And tonight we're going to be focusing on a project that takes place at San Francisco County J07 in San Bruno. And we're very fortunate and I'm most happy to have Leo here as our speaker. He'll be talking about a program called the Man Alive program, and it's a group of 50 to 60 men who have an extensive history of violence, who are housed in an alternative setting to the mainline jail populations. and who are immersed in a curriculum that helps them look at their violence and the effects of their violence on their victims and their families and their community. And they're also given the tools to turn that violence, to turn their lives around. It's a very intense curriculum, six days a week, 12 hours a day. And Leo is a part of the staff, a facilitator and an educator, and was once a client in the program.

[01:05]

And so he'll be talking about his position there and about how the curriculum is actually laid out. And we also have with us tonight John King, who some of you know, who is a Zen priest, city center priest. And he teaches meditation in the program, as do I. And Bhavani Clute, who was a yoga teacher there. And I don't think we would really be... in that program were not for Leo's enthusiasm and real clarity about the role of yoga and meditation with this particular population. And so he was a great defender of us joining the staff, and we've felt very lucky ever since to be part of that. And so we'll all be here to answer questions later on in the class. Leo will speak for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then we'll have a chance to share in questions that will come up. Leo is a native San Franciscan, right?

[02:08]

Yeah. And the last eight years of his life, he has devoted to violence prevention programs in the community as a community activist, as an educator, and also as a multimedia artist. Has a strong yoga practice himself and is very busy taking care of his first boy. And I just want to welcome you, Leon. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you. And I think we can just begin. Yeah. Oh, really? Cool. Yeah, we can begin. Thank you all for receiving me, and it's really an honor to be here, too. This is really different from the types of presentations that I'm used to doing. And I'm really nervous because of that too. It's a little more intimate than I'm used to, um, having. So just bear with me a little bit. I think I'm probably going to drift a little bit. And if I do that and you can nudge me. Yeah. You don't think I drift? I wrote the book on drifting.

[03:09]

Um, I, uh, I, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my background as a person and, uh, a little bit about what I do in my professional life now. I think what I'll start off with is just sort of my journey through life. I come from an abusive home. I was born and raised in San Francisco. My father was sort of that classic rageaholic, never knew when he was going to snap and go off, and did a lot of physical violence, a lot of emotional violence in the house, and I'm an only child. I was really the focus of that abuse. My mother was a lot, but it seemed that, at least as a child growing up, what I remember is that I was really the focus of it. That whole statement that we make about violence being learned, I really have a visceral experience of that because what I figured out early on was that

[04:13]

My dad's, there was a certain predictability about his violence and an unpredictability about his violence. What was predictable was that he was going to be violent. What was unpredictable about was when he would flash and it would happen several times during the week, but I never knew when or why. So what I figured out was a way that I could control that was to misbehave and act out in the home and bring that violence onto me so that I had sort of a control of when it would happen. And then I knew that there'd be a stretch of time where I knew that I'd experience a little bit of peace and safety. And I also knew how to measure... his response to whatever it was that I would do. So I knew that there was certain things that I could do that he would flash, but I wouldn't get beat up too bad. So things like taking the crayons and marking the walls, those were okay. Breaking his things would like, you know, that was like a little too dangerous.

[05:18]

And so I would stay away from doing those things. So there was this kind of... thing that I learned early on, and that was that I could actually keep myself safe in a strange kind of way by acting out and by being violent. I learned that at home. I also got a lot of training from my dad about how to be violent. You know, sort of the classic stereotypical, you know, men, boys don't cry, stop your crying, uh, Don't let anybody pick on you. You have to learn how to throw the first punch, those kinds of things, right? I was sort of, growing up, up until I was about maybe six or so, I think, I just remember being really timid, like really kind of like shell-shocked by the abuse at home. And so I was sort of withdrawn at school, and sort of the teachers kind of looked at me as...

[06:22]

probably had labeled me as emotionally disturbed and with a learning disability, you know, like I was sort of withdrawn and not very responsive. And I did that as a way to... to keep a lot of space around me. And I remember what that did, though, is it sort of made me a target for other kids to kind of bully me and things like that. And so I remember there was this one instance, and this is really important for me to share this with you because it was pivotal for me in my life, where there was a kid, and I think this was preschool, or it may have been kindergarten or preschool, I was about six, six years old, and there was a kid. He was sort of larger than all the other kids in the class, and he was a bully, and he was going around. He'd kind of pick his targets for the day and pick on them and do different things to them. Usually... hit him. And, and then there was sort of like, it seemed like there was never any recourse.

[07:27]

Like he sort of got away with hurting the kids, you know? And, um, so one day I remember he, he came to me and he slammed my head into, um, one of the shelves and, oh, I need to backtrack because I remember there was this, my dad used to collect all these like She was sort of an eclectic collector of antiques and weird artifacts. And there was this taxidermed badger or something that he had that I was, like, terrified of. It smelled really weird, you know, and all this stuff. And I didn't want to go near it. He'd put it in front of me and I'd cringe. And he would tell me to hit it, punch it, kick it, you know. Hit it, punch it, you know. I learned that if something scares you, you go after it and you attack it. That's how you deal with what scares you. To move forward to this incident, this kid slams my head into a shelf and I go after him. A teacher comes in and separates us.

[08:28]

I remember there was a janitor. there who kind of took a special interest in me for some reason. He was always really nice to me and I really liked him. He happened to be there at that time and what he did was he put me on his lap and he gave me his keychain to play with and they moved that kid to another part of the room and I guess they were waiting for the energy to deescalate or whatever. I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to get that kid and I'm going to get him. And there was this thing that I had where it was like, I really was thinking, I'm not sure if kids at that age have a whole sense of like life and death, but I had a sense of it. Like I wanted to take his life. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to go to sleep and not wake up. And I was going to make sure that that was going to happen. So I remember... I was playing with this janitor's keychain, which was like this little ice cube with the fly in it. You remember those things? And I sort of like, I calmed down and I gave him back his keychain. I jumped off his lap and I guess he thought everything was cool.

[09:28]

He let me go. And I took this building block. It was like this Y-shaped building block. And, you know, it was a large, like, I don't know, Lincoln log or whatever it was. And I walked up to this kid and he had his back turned towards me and he was like kneeling on the floor playing. And I raised this block over my head and as hard as I could, I just brought it down on his head and I cut his head open. And I mean, I remember all this blood coming out at the top of his head and sort of he was sort of like he squealed, you know. And the teachers came and they picked me up and carried me away and all that. And to make a long story short, I never got in trouble for that. Like, my parents were never notified of that. And it was really weird. I'm not sure whether there was a fear of a lawsuit or what, you know, there was some sort of a complication there and some kind of a cover-up. And I remember that my mother... had a godbrother who she came to this country with, and he was sort of like surrogated as my uncle, and I used to call him my uncle, and he came to pick me up.

[10:30]

He was another abusive guy who was really like, you know, pugnacious and everything, and I remember he picked me up from school that day, and I was like trying to tell him what happened. And I wasn't really expressing myself in a way that he was understanding, but he knew I got in some kind of trouble. So he's getting really frustrated and getting angry with me and trying to get these details out of me. And finally I just told him, I just made the whole thing up. I was just kidding, nothing. And I remember like waiting to see whether I was gonna get caught or anything was gonna happen and nothing ever happened. So the message I got from that incident was that I could do that kind of violence and get away with it. There was a sense, I remember, that there was no, like I wasn't gonna feel any repercussions from that, you know? And that was real pivotal for me in my life. I think at school from that point on, I had sort of a kind of a maverick sort of anything goes and what can you possibly do to me? You might send me home.

[11:31]

And I got sent home a lot, you know. I got kicked out of three or four different, let's see, probably four different junior high schools. and then finally the Unified School District in San Francisco banned me, wasn't going to let me back into regular public school. I was going to a youth center at that time. I had a counselor who was really well-connected. He asked me one day, because I wasn't in school, and he said, I can get you... for your sophomore year into Washington High School. And if you're interested in really applying yourself this time, I know the dean of boys, they had like a dean for girls and a dean for boys in those days. I know the dean of boys really well and he owes me a favor or two. If you make a promise to apply yourself, we'll bring you in for a meeting and maybe we can get you in. and I didn't have enough credits to be in high school, but somehow there was, they were going to allow me to, to do some sort of a, I was going to work my credits and maybe go to summer school and I could be in, I could be in 10th grade with all the other 10th graders, you know?

[12:42]

And I said, yeah, I'll do that. And so I had, um, I got in, I met with this guy and, um, uh, and I got in and, um, And I did really well. It was actually, now I'm remembering, it was mid-term for my sophomore year. And what I learned that term was that I actually wasn't dumb. That I actually, if I was interested in what I was studying, that I could get good grades and do really well. And so I did really well and impressed a lot of people and my counselor and everything. And then summer came, and I got in a lot of trouble during the summer. I got into drugs, and I met some folks at... the high school who I ended up hooking up with during the summer and it was just on. And, um, we, you know, we, I mean, it just, one thing led to another and I was doing drug deals and stealing cars and stealing motorcycles.

[13:53]

We had like a little, um, kind of like a little business going where we'd steal motorcycles and then we would dismantle them and take frames from those same motorcycles that we would buy at junkyards that had the serial numbers and rebuild the bikes and sell them like new bikes for real cheap and made a lot of money and all this stuff. By my junior year, it was sort of a wrap. You know, I was just there was no way I was going to apply myself. And so I sort of drifted through my junior year and never finished high school as a result. So that's kind of like where I'm at. I was in actually got into a lot of I was a. In junior high school, I was in a pretty well-known gang in San Francisco. I've got mixed heritage. I'm Asian Pacific Island on one side and European on the other. And back in the 70s, there was a lot of, if any of you know about the Bay Area and San Francisco from the 70s, it was sort of a boom in Asian youth gangs back in the 70s that were sort of terrorizing the city, doing horrendous things.

[15:03]

And not just that weren't just affecting the immediate community, but were affecting other people like there was a golden dragon massacre if you heard about it where four guys went in blazing with uh with automatic semi-automatic um weapons and took out like 52 people in this restaurant including tourists and all that stuff it was just like a lot of crazy stuff going on back then and i was a part of that like i was actually a very visible and integral part of that whole dynamic that was going on at that time Um, by the time that, uh, I was out of high school, um, I realized a lot of my friends were dying, um, either getting killed or they were going to prison or they were, um, drug overdosing or some of them were flipping out, like going crazy and ending up homeless. Like, um, just a lot of like real down, like negative downward spiral that was going on around me and I got scared. And so, um, I decided to alienate myself from all the people I knew and to make new friends and try to get into the workforce but do my dope dealing on the side to kind of supplement.

[16:17]

What I learned was that I had a lot of rage and what I learned was that I could pretty much get what I want if I put fear in people. So I had this real addiction to the kind of adrenaline rush that I would get from getting into fights and things like that. By the time I was 24, I learned... That I could be violent in intimate relationships, too. And I was abusive to three different partners in three different relationships, including my ex-wife, who I almost beat to death one time. we she found out that I was seeing someone else and she confronted me and I pretty much I grabbed her by the face and threw her down to the ground head first and she had like a seizure you know her eyes rolled back and I thought I'd killed her at the time and another time in that same relationship I drove I drove my car off an embankment tried to kill us both and

[17:29]

We both survived without any injuries. Miraculously, I wasn't strapped in. She was strapped in. So I carried my violence into three intimate relationships in the most extreme ways that you can imagine, right? In 1994, I got arrested for domestic violence with another partner of mine who I decided to be physically violent to right out on the street, right in front of the house that we were living in, in front of all my neighbors who happened to be watching. Not all my neighbors were watching, but there were several. It was like a really warm night in the summer, and there were people, you know, out on the balconies and all that stuff. And I... went off on her and somebody called the police and I got arrested and I bailed out that night and then I, trying to remember the chronology of this, I really like got it, like it was sort of like a rock bottom kind of moment for me, you know?

[18:42]

And I'd been clean and sober for like three years Yeah, it was like going on close to three years, amazingly, or two to three years. So it was one of those things where I thought like, I thought I was getting my life together, you know, because my big thing was like getting drunk, getting into bar fights. And so I got arrested and I bailed out and I knew I was looking at doing some prison time because the extent, there were all these witnesses and, you know, the extent of my violence was, And I hired a lawyer and the lawyer was in total collusion with the violence that I did to my partner. And I remember like, he was like a mirror and I started to feel really disgusted with him, you know? And so I remember saying to him, look, I don't want to go to trial with this. I just want to take a deal and do some probation. I know I could do that. And he said, yeah, but you're not guilty of a felony.

[19:42]

And I said, I don't care. Talk to the DA. and let her know that I want to take a deal, I want to do some probation time, maybe even get into a program. And he refused to talk to the DA. He kept telling me, making all these excuses, because I think he wanted the money. He wanted me to go to trial, and he wanted to make $7,000 or $10,000, whatever it is that he was going to make. And so I remember firing him, um at the courthouse um because i i walked up to the da and i said has my lawyer talked to you because he was saying he had talked to her and that she wasn't listening and i just didn't believe that and so i said does he talk to you and she said i can't talk to you what are you doing and i said why not she said because you have a lawyer and i can't have this um what there's a there's a name for it i think it's called well yeah but there's a there's actually a name for it it's um Ex parte. Ex parte. I can't have an ex parte conversation with you. I'm sorry. And so I walked up to my lawyer and I said, you know what?

[20:46]

Go home. You're fired. And so I walked up and I said, I'm doing this in pro turn, man. I mean, come on. Do a deal with me. She laid this deal out. Three years, intensive supervision, probation. I want you to go to a program for a year. I want you clean and sober. And I said, oh, that's no problem. And... And that's it, you know, three years probation, felony probation, intensive supervision. And so I took the deal and I joined this program, which was Man Alive. And I'd say for the first nine months or so, what we learned was pretty interesting. What we did was we just went over everything, every possible way that we had learned our violence growing up. And I remember, like, I didn't really get until that point that I had learned my violence. It just seemed like it was just sort of an innate part of me. And I didn't think that I was violent, because my violence always felt like a response to violence, right?

[21:48]

That's how it felt to me, you know? And I really got how I... I mean, I would set myself up, put myself in situations that... somehow would merit my violence, or at least that was the rationale, right? So I learned, like, all these ways that I'd been setting myself up, and I was sitting in a room full of men that were mostly men that had extensive criminal histories, and incidentally, I have a pretty extensive criminal history, but most of it was juvenile. I'd done some juvenile time and found out today that you were doing, you were a counselor there right around the time that I was housed there, so that's just pretty interesting. And so, yeah, I learned all this stuff. And what was fascinating for me was that I learned, first of all, I learned that my violence was learned, that it was a total decision. I never made that connection, even though, like, I mean, I come from a Buddhist background, and where I learned my Buddhism, it was, the focus was always, everything you do is a choice.

[22:56]

Everything is decision, decision, decision, decision. And I've come from an extensive martial arts background where there was a heavy Buddhist influence on the martial arts. Incidentally, martial arts, believe it or not, as much rage as I had and as much violence was in me, I believe that the Buddhism, my spirituality and my martial arts really kept me from falling off into a real dark spiral downwards. It was sort of a channel for me. that kept me alive and kept me from killing people, you know? really believe that to this day. I mean, I just attribute so much of my recovery to that too, even, because I don't think that I would have been able to internalize the Manilife program had it not been for my, the connections that I made to my spiritual background, both through martial arts and religion too. So, anyway, to go back to the Manilife thing, I was sitting in a room with a bunch of guys and like,

[24:00]

who had extensive criminal histories and spoke the same language I was speaking. And they made it really clear that this is not therapy. It's like you learned your violence in community. You learned your violence at home and in community. This is the way you have to unlearn your violence. Years and years of therapy, that's not gonna change anything, right? You got it from your peers. You got it from your parents, right? You got it from the media. So you have to adapt that same peer model, that same dynamic to unlearn your violence. You need to hang around with people that are not violent and that are conscious of not being violent. And you need to come to these classes and talk about what's going on in your life with these men who are doing the same thing that you're doing. And you need to teach each other. So the facilitator of that class said, I'm going to stay out of this as much as I can. Am I running over? No. No, you're doing great. Okay. Just let me know. Give me a clue. Yeah, yeah. So... I don't think that'll help. But so, yeah, so that was like, you know, totally a new revelation for me.

[25:07]

Although, like, what I got done at that point was, okay, this is about decision, just like everything else. Now I get that connection. But I'm not going to decide to stop my violence just yet. What I'm going to do is I'm going to continue my violence, but I'm going to watch it. I'm going to pay real close attention to it, pay attention to where I go. So is this a rationale that was going? There's a little familiarity here. I think I was laughing familiarity in a way, right? So there's this rationale I got going that was like, okay, so if you... If you're conscious of it, maybe there's a way that you can do it and keep yourself safe at the same time. Like there was this thing going on because the idea that I just completely stopped my violence was like deadly to me. I mean, literally deadly. Like if I don't respond violently to situations that I believe merit that, then I'm not going to be the person that I know. And I wasn't willing to let go of that person that I know, you know, because that was a person that kept me safe my whole life, you know. So I did some pretty horrendous things for the first, I'd say, nine months I was in the program.

[26:13]

Just the typical stuff. One time I was on Irving Street in San Francisco. It was actually Irving. It was like 9th Avenue near Irving. And I was standing in this driveway of this body shop or something. And this guy pulls up... Um, and he pulls up in his car and he just stops like about two inches short of me as a way to kind of like play chicken. Um, and then gets out of the car and his girlfriend was with him and he gave me this look which was like... You know, it was a totally like arrogant kind of cocky, like, you know, kind of a thing. And his girlfriend and I looked at the guy like, you've got to be kidding me. He's absolutely have to be kidding me. Right. And his girlfriend said something like, what a joke or whatever. Right. And so I remember this is like, you know, this is like probably after about my sixth month in the program. So I remember I said, okay, so I'm on probation, right?

[27:16]

I can't get into trouble. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna figure out a way to do this. I'm going to make a good point here and not get in trouble. So how am I going to do this? So I went to my car and I got out a baseball bat, right? And it was at nighttime, you know? And by the way, my girlfriend at the time was with me, right? And she was like, oh God, here we go again, right? And so I said, just wait for me in the car. And she said, you know what? I'm taking a bus home, right? So she split. So I went to my car, which is parked around the corner. I got a baseball bat out, and I just went to town on this guy's car, right? He went into a video store, which was right, you know, a few doors down from where his car was in the driveway. And I went to town on his car, and... And there were people all around going, whoa, what is going on? And I was just, like, smashing everything. And then I took his windshield wiper, tore it off, and I walked into the video store looking for him. I found him. So here I am, like, just, I'm, like, sweating.

[28:17]

I got all this adrenaline going, veins bulging out of my head, right? And I walked up to him with his baseball bat, and I gave him his windshield wiper, and I said, you know, I believe this is yours. Wow. Like this. And then I turned around and walked off. And I remember that I waited outside for a couple of minutes, right? Like, not even a couple of minutes, like for 10 seconds. Like, I wonder if he's going to follow me out, you know. And then I thought, no, that's going too far. You did your business, go. So I split. But that kind of stuff. Like, I did that while I was in the first year. And then I couldn't... Let me just ask you a question. So at that point in the program, you could be out of the program. Right now, the men are all housed 24 hours a day. Yeah. And you're not allowed to go out. But at that point in the program... Well, see, I wasn't incarcerated. Like, I didn't do... I didn't... See, we have... I forgot to make this clear. We have that jail piece in the program, right? Which is... We're the centerpiece for this RSVP jail program. Yeah. And then we have community programs in different parts of San Francisco and the community and all that. So... And I was... Yeah, I was in a... You know, I was taking a class in the mission three hours a night, once a week. And... And so that could have gotten me kicked out of, not kicked out of the program, but I would have had to start at week one.

[29:23]

You know, the... the rule of the program was you commit violence after eight weeks in the program, you disclose, then they send you back to, there are three stages in the program, they send you back to the first week of stage one, of three stages, and you have to work on your violence. And when the facilitator and the rest of the class vote that you're ready to move on, then you move on, right? And so I wasn't going to do that, so I kept that a secret. Among other things, you know, among other things. I wasn't being violent at home to my partner because I really got, like, just how... I really got sensitized to that, like just how horrific that was for the partner who I had been violent to before that, who we'd broken up and everything after that. But I didn't really make the connection, like how horrific that must have been for, well, that guy who comes, you know, who this guy, this crazy guy walks in with a baseball bat in front of his girlfriend, how vulnerable he must have felt at that time, regardless of what he did, right?

[30:26]

And how, like... You know, the community, like these folks that watched me dash this car in, like how unsafe they must have felt. There was a restaurant right across the street and people sitting in the window, having dinner, watching this happen, right? Like, I didn't get that. I didn't make that connection yet, right? I was getting it in increments. And I got in a couple fistfights, you know, and then, and I was doing really well, like, presenting myself to my probation officer, who incidentally was doing, like, home visits. It was a lot, the kind of probation I was on was a lot like parole, you know, where they do home visits and really, like, get into your life and everything. And I was like, you know, I charmed my probation officer, who was a woman, who, you know, and that was my thing, you know, and I was like, you know... making tea and doing all that stuff when they'd come over. I mean, it was really like, you know. So she said to me, because Man Alive at that time had, there was two stages, nine months worth of the program in San Francisco, and Marin had the only third stage class at that time locally.

[31:36]

And so she said to me, you know what, you've done so well, you know, so well for the last nine months, that I'm going to say that you satisfy the terms of your batterer class and not have you go all the way out to Marin. You don't need to drive all the way out to Marin, you know. And I was like, oh, okay, cool, right? And so, but then I went on my own, you know, because I was like starting to get really fascinated with the classes. You know, now we're getting to the point, let me tell you a little bit about the program. The first stage of the program, which is now 20 weeks, is about learning how to make a moment-to-moment decision to stop your violence. And how every incident of violence starts with a decision. And it starts with a moment where our sense of male role superiority is challenged. And because we live in a belief system that says that we are sort of the personification of male role authority, right?

[32:39]

That in order to feel that male role superiority, we have to have a somatic sense of it. And the only way that we're going to have a somatic sense of it is by doing something that substantiates that, which is violence, right? picking a chair up and throwing it across the room, right? You feel that in your body, you get that pump. Or it could even be a look that you give somebody. Or it could be the silent treatment, but it's whatever you do in your behavior that substantiates that feeling of authority, right? Or that idea of authority, it becomes a feeling because you're doing it in your body. So we learn that in first stage, right? that you're doing this because your belief system, which we call the male role belief system, tells you, it obligates you to have this feeling of superiority in your body. And superiority and inferiority, as you all know, is an illusion, right? They're just images and, you know, they're just roles that we play. And so this belief system requires constant feeding, constant substantiation. This is some deep stuff we're learning.

[33:41]

And I remember, you know, even one of my heroes, Bruce Lee, used to say, when you live... in an image, you're no longer yourself, but you live in a concept of yourself. And the minute that you occupy a concept of yourself, rather than being in yourself, you become a target. That was what Bruce said, right? And so, there were, like, all these connections, and I loved, like, intellectually, it was like a playground for me, this program, right? And so, that was first stage. And then second stage is where you learn how to come into your authentic self, and There's sort of a limited way in which our program does that, in which is that you become aware of your senses and you learn some techniques to drop out of your intellect and into your senses, right? And then once you have a good understanding of your senses, you can start to have an honest evaluation of your emotional state, right? And once you have an honest evaluation of your emotional state, you can start to set some healthy boundaries.

[34:42]

And that's what you learn in second stage. And in third stage, you learn how to then, mostly what we do in second stage is identify hurts and learning what boundaries would look like, knowing what those hurts are really about at core, right? And third stage is about how to create fulfillment plans where you turn those hurts into some sort of gain or fulfillment that is not violent, not controlling, but really self-based, right? So it doesn't rely on another person or another image of inferiority to help you substantiate your superiority and all that. It's away from that. So I wanted to learn that third stage of the program, which I had to drive all the way out to Marin. I was like, so I did that. And then I made a point to tell my probation officer I was going to do that anyway. And would that help me with my case? And she said, well, it couldn't hurt. And I said, well, what if I wanted to get this felony reduced to a misdemeanor? Because I know that's stipulated.

[35:42]

Would that help? Oh, yeah, for sure. So... So there was another kind of payoff for me. So I drove out to Marin and I was learning third stage. Then I had another kind of a moment of epiphany. It was like another moment of clarity or a rock bottom moment, you might call it, where I got into an argument with a bus driver. I was trying to pull into a parking space and this bus driver drove up right behind me and wouldn't let me get into the parking space. And so I waited and, you know, the bus driver was honking and I said, well, I'm not going anywhere. You're the one that's got to back up, you know, that whole thing. And then the bus driver pulled up alongside of me and I pulled into the space. The police were called though. And the police came and they ran a check on me and found out I was on probation. And one of the things that was stipulated on my probation was that, you know, I could be searched at any time, right?

[36:47]

And I wasn't allowed to have tools or anything that be used as a weapon. And so I had this whole humiliating search, which happened once because I had a busted taillight. It wasn't a busted taillight. It was a burned out bulb. And I got pulled over and I got searched, you know, and all that stuff. But it was something really humiliating about feeling like I had been wronged and then that the cops were totally on the side of the bus driver and... And so I was like, this was all on my way to this class, right? And I thought, wow. And so I'm like, I really need the class now. Like, they let me go. They let me go. But I mean, I got cuffed, and I was sitting on the curb in my cuffs while they took my car apart, you know? And I was like, whoa. And this is San Rafael. It wasn't my community. So I go to class when it's all done, and I'm about a half an hour late or 40 minutes late. And I walk up, and there's a sign outside. They have a 15-minute grace period, and then the doors get locked, and you can't go in. So it's like, sorry, doors are locked, and you can't come in.

[37:49]

So I waited until the break. It's a three-hour class, so right at the halfway point, there's a break. I walk in. Um, right after the break's over with and people are sitting down and I just, I made this announcement. You know, you guys, I don't have to be here. You know, like, this is not a part of my probation. Something happened. Like, I really, really need to talk. You know, I just like... And I was like this, I was trembling. I said, you know, I'm about, like, I really understand how people flip out and kill people, you know? I mean, I'm really, guys, right now at this point, I need this. And so they took a little consensus, and they said, yeah, let him stay. And so I told them about the incident, and I really learned how I set myself up. Like, that was just, you know, I was so open to hearing, like, from an objective party, like, what that was about. Because I expected a little bit of sympathy, and I got none. I got absolutely none, right?

[38:49]

But I was open to that. It was kind of cool. I was like, oh, whoa, yeah, you know, I could set that up. I mean, you know, why that parking space? You know what I mean? You know, and like, come on, dude. I mean, you know, you've got a problem with violence. I mean, you're being on probation. It's an opportunity for you. I mean, it's like added bonus that you stop your violence. Because if you don't, you're going back to jail. I mean, use that, you know? It's like, yeah, yeah. so that was like a turning point and from that point on i decided that i was going to stop my violence in my life like i really got the value of that there was something about the humiliation and all that and and just how i was held accountable in that class and that was great and then about about three i don't know three or four weeks after that um The guy who was running the office for the men's program there, which is a satellite of a women's program, the Morena Views Women's Services, was quitting and they needed somebody to run the office and coordinate volunteers and do clerical work and be a liaison to the...

[39:58]

probation department and whatnot. And do you want to do that? Do this. And it was like, you know, I can't remember what the pay was, but it wasn't, um, it wasn't much, you know? And, uh, and I knew that like, once I was done with the program, like, you know, my 16 weeks in third stage was done, that it probably would take off and never come back. There you are. Yeah, I do want to make sure. Well, you're doing fine. How much time do I have, though? You've got until 9, and we wanted to have some type of questions. So how about if I go for another 15 minutes, 10 minutes? Is that cool with everybody, if I do that for 10 minutes? I'm just getting into the program and the victim impact stuff and all that stuff. You want me to do that, too? A little bit of that, yeah. okay a lot to ask isn't it no it's not actually it's great i can because it kind of gives me incentive yeah so i i knew that like this is and actually i'm getting into that now because this kind of like changes this is the transition see um is that i knew that if i had just uh if i just left it up to my own you know like will that i would just not continue and so i took this on as a responsibility you know and uh

[41:11]

Because it meant that I would have to show up every day and it meant that I would have to learn more and it meant that I would have to represent the program to people, which meant that I would have to walk the talk and all that stuff. And so I took that as like an opportunity, you know, to keep myself safe. Because I knew that I was in trouble, you know, and so. Um, that's what I did. So I, I went into it with like a lot of passion and fervor and, um, gave up my job actually eventually, which is like I was in real estate and doing a little bit of insurance work, but like investing in real estate with some partners and being, doing like really shady stuff too, really bad stuff. Lots of, doesn't surprise any of you, I'm sure at this point, but, um, and so this was like, it was an opportunity for me to start doing something with my days that were really honest too, you know? And I pretty much bankrupted myself. And it was kind of cool. It was sort of like a macho challenge in a way. Like, can I do this? You know, it was like boot camp. Well, one thing led to another. I started to train as a facilitator, which I resisted.

[42:16]

I actually started a little bit and then I stopped. But I was coordinating a 24-hour crisis hotline. It's a hotline for men who are violent. who can call this hotline, like, if they're in the midst of their violence or about to do their violence, and they can talk to a volunteer, some guy that carries a pager, and, you know, he calls this answering service, basically, and the answering service pages the volunteer, and then they patch the calls, right? And there were, like, five guys on this... And I was one of them. I got trained to, this was like the scariest thing I ever, more scary than 10 times scarier than this. Where I knew that I was going to have to take calls, you know, and talk to guys that were like, you know, I mean, possibly, potentially kill somebody, you know, and like, what am I going to say to this guy? Right. And so, but I knew that if I was going to coordinate the hotline, I had to learn how to take hotline calls too, so I did that. I got trained to do that. We did all these worst case scenario role plays and then I,

[43:17]

And everybody said, but don't worry, you know, like calls are never like that. Usually folks that just want information, they're in trouble, but they're not in crisis and they just want information. And so don't worry about it. Well, sure enough, at two in the morning, right, I get the worst case scenario. This guy is like going off and his partner's in the background screaming and yelling too. And he's like, I'm going to fucking kill her. I swear I'm going to kill her. So I'm like, I can't believe, like I thought for a minute this was like a joke that one of the guys was playing on the phone. Like this can't be happening, right? And so anyway, I got the guy, you know, he made an agreement to leave the house. We have like a certain protocol, you know, leave the house for a certain amount of time. Call me again when you're outside. I'll teach you some stuff, right? Can you get out the house safely? If you can't, call 911. Call 911 on yourself if you have to, right? He got out. He called me. I gave him some tools. I asked him to come to a class. He came to a class, which was kind of cool, and he looked for me, and I was there. I was like, whoa, you're the dude I spoke to the other night?

[44:20]

He was like, yeah, volunteer, total volunteer. A year later, he was sitting in a room where we were training hotline volunteers, and he was learning how to be a hotline. Woo! It was like a full circle thing. So I was like, at that point, that was like the pivotal thing. And I realized that like, God, this is like the most honest thing I've ever done in my whole life. This is incredible. It's really like, like it feels like I really know what it feels like to respect myself. Like, whoa. This is almost too much. Like, I almost need a drink, you know? It's so serious. You know, I had a few of those, right? Where things are going real good and it's like, oh God, reach for the booze and stuff, so. Um, so then I, you know, I just, we, it was great, because I took that hotline thing, which had five volunteers, and when I left the men's program to work in San Francisco, there were like 35 volunteers on that hotline, which meant that we only had to do like half shifts, and, you know, because it was just crazy, the kind of work that we did when we were like five and six guys, so...

[45:27]

I came to work for Hamish Sinclair, who started Man Alive about 25 years ago. I came to work for him in San Francisco and had to really take the training piece seriously because I knew that there was an opportunity for me here in San Francisco that I didn't have working at the men's program. I felt like I'd sort of stay eliminated because there's a lot of politics and Stuff like that going on. I mean, it was great. My experience there was wonderful and everything. But I knew that I needed more. And so I took up Hamish's offer to come to San Francisco, get trained by him. And I learned an incredible amount about how to run groups and how to get groups to run itself. And then I started work. During that time that he was training me, he was also on an advisory committee for the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.

[46:32]

So I resolved to stop the violence program. And they were in planning. I don't need them. Thanks. I'm cool. That's good thinking because I do roll these and tell them sometimes, you know. Yeah. He's been reading my mind all day. It's cool. He's like going, yeah, he like knew when I was nervous downstairs. And I thought I was doing a good job of being all like, you know, Mr. Jovial and everything. You could tell I was nervous and stuff. Anyway, so, yeah, so I was a part of the planning, a little bit part of the planning, but I came in kind of late. But, God, there was something I wanted to say and I can't remember what it is now. So much I want to say. It's crazy. But I... So my first day working in the trenches at the county jail was pretty amazing because... Most of the guys in my class were mandated, and there were a few that were actually... They had referred themselves from other parts of the facility, knew about the program, because we were going around making presentations throughout the different facilities in San Francisco to recruit self-referred guys.

[47:42]

So a few of them were self-referred, but the majority of them were, like, mandated. Pretty rough crowd. Guys that might otherwise be classified in maximum security facilities were... in this program. And I remember thinking, God, how am I going to do this? Then once I sat down and I looked at all these guys, they looked familiar to me. And not like I knew them, but like I was home, you know what I mean? And I was, like, surprised at how comfortable I was. I was just like, hey, what's up, you know? And so that group that I had actually turned out to be a pretty incredible group of advocates that came out. I ended up having, like, most of the convicts in my group for some reason. It's really karmic, man. I mean, it was like, you know, like the most seasoned guys. One of the guys was Urban Pool, who was, like, in my group. He spoke here last year. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Urban, really powerful advocate of the program, really powerful personality, had extensive history of violence.

[48:48]

He was like, I guess Urban was like almost 50. He was almost 50 years old and, you know, had been violent for like 35 years of his life, you know, and had been in and out of penitentiaries, spent like 20 years of his life in penitentiaries or in some sort of facility, custodial facilities. Um, I felt really connected to him and I spent a lot of time like, uh, training him when he transitioned from, um, uh, county jail to, um, Walden House, which is a, uh, um, a residential treatment program for addicts. And I remember going there like two or three times a week and training him. And he and I were both like borderline narcoleptics. And so, you know, I'd be like, it'd be at the end of my day and my brain would be fried and I'd be sitting there and working with him and I'd almost fall asleep and I'd go, whoa.

[49:49]

And I'd look at him and he'd be like this. It's kind of cool. And so, but he ended up being like... a powerful advocate. He reached so many people and was instrumental in so many people changing their lives. But his life ended tragically. was in kind of a crisis, sort of an existential crisis for the last several months of his life, I guess. And then he relapsed. And within a couple of weeks, I'd say, of his official relapse, and I could be wrong, but close anyway, he ended up dying of an overdose. And he was really, you know, had started a real cycle of violence in those two weeks, too. Really intense cycle of violence. Victimized a lot of people. Actually, that was even less than a week. Less than a week. Yeah, it really spiraled up.

[50:50]

Right. One of the things, Leo, I wanted to shift in a little bit is that, as I mentioned earlier, you were a real advocate of us coming in with our meditation and our yoga. See, that's a whole piece that I left out. But you haven't left it out, but I think we can get into it. But it's interesting, I think, to the people here who are listening, how do you bring this practice, which seems quite separate in some ways about what you're talking about, and you saw immediately there's a connection here with the man alive. Yeah. Because to me, it's like the whole, the whole issue of violence is that violence is a socialized behavior, right? I mean, it's, I don't, I don't think any of us are born to be violent. I just, I'm convinced that we're not. I mean, I was a really sensitive kid. You know, I remember like how much I felt all the time. And, um, and how unsafe it was for me to feel, and how violence then became a way for me to not feel, and to not be hurt.

[51:56]

So what happens is that in learning the culture of violence, because I believe violence is a culture, that we take on personas, you know, that support, that foster and support violent behavior, right? And that for me, meditation, and the personas become so like integrated into our identity of who we are. You know, I mean, it was like that whole thing I told you about where it was like the idea of me not like, I look at my hands and they were weapons, you know? Like, and then, you know, but I also, I've done body work and even like in my 20s, you know, like had studied massage and had a little massage business going on the side. And, you know, like I had all these other things like art and I can operate movie cameras and all these creative things I can do with my hands. But when I, first thing I do when I look at my hands is I see them as weapons. I really do. My knuckles are still kind of calloused from the old days and stuff. And I mean, really, my hands are scarred up.

[53:00]

You know, I had this like, this scar here that, you know, I'd like to like, it gives me the creeps. There's a tooth in this knuckle here. When I hit somebody in the mouth one time, really big guy, so it was like one of these kinds of punches, and his bottom tooth stuck in my, you see it right here? Meditation. Yeah, meditation, right? So, okay, I'll tell you, but that almost killed me. I got, like, gangrene from that, right? I was in the hospital, which I wanted to tell the folks about one other thing, but I'll tell you, if you need to describe it, I'll tell you why. I'll bet you a question will come up, and then I'll be able to say this thing. But the meditation, you know, like, what I'm saying is that it was such an integral part of my life and such an integral part of who I thought I was, right, that, like, There was nothing in the world that could tell me I was anything else. But when I go into meditation, right? And the type of meditation that I practice, Kriya Yoga, it teaches us about our senses, but it also teaches us... There's a lot of techniques where we actually disconnect from our senses, and we disconnect from our intellect, too.

[54:08]

And we go right in between the heartbeats, you know? And there's this place where I... It's like there's no room for roles or conceptualized ego self-identities, you know what I mean? It's like nothing, you know? And to me, you can sit around and talk all day long about what it means to be your authentic self, to have feelings, to nurture, to do this and to do that. it becomes very theoretical, you know, but to actually go into a place of meditation where you, where you go into that void, you know, and there's no, there's no sense of self. I mean, it's kind of, there's sort of a, a weird paradigm there because it's like you find yourself by losing yourself, you know? And it's like, it, there's this, there's a, there's a real like experiential, um, way to do that, that all the talk in the world and all the theoretical constructs in the world don't touch and don't explain.

[55:09]

And so I really wanted to make sure that the guys got that. And I would do like meditations and stuff in groups sometimes. Right. But I knew that like I had other responsibilities of what I was going to teach in the groups. And then when these folks came along, especially Bhavani and said, I really think there's use for that. I was just like all over it. You know, I just was like, yeah, you know, and it was sort of like. Let's not talk about it. Let's just go. It was just a matter of me saying to Bianca, I think it should be done. But she wanted me to have all these meetings with you. And I already knew just by meeting you that you were the person to do it. And so you had your hand up. Sorry. Yeah, I'm wondering, is there some part of a technique, like maybe a meditation technique, that you teach people to carry with them through the day, and so there's something they can do when they start to feel a loss of control, or is this physical sensation to give them that sense of identity, that by-identity? Yeah, and that would be a question that I would really like to defer to Bhavani and to Martha and John, really.

[56:15]

But I could tell you that the thing that I used to teach the guys all the time was at that moment that we... Before, like, we incorporated meditation into the work, right? Like, even in my community classes. Like, that moment where we... can make a decision to violate we call it the moment of fatal peril and it's called fatal peril because fatal means deadly and it actually it's a moment where our male role authority or image of male role superiority is challenged you know something happens and and it betrays our obligation to feel superior, right? And so we, all of a sudden we're like in this existential state of panic. Like, who am I here in this moment? Our hands come up like this, right? It's like, who am I? I'm not the man that I think I should be right now because she's saying no or because he's disrespecting me. He's in my face, you know? And like the feelings, it's a fear moment really is what it is. It's a moment of panic, which then we jump into a place of anger a lot of times so that we don't have to feel the panic and all that, right?

[57:22]

That feeling is so like undarable in our bodies as men because it's vulnerable, right? That we literally go into a freak mode, like a panic mode, right? We go crazy and then we start acting violent and everything. And so what I... figured out was that most of the time when we were in that moment our breathing would stop like i knew my breathing would just go rapid like i get that and then if i really wanted to like you know calm myself down i'd have to go back into my diaphragm and all that right and so what i i took from my kriya yoga practice is there's what we do a three-part breathing where We inhale for the count of 20, we hold our breath for the count of 20, and we exhale for the count of 20, and we do like reps or sets of that, right? So I did a modification with the guys in my classes where I just would say, take a deep breath and count to five, you know, because 20 is like a lot to expect of somebody who doesn't even know that they can breathe from their diaphragms just yet, right?

[58:25]

And then just have them inhale, right? And exhale, inhale and exhale three times. And then inhale and hold their breath and tense up their muscles, right? And then hold your breath for as long as you can breathe without turning blue. And then let your breath out and relax your muscles. And what that does is it kind of forces your body into a state of relief. And so that's always, I called that, I wrote it down, Hamish had me write some manuals, like some narratives for class, and I put a name to that, I called it the suspended breathing. So basically that's the first thing that I would teach guys, and we're supposed to be teaching guys in class, when you're in your moment of fatal peril, do your suspended breathing. So it's like take three deep breaths, then hold your breath, tense your muscles while you're holding your breath, and then relax. And it brings your body into a grounded kind of state of relief, and then your mind follows, right? It's just like if somebody hit your toe with a hammer, your body would go, ow, and then your mind would go, ow, too, right?

[59:31]

And all that stuff. So it's just sort of a way to force your body into a somatic state of relief so that you can make more calm decisions, you know? Does that make sense? Yeah, those of us that, three of us that teach meditation, we're a part of a program called Victim Impact. And the men listen to a speaker who has been victimized. and they have to sit and listen to this person who's been beaten, or we had actually a Holocaust survivor come in, and someone who was gay and has been beaten. So they listen to these people, and then we break up into small groups, and they really talk about what did they hear? What did they hear that happened to that victim? How were they victimized? Was it sexual? Was it emotional? Was it physical? What kind of resources were taken? They really examine and pull apart the kind of actions that they heard the speaker talk about.

[60:34]

And then they have to speak about their own violence. What did I do that was not so different from what happened to the victim that we just heard? And so it's a very intense afternoon. It's once a week on Wednesdays. And the guys are really in the thick of not only their past but somebody else's past and looking at that. And so we come in at the very end of that day and teach meditation and yoga as a way of kind of settling out from what they've been hearing and seeing. and quieting down, and actually, I think, in a sense, coming back to that deep place where they can actually feel, where that authentic self can kind of be heard. So it's a very intense afternoon. It's kind of emotionally exhausting for anyone that's a part of it. And so the meditation is a way of just saying, okay, I can come back to the present moment. I can come back to this person in here who can change.

[61:34]

And I don't know, I think we each do a different form of meditation, but it does always involve coming back to the breath. I mean, whatever, it always begins by becoming aware of the breath. And as we've come to learn, I think, in our practice, that if there's an awareness of the breath, automatically it kind of calms the mind. And then Leo talks about, you know, we all have our own experience of what meditation is. is like for us in different times in our lives but there's you feel the whole class just settle and soften and forgive themselves you know in a certain way and uh and i think it's really been a pretty important part although a small part of that particular part of the week and we begin with the yoga and the stretching and then go into the meditation Can I ask about what stage of the program you start doing the victim impact phase? Is it at the very beginning? The program, it's sort of an ongoing, you know, it's not like in stages in custody in the community.

[62:40]

Yeah, people keep joining. People leave, they go to prison, or they get released. Yeah, it happens once a week, and a survivor does a presentation, and then Bhavani is a facilitator. She takes about 20 guys or so, or 18 guys or so, to one part of the facility and runs a class, and other facilitators run classes too, to help kind of process the... the presentation and internalize a lot of the experiences of the survivor to help build empathy. It's actually a class that's designed to deepen and develop levels of empathy in the participants. And so Bhavani really masterfully takes guys through process of identifying violence, talking about the impact of the violence that they saw on the survivor through his or her presentation and then to start to draw similarities in their own lives.

[63:48]

about violence they've committed that are similar either in the way that the violence was exacted or how people were impacted by their violence, and then to process their feelings around that, right? And then they cap it off with the meditation at the end. So it's a real powerful, powerful process. Yeah. I'm really interested. I think it's probably coming from my own tendency to get defensive in a lot of situations. And I'm imagining that a newcomer might feel very defensive given a victim and having to look at their own role. And so how do you, as facilitators, stay open to that and be present with that and not match that energy? Do you want to answer that one? Actually, it isn't just me as a facilitator. Fortunately, I mean, like what Leo was talking about is there's advocates in the group, too.

[64:53]

And so there's guys who are at different times of their own process. and and so they um they help call each other on it and and for the first week or two that the guys are in the program um i don't expect too much out of them you know like the first week it's like just just watch and just listen and you don't have to you know say anything at this point some of them actually do you know when they're sitting there in orange they know their lives aren't working And, you know, they know they've got a problem, most of them. And so they see the other guys learning and doing this work, and so it's a real powerful peer situation. So for me personally in working with them, my practice is critical for me to be able to do this work that I do. I'm constantly working with the concept of non-attachment. Mm-hmm. not getting attached to the results of whether they're successful or whether they're not and so there's a whole lot of stuff around that for me personally I think we also observe as you can imagine a lot of denial that they've been violent and there's a lot of nervousness around what they're being asked to do and we call it colluding which they'll start to laugh in the class or they'll start to talk to each other or they'll

[66:20]

be in denial that they didn't do anything violent like that. The manual for this program is this thing. Literally, it covers the most extraordinary amount of territory, and that's part of it. What is the colluding? What are the sidebar conversations? What are they doing to try to avoid or become defensive? And so this is, you know, the facilitators are really trained to notice it and to call it. And it really teach the men how to call each other on it. I mean, that's like the highest level of facilitation is where you're actually not that involved in a process, really. You've trained the guys to really facilitate their own classes. How do the three of you work and meditate? At the end of the sessions each week, how do the three of you work simultaneously? Do you work with separate groups? So you're actually facilitating individual groups.

[67:22]

And how many are in each of your groups, 20 or so? If there's 60 men in all, how many do we have? Any more than 55. That's divided up into four groups. And as these persons, some of them you mentioned, go on to prison, do you have some type of... continuity for them in prison with some of the prisons, with the California... If they go to San Quentin, yeah. If they go to San Quentin, there's a violence prevention... There's a Manilac program in San Quentin right now, which is voluntary, and it's like once a week. It's not quite as extensive. And yours is not voluntary. It's both voluntary and mental? That's correct, yeah. I think some of the men can choose to go to the mainstream jail or to do this program. Oh, I see. Yeah. And go on with the outreach, like at San Quentin, are there budding programs in other prisons? Are you working with consulting with other prisons? We're actually right now consulting with CDC to do a post-release program for parolees.

[68:24]

And Hamish Sinclair, who's the founder of the program, is actually driving up to Sacramento once a week to teach parolees and administrators how to run classes. And hopefully, so it's sort of like a backdoor sort of tail wagging the dog way that we might be able to get into other prisons around California. CDC. CDC, right. And it's also, I think he's been to Boston and where else is he interested? Denver? Starting a Man Alive program. Well, yeah. I mean, Denver's interested. Boston's interested. We started a program in Auckland, New Zealand. Hamish and I went in February and started... a program at a forensic psychiatric jail facility there. Guys that have committed like some of those heinous kinds of crimes you can imagine, but found innocent by way of insanity and are there for like, you know, indefinite periods of times, right? And so we started a program a program there and then I went back in October of last year and to see how things were going, do some more consulting work and started a high school program while we were there too the second time around.

[69:38]

And are your connections through the Superior Courts or just the prison of the sheriffs? Oh, you're talking about here? Here in California. Yeah, I mean, we have a connection with Superior Court and the Probation Department. Yeah, and that was our way into the jail first, right? We were doing community classes and the compliance, you know, compliance affirmative programs connected with the probation department and superior court, or at that time it was municipal court mostly. But now they, yeah, but now there is no muni court. It's all the superior, yeah. And other counties in California? Yeah, Marin County here and... We're working on Alameda County, but we're not quite there yet. And there's extensive community outreach. Once they've left the program, there are things that they do and can do. How many days a week can you... Five days a week. Yeah, like AA or something, you have access to a man alive programs in the community.

[70:44]

Right. Yeah. I'm guessing that probably close to 100% of the people in your program were abused or neglected or something in their background of that nature. And I'm wondering how you work with that. Is there any one-on-one therapy that goes on at the same time, or is that also dealt with in situations? Yeah, we have, there are two ways that we approach, you know, this program. One is in the community, which actually has less resources than if you're actually incarcerated. If you're incarcerated, it's actually five days a week, like 10 hours a day intensive program, right? Yeah. And if you're talking about the in-custody piece, we have a class once a week for men. We call it a loss of innocence class where we can actually talk about our childhood and the abuse and, you know, how we were indoctrinated into our violence through the kinds of abuse that we were exposed to.

[71:51]

And... A lot of times, and we don't really, we give some space to deal with that in class, but we don't do a lot of that. We do that in one piece of the class, in Man Alive classes, where I'm talking about Man Alive is separate from Loss of Innocence, where we can talk about how we learned our male moral belief system, how we were indoctrinated into it, but we don't make that the focus of the class. We make the moment-to-moment experience of our violence the focus of the class because it's an accountability program. And so they're not quite as fortunate if they're coming into the class through the community, right? And a lot of times we suggest if they have resources to get therapy and do therapy along with our program, because it's a good combination, you know? And yeah, so. And there are places where guys can get therapy cheap and for free, stuff like that, and we give them those resources. Yeah, I have a similar question.

[72:51]

I have a history of abuse myself. And for me, I was in denial and was able to not show it. And for me it came up in meditation. It came up big. And so I wonder if that's a possibility, if you have, facilitators who could, you know, catch it and, you know, have conversations with people. Can I say something about, and this is my observation watching John, I haven't seen, I have seen the work a little bit, and Bhavani is that the kind of meditation that they teach that they lead in the programs. I think you guys have thought of that, that if you go into those real deep states of meditation, it frees up a lot of trauma. And so a lot of the meditation that I've watched them do is a lot of guided imagery stuff. where there's a focus that allows people to learn real basics of meditation, one-pointed thinking and things like that, and sensory exploration and all that, and not to go into those deep unconscious places where you open up cans of worms and all that.

[74:07]

So I just wanted to put that out there. I've watched that and I've had a lot of respect for watching you guys do that because that was like a big fear of mine. I think when we had a conversation early on where you were kind of aware of that possibility and that you were going to teach meditation that was a lot more accessible. So that might be the first part to your question. And then I don't know if you guys want to expound on that. You know, for me, I think a lot of... The program is designed for that to happen, not just in meditation or the possibility, but it's really like... I think one of the hardest parts of the program for men I hear is that moment when they realize that who they thought they were, they are not. They're not the hitman. And they feel terribly confused and empty and... are scared and they haven't really had an opportunity to feel scared in their life in a long time or fearful or sorrowful. So a lot of that is exactly what is encouraged to happen in the program, not really so much in the meditation, but in all the different classes that they take from, you know, six in the morning until nine at night.

[75:12]

And so there are these professional people like... who've been there and have had that experience, and that's where they get their support. And I think one of the marvelous things about this is that the facilitators are people like Leo who have been in the program, and they really know what these guys are going through. And our meditations are very short, so they're not doing three-day meditations and seven-day meditations, where I think that would be more likely to happen. I think all three of us teach a breath-oriented meditation. That's the fundamental focus. We also do the volunteer class. Martha described that short half-hour class that we do at the end of Survivor Impact, but on Tuesday nights we do a two-hour class that guys can volunteer to come to. And there's a lot more silence in those meditations. It's not as guided as what we do on the Wednesday afternoon one.

[76:14]

And sometimes it does get really emotional for the guys. I was in a class one day where two of them during the meditation just started sobbing. And sobbing in a jail is like, you know, that doesn't happen. Well, actually, it does happen. In our programs, it does. Yeah, it does, actually. But, you know, and I think it's part of just letting them feel the pain of what's happened. And I think that my experience in when that happens, if they just... experience it rather than resist it, it takes some of the power away. And so, and probably all through that. Well, just that, you know, I think they're actually, we're talking about really three programs. There's, you know, the work that we do with RSVP. And then there's this other group, which, you know, works at San Quentin with we. And then the group that Rosie was participating with also at Downtown and Bryant, you know, just doing some yoga and meditation.

[77:17]

And now we've actually started, Martha and I began about a month ago, downtown, actually doing a Zen service at one of the pods. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, there's a network called the Prison Meditation Network, which is run by the San Francisco Zen Center and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. And there's a couple of brochures about it. But we're kind of a loosely formed group of people who do this kind of work wherever we're asked. Mm. I think one of the things that's been so meaningful for myself and for all of us is how powerful this program's been in terms of really helping us, the insights and the kind of growth that all of us feel as facilitators. I mean, we're just an adjunct to what you guys are doing, but I know I've learned so much from you, and it's really been very helpful in our practice. Yeah, we're two-way, two-way street. Yeah, that's what I think, two-way street. Somebody who hasn't asked a question. We have someone back, Joe. I have two questions.

[78:19]

I'm wondering if there's a difference in the success of the program based on ethnicity. I guess most of the people you're working with are men of color. I'm wondering if, like, I perceive as being a white boy anyway. like these, like Latino cultures and, you know, black culture in this country to be, you know, more generally speaking, machismo. I'm wondering if that makes it really hard, you know, to get through to the people that you're working with. And then the other question I have is, you know, I was here when it was urban, is that how you say his name? Spoke last year, and when I heard that he overdosed, it was... I was really, really surprised because he was a beautiful person. I wasn't surprised because he was a beautiful person, but he seemed very strong when he was here.

[79:19]

And to hear of his relapse really makes me think of my own habits, my own tendencies. I think that's one reason why I actually just... went through a Jukai ceremony and I took the precepts was so that, you know, this is something I can have in my life to support me, you know, so that I don't necessarily, so I don't relapse into these old habits and I wonder, like, I guess it's never a guarantee, but I wonder what your thoughts are and relapse for yourself. Yeah, your first question had to do with whether ethnicity makes, like, internalizing this work more challenging, like, you know, being a person of color, you know, And one thing that I really see, first of all, I see violence as a culture. And if you look at the, if you're talking about domestic violence, just domestic violence in itself, that it happens equally in just about every cultural demographic in the United States.

[80:28]

And it happens even, I was going to say, because the big splitter to me is not, I mean, race is a huge splitter, right? But a really, really, like, powerful splitter is class, right? Yeah. Because we have white guys in that dorm there, right? And they're from a different social economic strata. And they're just every bit as violent as anybody else in the dorm, right? So if you're looking at domestic violence, it happens anyway, right? So we, you know... It's not so much that these folks are more violent as it is that they have been caught and they have less resources to get themselves out of the predicaments legally that other folks do, right? And actually, what I've noticed is that I've had guys, you know, I've had, like, you know... upper middle class a very wealthy white guys come to my classes in the community volunteer right one guy came one night with a cast on his hand and he said to me and this was a he's an investment banker had a series seven you know license everything like that and he said uh i need to join this program and i had like 40 guys in my class that at that point i said i can't let you join because it's too crowded here you know um

[81:48]

but I can give you some other programs. He said, no, I heard some really good things about this program and I really need to be in this class. And I said, well, come back in a month. And he said, listen, I just took, see this cast here? I broke my hand on my fiance's face. I went to West Point. I don't know if you know about West Point, but it's a pretty tough military school. So he said, I said, yeah, I've heard of West Point. He goes, well, I boxed at West Point. And he said, I hit her with everything I had, and she had to get reconstructive surgery. And he says, let me tell you something, man, I really need this program. I figured, okay, one more person's not going to hurt. So I said, yeah, come on in. And he turned out to be one of the most resistant guys. I mean, he was like Dung Ho. He was in the process, and he wanted to process everything, but he did not want to work on his violence at all. It was so hard for him. And then he had the guy who was sitting next to him, Right. African-American gentleman and another guy, Polynesian guy, both had been in and out of prison who internalized the program just like this.

[82:50]

Got it, man. You speak in my language. I get it. You know what I mean? And would hold this guy accountable night after night. And this guy would say, what do you know about me? You know what I mean? You know, and all this stuff. So I think that like how they internalize the program has a lot to do with how you set up a teaching dynamic in the class, right? And I've seen some facilitators have a really hard time reaching guys because of the dynamic that they create in terms of rapport and everything, and not so much because of whether there's like a cultural block, you know what I'm talking about? But sometimes culture has something to do with it, you know what I mean? Because we all have our ways of expressing ourselves that have to do with our cultures, you know? but, um, ultimately it's not about that, you know, for me. How about urban? And I know that affected Joe and it certainly affected everybody who looks at, and we were talking earlier about a big part of violence is drug abuse.

[83:52]

So, yeah, you know, a huge part of violence is drug abuse. And I think it's not so much because, because drug abuse brings on violence is because drug abuse is another form of violence. And, um, when you take guys that have a propensity to be violent, and then one of the ways they express their violence is through drug abuse, then it's on, it's a wrap, you know? And drug abuse is one of the most, to answer your question, I think, or I don't know if I have an answer for it, but to respond to your question about how do you deal with relapse in this line of work, you know? And I think that It's a very, you know, they call it a cunning and baffling disease, right? For a reason. Is that the addictive mind creates so much rationale, right? like it turns out that urban was drinking and doing stuff right you know but but had everybody who knew he was drinking convinced that it wasn't his problem because it wasn't his drug of choice so he could take an occasional beer he could do that and and um i don't being an addict in recovery myself like i still get cravings you know at times right and if i if i um internalize those cravings if i don't like express them somehow and and tell somebody right and uh

[85:14]

process it, the cravings get stronger. They really do. And then they manifest into some sort of behavior that leads me down a different path, right? So I think that the way to really deal with it, and I think one of the things that we need to learn a little bit more as violence prevention facilitators is how to get a discussion about relapse and addiction going in our classes more than we do. Because I think that a lot of times our focus tends to be on violence and not so much on relapse. But here's the good news. The good news is that we're dovetailing with a recovery program in custody. And what we do now with inmates is that, well, first of all, we have facilitators from the recovery program come in, or we're planning to do this, have them come and run classes in our program. And then the other thing is that we're taking guys that have been in our program for a while that we know have a little bit more time left in their lives. their jail stay for whatever reason we send them over to the next pod to do recovery work for 90 days or whatever and so that that deals with at least the discussion of their addiction more right and focusing um

[86:29]

Yeah. Did that answer your question at all? Seeing that the time is nigh when we're going to have to kind of ring a bell and come to an end. But what I'd like to say, we were willing to stay around for a little while after the class for those of you who haven't had questions answered. But I know some of you do need to get to bed and get up early. Five o'clock in the morning, is that it? Four thirty. Four twenty. Four twenty. I get up around that time anyway to play with my daughter. Before we do our little chant, just wanted to say that these books over here are just books of mine that you're willing to borrow, those of you who live here, and just share them among each other and then by the end of the series bring them back to me or Wendy. And these are things that you can pick up and take home. The one, the magazine here is an in-house magazine put together by the clients, by the men in the program. It's mostly writings by them about this program. And I see that there's probably not enough for everybody, but maybe those of you who live here can share them and those of you who don't live here can have one to take home and

[87:39]

And it's really a remarkable testimony to how the program affects the lives of the men in it. Read it from cover to cover. And incidentally, on page 10, there's an article about me and... And it's actually not about me, but it's a little bit about what we did in New Zealand, which I think would be cool for you guys to read. And it mentions this one woman who graduated from our high school program here in San Francisco, who went with me to New Zealand to start a high school program with me. And she just, I mean, she's amazing. So, anyway... Yes, there's an article in there that's written from one of the guys who was a real regular attendee of the yoga meditation class that we do on Tuesday nights. Yes. And that's a really sweet article. Well, I want to thank you, Leo. Thanks for having me. It was really wonderful to have you.

[88:40]

We had a great afternoon. We went down to the garden. I think we'll see you again one form or another. Oh, for sure. Well, let's chant and then we'll stay around for some questions. May our intention...

[88:54]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_85.26