#57 - How Talking in a Circle is Changing Prisons and Police Departments

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

Chris Miller here.

If this is your first time listening or watching, it's so nice to meet you.

If this is your, what would this be?

58th time watching?

I forget what episode number this is.

It's great to have you back.

This whole entire podcast is about improving social connection so that we live less stressful lives and are able to live lives to the full extent.

This episode features Jared Seide and his work is very important to me.

He is the executive director of Beyond Us and Them, also Center for Council.

What he does is he works with people who are formerly incarcerated, people who are incarcerated.

He works with law enforcement.

He works with healthcare officials.

I know people who are very near and dear to me who have spent time behind bars.

I have people very near to me who are law enforcement officers, people who are healthcare workers.

And Jared and Beyond Us and Them, they are using social connection to raise levels of connectedness and lower levels of stress.

And before I even go in and start explaining all of his research, I'm gonna stop because he does it even better.

But I was super grateful to have him here.

I think you're going to enjoy the episode.

Before we hop into it, if you haven't already, leave a like and a review and a rating on this podcast.

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And I do think it does help people discovering the podcast.

So I want more people to discover this podcast, especially when it features work like Jared's and organizations like Beyond Us and Them.

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So without further ado, Jared Seide.

You are officially live in the Talk to People Virtual Podcast.

I'm here with Jared Seide.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I'm thrilled to be talking to you now.

So question one is, how does one grow in compassion?

How does one grow in compassion?

You know, I think I had the great good fortune of studying with the amazing Joan Halifax, who was a protege of Joseph Campbell and is a noted medical anthropologist and important socially engaged Buddhist teacher, a scholar in compassion who has written widely and basically says, you can't teach compassion.

Sorry.

But compassion is made up of non-compassion elements that are trainable.

And I think that there are ways in which we can practice and recognize how it is to settle our attention, to create a relationship with our body and our thought stream in our heads and our emotional regulation and our spirit such that we can actually meet the moment, meet each other, meet the world and open ourselves in a kind of a vulnerable way, an intimate way to the experience of the present moment.

And in doing that, I think it creates the conditions for compassion to arise.

Compassion is an emergent process.

It's not pity or sympathy or empathy.

Those are very different things.

Compassion involves a much more kind of robust understanding of how it is we perceive suffering in another and in ourselves and in the world and what we do about it.

The resolve to take action is part of compassion.

It's not putting this at a distance.

It's really allowing ourselves to internalize it and to recognize it in ourselves as well.

So there's no such thing as compassion fatigue.

If you're fatigued, take care of yourself.

You can't leave yourself out of compassion and you can't leave the sort of idea that you sort of liked something on social media and you're done.

As you are moved by what you perceive, the action you take invokes this sort of quality of compassion.

And it's a practice that I think takes a little bit of intention, but it has an enormously beneficial impact on our health, on our relationships, on society.

It's so critically important and it really requires of us that we show up.

Yeah.

I can tell that compassion resides in you, that practice and when did that start?

Because you wrote the book, Where Compassion Begins.

When did you realize that compassion had grasped you and you needed to talk more about it?

You know, I grew up in New York and much of New York is still in me, except for the accent, which comes out when I am back there.

So I start talking like this and like, there's a sense of, you know, you call me Jared, I'm home.

You wanna get my attention.

You call me by my name, which is Jared.

But that has somehow like lost any place in my life now.

The qualities in New York growing up were so immersive, I would say.

New York was a mess when I was growing up.

It was exciting and sketchy and magical and intimate and loud and honest.

And you couldn't help but feel that your story and everyone's story were overlapping all the time.

I think that that sense of how I define myself in relationship to others and how others perceive me and what happens in relationship was just part of what I understood being a human was.

And I think, you know, leaving New York, you know, it's a great relief to not have the screaming and the yelling all the time.

But frankly, I get kind of anxious in the Midwest.

Like when I'm driving around, I don't see a lot of people.

You know, there's an occasional cow or something.

It's kind of like, yikes, we're all the people.

And who am I with these fields?

Like I, you know, I recognize that in me, there's this quality of finding myself in relationship with others and the quality of being seen and having an impact on others, whether it's, you know, hey, what are you doing?

Or, hey, you having a good day?

Or get out of here or something.

You know, there's a sense that people, you know, perceived you and engaged with you.

And I think that was really deep inside me.

And I carried it with me when I came West.

I think being a parent was all consuming and I loved it.

I think when my daughter was in a school that started to get kind of sketchy, I noticed that the place was scary and I didn't want to subject my daughter to a place that didn't have compassion where she could get lost or hurt.

And that's when I kind of realized I needed to really lean into what it meant to create an environment where folks could take the time to really listen to each other's story authentically and care.

And that's where the beginning of all this work kind of happened was in that experience in my daughter's elementary school.

Okay, so your daughter was young and you started to reflect on that because it was so near to you.

And then do you start writing the book then, or was it something you sat on for a while and you finally put pen to paper years later?

You know, what I experienced in that moment, and this is like, you know, Rodney King had happened and so Los Angeles was kind of like on fire.

There was a lot of sense of mistrust and in a public school, the environment was so full of intensity and animosity and suspicion.

I was the president of the governing board of the school.

I knew it was necessary for us to do something to heal this community.

I had heard that there was this practice of council, this thing that people were calling council, coming together and sharing stories.

And I had heard that that was being experimented with by some of the private schools and some other institutions in Los Angeles.

And we asked some folks to come over and show us what that could look like.

And what I saw happen at that school in a matter of three, four months was like a complete transformation in the whole school community.

I saw a practice transform a community into a place of compassion, into the closest I had seen to beloved community in my life.

And that was so extraordinary that I kind of dropped everything I was doing and decided I needed to do this.

I needed to be part of whatever this was and not just for schools, but there were clearly so many places where so much healing could be possible if we had a practice.

And that sort of turned me towards finding out what this practice of council was going to work for the organizations that were experimenting with it, eventually becoming the director of training and then kind of splitting off and starting the Center for Council, which was kind of the gold standard in training and council.

And all of the programs that we would then evolve for other schools and prisons and other organizations and law enforcement all grew out of that experience.

And the book, I think ultimately was a way to take a moment, take a breath and take stock of what we had learned and what we realized was so powerful and scalable in terms of this practice and how it could heal communities, families, relationships in a really important way.

And the school meeting for four months, did they meet weekly and do council and sit?

Or what did it look like format wise?

You know, my first experience of sitting in a circle with parents who didn't trust me and were suspicious of me and my kind of having a sense of like, who are these people?

And then seeing a moment of reflection and pause and a backward step and a story about, you know, some great meal you had once or a best friend or a person you once had a crush on when you were a kid or a beautiful sunset or a superhero that you always admired or, you know, something about hearing folks tell stories from their life just shifted everything.

And it would be this way in council after council, not just in that school, but in prisons, you know, all over the world where I've done this, that once you move towards that authentic experience of who you are and you allow yourself to listen to the resonance and the stories of other folks, not their opinions or trying to like debate it out or come up with a sort of a compromise or a sort of zero sum, you know, discussion, but just listening to their stories just softened the environment in a really palpable way.

You left those circles from the very first with a different sense of who you were sitting with.

You know, it wasn't just that person you had a story about, you know, who wanted things very different than you and, you know, couldn't possibly see it your way.

It was a person, you know, who also, you know, had an auntie who made blueberry pies that you loved or a person who grew up with a chihuahua like you did or something.

And just in that kind of moment, something kind of miraculous happened.

And that was the seed that kind of got me thinking, wow.

And after the parents started doing it, we brought the teachers in and then the teachers so fell in love with it that they started to bring it into the classroom.

And when my daughter would come home and talk about the insight, you know, as a third grader into, you know, why the bully acts like that.

And why, you know, the person she's known for years is feeling kind of blue.

And, you know, why folks are feeling stressed out.

The way she was able to integrate the humanity of the folks around her and find her own voice was so striking to me.

I just realized, you know, something incredible is happening here.

I can't believe I didn't think of it, you know, sooner, but this is something I really needed to lean into.

And so yeah, it did transform the entire school community.

And it also led me to think that this is much bigger than one school.

Yeah.

It's fascinating because I've had, on this podcast, we've had Skip the Small Talk On, which is an organization based out of Boston, and they have prompt cards and conversation events, and their whole thing is an hour long of skipping the small talk.

And then Pittsburgh Social Health in Pennsylvania, and they gather people, typically transplants moving back to Pittsburgh, and then there's Connection Central in Nevada, and they do groups of people who get together.

So seeing, there's a trend, right?

Yeah.

And it's like getting people together and sitting down.

But for council, is there a typical format, like certain questions you ask?

Is there someone who leads it?

I'm really interested in the technicalities.

Like what does that side look like?

And how do you know it's a successful one?

Yeah, those are great questions.

You should come to one of the circles.

You know, there are some basic elements of council and some really important intentions.

The quality of the circle is really important.

You know, a circle means, you know, we all can see each other.

No one has a better seat than anyone else.

There's no VIP section or, you know, someone who gets to stand at the front.

We all have a sense of equality and that there's no beginning or end.

In every council circle, there's always an empty chair too.

You know, we always add an extra chair because you never know.

And there are people there who may not physically be there.

Maybe they missed it or maybe they're no longer with us or maybe they don't know about it yet.

But there's always a sense that the invitation is there.

There's always a center in council.

There's something that signifies our common ground that is somehow precious.

You know, it's an object or a bunch of objects that someone has brought that means something to them, that have some kind of significance, they hold some story.

And they also act as a sort of a talking piece where you can take an item from the center and in holding that item, you sort of connect with the story of where that item came from and what its meaning was.

In council, there's always a moment where we step in.

There's a threshold.

There's a way to sort of mind the liminality of the world out there that's crazy and noisy and impossible and what we're about to do, which is gonna be different.

And as we create that sort of threshold moment, that sort of, you know, almost like a ritual moment of like, okay, now we're gonna all step into this.

There's consent.

You know, there's no coercion.

Everybody steps in together.

And then once we're in council, there are four basic intentions.

And the intentions are really simple, but they're not easy to do.

The first is that, you know, when we listen, we listen from the heart.

And that means that though we may have opinions and ideas and stances and judgments, that we may have thoughts on that person's gender and age and race and who they love and where they worship and who they voted for.

We're listening to just hear what they have to say.

We're listening like we listen to, you know, the waves at the beach or the sound of the, you know, the leaves rustling in the wind.

We're listening without having to agree or disagree.

And we don't often do that with other people.

We do it in nature, but we don't tend to do it with others.

So listening in a way that opens us to who that person is and doesn't require of us that we have any opinion about it.

When we speak from the heart, it means that we're just giving voice, we're putting words to what's alive right now.

It's not the agenda, it's not the story I always tell.

It's not that sort of thing that I had intended to sort of put forth to let you know who I was or to seduce you or scare you or whatever.

It's just what's alive for me right now in this moment.

That it's spontaneous, that you get to the point, you go to the essence and we say what's there, what's fresh in the moment.

We sometimes surprise ourselves because sometimes it's not what we expected to say.

And when we preference that spontaneity, we allow ourselves to become kind of the next version of ourselves.

It's not the old story or what I came in here thinking I was gonna do or what I've always thought about myself.

It's what's alive for me right now.

And just in that sort of speaking and listening from the heart and being spontaneous and being lean, going to the essence, something is different about that way of being with each other.

And then the last element of council is that there needs to be an ending, a closing.

We need to agree that we're now gonna step out of this time in a good way.

And what that means for, you know, confidentiality is something that every group has to figure out that, you know, we appreciate this time together.

We're gonna step away and we may come back again, but these stories really were meant for this time together.

And just those five elements give us the opportunity to create this beautiful container, this structure of belonging in which a kind of authenticity is invited that brings a sort of an intimacy that doesn't usually exist when we just meet people casually and less intentionally.

And I think that that invitation to be vulnerable, to really show you a little more of who I am and to take the time to really consider more of who you are and not just my opinions or thoughts on who you might be or analysis of what your intention might be, to truly take you in, to listen completely and to allow myself to speak authentically is an act of vulnerability and courage.

And I think in doing that, what it engenders is more vulnerability and more trust and deeper relationship.

And something really beautiful emerges just from that alone.

It's a really transformative kind of process.

And seeing it amongst peers, parents at a school just got me thinking, and this is many years ago, how many places could benefit where you sort of think that those folks over there, they're the real problem.

And I gotta give them a piece of my mind, but what if we actually just sat with them and had a moment to really listen in to what might be going on beyond your assumptions?

And what if they could see a part of you that you don't often get a chance to show?

And what we've seen happen in countless prisons and police departments and schools and hospitals, et cetera, has just been phenomenal.

Just basically utilizing that very simple and straightforward practice.

It is incredible to hear about and to think about because we know that the benefits are undeniable.

I've been a part of conversations where you can tell there's a breakthrough there, but the hard part is it's so intimidating to put together organically.

And I think about that even for me, whenever I imagine gathering people who are of different, be it beliefs or different cultures or different stances on a big issue, and then being like, hey, 6 p.m.

on Thursday, we're gonna have a conversation where we're going to be in the moment, speak from the heart and make sure we drop our guard so we can be vulnerable.

I'm always thinking about that because I really love social connection and that's the reason why I do the podcast, right?

Because I believe that life is better when you talk to people.

I believe that humans are social creatures and it is wired within us to be able to be a part of community where we belong and add value to.

But then I find myself in my community living in Lawrence and not really going out of my way too much to meet people who are different than me.

And I wonder how many other people feel that way.

I know there's this project called More In Common and they did a big report called Connecting Amongst Differences.

And they said the number one reason people cited why they didn't connect amongst differences was lack of opportunity.

And then the other thing for political differences was social exhaustion.

They're like, this is exhausting because they were probably approaching it with a pretty combative sentiment.

But it makes me wonder, like how can people implement that in their own life?

For me, you know, coming to California was about the entertainment industry.

I wanted to sort of tell stories authentically.

I had worked in theater.

I wanted to be able to use the medium of television and a film.

I felt like I could reach lots of people.

And the authentic storytelling and the success in Hollywood were sort of like inversely related in that the more success I had, the less authentic it was.

And the stuff that was really authentic just didn't pay.

So that wasn't going to be the answer.

And what was so remarkable to me in finding how versatile this practice was, was when you're skilled in how to create the container and you have a willingness to actually invite people in, it sort of sells itself.

You know, our organization, the nonprofit called Beyond Us & Them now, has created countless programs in schools and in prisons and in organizations.

What happens when you make a decision to actually change is you find, you know, every other Monday from 4 to 6, or Saturdays for half an hour before the family goes about its business, or, you know, 15 minutes before the board meeting starts, or after roll call if you're at the police department.

And, you know, the lieutenant is like, no, we're going to do that council thing.

It's roll call, it's Thursdays, let's go do council.

And you begin to realize you can integrate this in increments, and it can be as easy as, you know, 15 or 20 minutes of checking in, or as deep as an hour and a half or a couple hours, you know, a couple times a week or once a week.

It can be any of those things once you understand the value of the container.

And there are times when you just want to say, hey, let's, why don't we do that council thing?

I feel like we're, you know, we're missing something and we're not connecting.

But I think that's really something that follows a regular practice at, you know, the school or at the company or in your family or in your neighborhood or in an institution that's willing to hold a regular practice so that you just show up.

You know, during the pandemic, we started doing it online and there was a very formal practice.

We still do these online social connection councils where folks can just log on.

You know, we have a few times a month and for 90 minutes we step into this council practice.

And you think a bunch of strangers showing up for 90 minutes, what could you accomplish?

But I know that 90 minutes of this kind of presence is not in any way, it's not exhausting.

It's so invigorating and inspiring.

Folks leave there feeling lighter and they want to come back.

And so I think once you sort of catch that bug, which is probably not a good thing to say these days, but once you have done it and it feels like it works, it's something that you want to do again and again.

And if you can create a structure where it is a regular practice, it begins to change who you are.

It begins to be part of just your everyday.

And yeah, who has time to meditate?

Who has time to do yoga or take a walk or pray?

Who has time for that?

Well, you figure it out.

Just get into the habit.

It's Sunday, I'm going to go to church.

It's Thursdays, it's yoga time.

Whatever it is in your life, you need to make a regular practice of it.

And when you do that, it becomes something that you begin to see is seeping into your day-to-day.

And so, you know, the cops that we do it with over the three-month program we work with them, you know, they'll say, you know, I've been coming to these classes.

It's really interesting and strange, and I don't know what's happening.

But then I realize that with my kids, I'm different, that I'm suggesting things, and the kids want to talk to me, and all of a sudden my family is really engaged, where I had a traffic stop and pulled over a guy, and things started to get a little hot, and I realized this was not going in a good direction.

But then I kind of took a step back, and I connected with something about how it is that I could express and hear, and I re-entered the situation, and everything changed.

And so that traffic stop didn't go south, it just became something more nourishing.

It seeps into your life, but you have to have a practice.

And there has to be a dosage that you're exposed to.

You know, come to a workshop, read the book, bring a program into your school or your workplace.

Have a sense that, you know, you are skilled enough to be able to bring this then into your family or into your life.

And I think you'll find that it's a really valuable tool.

Mm-hmm.

I started the podcast in January 1 of last year, and the preface and approach was, let's get rid of loneliness, and let's eradicate loneliness.

And then I pivoted to social connection because the hardest part, I find, is getting people to take the taste and then them knowing like, oh, this is good.

For me, I think a lot of people down regulate, they get used to loneliness.

They get used to being away from their neighborhood.

Annie and I, we just moved into a new neighborhood, and we are the new kids on the block.

We are the youngest couple.

We don't have any kids yet, so it's just the two of us and a golden retriever.

But we've only had just a few people come up to us and approach us.

And it's interesting to me, because I think I would like to live in a neighborhood to where I know everybody and you have that nice neighborhood feel, but I don't really know what it's like.

So I have to, it's like you have to experience it so that you can know what it's like and so that you can do it again, like you're talking about, like that dosage.

And I think with the podcast, a lot of what I do, a lot of what I position it at is maybe the people who have tasted it, I encourage them to go back to the well, and then I encourage them to encourage others who are near to them or like set up events or set up opportunities for people to dive into what it feels like to be yourself with those around you.

And I have like so much to talk to you about, but it makes me think a lot about like our personal experience and how, like how do I go about living in a neighborhood to where everybody knows one another, you know?

I guess I'm gonna have to do it.

Like I'm gonna have to create something or I'm gonna have to go up and initiate those conversations to get to know those people.

And that can be like overwhelming, you know?

You know, I think the nature of this kind of connection is deep.

And I think that, you know, what Gandhi said about finding peace sort of beginning with ourselves, that as we change, the world changes around us, is a really important reminder that there's an enormous amount that we can do in the way we connect to the world.

The council that you have with your golden retriever or that you and your wife have, the way in which we encounter nature, the way in which we are aware of those folks who are kind of with us, the ancestors, the parents, the in-laws, everybody, you know, we are able to create relationship with those aspects of ourselves.

And I will sort of mention, the work in prisons has been extraordinary for us.

We're in 29 prisons in California.

Many thousands of folks have gone through our program.

But during the pandemic, these folks, these men and women were stuck in their cells.

There was no getting out of the cell and going to the yard and the day room.

They were in their cells for months and months and months.

And many of them had already found this incredible sense of liberation in their sort of rehabilitation process through coming together with others.

They had groups of 20 folks.

And once or twice a week, they would meet for an hour and a half.

And it was their time to feel like their humanity was restored, where they could be themselves, to have their real name, and to see others as not just rival gang members or people who have all kinds of history, but real humans with real histories.

And that was such a nourishing part of their journey.

And then to have it completely shut out.

There was no...

I mean, we all kind of talked about being held captive, but these folks were literally in a cell, like 24-7, no contact.

And we got letters and letters and letters.

And we realized that we had a responsibility.

We had grant funding that was expiring.

We couldn't go into the prisons, but we asked folks to really think about what it is they'd want to share and to write it down.

And so we created this program where we just invited folks to share on paper.

And we'd receive just bucket loads of letters.

And we would go through them and put together the shares of everybody in a circle from a particular prison and sort of make little newsletters and send them back into the cells and have a cover sheet that talked about a guided meditation, some practices to settle, to imagine you are surrounded by those people in your circle, to really even maybe put some objects around you and think about them.

And then to read through one after the other the shares of the folks who are also going through this.

And as you read them, imagine them speaking to you.

And then at the end, there was a blank sheet where it was your turn to write how you were feeling.

And so then they would write and send that back to us.

And we compiled it again and we went back and forth and back and forth over months.

And this thing that seemed like it was, it would require a group of people meeting together, whether it's on a prison yard or in your neighborhood or wherever, it wasn't even necessary.

I mean, it would have been much nicer if we didn't have to go through this.

But the fact that folks were nourished by something that was sort of alive in their hearts.

And they were able to shift in this time to connect with the experience of others through whatever means necessary.

In this case, letters being sent back and forth was kind of a remarkable indication to me that this was much more powerful than a town meeting where we just sort of show up to a potluck with some macaroni and hope we can make a connection or two.

This is really about feeling as if people care about me and that my actual authentic experience matters and being curious about the world around me and willing to really listen to the stories.

Whether that comes as letters back and forth or a walk in nature where you see the color green in all its various manifestations or the panting of your dog or even just a conversation with your wife, there are all kinds of ways we can improve our ability to perceive and to be present for authentic experience and connection.

That's a brilliant idea.

Who came up with that?

Did you come up with that?

Yeah, it just seemed like the thing to do.

Like I said, compassion requires that we take action when we are sensing suffering.

And in folks' moment of need, it just felt like, how do we respond to this?

Well, we'll just compile the letters.

Let's shift.

Let's do what feels like we serve in this moment.

And so I had a staff and I had a grant that was running out so I could pay people.

And we just figured it's the way we could do it.

We also put together a book based on a lot of folks' letters called Leaving Prison Behind, which is all the words of folks inside and then their families, wives and kids and such.

And it is kind of set up as if somebody in prison is having that council with this imaginary assortment of people that he needs to talk to.

And he sort of sets out a little council circle in his cell by himself and then imagines what they might say to him and what he might say in return.

And it's sort of a graphic novel we put together to send into prison to help folks who are grappling with the conversations that need to happen before they get ready to come home and come home in a good way and be successful, contributing members of society and not folks who are still imprisoned even though they've come home.

I'm blown away by that project.

It's a perfect way to...

It's a perfect example of how having a little insight could really help people because a lot of people would look at COVID and be like, well, shucks.

We are not able to do the groups anymore.

We have to be socially distanced, all of this.

The next...

I'm talking with Amy Giddin, who created an app called Daily Aloha.

Her inspiration of this app was she was in New York and she was riding the subway.

Whenever she was going to the subway on the wall, there was all of these Post-It notes on the wall.

There was a prompt and it was, I think, something you're grateful for.

It was a gratitude wall.

And all of these Post-It notes were different colors and they had different handwriting on there.

But it was, in that moment, an expression of all these different people who have ridden the subway that you could then participate in and be a part of.

And it was cool because the letters almost remind me of it because it's like even though they weren't there presently in that moment while you were writing your thing down, you still got to read what they wrote down in the past and then you knew what you were writing down, others were going to see in the future.

And now she has this app where every time you log on every day, there's a Post-It Note and it's a prompt.

And then you answer the prompt and once you submit your Post-It Note, you post your Post-It Note on the wall, it gives you another Post-It Note from somebody else that you can acknowledge and react to and confirm that this person's seen and that they're part of something larger than themselves.

And she wanted to do that because she wanted to create an app that was different than social media, right?

Because on social media, I had just put a TikTok up before this and someone said, stupid, blank, blank, blank.

And then another person said, that guy's a tool.

And I was like, okay, right?

And to me, it doesn't really, it doesn't bother me just because of other things, like, okay.

But she wanted to actually create a platform where we could acknowledge that we're larger than something than us.

And you getting those letters reminds me of that.

I can only imagine how happy someone must have felt to know that, hey, I'm not alone in this cell.

Instead, I get to partake in something larger than myself.

And, you know, interestingly, it was a matter of, you know, sorting through the group's letters so that we could send back, you know, to folks who had sat in real life with folks.

It was the same people that you had been with prior.

You kind of could see their faces because, though they may not have seen them for weeks or months, it was the same folks.

They were anonymous, but you would kind of feel the voices.

But it was also the trainers from my staff who had gone in there participating in this.

So they would also read through, and they would add their kind of words.

And through that, for this first page, we would come up with a prompt based on, you know, what we were feeling from the shares.

And you had asked this question earlier, and I didn't respond to it, and I'm glad to think I appreciate these reminders.

Council doesn't start with a curriculum.

And while prompts are incredibly important, the prompt is what will serve the group based on where the group is.

And the skillfulness of the facilitator, you know, we have 120 or so certified council trainers who have gone through an enormous amount of training and, you know, a lot of content as well as a lot of experience.

One of the skills that you learn is to really allow yourself to check in with where the group is and to offer a prompt that will serve the group in going deeper into what the group needs to talk about.

I remember I was doing a workshop for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which is what it was called at the time.

And it was just coincidentally, it fell on the day that the DOMA decision was announced.

And so, Defense of Marriage Act, it was kind of a victory for that community.

My co-trainer and I were thinking, okay, so it's going to be a day of celebration, we need to come up with prompts that are going to be celebratory.

And we walked in the door and it was like grief.

And these people were like heartbroken.

And we were like, what is going on here?

We had no idea.

And in feeling into what was in that room, all the loss, all the people who couldn't make it to this day, all the things that folks had given up, clearly there was a grieving that needed to happen that we didn't know until we were actually physically in that room and understood what that group needed.

So all the planning we had done went out the window and it was about how do we serve this group now.

And in every council, it's really important that the facilitator, who is the person really kind of creating the container, understands that maybe we need to play a game or maybe there's an icebreaker or maybe we need to talk about the intentions of council, maybe do some more check-ins, maybe we need to kind of lighten the mood or maybe we need to kind of go a little bit deeper and in that kind of listening and that connecting with what would be of service to this group in this time, what would really be helpful to where this group is, a prompt emerges.

So, you know, folks who say, can you give me some good prompts?

I'm like, I don't know.

I mean, I could tell you what I could, you know, a good prompt now has nothing to do with what a good prompt tomorrow is going to be or my group and your group, you know, are completely different.

So I can't know what's in that room, but I can talk to you about how you can sense into what the right prompt would be.

And in training in this practice of council, we come to understand what we need to do to be able to serve that group.

And, you know, the word facilitator comes from facilities.

It's to make easy.

It's not to lead the group or to fix the group or rescue the group.

It's to make it easy for the group to do what it needs to do.

And part of that is finding a prompt that really is responsive to what the group needs in that time.

Something you mentioned was working with people in prison and people who are incarcerated.

And I've reflected on this a decent amount because I have people who are near to me and they've spent a lot of time either in jail or in prison.

But people often hear about re-entering society or recidivism.

But I don't think a lot of people understand what makes it so hard.

What are the challenges formerly incarcerated people have whenever they re-enter society?

It has been such a vexing problem.

And we've been in prisons for over 10 years and watched folks come home and be completely overwhelmed.

This process of leaving prison behind has to happen way before they come home, first of all.

Because what it means to be institutionalized, to become a person who is truly given up their individuality.

You don't make choices about what you're going to have for dinner tonight, or when you're going to eat, or when you're going to take a shower.

All of that is gone.

And what the culture does in a prison yard, and most of the prisons are men's prisons, so there's an enormous amount of toxic masculinity, there's an enormous amount of bullying, people communicate by intimidation.

You are really reading each other for how to survive in an extremely dangerous environment.

So you have become a creature of an institution that is very dangerous, in which you must make some accommodation in order to get by.

And all of the things that you choose, and often you need to take sides, because you need protection, you need to know who your friends are, and when it's time to go after somebody, you need to be part of the team.

If you're not throwing punches, then folks notice that, and you could be in some trouble.

So there are all kinds of things that happen in that sort of life.

When you come home, the adjustment to toddlers and spouses and neighbors can be so overwhelming.

Not to mention technology that has moved so fast.

So folks coming home after 10, 15, 20 years that don't understand that you don't hail a taxi by going like this.

You have an app and this phone controls who picks you up and how your food gets delivered.

And going to the bookstore and the fact that the world has changed so much with technology is completely new.

The fact that we relate to one another in different kinds of ways than one does inside prison is completely new.

And having a community that can help you recognize that, understand that and begin to adjust to that is critically important.

Because it's not just about come home, you know, get a job, reconcile with your family and everything's going to be fine.

It's about really understanding what prison has done to you and undoing enough of that so that you can begin to learn a new way to function.

And reentry programs are just so critically important, not just for the basic resources of housing and jobs and resumes.

And, you know, there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances that have to do with substance abuse and anger control and parenting skills and things that need to be part of your process that maybe you started in prison and need to continue.

And how do you connect to those resources, mental health resources, what it means to create a healthy diet and do things on the outside that were done for you on the inside?

It's very complex.

And it's a process that I think you don't realize until you're there.

And there's so much wisdom amongst the folks who do go home.

You know, we have program after program where, and you know, I talk about this one program at Ironwood Prison, which was a really tough, tough prison, a lot of violence.

We had a very mixed group where there were folks from all different gangs and all different ethnicities and a lot of apprehension.

They were all lifers, all of them.

They had life sentences, 25 of them.

And they took to this work in such an extraordinary way.

A few years later, 100% of them had come home.

They had all gone to the board and gotten grants of parole.

They had all come home.

Three of them are on my staff now.

They're extraordinary.

They've bought homes.

They've had kids.

They've turned their lives around.

And they attribute so much of their success to the work they did.

But the incredible thing is as they would come home, new folks would come into the group and they would be trained.

And there was a gap of about four or five years.

I had gone back to that prison and sat in the group with people I'd never sort of seen.

And they were doing this work together.

And I was part of the circle and it was incredible.

And I said, you know, how do you know about this?

It turned out they had been taught by people who were taught, by people who were taught by people that we taught.

So four generations since we'd even been there, this was a practice that was providing so much healing and community and connection.

And in that circle, folks who'd never developed any kind of emotional intelligence, who didn't understand what sadness was, or what shame really was, who didn't have any context for the abuse that they had experienced.

Hearing someone that doesn't look like you tell a story that resonates so much with your experience and then seeing their strategies and how they're working through it creates a complete shift in how you see the world.

All of a sudden, things that you've been carrying by yourself, you're carrying with a community.

And they're actually giving you permission to recover those parts of your humanity that you had stuffed down.

So the value of these groups that have started through all of these dozens and dozens of prison groups that have started it have really transformed, I think, the population, thousands and thousands of folks now and their families, and that they come home and they have a reentry program, one of our programs, where they can really feel that this work continues and they can be integrated.

To me, they're one of my greatest assets.

I love sending these guys out to do programs because they speak with so much authenticity because of the journey that they've kind of created for themselves, kind of miraculously.

And it's extraordinary to see somebody who's got a swastika tattooed on them, co-facilitating with an African-American guy and a Jew, who is a sworn enemy going in, and that you have been able to break down some of the things you had been taught and have some ability to be accountable and to make amends and to move forward is kind of a living embodiment of the potential folks have to change and to grow and to heal.

So it's an amazing process to see.

It sort of is self-sustaining.

And again, you just kind of need to create the opportunity, you need to create the container.

I mean, pardon the pun, but in prison you have a captive audience.

So you can sort of say on every Tuesday, we're going to do this.

And when you sign up, there's going to be a room for you.

The guards are going to lead you there.

And you have to be there, then you got to go back to yourself.

It's not as easy, you know, in a new neighborhood as you and your wife are experiencing.

But there are places that this can be done for sure.

Right.

Do the guards take part?

What happened in these councils over and over again was the guards, correctional officers who were around, started paying attention.

They paid attention to what the folks were doing, but they also were noticing that the yards were becoming more cooperative and less infractious.

And so, you know, we started to get some interesting conversations going with our trainers, and guards would follow me out into the parking lot.

And I'd have these conversations like, you know, we never like want to sit with those guys, but is there a version of this that might be good for us?

Because we're really stressed out and I don't really, you know.

And so we started to do these things.

There was a, you know, a barbecue we'd be invited to.

There was a meeting set up for breakfast.

And, you know, they didn't want to acknowledge that it was the same program we were doing.

It's inside.

But it was so obvious that they needed it.

And I began to realize something about what I, what assumptions I had made.

You know, I had, I had had a sense that these folks who were really committed to transforming themselves, who were taking seriously this opportunity to reflect on their lives, to develop insight, to develop new skills, to become accountable, that there was something really beautiful about this.

And these like, you know, very brutal, obnoxious, you know, unfeeling folks would come in and scream and yell and push people around.

But I realized that I was making some judgment about them, that there was a great need and there was great suffering.

And I couldn't see it.

You know, I wasn't there looking for it until in a moment, it just sort of like occurred to me like, oh, now I see it.

You're screaming and yelling because that's the only tool you got.

You can't say I'm scared.

Like I have elderly parents at home.

I have a special needs kid that I got to get home to.

I'm afraid that this riot that might emerge is going to like cause problems and I'm not going to get home to them.

Like all the things that were going on were not things that could be spoken of because there wasn't a space for officers to really step into that kind of vulnerability.

And it made me think, okay, so this is the new front for our work.

We are entrusting folks with the public safety.

We're asking folks to step up and into careers that are so incredibly dangerous and important for public safety, where the statistics are showing us that folks often don't reach 60.

The mortality rate and age, the expected mortality is maybe 58, 59 in law enforcement, most of the time, for the career.

And these are folks who are dying of stress-related illnesses.

These are not folks who are getting shot.

It's not line of fire stuff.

This is folks who have unmitigated stress throughout a career and are dying of diseases that are stress-related, like high blood pressure and strokes and early onset Alzheimer's and diabetes and things that are the result of not having developed tools for creating a better relationship with stress.

So there are constant dysregulation and their inability to talk about it because you don't want to appear soft and you don't want to be unfit for duty, so you don't want to be referred out to a shrink.

There isn't peer support prior to a critical incident.

Of course, after the critical incident, somebody shot, the team comes in and folks have to show up to it, but there isn't integrated into the culture of policing a place where you can connect with your peers and really talk about some things that are tough, some things that you found amusing, some stuff you're struggling with, some stuff that you're interested in.

These council huddles that we've created as part of the program to support law enforcement gives folks this place to come where they can connect with others.

They can nourish themselves in community.

They can develop these skills for self-awareness and self-regulation and communication, not only amongst each other, but in terms of how they meet their families and ultimately how they meet the communities and the folks that they are charged with taking care of.

And when you haven't taken care of yourself, you can't expect folks to behave well when they meet the other, when people are in distress, when words like, I can't breathe are not something you can perceive because you're so dysregulated and you're so worked up that you can't even hear those words, then what do we expect?

What do we expect of them, really?

They're not provided with the resources that they desperately need, and that's been a really exciting part of the work we're doing.

Next week, we'll be at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Officer Wellness Conference talking about some of the research that we've been doing on this power program, Peace Officer Wellness, Empathy and Resilience Power.

Wow.

This power program we've been doing with agencies around the country, we're starting to not only measure qualitative and quantitative changes, but now biometric changes in heart rate variability.

Talk about dosage.

A dosage of three months of this program, measuring baseline HRV and low frequency ranges prior and post is kind of a striking example of how folks are improving as a result of this work, not just mentally and emotionally, but physically.

Their physiology looks better.

We're going to be presenting some of this research now and in concert with our friends at the Department of Justice and other allies we have, really trying to support law enforcement in ways that we have developed working with incarcerated populations, frankly, so that everybody could benefit from it and also could be provided with resources that we all need to be healthy.

I'm excited to hear about how that goes next weekend.

Thank you.

Yeah, you'll crush it.

The second guest I had on here was a police officer who was also a pastor.

And he said, my job is the same thing, I'm just caring for people in dark times.

He said, oftentimes when I'm a police officer, I show up to them and I give them comfort and whenever I'm a pastor, they come to me and I give them comfort.

And like hearing his heart, but then hearing, because I'll meet with him regularly and he told me about a story where he was doing a ride along with another cop and this cop had been in trouble multiple times.

And there's an instance where they had someone who they pulled over and tensions were rising.

And my friend noticed that there was a gun involved.

And he said, oh my gosh, we are raising tensions and we could get shot right now.

And it really upset him at the other person being like, hey, we need to be a bit more emotionally agile here and think through this because I'm not trying to get shot over a traffic stop.

So hearing his story, but then also seeing the rhetoric of all cops are bad people or defund the police or it is a very like weird situation to try and figure out how to navigate.

And I am really, it's very optimistic to hear about the biometric results because there's that phrase numbers don't lie, but there's also the phrase that stress kills.

And if we can lower stress overall, it's going to help so much.

But I am curious about how you, what you think about the tensions between law enforcement and the pressure that people put on law enforcement and like that whole entire situation, what's your assessment on it and how do we move forward in the most compassionate manner?

You know, these are big questions, of course.

And I think that we begin at a deficit when we are not trained in regulating ourself and developing the capacity to attend to the present moment.

I think that the skills that I have found to be so very important and that are integrated into the work we do really are based on a foundation of how we can ground ourselves in awareness and in presence.

And in doing that, resist the urge to be fearful of the other.

And the other can be anything that sort of disrupts our understanding of, you know, status quo.

And so when we perceive, and we often perceive, you know, animosities that don't really exist and become defensive around these sort of concepts, when folks hear that police officer telling a story about, you know, his pet bunny that he loves within, and I'm referring to one of the videos on our website, he came to a council ready to set straight the community, the community was there.

Everyone had sort of worked in council, but not with each other.

You know, he didn't have his uniform on.

He came in and then for some reason, conversation arose, and the prompt was to talk about your relationship with, you know, with a pet.

And he had this beautiful heartwarming story about this rabbit that his wife had brought home that nobody wanted.

And he renamed the rabbit Bun Buns and loved to sleep with it and told this beautiful story.

And people were like, what?

And when it came around to one of the activists who was sitting there, it's like, you know, I've never heard a cop talk about a pet bunny.

If every cop could tell a story like that, I would see you so completely differently.

And just in this amount of time, I've shifted my whole sense of my relationship with you.

Had you come in in uniform with the attitude that, you know, you said you were going to bring, it would have been completely different.

So, you know, what is it that changed that?

How did we down regulate?

How did we manage to show up in such a way that we permitted the other to bring a story of something, you know, innocuous, not like, you know, your deepest wound or your deepest insight, but just a story from your life and have that humanize you to the point where all of a sudden, we're not quite as adversarial as we might have been.

I think that those qualities, the capacity to be vulnerable, to really listen to the other, to see the fullness of another person and to bring forward parts of yourself that aren't just, here's the uniform, this is the only part of me that I want you to see, create the possibility for change and growth.

And I think the opposite is true in that if we are just seeing the other as a threat, there's no way we're going to possibly move forward.

And in this time, particularly this political season, there is so much pushing us to see those we disagree with as less than human, as sick or unimaginably deranged or who knows what.

I mean, and on both sides, whether you're watching MSNBC or Fox News, you're hearing this language that the others are crazy and they couldn't possibly be anything like you.

And so we need to be really careful about how we're being worked up into this very contracted kind of place, this sort of constriction that happens where the aperture through which we see each other gets smaller and smaller and smaller until all I see is that little uniform, the color blue, or something about you.

And then there's nowhere to go.

We have no way to develop a relationship that's going to be positive.

You're just the enemy and I have to fight you.

Then that's where my sympathetic tone is so high.

It's just about fight, flight, freeze.

That's it.

There's no discernment.

There's no parasympathetic tone.

There's no ability for us to navigate into a relationship because I'm just so worked up that there's no possibility.

I've committed to this going in a direction that's going to be you or me.

We're in trouble when we get to that place.

We need to figure out how to get out of it.

Sitting in council, breathing, meditating, prayer, nature.

There are all kinds of ways we can interrupt that sympathetic tone and bring ourselves back into a place where we can be relational.

But we have to make a deliberate practice of that.

We have to learn practices that enable us to bring that on board when we recognize.

It's a neurological intervention that many of our moms taught us, which is known as count to ten.

Count to ten is like, okay, numbers.

All of a sudden, all of this craziness is interrupted by this abstract thought of counting.

It's a simple intervention, but it stops you from doing something stupid when you're worked up.

How do we find more of that?

That's what this work that I'm so interested in, that our organization is so committed to, is really all about.

Breathe in the flowers and blow out the candles.

Okay, sure.

Right.

That's what works for you.

Yeah, but whatever works, many people who listen to this podcast are employers who make hiring decisions.

And I know that there's a stigma.

Some people will say that they don't want to hire anybody who has a criminal record.

What do you think about that?

I've sort of broken that rule a bunch of times and the folks that I've brought on to my staff are some of my most trusted employees.

You know, I love these folks.

They've really done the work and the quality of their character, their authenticity, the work they've done, their willingness to be the best version of themselves and to fully commit is really commendable and extraordinary.

So I can only speak from my own experience and say that it's been a great blessing in my life to have encountered folks who've done remarkable things, having come from a place of extraordinary adverse childhood experiences and trauma, found themselves in a life that nobody wanted, least of all them, were on the worst day of their life doing something terrible and were caught, unlike some who weren't, and as a result entered a life of imprisonment that was so many incredible levels of complication more dangerous.

I don't know how to describe what it means to submit to what it is to be incarcerated and to be able to persevere through that and actually engage in a process that the state finds to be adequate for you to come home is a pretty remarkable achievement for those who have gone through that.

So I understand folks' hesitation, because on paper sometimes the things someone has done on their worst day look pretty awful.

But taking the time to see who they are and to really understand their journey, I work with folks who have done 20, 30, 35 years of prison and did something when they were 16, 17, 19 that they regret deeply, that they've thought deeply about, have a lot of insight around, have made amends and done a lot of work on, and are committed to making right in the world.

And I feel very grateful to have a chance to be part of their second chapter.

I hope folks have a willingness to be open minded as they encounter folks who have gone through this.

And it's not to say that everybody who has committed a crime can become a great person.

A lot of folks aren't ready to, and a lot of folks frankly should stay in prison because they're not ready to come home.

Many of our formerly incarcerated folks, they're not abolitionists by any means.

They're not saying, do away with prisons.

They're like, man, some folks need to be in there.

They're not ready to come home.

I don't want them as my neighbor, but many will come home.

And if we are successful in the work we do, they have had tools to do work that creates in them this deep desire to be the best version of themselves and to be successful.

And I think that's an incredible thing that a lot of folks who haven't faced adversity don't ever have to encounter or come up with any tools to respond to.

So...

That's a great answer.

It's wild to think that when we hear about people's...

Maybe they spent some time in jail or maybe they didn't even spend time in jail, but there was something that happened.

And they've thought about that more than anyone else has ever thought about that.

Especially if you do get arrested and you are spending a significant amount of time behind bars, it's like you think about that every day.

And for us to hear somebody's story, it's so unique to me to realize, wow, like you're telling me that story now and I get to think about it and I get to process that story, but you have been processing that story for days and years as you're sitting alone or by yourself.

And the burden, that burden, it strikes the need for what you are doing to get together and to talk about it and to wrap words around things and to recognize what it means to them.

It's really impactful for me.

So I really love the work that you're doing.

I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about Beyond Us & Them and share what people need to know most about it.

Um.

Um.

Yeah, I'm humbled, and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be doing this work, to have been part of building an organization, to have had the opportunity to create a track record of success where we can point to some real data, to have worked with the RAND Corp and UCLA and now a variety of universities and developing these biometric measures.

I think I'm very grateful that we have a Surgeon General who has now elevated the importance of social connection to the level of epidemic that needs to be addressed.

So that means that there's a lot more support for programs like this, for consideration of bringing a program that is really about self-awareness and self-regulation and social connection into organizations, into businesses, into schools, into hospitals with first responders, into police departments, into prisons.

And to have developed a sort of methodology and a process for folks to become trained in this, to be able to scale this work.

The organization is committed to creating these programs that are self-sustaining so that when we send trainers in, their job is to leave and to have seated at practice.

That will be a benefit for that school, for that organization, for that community.

We need to be developing these skills.

Organizations, institutions like prisons and hospitals and other businesses are a really important place for us to create these structures of belonging.

We know how to do it, but there needs to be resolve that it is important.

It's important to have an equity practice, a practice where everybody is valued and everyone's voice counts, not just an edict about DEI or something, but in fact embodied practice that demonstrates that each person is important and has value.

And I think that we didn't come up with the idea of coming together and connecting in this way, but we've got a really powerful approach to helping folks learn these skills so that they can bring it into their families, into their businesses, into their communities.

I think that there is a particular urgency right now.

We are looking at a moment in our lifetime where the fear of the other and the sense of us versus them has really kind of gotten out of hand.

Part of it maybe has to do with going through COVID and being isolated.

Part of it has to do with how social media has so entranced us and that we're so attached to a feed that's based on an algorithm, that's based on getting us upset and getting us engaged.

And so we have a sort of distorted view of the world.

We're not engaging in the town square.

We're not at market or in block parties.

And we know this going back to Robert Putnam's bowling alone back in 2000, that we have really receded from these practices that create community.

And so the social fabric, social capital is really torn and needs to be mended.

I think that the ideal of that place beyond us and them is so important.

It comes from a Rumi poem called A Great Wagon, which is I think a gorgeous poem that has a line in it about out beyond right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field, I'll meet you there.

And when the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about ideas and language.

And the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

I think the aspiration of this organization is to remind us of how important it is to get beyond all these things that we fear about the other so that we can cooperate, so that we can create the kind of robust democracy and kind of fruitful interactions that make community something that's vibrant and that allow individuals to lead healthy and productive and happy lives together and not fearful ones where we're girding for the next conflict with that kind of vision of the other.

And so, the organization is here to not only teach folks how to integrate programs and practices into their lives and into their workplace, but also to really hold up this model for what we all aspire to be, this idea, this ideal of beloved community that Dr.

King and many others have spoken of, where we may disagree, we may not vote for the same people, we may worship differently or love differently, but we have to get along with one another.

And on some level, we have to find a way to be civil.

And that needs to be something that we all value and that we take seriously and that we take the time to really integrate into our lives.

And we're here to help with that.

I think we've got a really powerful and effective way of doing it.

It's certainly not only us.

There are many who will be part of this antidote to all the othering that we're seeing.

But I feel very grateful and humbled to be playing some part in that.

I'm glad you are in the role because you are really good at articulating the idea and the core message.

That's definitely, I imagine you have a lot of skills, but it's definitely one of them is your ability to communicate vision and yeah, to take what you're working on.

And I know everybody who's listening right now, they know a lot more and they know why it matters.

And that's why we're here.

But people who are interested in learning about your organization and getting involved, what do they need to do?

Thank you for asking.

And my job is to try to make the point, as far as getting attention, if it bleeds, it leads.

And all the bad stories are the ones we see all the time, but the incredibly positive stories, the stories we have on our website, stories of transformation of lifers who are part of these horrible gangs and life of crime that have turned their lives around.

And police officers who are now living these really vibrant, engaged lives where they're a real hero to the community.

It's important to find out, to listen in, to learn more.

And those of us who do see the importance of this to support it, it needs to be supported.

We need to find allies.

And those are allies who care enough to share the stories, who want to become donors, who can open up possibilities to bring this work into their communities, into their schools and businesses.

The website beyondusandthem.org is a great place to learn about us.

Center for Council is another thing you could Google and find us on the internet and on social media.

And I think you'll be inspired by this work, just as I am.

We really need folks to care enough to make this a priority.

More and more of us need to turn towards this, to elevate these stories, to amplify these stories, to support this work.

You know, I have spent a lot of time going to places like Oswiesim in Poland, where Auschwitz is, or Rwanda to Bosnia to Pine Ridge.

And if we don't take action, if we don't actually step up to the dehumanizing of the other, humanity has a way of moving down a slippery slope, you know, and terrible things happen.

I mean, folks who are neighbors, folks who have always gotten along in a short amount of time turn against one another, and, you know, the story of humanity is filled with all kinds of experiences of genocide and Holocaust and violence, and some of the things we're seeing in our own society now suggest that that's a possibility.

It's a horrible thought, but the only way to respond to that is to show up and create opportunities to connect with the other and to dissolve some of that sense of us and them.

So it couldn't be a more important time.

We can use all the support we can get.

I so appreciate taking the time to talk about this with you and hope that folks who are listening, who find it to be something of interest, will seek us out and find ways to get involved and support this work in whatever way.

Thank you for being here, Jared.

It's a pleasure having you on.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to talk to you.

Appreciate what you do.

And folks, we will see you next time.

Bye.