Mindfulness Prison Project
We are currently looking for funding for the following program organized by Marybeth Hamilton.
Devised at the prison’s request, this program targets residents of the Reintegration Dorm, a newly-established facility intended as a national model, providing education and training to inmates who are within six to eighteen months of release.
The mindfulness program aims to relieve feelings of stress and tension that are endemic to the prison environment, while providing the women with an internal toolkit for defusing unsettling thoughts and emotions, an essential resource for navigating the upheaval of re-entering the outside world.
At the heart of the curriculum are simple but powerful mindfulness techniques, using sitting meditation, walking meditation, and yoga postures to cultivate sensory awareness, concentration, and emotional balance.
The mindfulness techniques help neutralize emotions, track and defuse racing thoughts, step out of the vortex of racing mind and find a place of equanimity. The focus is on developing the capacity to use these skills off the mat, and to help each woman learn the feeling of a centered, balanced, non-reactive sense of self.
Marybeth also teaches with Michele Vinbury at ORW through their EMBER Yoga program.