GAGGING THE COOK

WEEK 5: Today Frederiko the cook showed up out of the blue. He was a wave of words in my quiet group....."Well I know all about this, I'm seeing 4 psychologists now, when I have a leave I go to group therapy....."...etc. Every time I'd try to introduce the theme of the day, he would wildly wave his arm with an urgent question...something like, " Well, if you're left handed is it true that you get paralysis on the right side of your body?" I decided to do an excersize on mindfull eating, and had brought them chocolate coated pretzels. I asked them to close their eyes and breathe, and hold the pretzel in their hands, noticing smell, texture, etc, then little by little tasting and breathing and noticing what happens in the mouth when we bite into something. Since the other members had already done the raisin excersize and knew a little about mindfullness, they experimented with the flavour. I had my eyes closed and was instructing how to notice, when I heard a mad gagging sound. Frederiko had gulped the pretzel down, and while breathing proceeded to gag on it..he was turning blue, gulping, coughing, sputtering. My other quieter more compliant students were trying not to laugh....Frederiko tore out of the room doubled over. "I breathe in calm body. I breathe out I smile. I breathe in"....("where in the hell was the prison doctor when you needed him?")... "I breathe out....I smile."

BREAKING THROUGH

WEEK 5: I am starting to feel an easy familiarity with the prison. The TV room is like any living room, men lounging around talking, doing crafts. I lean over the table, watching Alberto make his beautiful owls, made from tiny pieces of folded recycled paper. "When are you going to make me one?" He looks slyly down, and apologizes. "I'm getting out tomorrow." "Oh." I gulp back my disappointment. Somehow I'm not prepared for this. "But won't you miss it here?" One of his grizzled companions turned to me, with a sardonic look on his face and said, "You've got to be kdding us! What do you think, that this is a vacation?" I look guiltily around and realize I have no idea what it's like to be confined. Manuel is in our MINDFULLNESS group, and comes faithfully every day. He always sits politely to my right, staring at the screen of the TV blankly. He is in his late 30´s, has never uttered a word, and usually it takes a moment for him to register what I say. (I have a thick foriegn accent in Spanish, which I imagine sounds very funny to them....kind of like a funny eastern European Meryl Streep accent.) Today at the end of the group I could tell he was gathering his thoughts. I knew that he liked our mindfull walking meditation, which we often finished with. I waited a moment, and he said, "I had a pass to go home last weekend. I was with my kids, and I realized I wasn't listening to a word they said. I WASN'T PRESENT. I was worrying so much about them in my head, I couldn't even see them in front of me. I had to walk out in the street to clear my thoughts. It upset me. Is that normal?"

JUDGED

WEEK 5: ADOPTING A NON-JUDGEMENTAL ATITUDE. Modesto had his head on the table. "What happened?" "They caught me smoking hash in my bed. The guard walked by and smelled it. I'm afraid they're going to send me to the big house." He says, "I was so nervous I couldn't sleep...I was jumping around like a monkey. It was the only thing I had at the time to help me sleep." I know this group isn't about psychology, but the therapist in me couldn't hold back the interpretation: "It looks to me like you like this place too much...it's as if you enjoy being punished." His face softened, as he started talking about being little and being beaten with a broom handle by his mother. With his handicap (his hands are twisted from his cerebral palsy, his spine severely bent, and his legs are bowed)his family had no choice but to throw him out in the animal pen and make him live with the goats, beating him daily to "get the devil off of him." I choked back the sharp rush of emotions, trying to put this in perspective with my world view. Looking around the group of 10 men, there was not a dry eye in the house. I think it was the first time I've been in a group of men who were all crying. Not the sobbing kind of crying, but each one there, present, looking deeply at Modesto, and softly feeling their own sadness and their own losses. We ended the session with a walking meditation, step one, I breathe in, step 2 I accept this moment, step 3, I breathe in, step 4, no judgement.

BREAKING OUT

WEEK 4: HOW TO RESPOND VS. REACT TO STRESS. When I walked into the flourescent lighted TV room Modesto was singing flamenco at the top of his lungs. He looked at me and giggled. I was growing quite fond of him. He started chattering so fast that I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Several times I had to ask him to shut it or leave the classroom. He drank a coke, and proceeded to hit the ceiling, stammering and laughing and flapping his hands around. I raised my voice sternly, telling him to go calm himself down and come back when he had a little self control. The pedantic sound of my voice (it was like my third grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson's, terrible, shrill, slightly out of control voice) echoed down the hall. I expected a guard to break in. The 10 prisoners dropped their faces shamefully down. PUNISHED. Modesto said, gulping back something like a strangled hyperactive emotion, "I'll shut myself up now." I decided to talk about the effect of stimulants on hyperactive people. The shame in the room was visceral. We put on a Charlie Chaplin clip and called it a day. (Later I commented to one of the prisoners, "Poor Modesto." He responded, "What do you mean? He's in here for armed robbery.")

GORILLAS

WEEK 3: "PERCEPTION". Last week I cried for them. It was a vague kind of feeling, I want to say it was like a longing. I couldn't quite attribute the sadness to any one prisoner or any one story. My heart ached- Today was the day of the gorilla movie. This is a psychological test, shown in a dark video, where 2 basketball teams line up, one dressed all in white, the other in black. The observers are instructed to count the number of times the white team passes the ball. In the middle of complicated ball passing, a gorilla walks through the middle of the court. Something like 90% of all people don't see the gorilla. I have shown this video to Buddhist monks, who have to watch it over and over again to see the gorilla. Sometimes even having seen it, they don't see it the next time. They always get the number of times the ball was passed right, however. The prisoners saw the gorilla the first time. Every one of them. Antonio was cackling behind his hand about something. I was astounded, and asked, "What's so funny"? He told me with an ironic grin, "Any petty pick -pocketer knows that old trick..you tell people to watch something, meanwhile you steal their wallet." Leaving the prison I counted the steps going down to the patio. 34. 55 steps to cross the patio and reach the front guard station? Why was I doing this? It seemed like a prison behavior. I no longer got lost. And I was aquiring some skills here.

PRISON HEART

WEEK 2: "HOW TO HANDLE EMOTIONS". I'm finding it nerve wracking to get around the prison. I get disoriented and often end up in a narrow hall alone. Once I was standing in the men's bathroom, thinking, who am I? One of my kind students of mindfullness, Modesto, a 29 year old man with cerebral palsy, found me and gently lead me away, back towards our classroom. He understands disorientation. I felt sad, which I understood, was some kind of collective feeling that was floating around that place. Where were people's souls when their bodies are locked up? I ask the class, "What are we talking about when we talk about emotions?" 10 blank stares bore holes in my forehead. I asked myself, "Yea, Einstein, what are we talking about?" Luckily I can always fall back on the power point presentation. Most of them are illiterate and don't read or write, so I learned this week to put in funny Charlie Chaplin clips to keep their attention. Unfortunately this week's clip had Charlie taunting the law and rolling back and forth under a fence to escape from the police. They didn't laugh. They filled out an emotions inventory. I helped an older, illiterate man, Antonio, fill his out. "FEEL...SAD? NO....ANGRY...NEVER....UPSET.....NO..... THOUGHTS OF HURTING ANYONE? ALL THE TIME:" I have asked them to tell me if they don't understand my foriegn accent. They never correct me. Today when the loud speaker screamed at us I followed them down to the patio to watch them line up for the count. If they're not in line in 5 minutes, they get docked and have to be in the pen. Emotions: 100 men lining up at attention, waiting patiently while each name was called. Patience. Is that an emotion?

MINDFULLNESS PRISON MIND

Week one prison. I flash my badge, which says, "STRESS REDUCTION." My picture smiles out at the guard. He wearily reaches to buzz me in, motioning me to step through the metal detector. Don't they search people? What stops people from smuggling things in? I enter the patio, where much of prison life seems to be taking place. Men lounging underneath the basketball hoops. Smoking. Staring vacantly. Watching...the pay phones?I feel more than see all eyes on me. I hope I remember where I need to go to teach my 8 week class on Mindfullness Based Stress Reduction, the sterile "TV ROOM" where prisoners play board games and make handycrafts. Is it my imagination or are there hostile glances as I enter, disturbing the din of the TV? The loud speaker grates my ears. "ALL PRISONERS WHO WANT THE STRESS CLASS REPORT TO ROOM NUMBER 7". Who would want a stress class, I feebly think? We gather around the long metal table, the stressed and the stressing. I fumble with the cables, tottering on a chair trying to get plugged in. I feel watched, with an intensity of gazes, that analyze my every move. I have the thought, "Teaching mindfullness in a prison is like entering a beehive and teaching discipline." I'm not sure what this means. But there is no lack of attention at this moment. We start with a short meditation. As I look around the room, the men's eyes are closed, and their faces relaxed. Some even have half smiles. I feel I have done my job and am ready to leave. THE LOUD SPEAKER CRACKLES OUT AN URGENT MESSAGE WHICH I MISS AND THE MEN GO TEARING OUT THE DOOR. "The count," I'm told. They come back. We go around the room and each has a heart breaking story. They tell their stories as if lining up for the chain gain, compulsory, obediently, even I'd say, wryly. I have a captured audience and the repercussion is deadening my voice. Noone asks questions. We finish with the raisin. The raisin is a famous mundfullness excersize that involves closing your eyes and being told that martians are going to give you something from their planet, and you have to take it and savour it and identify each breath of the raisin. Being the raisin. They closed their eyes and giggled. they liked the raisin. They said they had never tasted anything so sweet in their lives. They ate the entire bowl of raisins and asked if I could bring more next week.