Inside-Zen Prison program
Sun Mountain Zen offers a meditation program at the Woodford Correctional Centre. Meditation has long been recognised as an effective discipline and mindfulness practice that, when exercised on a regular basis, enhances practitioners ability to self regulate impulses and recognise mental conditioning. Meditation and Mindfulness training as a rehabilitation practice is designed to focus on the ability to self-control and to mitigate harmful impulses regardless of a practitioners raw intelligence or IQ.
Sun Mountain Zen also teaches a Self and Social Awareness course to Prisoners in Brisbane. This program is a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course specifically addressing self-transformation and personal development for incarcerated adults and youth.
The curriculum, which has been designed by the Prison Mindfulness Institute in the United States, teaches the following modules:
- Mindfulness practices.
- Resourcing self when triggered through state shifting.
- Understanding physical and emotional pain.
- How to change habitual roles.
- Taking radical responsibility and shifting our allegiance away from being right.
- Justifying and blaming.
- Choosing empowering roles in relationships.
- Nonviolent communication.
- Transforming conflict
- The power of forgiveness
- Mindful living.
This course compliments the weekly Zen meditation practice and offers practical tools to integrate mindfulness in the daily routine of a prisoner.
We are always looking for volunteers able to assist us in delivering this service. For more information, please contact Arno Hess who coordinates the prison program.