Friday, July 15, 2011

TEDxBoston - Jenny Phillips - The Only Way Out is In

http://helpmejoseph.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c8ed053ef010536f47765970c-800wi

This is a nice TED talk on using Vipassana training for prison inmates, which is something we should be doing for all inmates. I'd guess that the large majority of inmates ended up in prison because they have little or no skills in self regulation, something that can be remedied with some training in meditation and self-awareness.

This NPR Morning Edition segment looked at a similar program in Alabama.

Convicted murderer Johnny Mack Young in the meditation stance he keeps for nearly 10 hours a day during the 10-day silent meditation course. Officials say the meditation program is reducing violence at Alabama's highest security lockup. "It changed my life," Young says.

"Vipassana means seeing things as they are," says inmate Johnny Mack Young, as he kneels on a blue mat, resting back on a small wooden stool. This is the position he keeps for up to 10 hours a day during the intense silent-meditation course.

"For the first three days, the only thing we do is sit and focus on our breath," Young says. "This is to still the mind and get the mind sharp."

Isolated in the gym, the inmates wake up at 4 a.m. and meditate on and off until 9 p.m. They eat a strict vegetarian diet. They can't smoke or drink coffee. And there is absolutely no conversation — only an internal examination of how the body is reacting.

"You'll start feeling little stuff moving all around on your body," Young says. "Some guys can't handle this; some guys scream."

It's a rude awakening for some prisoners, Vipassana teacher Carl Franz says.

"Everyone's mind is kind of Pandora's box, and when you have 33 rather serious convicts facing their past and their own minds, their memories, their regrets, rough childhood, whatever, their crimes, lots of stuff comes up," Franz says.

For Young, a convicted murderer, that stuff includes his childhood role in the accidental death of his baby sister, the fact that he never mourned his mother's death and his crime — a drug-related murder.

"That's one of the things that tortures me," Young says. "We learn this stuff. We learn it too late in life."

Now, age 61 and likely in the last home he'll know, Young says he just tries to have the highest quality of life he can. He says that prior to taking the meditation course, he was in trouble a lot, fighting and trying to escape.

"It changed my life," he says.

This is pretty cool considering that Alabama is DEEP in the Bible Belt.

TEDxBoston - Jenny Phillips - The Only Way Out is In

"Nobody felt safe; the prisoners weren't safe, the staff weren't safe . . . A radical idea began to spread: maybe meditation could help."

Psychotherapist Jenny Phillips describes how the tranquility of ancient Buddhist meditation at a maximum-security correctional facility helps prisoners emerge from a rigorous Vipassana program with a renewed self-image and a greater sense of personal responsibility.



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