mind, body and life skills for at-risk youth

Introduction to MBA Curriculum

In the summer of 2008, MBA convened a curriculum conference with its top advisors, trainers, and senior instructors to distill 23 years of organizational wisdom into a new curriculum for youth. To develop the new curriculum we looked at the top 10 challenges expressed by youth in our classes over the years and the 6 criminogenic factors that cause offenders to recidivate. We cross referenced these against the 10 topics that our instructors felt were most vital to supporting youth, and built a set of content modules from the intersection of these three lists. These content modules are set within a universal class structure that is grounded in mindfulness meditation and emotional awareness, and makes use of the council style. The intervention is delivered by highly trained MBA instructors, who have been through an intensive and individualized facilitation training developed by MBA’s Training Department.

Above Photo – from left to right: Notable MBA Curriculum developers at the conference:
GEORGE MUMFORD – a sports psychology consultant, meditation teacher, he served as a member of Head Coach Phil Jackson’s support staff for the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers , teaching both teams the practice of mindfulness meditation. George brought many of these same techniques, and his ‘play like a champion’ philosophy, to the MBA Curriculum.
FLEET MAUL – Founder of Prison Dharma Network and the Peacemaker Institute – Fleet is one the most renowned meditation teachers serving the incarcerated population today.
VINNY FERRARO – Senior teacher for Challenge Day and MBA Teacher Training Director.

Content Modules

1. Basic Goodness
2. Mindfulness
3. Active Listening
4. Impulse Control
5. Emotional Intelligence
6. Empathy (Self & Others)
7. Forgiveness
8. Transforming Negative Core Beliefs
9. Cause & Effect
10. Interpersonal Relationships

Universal Class Structure

Creating trust and building a physically and emotionally safe space is our first responsibility. If possible, classes are held in a separate room with no other adults present. The group is arranged in a circle. Outside interruptions are minimized. Facilitators have a hosting orientation. Norms, including confidentiality, are agreed on by the entire group. Class content is delivered. The signature meditation is practiced. The class is closed in a ceremonial way.

Mindfulness Meditation

The practice of meditation is simply the practice of remembering, of returning to contact what is happening right now. In each moment, the future has not yet arrived and the past is already gone. Life occurs right on the “tip of this moment”. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of returning your attention to this present moment each time your mind wanders into thoughts of the past, or starts thinking about the future. It’s simply bringing your self back to this felt moment of life.

This practice has many benefits:
•Increases attention span, strengthens concentration and capacity to focus
•Rejuvenates the mind through direct access to inner calm
•Promotes emotional intelligence through enhanced self awareness
•Provides a potent tool for stress reduction, anger management, and impulse control
•Increases ability to manage conflict with ease

The style of meditation we teach is called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, developed by MBA advisor Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Emotional Awareness

Part of the reason MBA’s model is innovative is because it begins with a radically different premise about mental health. Whereas western mental health models are very nuanced in their description of mental illness, they have less to say about what constitutes optimum mental health. MBA begins with a different definition of mental health: one that looks at mental health as the ability to be fully present in an equilibrated way with our moment-to-moment experience. This ‘mindfulness-based’ definition of mental health perceives lack of health as those behavioral, mental, and emotional habits that prevent us from being ‘in the moment’, where we have choice, and are instead involved in modes of reaction. Whether that reaction is to shoot someone, to shoot up, or just to check out, from this point of view all are ways of exiting a present moment-to-moment experience that has become untenable. Youth who grow up in an unpredictable, violent, and abusive context may understandably have a much more difficult time staying ‘in’ their experience.

Our direct organizational experience is that the things that are pushing people out of their experience are emotional, rather than cognitive phenomena. In other words, we believe that youth typically act out because they are trying to meet an un-recognized emotional need or respond to an emotional situation they do not know how to ‘be’ with. This need may be to exit an internal situation or conflict, which drives drug use or violence oriented at self or others; it may be a need to feel connected to a community, which drives gang affiliation; or it may be the need to feel fully alive, which drives extreme risk-taking behavior. Or it might be the triggers from previous trauma that create an emotional state. Our experience is that these are all emotional drivers of behavior and that what underlies them are un-recognized emotional needs.

Our intervention therefore aims to shine a light directly on these ‘invisible’ states of awareness. Our foundational orientation is toward bringing young people’s attention to these ‘invisible’ states of awareness that are behind and beneath their ordinary reactions. And when we really look at these ‘invisible’ states- they are feeling-based.

By bringing consistent attention to this previously invisible fabric, young people begin to experience directly the needs that arise prior to the actions they take, and can begin to get a sense of these as distinct. As young people hone the capacity to directly experience their own internal needs and feelings with greater steadiness and clarity they can separate these needs from actions. And here there is some freedom. They are able to gain deeply personal insight into why they act the way that they do, and to begin to understand the origins of these behaviors and emotional and mental patterns in their own histories. They begin to become understandable to themselves. Through developing confidence in this practice it becomes possible for them to begin investigating the traumas in their lives that have created the emotional patterns that they are accustomed to using in their day-to-day lives, and to begin the process of changing these patterns if they so desire. Concurrently they are learning techniques of self-care and communication so that they can better experience their own intrinsic value, and express their needs to others. This process of healing is the gradual and natural expression of their deepening self-understanding, and is, in our view, the most direct avenue to helping highly at-risk young people change their life circumstances.

Council

We often begin and end our classes with a council session, a speaking and listening circle adapted from Native American ceremonial circles. In this format the teens sit in a circle where everyone can see everyone else. Council is formally opened with a dedication, during which a candle is lit to signify the formal beginning of the process. During council a ‘talking piece’ is passed around: whoever has the piece has the floor, and all other participants practice actively listening to them. The person with the talking piece is encouraged to speak in an unrehearsed way about what is true for them–either in relation to a specific topic, or to simply share what is on their heart and mind. We encourage participants to speak without an agenda, and with sincerity. When participants have the full attention of the group and the opportunity to express themselves in a confidential and explicitly non-judgemental environment, they often find themselves speaking about deeply personal matters. Each participant has the opportunity to speak his/her piece and be heard and acknowledged by the group. At the end of Council there is a closing dedication, and the candle is extinguished to signify the formal end of the circle.

Some of the benefits that this technique offers are:
•Develops empathetic listening skills
•Encourages a sense of group participation and belonging
•Creates a safe environment for honest personal sharing and exploration of difficult issues
•Promotes mutual respect among youth of diverse backgrounds
•Provides the opportunity for positive self-expression

For More information about Council, check out our Youth Speaks section.

Facilitation Training

MBA’s Teacher Training Department focuses on training instructors in how to be with deep emotional content skillfully. Because the group process often brings up strong unresolved emotions, and because the young people we serve are often dealing with repeated trauma, instructors are engaged in deep personal work with their own emotional content, so that they are not triggered by it in the young people. Facilitation training also addresses the place that we are relating to eachother from. MBA is engaged in an exploratory process with youth. We are interested in being with them in a deep and authentic way. We’re not in the room to tell them what to do, or how to be. It’s not a teacher – student relationship, so much as a coaching and guiding relationship. We are there to model authenticity, and vulnerability; to share our experience of transformation. Our training process helps instructors to learn to teach from a place of ‘open-heartedness’ rather than a place of ‘knowing’. This invites youth to open their own hearts.

Top 10 Issues for Youth

Over the years, youth in our classes identified these as the top 10 struggles they face in transforming their lives. These are not in a particular order.

•Dealing with stress
•Dealing with death, loss, and grief
•Dealing with guilt, regret
•Gangs & loyalty code
•Relationships/ Sex
•Drugs
•Conflict, anger, fighting
•Despair/ hopelessness “It’s too late for me…”
•Money, jobs, school
•Family

6 Criminogenic Needs/ Factors

Community Corrections: Research and Best Practices. “What are Criminogenic Needs and Why are they Important?”

Edward J. Latessa, Ph.D. Christopher Lowenkamp, Ph.D.
Professor & Head Professor
Division of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati

Over the years, a great deal of research has been conducted on offenders, correctional sanctions, and correctional programs—literally hundreds of studies have tried to better identify the risk factors correlated with criminal conduct. Sifting through and reading this literature is a daunting challenge, but fortunately
quite a bit of research has been done not only to identify risk factors, but also to determine which are the strongest. Research by Andrews, Bontà, Gendreau and others have identified six major risk factors associated with criminal conduct:
1. antisocial/ pro-criminal attitudes, values, and beliefs
2. pro-criminal associates
3. temperament and personality factors
4. a history of antisocial behavior
5. family factors
6. low levels of educational, vocational or financial achievement.

If we look carefully at these areas we can see that some can be influenced or changed while others cannot. Those that cannot be changed are called “static.” Examples include prior record or family criminality. Early onset of criminal behavior is a very good predictor of future behavior, and it is a risk factor that cannot be changed: if you were first arrested at age ten you will always have been first arrested at age ten. Similarly, if your father is in prison it may help explain why you are in trouble (i.e. social learning), but the fact that your father is in prison cannot be changed. Those factors that can be changed arc called “dynamic.” They include factors like who an offender hangs around with, offenders’ attitudes and values, their lack of problem solving skills, their substance use, and their employment status. All these are correlated with recidivism, and all can be targeted for change. These dynamic factors arc also called criminogenic needs, crime producing factors that are strongly correlated with risk.

We can compare this to the risk factors associated with having a heart attack. Your risk can be heightened by your age (over 50), sex (males), family history of heart problems, high blood pressure, being overweight, lack of exercise, stress, smoking, and high cholesterol. Some of these factors are static and others are dynamic. To understand your risk you would factor in all of them; to affect—and lower—your risk you would focus on the dynamic ones. Applying the same logic to effective correctional intervention we come up with the need principle as a way to choose the “what” to target for change in an offender—namely, dynamic
facrors or criminogenic needs that are highly correlated with criminal conduct. Programs should assess and target crime-producing needs, such as anti-social attitudes, anti-social peer associations, substance abuse, lack of empathy, lack of problem solving and self-control skills, and other factors that are highly correlated with criminal conduct. Furthermore, programs need to ensure that the vast majority of their interventions are focused on these factors. Such a focus produces results.

Programs that concentrate more on non-criminogenic areas have small to slightly negative effects (i.e. they may slightly increase recidivism!), while programs that target at least four to six criminogenic needs can reduce recidivism by 30 percent. It is important to note that most offenders are not high risk for recidivism because they have one risk or need factor, but rather are high risk because they have multiple risk and need factors. Programs that target only one such need may not produce the desired effects. For example, while unemployment is correlated with criminal conduct for many probationers and parolees, by itself it is not that strong of a risk factor. After all, if most of us were unemployed we would not start selling drugs or robbing people; we would simply start looking for another job. But if you think work is for someone else, if you have no problem letting someone else support you, or if you think you can make more in a day illegitimately than someone can make in a month legitimately then being unemployed does add considerably to your risk of offending. Successful programs must address clusters of criminogenic needs that work together.

It is also important to remember that non-criminogenic factors such as self-esteem, fear of punishment, physical conditioning, understanding one’s culture or history, and creative abilities will not have much effect on recidivism rates. Unfortunately, there are a lot of programs out there that target non-criminogenic needs and as a result do not produce much effect on recidivism. Studies have shown that programs that target four to six more criminogenic risk factors than non-criminogenic risk factors can have a thirty percent or more effect on recidivism. On the other hand, programs that target more non-criminogenic risk factors have virtually no effect. Remember, “what” you target for change is important, as is the density of those targets around crime-producing needs.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

We call what we do “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” (MBSR). However, in actuality, MBSR goes far beyond what is commonly thought of as “stress reduction” and may be best described as tapping directly into the dimensions of human experience commonly described by words such as heart, spirit, soul, Tao, and dharma. In this way, MBSR can be thought of as a consciousness discipline: a profound spiritual discipline, aimed at deep self-reflection, self-knowledge, and liberation from confining views of self, others, and the world. Our articulation of the meditative principles and practices involved in MBSR attempts to uncover the universal dimensions of such disciplines and their applicability in modern society, and is independent of the ideological and cultural belief systems and religious frameworks out of which these meditative practices emerged, although it honors what is deepest and best in all the meditative traditions and attempts to embody the wisdom and compassion that underlie all of them.
Mindfulness is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life, a way of taking charge of your life, a way of doing something for yourself that no one else can do for you — consciously and systematically working with your own stress, pain, illness, and the challenges and demands of everyday life. The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM) is an outgrowth of the Stress Reduction Clinic, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. in 1979. Jon Kabat–Zinn is a current member of the MBA advisory board, his son is an outstanding MBA Project instructor.
The Stress Reduction Program has been featured in the Bill Moyer’s PBS documentary Healing and the Mind and in the book of the same title, on Oprah, NBC Dateline, ABC’s Chronicle, and in various national print media. It is also the subject of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s best-selling book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (Delta, 1990) and Saki Santorelli’s book, Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine (Random House, 1999). Since its inception, more than 13,000 people have completed the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program and learned how to use their innate resources and abilities to respond more effectively to stress, pain, and anger.