Just Breathe...

I never thought that something I would learn as a Doula and Childbirth educator would come in handy while working as a prison volunteer, but it seems that life prepares you in all sorts of ways, expected or unexpected. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to be teaching Mindful Awareness Meditation to the Wiccan group, something that the Calm Birth technique is built on. We had a discussion about decision making last time. About making right decisions and wrong decisions, and that while in prison these guys need to hone that particular skill, or develop it from the ground up. 

Devon, the leader of the group that I mentioned last time, got in trouble and was kicked out of his dorm. Apparently, he’d graduated a particular program and was supposed to move out of that dorm. He’d requested the transfer, but hadn’t gotten it at that point. So, while others were at classes, he was sleeping and ended up getting in trouble over it.

When Cathy asked if he knew he wasn’t supposed to be sleeping, he said yes. And istead of the expected giggle or roll of the eyes that he thought he’d get, or the image of a ‘cool guy’ or ‘comedian’, he got an earful about choices, decision-making and the difference between a solider and a warrior. 

The conversation moved on to one of the men in the group named Tex. He’s an older guy, maybe in his 50’s who was raised Pagan. He’s pretty quiet, but I’m starting to learn that he has a lot of interesting things to say. When pointedly asked to contribute, he discussed what he calls risk thoughts. Risk thoughts are ‘if I do this, this is going to happen, then this, then that.’ He’s describing thinking before acting, or what I pointed out to be the difference between Responding and Reacting. When you react, you usually do so from a raw, emotional place. When you respond, you take the time to think first. 

When Tex said he takes a minute to breathe as he’s making his risk thoughts, I pointed out that beyond giving a person time to think, breathing calms a person’s adrenaline allowing calming hormones t take over. That’s where Mindful-Awareness Meditation and Progressive Relaxation comes in. 

This type of meditation, and the techniques built into it, teaches people how to breathe the vital energy in the universal energy field. While Calm Birth is built on this for childbirth, it is also used for any kind of healing (and is what Calm Healing by Robert Newman is based on as well) and has been studied by medical schools such as Harvard. Just twenty minutes of meditation and proper, full breathing can be better than 8 hours of bad sleep, regulate hormones, help the immune system function, increase pain thresholds, and lower adrenaline and cortisol, two hormones that cause human beings to switch into the ‘fight or flight’ responses. 

That benefit in particular, the avoidance of the fight or flight response can be of great use to inmates. They live in a situation which is often chaotic, where personalities clash, fights break out and rules can be broken. The inmates may try to avoid situations that will get them put into solitary or add time to their sentences, but the hormone adrenaline can mess with the thinking process and affect those risk thoughts that Tex talks about. If I can teach them a technique to help them remain calm in tense situations, avoid conflict as well as benefit their overall health, biological functions, and potential offer them moments of intuitive clarity, then I’m all for it. 

We’ll see how it goes.