Mindfulness Behind Bars

In November 2024, only a few days after the election, I had the privilege of attending a conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Lama Rod Owens, a Buddhist priest whose popular books have helped in recent years to make Buddhism more accessible to Black Americans. Hosted by the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in an Oakland theater, the event centered on love, power, and liberation. In the conversation, Davis spoke of her yoga practice over the last five decades and reminded us that she first encountered the practice of meditation and yoga while incarcerated. She emphasized the importance of that practice while imprisoned and continues that practice today under the guidance of an Oakland based yoga teacher.

Davis is far from being the only Black liberation figure to have turned to Buddhism and yoga during incarceration, at a moment when both practices were gaining traction in the U.S. political counterculture and often being advocated by the same people. Black Panther Party leader and former political prisoner Erika Huggins also began her meditation practice in prison to survive incarceration and solitary confinement. The practice was so vital in a carceral institution that she became a meditation and yoga instructor upon release and began teaching meditation inside prisons. Likewise, in the late 1950s revolutionary anarchist and jailhouse lawyer Martin Sostre adopted a yoga practice to strengthen his mind and body in the fight against oppression. The practice was crucial to enduring years of torture and solitary confinement afflicted on him for fighting for prisoners’ rights. For Davis, Huggins, and Sostre, meditation and yoga were essential practices that resisted the carceral state’s violence and mental tribulations.

I can personally vouch for the fact that Buddhism continues to reach people inside of U.S. prisons. I found meditation the last time I was incarcerated while awaiting to go to trial. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Even though I grew up with Buddhist culture and iconography that my family brought here from Japan, it was only during incarceration that I became a practitioner of Zen, a school of Buddhism that prizes spontaneous and unmediated insight into the nature of reality. There is a teaching in Zen that says we sit meditation with no goal in mind and no expectation for outcomes. We sit for the sake of sitting. But this doesn’t mean that meditation doesn’t produce transformative change that leads to mental and physical health benefits, and these can be especially valuable for those who have or are currently experiencing incarceration. I owe my sobriety and healing journey to sitting meditation and the collectives I met after incarceration.

Since 2020 I have worked with a network of formerly and currently incarcerated practitioners and teachers/volunteers in California, providing meditation and yoga services inside California state prisons, jails, and youth facilities as well as cultivating an outside sangha (Buddhist religious congregation) for collective healing. This network also contributed to policy work, reentry services, and collective building. Currently, I cofacilitate a Soto Zen Buddhist Association affinity group called Zen In Prisons (ZIP), which connects Zen centers across the country that facilitate Buddhist services inside state prisons, federal prisons, and immigration detention centers. Some of these centers have been providing services to incarcerated people for decades.

Through this work, I have been fortunate enough to engage in deep interpersonal connections with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals from California to Alaska to New York. In addition, I have been able to conduct surveys as well as informal interviews with formerly incarcerated Californians, who have shared their own reflections on the power of Buddhism and yoga to transform their lives and build meaningful communities. In what follows, I will share some of this testimony and place it within the context of what is known about how meditation can help individuals weather the violence of incarceration. Although Buddhism and yoga are separate traditions, they are considered together in this essay as allied non-Western practices that have often remained partnered within prisons popularized and practiced together in the United States at a time of counterculture revolution that is present today.

While we work to dismantle what organizer and abolitionist scholar Dylan Rodríguez calls the U.S. prison regime, we need to continue cultivating transformative healing practices and radical self-care for all of those impacted by incarceration. And as I was reminded recently by Palestinian scholar and activist Nada Elia, community care and self-care are two sides of the same cushion.

Spending even one single day incarcerated can have life-altering consequences on one’s physical, psychological, and mental health. Mass incarceration not only disproportionately cages Black and brown community members, but also those suffering from addiction, generational trauma, poverty, and mental health issues. Over half of incarcerated people have suffered from substance abuse disorder in the year before being locked up, over half have a reported mental health diagnosis, and nearly half of state prison populations have some sort of disability, and all these statistics are even higher for incarcerated women and LGBTQ+ people. Prison not only retraumatizes vulnerable populations, but generates new disability, including PTSD, chronic depression, suicidal ideation, paranoia, psychosis, and cognitive dysfunction.

In a recent study, researchers found meditation to positively affect mental health, the immune systems, and overall physical health. These benefits range from decreasing inflammation, reducing stress, boosting the immune system, decreasing blood pressure, increasing happiness, decreasing anxiety, reducing suicidal behavior, decreasing loneliness, and alleviating symptoms of PTSD. In studies on the benefits of meditation specifically for incarcerated individuals, researchers found a decrease in hostility, anger, aggressive attitudes, psychiatric symptoms, depression, and an increase in optimism, self-esteem, and positive behaviors. Similarly, yoga has had positive effects on reentry, psychological distress levels, executive function, perception of bodily dysfunction, memory problems, and trouble concentrating.

I have experienced these positive benefits in myself and witnessed them as well in my closest comrades, colleagues, and fellow sangha practitioners. In order to further understand these effects and how widely they are experienced, I conducted a survey and informal interviews with nine other formerly incarcerated individuals who participated in Buddhist practices, meditation, and yoga while incarcerated. Their ages ranged from thirty-five to seventy-three, with their length of incarceration ranging from five to thirty years. Eight identified as men and one identified as nonbinary (unfortunately I wasn’t able to include any women in the study because our program has been unable to receive permission to have sustained engagements in any women’s prisons). Seven of the practitioners served time in California state prisons, one in Oregon state prisons, and the ninth in military and federal prisons. They all participated in yoga while inside and all but one also attended Buddhist services and had a meditation practice. Over half participated in a secular mindfulness group and four practitioners created a Buddhist group because there were no services in their specific yard or facility. They all have continued a meditation practice since returning home, all but one has participated in Buddhist or mindfulness support communities, and two have kept a yoga practice since being released. None of them have been rearrested for a new charge and only one was rearrested on a technical parole violation.

The practices of the groups consisted of silent seated meditation that ranged from fifteen to thirty minutes, a group check-in, some walking meditation, a period used for either group study or to listen to a dharma talk (a public discourse on Buddhist teaching), and group discussion. Most groups had a movement component and formal Buddhist services that consisted of chanting with a question-and-answer period.

Every practitioner who participated in these groups said that meditation had a positive impact on their mental health and well-being. One emphasized in particular the power of the group setting: “The Buddhist sangha transformed my life, giving me an opportunity to practice with other people (previously I had been trying to teach and practice on my own). The sangha was where I was treated like a human. It is where I began to find myself.” Another noted how sharply this contrasted with the inherent violence of carcerality: “To seek calm in places manufactured for chaos became our most powerful act of resistance.”

One practitioner described the transformative process of meditation as:

I found a sense of responsibility for myself and how I relate to the world around me. I became aware of how sensitive my mind was to suffering and how quickly I would seek any opportunity to reduce that suffering, regardless of its effect on others and consequences to myself. This awareness then allowed me to begin relating to my mind and to suffering with honesty and openness, sitting in the thoughts, feelings, and sensations without running from them. I began then to be able . . . to interrupt habitual negative patterns and replace them with the ethical and positive activities that have now taken root in my life.

All but two of the practitioners noted a positive impact on their depression, anxiety, impulse control, aggression, substance abuse disorder, and trauma. In expanding on their experiences, practitioners stated feeling a sense of purpose, being present, growing happier, and gaining practical skills needed to survive prison and sit with difficult emotions and experiences. For example, one practitioner stated: “I became less aggressive, more willing to let things go. I became happier, more calm and open to experiences. I became less reactive and more considerate. I had been suffering from anxiety, depression, and PTSD and saw a significant reduction in symptoms after beginning my practice.”

Responses particularly surfaced the positive impact of volunteer facilitators and the support of outside meditation groups. Together, the involvement of these non-incarcerated individuals made people feel seen, valued, heard, and supported. The function of the prison is to isolate incarcerated people and keep the community out; interactions with volunteers pushed back on this, giving practitioners a meaningful connection to society outside the walls. For some, this was their only connection to the outside world while incarcerated. One practitioner stated:

We had one [volunteer] only a short time, but it was so powerful. To have someone come inside and represent to me that they cared for me and that my life mattered to them made a huge difference for me. They gave context to the teachings, shared how the practice helped them to change and provided guidance as to how we might do that same.

Another stated: “Having an external support group helps show us that people in society regardless of what we have done still have compassion for us. This helps us heal and transcend.” For one practitioner, these interactions offered an extra supportive layer in overcoming substance abuse disorder: “The Buddhist group served the spiritual component to my 12-step recovery work. My meditation practice really took off after meeting with others who did it. I also felt safe and human and value in my Buddhist sangha, something I only felt in other (volunteer-run) groups.”

Prison is overwhelming but also incredibly tedious, and to some degree one would anticipate that any enriching activity would draw similar praise. Practitioners emphasized, however, that their experiences with meditation groups stood out as unique compared to other programming. One stated: “Most other programs were [just] a way to get out of the cell. . . . Sitting in silence is way too uncomfy for the guy coming to a program to buy or sell dope. The practice itself created a safe space, a rarity in prison.” Multiple practitioners noted that meditation is experiential, whereas other programs involved merely listening to other’s experiences. One stated: “There was no timeframe and goal to achieve” like in other programs. They continued, “It was a lifestyle change that I was learning, and something that would place me in a better position to deal with life.”

Participation in meditation and mindfulness support groups also had a profound impact on reentry success. Practitioners stated meditation prepared them for the fast pace of life outside and helped them to stay rooted in the present moment, reconnect with family, find stability, and deal with conflict. One stated: “Meditation helps me stay grounded, present, and calm in the midst of life’s chaos. While life does not wait for me and moves swiftly, meditation serves as an anchor that keeps me centered and focus.” Meditation also helped with processing the experiences of carceral violence and coping with incarceration-induced PTSD: “Anger and emotional self-regulation have been a struggle in my life. If there was any [chance] that I might be more likely to be [re]arrested it would be for an angry or emotional acting out. However, due to my practice I see the emotions arising and am not driven by them.”

We live in an era of unprecedented inequality and incarceration. Not only does our current system physically subjugate but, as Frantz Fanon recognized, it seeps into the minds of the oppressed like a poison. Meditation and the practice of mindfulness can help counter this by replacing negative habitual patterns with resiliency and healthy behaviors. Buddhism not only works toward reframing the self but, as bell hooks teaches, it is also a tool in resisting “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

Meditation, as a liberatory practice, can serve as both a survival skill inside prison as well as a crucial tool for navigating reentry. The responses to this small survey of formerly incarcerated Buddhist and meditation practitioners are powerful and call for more extensive study and initiatives aimed at introducing Buddhist meditation to more formerly and currently incarcerated people, including women and nonbinary/trans people. It is vital to provide and support these practices as we work toward dismantling carceral systems and creating new transformative changes built on restoration, healing, and compassion.

_{Image: Sora Sagano / Unsplash}

Contributors

Tony Koji Wallin-Sato Tony Koji Wallin-Sato is a multicultural Nisei writer who works with currently and formerly incarcerated students in higher education through Project Rebound. He is the Prison Education Coordinator for CSU Long Beach, a lecturer in the Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt, and an in-prison teaching artist with the William James Association. His most recent book of poems is Okaerinasai, published by Wet Cement Press.

Topics

• Futures

Tags

• community organizing
• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
• mental health
• mutual aid
• reentry
• religion