Introducing the WITHIN Project
Why I've been in prison this year
Welcome to STILL! I’m so glad you’ve found your way here.
This is a quiet, reflective space… to nurture your inner life and inspire your outer life in the world. Your paying subscriptions encourage my writing and help support projects like the one I’m introducing today…
I’ve been spending time in prison since the beginning of the year…
In this week’s newsletter, I want to tell you how I got there and what I’m doing there. It’s a story. It’s also an announcement.
To avoid burying the lede, I’ll start with the latter. Then you can keep reading if you want the backstory…
Introducing the WITHIN Project
Today I am excited to announce the official launch of the WITHIN Project.
The WITHIN Project helps incarcerated individuals access calm, release stress, and heal trauma—improving mental health and increasing post-release success—by bringing a research-supported meditation program to correctional facilities and reentry organizations in Wisconsin.
Most incarcerated individuals suffer from toxic trauma and stress—having post-traumatic stress disorder at a rate ten times higher than the general population, and experiencing emotional distress daily in the prison setting—but they lack access to the care they need.
Without adequate mental health tools and support, incarcerated individuals not only struggle daily, but are more likely to be reincarcerated. This is an issue for all of us, adversely impacting the incarcerated and their families, as well as the health and safety of our communities.
The WITHIN Project seeks to interrupt these layered problems by providing incarcerated individuals much needed access to a powerful healing tool: meditation.
Learn more and sign up for updates at withinproject.org.
Also, in order to sustain and grow this work, I’m looking for financial partners who want to help the incarcerated unlock the calm, courage, and compassion within through mediation.
Every gift matters!
You can give here: withinproject.org/give.
“Meditation helps me feel calm, cool, and collected.”
—Jeremiah, meditation course graduate at Racine Correctional Institution
The Meditation Program
Through the guardhouse. Past the visitors’ area. Across the yard. Inside a classroom at the end of a long hallway on the second floor of the building that houses the prison’s educational programs. Aging computers where people take GED exams fill half the room. A loud heating fan whirls.
I’m meditating in a circle with ten new meditation students, all wearing various shades of green.
Twenty minutes have passed.
“Slowly open your eyes,” I say. Then I invite them to report on their experiences.
Most of them can’t believe that much time has passed. They talk about being so relaxed. Some wonder if they fell asleep. They describe other sensations.
“I was free,” one of the men says with a smile on his face. Others nod.
At the end of this session, the first of four, I give them their homework: practice the meditation technique they’ve just learned once (or twice!) a day until our next session.
When we gather together for the next few meditation course sessions, after they’ve done their homework, they describe all sorts of different meditation experiences (this is normal!). One man talks about how meditating has helped him “get a break” from the exhaustion of always having to be on high alert in prison. Another feels like it helps him get out of his cell… even when he is still physically inside his cell.
But they don’t just talk about what happens in meditation with their eyes closed. They are excited about what they are experiencing beyond meditation with their eyes open. Greater calm. Lower anxiety. More patience. Less reactivity.
“Meditation helps me feel calm, cool, and collected,” one new meditator shares, while another says, “Meditation helps me manage my emotions.”
They’ve just started their meditation practice, but they are already experiencing its powerful benefits.
They are being healed and transformed from within…
* * * * *
In March, these first ten students graduated from the four-session meditation course at Racine Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility in Wisconsin’s prison system. Seven more completed the course in May. Now, in addition to continuing at this first site, a second site in Milwaukee will open this summer. I’m also in conversation with other prisons want to bring the course to help the men, women, and youth in their facilities.
But even though key stakeholders in different prisons see the transformative power of this meditation course, it is not yet something prioritized and funded in the Wisconsin prison system (As this New York Times article demonstrates, the Wisconsin prison system is dealing with major budget and staffing issues).
This is why I want to invite you to join me in launching the WITHIN Project: to make the healing power of meditation available to the incarcerated individuals who desperately need it, equipping them with a tool to unlock the calm, courage, and compassion within.
Please join me: withinproject.org/give.
"Prisons are places filled with trauma. The healing meditation practice that Ben brings is unique, necessary, and consequential."
—Mary E. Triggiano, Director, Andrew Center for Restorative Justice
The Backstory
While the first meditation course began in March, this initiative really started at the end of last year when a few threads of my life started coming together:
The experience years ago of creating and leading Aurora Commons, a community center for those suffering from trauma and experiencing homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and sexual exploitation.
Becoming a meditation teacher five years ago after the practice changed my life, and seeing it transform the lives of people I’ve worked with.
And, most recently, my growing relationship with Marquette University Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, which brings together perpetrators of violent crime, victims and families, judicial officials, law enforcement, law school students, and other community members for dialogue to foster healing, empathy, and the repair of harm, instead of fixating on punishment and retribution (See On the Day of Your Rebirth).
I heard about this incredible work years ago from my mom who has volunteered, attended conferences, and even participated in a restorative justice circle inside a prison. After I moved to Milwaukee I reached out to explore getting involved. This led to being a guest teacher each semester around themes of mindfulness and stress in the restorative justice class.
Together, these three pieces of my story started pointing me in a new direction…
A calling was taking shape…
What if I offered my meditation course in prison? I wondered.
As soon as I had the thought, everything seemed to flow.
I mentioned it to the director of the restorative justice initiative. She introduced me to the program director at Racine Correctional. We soon met and she invited me to teach the meditation course. I filled out forms, got a background check, went through a prison volunteer orientation, and visited the facility.
And that’s how, in March, I found myself in prison.
I am eager to deepen and grow this work in the months to come, and I hope you join me!
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“To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully.”
―Jack Kornfield