SEATTLE PrisonSMART SECOND ANNUAL REPORT TO THE COMMUNITY - 2011

It's already two years since a regular PrisonSMART program, an effort by The International Association for Human Values (www.iahv.org), has been launched in Seattle Jail/KCCF!

Now we have a team of eight volunteers, including the Schedule Manager, whose effort and commitment made it possible for 201 inmate participants benefit from this course since last September 2010 (343 people in two years). It gives us a special joy every time to congratulate those incarcerated men who complete all three days of the program (92 people in the last year; 163 in two years), see them becoming bright, smiling, energized, uplifted, and full of optimism to improve their lives. They are so grateful -- for the peace of mind, relaxation, their profound spiritual experiences, insights, healings, for the volunteers' commitment to them.

The inmate participants routinely report feeling more limber, and strong, and relieved from their various aches and pains in the body because of taking PrisonSMART and doing the Sudharshan Kriya. Thus, last weekend a newly made inmate trustee who graduated from the previous course two weeks ago excited reported to us -- while fervently moving tables and stacks of chairs to prepare the room for the class -- that he kept doing the stretches and breathing exercises he learned from us every day. We could hardly recognize him: he looked 10 years younger and walked not like an old man when we saw him last time! The course was challenging for him because of his constant back pain (he even was not able to do most of the stretches), but he stayed committed, and it payed off so bountifully.

Here's a poem inspired by the insights from the course, by another recent participant, a homeless person without much formal education.

Stillness

The answers to the questions you sometimes

so fervently seek, are often only found

in the allowing of the stillness to speak.

To withdraw for a moment from the

calamities, the tragedies, the stresses

of everyday life, is to welcome the healing,

the calming, the soothing, the absence

of strife.

The key to your freedom, to live and to love,

to be as you must, is found only in truth,

the establishment of trust.

To first put behind you the hurts, the pains,

the sorrows of yesterday, is to allow for

the forgiveness in the stillness to pave

a new way.

As usual, your support of PrisonSMART (www.prisonsmart.org) in any capacity is much appreciated. The donations are tax deductible, and could be made online at www.iahv.org (please choose "Prison SMART program" in the options).

Blessings,

Masha Ellis

Seattle PrisonSMART coordinator

www.iahv.org