Zen Peacemaker Affiliate
PMI (large)
Prison Mindfulness Institute
Our Mission is to provide prisoners, prison staff, and prison volunteers with the most effective, evidence-based tools for self-transformation and personal & professional development. In particular, we offer and promote the use of proven effective mindfulness-based interventions (MBI’s). Our dual focus is on transforming individual lives and transforming the corrections system to mitigate its highly destructive impact on families, communities, and the overall social capital of our society.
Tell us a bit about how your group was concieved
In 1985, Fleet Maull was incarcerated on drug charges. Prior to his incarceration, Fleet received extensive training as a meditation instructor under the guidance of Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Shortly after arriving at the federal medical center, he started a Buddhist meditation group in the prison chapel which he led for 14 years, training hundreds of prisoners in contemplative spirituality and the practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation. In the early 1980s, Buddhist prison ministry was all but nonexistent. Many Buddhist centers were beginning to receive letters of interest from prisons, and a number of these centers began forwarding these letters to Fleet. He quickly realized that he couldn’t begin to keep up with the growing demand for Buddhist prisoner support that was coming his way, and in 1989 founded Prison Dharma Network (PDN), a national nonprofit, nonsectarian support network for Buddhist prisoners, volunteers and prison staff.
When did your organization form? January 1, 1989
Tell us about one exciting project, program, or other offering you are currently working on.
THE PATH OF FREEDOM Path of Freedom was developed by K.Vita Pires-Crisp, Ph.D., and introduced in a five-year pilot program at the Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center (a maximum-security prison for juvenile males) in Golden, Colorado, in the early 2000s. In the past few decades, we have trained over 1,000 facilitators worldwide in delivering the Path of Freedom curriculum. The Path of Freedom is a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence (MBEI) training that employs key elements of social-emotional learning and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral training. The program focuses on increasing participants’ resources, capacities, and skills for self-awareness by developing mindfulness, presence, focus, and attention stabilization. The program offers tools for developing emotion regulation, resilience, deep listening, empathic communication, problem-solving, forgiveness, and conflict management. The Path of Freedom curriculum also focuses on increasing participants’ resiliency, self-reflective capacity, confidence, and positive life outlook through mindfulness-awareness meditation and contemplative/reflective practices. This direct meditative experience encourages a shift from fear-based, anti-social, or criminal strategies for meeting needs to pro-social strategies grounded in emerging confidence in their innate goodness, the inherent goodness of others, and a greater sense of possibility for their present lives and future. The program is also grounded in a holistic, whole-person, bio-psycho-social-spiritual, integral view of human development. The program is non-sectarian and is open to participants of any faith and/or those who do not identify with a particular faith tradition. The curriculum has received very positive reviews from experts in the corrections field.
For more information:
Prison Mindfulness Institute -
South Deerfield, MA