated the cycle of trauma with a downward-pointing curve. When a person is in homeostasis, the reaction to an external threat is automatic and intelligent. For example, if you see a lion on the horizon, you will turn and move away if you’re far enough, or try to climb up a tree if not.

As a traumatic experience escalates, one moves into the activation stage of trauma, in which he or she makes a ‘flight’ or ‘fight’ decision to react. In severe cases of trauma, at the height of the activation stage, one transitions into ‘freeze’ mode. One training participant pointed out how the word ‘free’ is contained within ‘freeze’ – and frozen people can indeed look as though they are enlightened and liberated!

One can never find freedom until they go through the deactivation stage, however. The presenter shared how physically shaking is a potent way of resolving trauma: it exemplifies the willingness to be vulnerable to one’s own experience and is a neurological way of completing the stress response to return to homeostasis. Not being ‘shaken up,’ then means one has not left freeze mode. Another participant pointed out how so many people remain perpetually in freeze mode. Corporate executives are often as physically stiff as the big prison inmates, as trauma is nothing but compounded stress: a sadly widespread phenomenon in modern times!

The things that are required for deactivation to successfully occur are:

1. Safety (through the presence of someone the traumatized person knows, likes and trusts)
2. Time without stress and
3. Giving one’s body permission to react however it wishes, even if it is uncomfortable.

The more trauma and stress that accumulate in the system, the harder and longer it is for deactivation to occur.

An interesting insight from the training was how the key to the success of yoga in healing trauma was that people counted the seconds they held the postures for. This enabled them to acknowledge the reality of change as the only constant in the practice – as in life. This is very aligned with the wisdom of aniccha, a Pali word that literally means ‘not everlasting’ and symbolizes the cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death through which every living being must pass.

People who become traumatized never escape moments of trauma and stress – that is what it means to be frozen. Yet, change is the very essence and nature of life on earth. Plants, insects, the moon, stars and galaxies are constantly dying and being reborn. Death and birth are an eternal dance – dissolution and creation are a constant reality of the material plane of existence. The more comfortable we can become with the cyclical nature of life, the more fully we are able to live, without holding back or holding onto cravings or aversions. In embracing all that comes our way in this detached manner, we can discover the complete and total freedom (moksha in Sanskrit) that the yogis and sages call Self-realization.

The key to discovering this inner freedom lies in, as Pancho astutely pointed out, the practice of cultivating ahimsa, or compassion. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, chapter two, verse 35 states:

Ahimsa-Pratisthayam Tat-Sannidhau Vaira-Tyagah

This translates:

“When non-violence is firmly established, hostility vanishes in the yogi’s presence.”

Gandhiji is a golden example of a person firmly rooted in nonviolence, who radiated this conviction to others, and continues to do so now after even death. He was so powerful that not even violent thoughts could exist in his presence, as is verified by the many people who report that their lives changed drastically upon catching just a glimpse of Gandhiji. I personally experienced a deep transformation of consciousness when I met a modern hugging saint from Kerala called Ammachi (who many call a modern Gandhiji).

Dinesh Uncle (in whose home the weekly meditation takes place) wisely pointed out how crucial the constant cultivation of consciousness is, as meditation is really just a way of practicing and preparing for the moment of death. So that when it is our time to go, we can transition out of this life cycle with as much compassion and equanimity as possible, to gain upliftment and even final freedom and liberation for our soul. This was Gandiji’s greatest legacy in my eyes: how he was able to fold his hands in a prayer even as he was conscious of the fact that he was about to be assassinated – and actually blessed his murderer. Though this example illustrates the tragic limitations of violence disappearing the presence of someone firmly established in ahimas, it provides incredible inspiration to keep practicing, indeed!

 

The Highest Yoga

I was taking my final exam to qualify as a yoga teacher from the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala, South India. The exam was more or less straightforward, with the exception of one question: “What is the highest yoga?”

The highest yoga? I thought to myself. Well, what are my options? There’s bhakti yoga (yoga of devotion), karma yoga (yoga of selfless service), jnana yoga (yoga of knowledge) and raja yoga (yoga of science)… It’s probably karma yoga, I guessed. The spiritual teachers always emphasize how service is the beginning and the end of the spiritual journey. I thought all the yogas are equal, though! What is this, some kind of trick question?!

Sign at entrance of Sivananda Ashram in Neyyar Dam, Kerala, South India

After some thought, the answer emerged. It was, in fact, posted on the front entrance of the ashram that had struck me upon entering four weeks earlier. “Bear Insult, Bear Injury, Highest Sadhana [spiritual practice]. Bear Insult, Bear Injury, Highest Yoga.”

Bear insult. Bear injury. This expression easily invokes an image of Jesus Christ strapped to a cross at the time of his death. Which makes it feel somehow unattainable. Rather than being a sacrificial practice of martyrs, however, I believe the meaning of this wisdom is best cultivated through the practice and development of patience and compassion in circumstances that are most personally challenging. It is the difficult practice of forgiveness. We no longer have to seek out spiritual teachers, or travel far to be with them, because in this way, we embrace people who challenge us the most as our greatest guides to enlightenment.

For example, many people would not believe that incarcerated youth in juvenile halls (prisons) could be spiritual teachers. They, in fact, can be. Just the other day, I led a mindfulness/meditation class in San Mateo Juvenile Hall with a group of incarcerated teenage boys, something I do every week through the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project. There are many labels society places on this group of people: Delinquents. Good-for-nothings. Threats to society. Criminals. Rascals. Failures. Spiritual teacher is generally not one of them.

What I see in my classes, however, challenges these popular notions. Many of the youth express how difficult it can be to withstand the insults and injuries of the hall guards.

The subject of the abuses of prison guards has been made well-known by Stanford University’s famous prison experiment, in which everyday people were made into pretend prisoners and guards in a makeshift prison in Stanford’s psychology building basement. The guards were only told that they could not strike the prisoners. As the days of the experiment went on, the guards became increasingly aggressive, using humiliating and dehumanizing tactics against the prisoners, to the extent that an outside observer could not distinguish it from a real prison environment.

A documentary film called Quiet Rage graphically illustrates how:

“Exposure to a jail or prison environment for even a few hours is toxic for the human psyche. It is not the conditions of confinement that lead to pathological behavior by prisoners, guards and other staff members, but the confinement itself.”

Violence of all kinds occurs inside the iron gates of prisons worldwide, with juvenile halls being no exception. Arson, rape, bribery, assault and weapon possession are common problems in all jails, amongst prisoners and guards alike.

The guards at San Mateo Juvenile hall often interrupt our class, calling out loudly for the youth to get their medicines and to leave the room as soon as our class sessions conclude. They blast the radio loudly outside our room and often question why we even bother to try teaching meditation to this group of “losers.”

Photo Courtesy of Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project

The fact that I feel challenged by the guards during the very short period of time I have to interact with them every week makes me imagine just how difficult it must be for the youth to have to put up with them day in and day out.

“I was talking to my mom on the phone and the guard just comes and cuts off our conversation, saying I had a 30 second time limit on my phone call and then laughing at me in front of all the other inmates!” exclaimed one youth.

“They treat us like we’re some sort of animals,” expressed another.

Upon further investigation, I learned that one guard in particular actually has charges against him for physical and sexual abuse and harassment of the juvenile hall inmates. He often bribes youth to keep their mouths shut after incidents of abuse, enticing them with anything from candy to special meals to promises to help them get out of the hall that rarely actualize.

One of the topics of discussion in our curriculum is forgiveness. Forgiveness is hard enough for ordinary people. This group, however, has to face the unusual challenge of forgiving opposing gang members who have purposely taken the lives of some of their closest friends and family members. Forgiving parents and caretakers for abandoning them physically and emotionally when they were young. Forgiving police officers for beating them. Forgiving guards for failing to protect them.

We therefore simply present forgiveness as an option that does not condone the actions of the person has injured us. Rather, we share with our students how forgiveness is a choice that, if practiced consistently enough, can free them – and all of us – from the feelings of hatred, anger and revenge that internally incarcerate far more people than are actually behind bars.

The normal, primal reaction to insult and injury is, of course, to simply injure and insult the perpetrator back. Yet, Denmark, another youth in my group, expressed the sentiments of ‘the highest yoga’ that day when he shared how he

“tries to imagine what the guard is going through himself when he yells and abuses us. I try to put myself in his shoes and can sense that he suffers a lot himself if he puts us through so much torture. I try not to add to his suffering by adding insult to his injuries.”

Denmark’s powerful statements reminded me of a Chinese fortune cookie I received years ago when I was confronted with the choice of how to respond to insult and injury in my own life:

“One who hurts another hurts himself the most.”

Denmark continued to talk about how he was able to transform his anger into compassion and empathy through meditation practice and how much easier this has made his time in juvenile hall.

“Not reacting to my impulses gives me choices and the power to decide how I’m going to spend my time up in here.”

Indeed, one of the greatest benefits of meditation practice for me has been this freedom to choose how I act and react to circumstances in my life. This juvenile hall experience is one of many that have made me come to regard my students as true spiritual teachers, in the midst of tapas (the heat of the fire that is the work of spiritual transmutation and true transformation). I continually find myself inspired and amazed at the tenacity and compassion of these young people, who have seen and experienced so much in their lives.

A spiritual figure who embodies the highest yoga in her social transformation work is Ammachi. Guided by the same sort of forgiveness and compassion that enables Denmark to see himself in the eyes of his guard, Ammachi (Kerala, India’s famous “hugging saint”) has led many women to empower themselves in a patriarchal society without the anger that has marked the modern women’s rights movement. I have written more about her in another blog entry.

On a smaller, but important, level, I often have yoga students set an intention at the beginning of class by visualizing a person they are angry with at peace. Forgiveness, after all, is first and foremost, a gift we give to ourselves, to free ourselves from the inner prisons of anger, hatred and fear.

Rather than condoning the actions of those who insult us, forgiveness heals and empowers us from within, enabling us to express ‘the highest yoga’ in a very practical way, each and every day.