QiGong Prison Ministry

An Interview with Doug Booth in Seeds of Unfolding

Finding Freedom on the Inside
by Sally Sommer

Doug, how did you get started teaching meditation in the prisons?

I understood the teachings of the Buddha to be directed at the relief of suffering and I saw the prisons as places where suffering is at its worst, perhaps, and wondered if meditation would help. I had read books by Bo Lozoff, whose work in this area for the past 25 or 30 years has been very helpful to inmates. About four years ago I called up the assistant warden and program director of the Santa Fe Penitentiary, south facility, and asked him if he'd like to have a free meditation program. I called it "stress reduction/meditation" to make it more palatable to the mostly Christian administration. He said yes, so

http://www.seedsofunfolding.org/issues/xvuk/features.htm

High stress and high noise levels are not confined to the prisons I teach in.  They seem to be universal problems these days.  I encourage my blog readers to go out and find themselves a good QiGong teacher or tape and experiment with the benefits.  The left side bar is full of links.  A good article to help convince you of the benefits was in Arizona Republic titled  "Peace, quiet pave road to health: noise can take a bigger toll on the body than you think" Dec. 12, 2006 featuring Rev. Deanne Hodgson, RN, an IIQTC graduate of Omega 2006, fellow Tai Chi Chih teacher, and spiritual friend.

See this link --
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/ar...

Curious about the health benefits of the spiritual practice I teach in the
prisons?

Here is a good summary article from MSN:

http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100144066&
GT1=8506

Traveling on my sabbatical has opened up many conversations about the nature of God. So many deeply spiritual people are resistant to what they identify as Christian beliefs. Beliefs they find incompatibly to their sense of compassion and justice, their views of the dignity of the natural world, and their scientific curiosity into the creative nature of the cosmos. They want no part of a religion based on the image of a punitive father, a fixed notion of natural relationships. So they reject "Christian" religion, and struggle without a home for their intuitive knowing of the Holy Mystery.

Christianity is at a pivotal point. We can seek a new way together. There are teachers such as Matthew Fox,President Emeritus, Wisdom University declaring a pathway for Christians choosing a different way.

I invite you to look over his "95 Theses or Articles of Faith for a Christianity for a Third Millennium" and see how this speaks to your condition.


matthew-fox-1.2.doc

Look around where ever you live and it is likely that some group will be offering a QiGong or Tai Chi experience in a local park or community center on April 29th, 2006 at 10 am.  This is World Tai Chi and QiGong Day.  Please join in the fun!

... “ As the planet turns, tens of thousands across hundreds of events in sixty nations will join in as 10 am rolls across the planet time zone by time zone. A Harvard, Yale, MIT study just revealed that “meditation increases brain size” especially in creative centers of the mind. As the moving meditations of tai chi & qigong expand throughout cities worldwide in public places, they expose tens of thousands to the gentle flowing motions of moving meditation, and with the help of global media, this moment of mind expansion is carried into millions of homes. What effect does this blanketing of the world for one day in images of unity, healing, and open heartedness, have on the planet, on humanity? Perhaps it expands the global brain size! And although research hasn’t emerged on this, yet, perhaps it enlarges the planet’s heart size.”  ...

To read the whole essay by Bill Douglas in The Meta Arts:  http://www.themetaarts.com/pages/billdouglas1.html

A deep bow to Bill Douglas who through his publisher just sent my prison classes two cases of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi & Qigong."   a wonderfully easy to read and accessible introduction to QiGong principles and movements.

While your moving send a wave of energy into my students, who will be sending one back to you!

(Advice from some Quaker women volunteers who are old prison hands, to new women volunteers,Quakers and others)

1. Prison is, to you, a foreign country. As in any foreign country, it is wise to be quiet, observe, listen, learn the language and identify the values of the prison culture before advancing too many strong opinions or taking any drastic action.

2. Don’t be afraid to define yourself clearly. You are not required to be all things to all people at all times, nor to live up (or down) to any stereotype (including the one about the sainted Quaker lady). You are entitled, more over, to define for yourself and for others what you choose to be or not to be, do or not to do. This will take some time, but you should be aware of the need to do it, from the beginning of your prison visiting. Even after you have clearly defined yourself, expect to be tested, again and again, in many ways, including sexually, morally, and religiously. Eventually, however, if you are firm in sticking to your definition of yourself, others will adjust to it.

3. Expect to meet many tremendous and valuable people in prison. Expect also to meet some champion manipulators. Do not be surprised if these sometimes turn out to be one and the same person. Manipulation is a form of survival for the powerless (a fact that women,
historically, have had ample cause to know).

4. Especially at first, you will find it helpful, ...

Use the link below to read the full piece.  I highly recommend this to any who are doing prison volunteering or considering it!! I orginally found it as a pdf on the Buddhist Peace Fellowships site (www.bpf.org/html/current_projects/ prison_program/pdfs/QuakerAdvice.pdf) but can't properly give credit the authors. My apologies and gratitude to them.  I have heard now that it comes through AVP materials....

quakeradvice.pdf

This wonderful article about the Buddhist Sanghas at Folsom Prison appeared in our local weekly paper.  It features students that are also in my classes.  In the photo of the men walking, the room in the background with the light is the C Yard chapel room where I teach.  On B Yard, I teach in the main room which is identical to the one shown.  I have written before about helping Helen Hobart out, traveling with her to the Chaplain’s conference and attending the Buddhist Volunteers gatherings.  It is great to have more of the community aware of contemplative efforts and the aspirations of some of the men inside.

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2005-12-15/news2.asp

Next up ... A  special showing of the new Johnny Cash movie and visit from the lead actor.  I hope they get off lockdown.

the-monastery-news-review.2.html

Do you ever wonder about the the value of helping prisoners, as compared to the homeless, troubled teens, or the addicted, or ...

I found this wonderful piece by Buddhist Ven. Chodron on the Value of Prison Work, I hope you’ll take the time to read it if you do.  As we Quakers say...this Friend speaks my mind. there is a great deal of inspiring material on this site.

http://www.thubtenchodron.org/PrisonDharma/the_value_of_prison_work.html

the-value-of-prison-work.2.doc

The Paradox of Freedom: Prison Dharma on the Edge

Published in Spring Wind: Buddhist Cultural Forum Summer 2003

Buddha Dharma is not Buddhist Dharma

by Kobutsu Malone

It's easy to run a meditation group in a prison when one is oblivious to the day-to-day horrors actually taking place. Prisoners are desperate for any outside contact whatsoever, and they'll do whatever they can to foster such contacts, including hiding the conditions they tolerate, for fear of alienating an outside volunteer. It is only after the volunteer reveals themselves as empathetic and trustworthy that they begin to hear about oppressive conditions. Civilian volunteers learn through experience the dualistic, deliberately divisive paradigm that drives the prison: they are either "cops" or "fellow prisoners.
…
Motivation: Here lies a paradox. Only a fully enlightened Buddha experiences pure motivation; even very high bodhisattvas experience motivation tainted by desire to liberate sentient beings. In any case, there are many levels of motivations and reasons for doing prison Dharma work. At first glance, we may appear to have very good intentions. Yet there are other disconscious motivations in place at the outset, such as the validation of one's own practice through "teaching" it to others, the exercise of entitlement in reaching out to prisoners as "lower beings" who need to be brought to a "higher level" (the flowering of arrogance that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to refer to as ego-hood), and the opportunity to play Teacher in a closed environment to a captive audience. Subtle racism and classism may be operating, and these are extremely difficult to see within ourselves. For those who work as Dharma teachers in prisons, accepting and fostering Beginner's Mind is usually a Herculean task
…
… and recognize the prison environment as the bottom-line intersection for all of the failures of our society and all of our personal failures
…
If we work with prisoners long enough, we begin to fathom the depth of the pain they endure; we see and acknowledge the suffering they manifest in response to their pain. We are not so different-in time, we see their situation as intimately intertwined with our own predicament. The scales fall from our eyes . . . Perception sharpens.
…
If prison Dharma is limited to creating sitting groups in prisons, all the while believing that our function is to provide something better to people than what they have-is this not power-over, downright arrogance?
…
…the need is for exceptional teachers-those who are thoroughly open and able to recognize their role as student of those imprisoned, and able to learn from them as much as they may be offering as Dharma teacher.
…
Yes, a couple of hours of quiet zazen is a relief, a respite, an escape from cellblock chaos for the prisoner. These hours are usually all that the volunteers ever see of prison life. They do not have to go back or to deal with the brutality of prison life. Their lives are privileged beyond comprehension, when compared with the lives of those inside. The volunteers are entitled-with their status, they can walk out of the prison at any time. They do not have the daily worries about being taunted, psychologically or physically abused, raped, beaten, gassed, or stabbed. Prisons are hostile environments and volunteers are often either unaware or in denial of this fact. If the volunteer cannot grasp this reality, the ability to be of genuine service to the awakened stated of mind is lost.

Here is a article of Yoga in the Prisons, and a sidebar at the end lists good resources.

magazine-_the_yoga_of_redemption.html