If any group of humans had an excuse to NOT connect with innate peace and well-being, it’s those in prison. However, that’s not the case. What Anna Debenham points out in this interview is that every single prisoner she’s ever worked with is able to find examples of well-being, resilience, and peace within them.

Anna’s work is incredibly inspirational to me and I was thrilled to be able to talk with her. In the introduction I mention how this interview was a game-changer for me in terms of deepening my understanding of our innate well-being that the Three Principles are pointing to.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show notes

• How Anna points prisoners to their innate resilience and well-being
• Embarking on a research project to measure the effect on prisoners of an awareness of the Three Principles
• Following up months and years after prisoners are released to measure long term results
• How prisoners cope with re-entry into their communities when they know where their experience is coming from
• Working with young offenders to change the trajectory of their life path
• Looking past the labels we’ve been assigned for our true nature
• How working in prisons points to the universality of the human experience
• On the ex-convicts who are now teaching the Principles to youths in prison

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Anna’s TedX talk (The video is the full morning of TedX talks in Portland in April 2019, but I’ve set that link to begin at the beginning of Anna’s talk.)
• The One Thought Institute
• Beyond Recovery
• Robin Charbit and Ken Manning’s site, Insight Principles

You can find Anna at TheInsightAlliance.org.

Transcript of interview with Anna Debenham

Alexandra: Hi everyone I’m Alexandra Amor

from StopSufferingAbout.com and I’m here today with Anna Debenham. Hi Anna.

Anna: Hi. How are you today.

Alexandra: I’m good thanks.

Anna: Thanks for having me.

Alexandra: Oh, I’m thrilled to have you here.

I’m really excited about this conversation. So let me introduce you to ourlisteners.

Anna Debenham arrived in Portland, Oregon

in the spring of 2016 with no connections to prison or to the criminal justicesystem or any clue how to start a nonprofit. She did have one thing: anunderstanding of the mind.

Through this understanding, Anna began to

teach in prisons, created a research project that was accepted by theauthorities of the prison and built her own organization from scratch. The InsightAlliance was born in the car park of a women’s prison and the rest is history.

They have groups in a men’s prison, a

women’s prison and are scheduled to start in the youth prison in a few weeks.

So Anna, why don’t you give us a little bit

more about your background, your training in the Principles and how you started

working with prisoners and in prisons.

Anna: I joined the One Thought Institute back in 2015 I think, something like that, because I’d heard about the Three P’s in work and stuff and I didn’t know what it was. I was curious and so I went to a talk George Pransky gave. That was my first exposure and it just felt true to me.

Everything that I’d studied before,

everything that I’d searched for, everything I’d learned before kind of feltlike it made sense, so it came together in like a little kind of nugget orsomething. And I was like OK that’s true.

So I got really interested and then joined

the One Thought Institute. And when I was there Jacqueline Hollows was juststarting a research project at HM Onley, one of the prisons that she worked inat the time. I think was the first prison that she was working in.

She needed a volunteer because she was

starting out and she’d done one group before and it was expanding. I got reallycurious. So I started volunteering with Beyond Recovery and I was there forabout a year. And I loved it. I really just loved it.

And then moved back to the states because

my husband is American. We’d lived in Portland for about 10 years and thenmoved back to England and we were there for seven years and then it just sohappened that life took us back to the States.

I knew I wanted to continue working in

prison. So that’s kind of how it started.

Alexandra: And then as you say you put it all together in the in the parking lot with a woman from the YMCA, is that right?

Anna: Well, I just started having conversations.

I didn’t know how best to get into a prison and one conversation led to another, which led to another, which led to another. And so I was actually running a group of my own through the religious services and then another group I was doing the life skills program.

That was in the men’s prison and I was just

doing it because I enjoyed it. I wasn’t thinking I was going to start anorganization or do anything with it. It was just something that I love doing.

And then I had a conversation with Susan

Stoltenberg who runs the YWCA and she got really interested in what we’redoing. And they already had a women and children’s program in the women’sprison. So she got me into the women’s prison and said this is a program Ireally think that would benefit from being in here.

When we were in there having our meeting she said to the people that we were having a conversation with, she said if you want this program to kind of go further than just a volunteer program you need to do research because it has to be evidence-based. So I was like OK I can figure that out.

So then we were in a car park and I was

like, well shit, I can’t do a research project just under me. I need to be moreprofessional than that. So then she offered me fiscal sponsorship if we were goingto be a non-profit and then we came up with the Insight Alliance and she’sfiscally sponsored as for about the first year or year and a half.

And then we got our nonprofit status and we’re doing our own thing but that was how it very organically came into being from not thinking that I ever wanted to run a non-profit.

It’s one of those things where people can say, oh nonprofit is such hard work, you don’t want to do that. People tried to talk me out of it but you realize that’s just thought. A nonprofit doesn’t mean hard work, a nonprofit just means a nonprofit.

It’s only hard if you think it’s hard. Otherwise, you’re just doing the next thing in front of you and figuring it out as you go, which turns out that’s what we’re doing. It may look like hard work but to me, it’s just get on with it you just sort of show up and figure it out. So that’s what I’m doing.

Alexandra: Oh

that’s lovely. Let me actually pull something from your website. Let me readthat as well for people listening.

The Insight Alliance works in prisons and

in the community with a simple focus: understanding the limitless nature of thehuman mind and recognizing our own innate well-being, that everything we needto thrive already exists within us.

So that’s what you bring to the prisoners

that you’re speaking to. Despite their circumstances they still have thatinnate well-being and wisdom within them.

Tell me how you start that conversation with a group of prisoners. Where do you begin?

Anna: I always start with well-being. We don’t go into thought until a bit later. But

it’s interesting, I’ve started of late to do an exercise which I found reallyhelpful when I got from Robin and Ken Manning in a business group I did withthem. It’s big is basically getting the guys to close their eyes and thinkabout a time when they felt at peace, when they felt okay.

That might have been yesterday and it might

have been several years ago and it may have been for a minute or it may havebeen for a period of time but just to think about a time when you felt at peaceand then to then to think about the qualities of that feeling.

And then as they call them out and I write

them on the board you get the same answers pretty much every time; calm,connected, hope, resilience, love, understanding. All the things that come fromthat feeling of well-being.

Then you ask did you have to try and get

there? No, it just comes naturally. And it’s like well that’s because it’sbuilt in. And that’s what we are. That’s what we want to get back to. It’s notsomething that you have to learn. It’s not something that you have to be acertain person to be able to achieve this.

Everybody sitting in this room, when they

felt at peace, these are the qualities of that experience. And they see andthey see that yeah that’s true.

It’s not something that you have to learn.

It’s not something that goes away because they’ve thought about it in thatmoment and and that’s what they feel. And so we start there and then everybodyhas their own experience of well-being. What that means to them and it doesn’talways look like love and peace.

One guy said, the other week, at the

beginning of class, “I’ve never felt that. I’ve never felt peace like that. Igrew up having to fight for everything. I had to fight.” And I was like wellthat’s interesting. Tell me more about that.

And then we get into his experience of

fighting. So I said that is resilience. He’s like Yeah.

Resilience. Can you count on it? Yeah I can

totally count on it. I know I can count on this. I’ve done it my whole life.

That’s the same thing. That’s well-being.

It may not look like peace and love but that’s well-being. And he got it.

So everybody is going to bring their own

experience so it’s drawing out what it means to them. To feel that well-beingand to come from that. Because the more you start to see it the more you see itand the more you come from that place. So that we kind of start with looking ateveryone’s experience of well-being.

Tuesday we started a new group. And one guy

was talking about when he was a first responder – I think he was in the army asa first responder – and he said at the time of a crisis it was like everythingslowed down into slow motion. And he wasn’t thinking about anything, he knewexactly what to do in the moment. There was something that took over, and allmy feelings and everything just go one to the side and I just did what I neededto do in a moment.

That was his experiences. That feels like

well-being. That feels like that intelligence of life that’s living me.

And so really listening to people’s stories

and seeing what it means to them and pointing that out so they can get a bettersense of what it was that we’re talking about when we say innate well-being.Some people say I’ve never had that. But they’ve got it.

Alexandra: I love it that you point out

that there are no exceptions. There’s never somebody, even if they don’t

believe it themselves, there’s never anybody who hasn’t who doesn’t have that. It’s innate, as we say.

Anna: To be honest people who come into the

room and people who stay in the program, no one doesn’t have a sense of it.

Even if someone tells a story you can find

well-being and if they didn’t resonate with it initially and they’re talkingand you’re looking for it because you’re always looking for well-being and youcan find it.

You start getting eyes for drawing that out

and being able to see it in everyone. I’ve never experienced anyone and I’veworked with hundreds of people now, men and women, who really don’t know whatI’m talking about it but it’s innate.

Alexandra: One of the things your website

mentioned is that you’re working on a two-year research project in a women’s mediumsecurity prison.

What’s the objective to that project and what does that involve?

Anna:We actually started it in the

men’s prison. What we’re doing in the women’s prison is the randomised controlgroup so it’s more robust.

But the idea initially was because they

said that we needed it, if we want to be a legitimate program. It’s got lots ofuniversal measures of well-being and states of mind.

It measures depression and anxiety and

stress and suicidal tendencies, addiction and wellbeing and all sorts ofdifferent measures. I knew nothing about research when we started this. I stillhave trouble explaining exactly what all the different measures are but there’sdifferent measures that are universal so you can measure it against differentinterventions measuring the same things.

But we’ve got through a year of that so

we’re working with a professor call Dr. Sarah Bowen who does a lot of researchin addiction and mindfulness and she got really interested in this. And sowe’re working with two Ph.D. students and who are who are lovely.

We’re coming to end of year one and because

it’s a longevity study, because we want to see about recidivism rates too. Soit’s not just we’ll test you after the 10 week program. We test you after threemonths and then we’ll test you again after six months and then we’ll test youagain after a year.

Groups go back to back to back. I go, right,

we’ve got another group to test and so I’m online because there’s a website whereyou can find out where everyone is, whether they’re paroled and what countythey paroled. And then you’re going to get in touch with the parole officer andyou go to find them. Then you’ve got to send them the packages. My office atthe moment is like a bomb site because we’re at three months and six months andthen we’re graduating a women’s program tomorrow. So a control group comes backin.

So it’s a lot of a lot of testing. But I

saw them last week and they said so far it’s looking really good. All the allthe things that are meant to going down like anxiety and all that stuff. All ofthe things that are meant to be going down are going down and the things that aremeant we going up are going up. So it’s like OK it’s worth it.

Alexandra: Amazing.

And for our listeners, recidivism is the tendency to be a repeat offender. Is that correct?

Anna: Yes.

Alexandra: And over the long term you’ll be testing for whether or not people

in the group are less likely to reoffend. And people in the control group mightbe more likely to reoffend.

Anna: Yes.

Alexandra: Got it. Fascinating.

Anna: Yeah well that’s the hope.

You realize that the conditions and the

habits of thought and the things that go on and people’s tendency to go back towhat they know.

When people get out we do groups on the

outside, helping people transition back into the community and because oncethey get the hang of this and they start to see thought and see feeling and youcan get out and then you go I get it but this is real.

This isn’t thought. Such and such is happening.

So you navigate different situations and how people can get to another level oftheir understanding so they’ve gotten deeper. But most people who I’m incontact with and now I’m trying to track down as well seem to be doing reallywell. So it’s nice just good to see.

Alexandra: Oh that’s great.

There’s something on your web site where

you say a lot of people say, “If I had known this 10 years ago I wouldn’t be inthis position right now, in a prison.”

That brought to mind for me that people who

were having a prison experience, who are incarcerated, are almost the ultimateexample of how we get so attached to our thoughts and we believe that it’s anoutside experience.

When we feel we don’t have any other

choices but to respond to what’s happening on the outside, that’s when ourbehavior can go off the rails. So it just seems to me that working with peoplein prisons is such a 180.

It’s an extreme example of a 180 for those

people.

Anna: Yes.

Sometimes it’s just a one off thing where the shit hit the fan, so to speak.

That’s the reason why we’re looking in the

youth prison now is because they said look if I knew this 10 years ago I wouldn’tbe here. We need to work with youth.  

I’ve got a guy who’s coming out of prison

who’s now 60. He’s been in and out of prison his whole life. He was in juvenileprison and he’s like, “This is the last time I ever come into prison. I’ve gotthis.”

And there are certain people that you just

know that it’s true. And you just think if I’d if you’d caught me back when Iwas 20 or 15 and I understood the mind I would be reactive or being so afraidof my feelings that I want to numb them with drugs and alcohol and then getmyself into trouble because I need to feed a habit because I don’t like how Ifeel.

When they have a new understanding of the

mind it just doesn’t make sense to need to escape your feelings because they’renot personal, they don’t mean anything and they can just flow through all ontheir own if you let them.

There was one woman last week who was

actually in tears just saying she’s got a life. And a lot of the womenseemingly that are in prison, a lot of it is because of abuse and sexual abuseand there’s a lot of self-defense and all those kind of things.

And she was like, on the day I committed my

crime, I just couldn’t get out of my head what I needed to do because I thoughtmy thoughts were real and if I’d known this I wouldn’t have done it. I knowthat I had I understood that it’s not real.

It is a double edged sword because they go this

should be in schools. Why hasn’t anyone told me this before because I thinkthere’s a lot of obviously a lot of struggling and stuff that goes on but they arereally excited that we’re working with them.

Alexandra: I imagine it must give them some

hope, as you say, that that for people who are getting in trouble at a young

age it will change the trajectory of their lives.

Anna: Yes. Exactly.

And then it’s really cool that the youth

that we’re going to be working with, they just so hungry for it. They’ve comethrough all sorts of elements; they have been in foster care and all sorts ofdifferent things and they are just really hungry to learn.

They were so excited the fact that we

starting and they were asking, “Can we start next week? Can we start next week?”They’ve been waiting for this for months and now I need more time. So we’restarting on the week of the 10th.

Alexandra: Lovely. We talked a little bit

about how you first introduce people to the idea that they are whole and abouttheir innate wisdom and well-being.

Then when you move on to teaching them

about thought, can you just give us an idea of how you approach that? Becausethis is the thing I always get inspired by is that in a situation like a prison,despite what I know about this this understanding, I think it would be reallyhard to feel at peace sitting in a jail cell.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Anna: You’d

be surprised. There’s a lot of peace. Well, now there’s more peace.

Again, you start with people’s experience.

They can all they all see that some days they get pissed off with people andsome days things bother them and some days they don’t. And it may take aminute.

There’s an example of a guy who was going,

No, no, no, this is this is bullshit. My bunkie, he claps. He’s got atelevision and he has his headphones on and he claps every time his team shootsor does whatever. And he claps and it drives me nuts.”

And he goes on and on and I’m not going to

try and convince him that it’s not real because to him it looks real. If thebunk mate wasn’t there I wouldn’t be feeling angry so don’t tell me it’s mythinking it’s because it’s him. He’s right there.

So I move on with the class and he may start

to see it anyway, so you just get on with it.

And then I think about week or so he came

back and was like, “OK now I get it. I know what you mean.”

And I was like why what happened.

He said, “I was going down to the chow hall

and I bumped into the clapper. And he said, ‘Hey man sorry, no disrespect.’”And he said, “I just saw him in a different way. I just had a differentexperience of him and then I just don’t care if he claps. What do I care if heclaps? He’s enjoying himself. Now it doesn’t make sense to me why I care if youclap. He’s just like that, he’s enjoying himself.”

He could see that the guy is still clapping

and he’s having a completely different experience. When people share thosesorts of things other people go, “Oh yeah, I get it.”

And they can have an experience of a guard

one day that’s driving the mad, and on another day it’s water off a duck’s backand things don’t stick.

They start to see how the mind changes by

itself and they can see that if they run with a line of thinking aboutsomething that is then they don’t work themselves up or they’ll have an insight,seeing that they’re creating a rage inside them because they’re spinning onsomething and then they stop. They just start to see it.

It’s so easy, in a way, because they can

all have good days and they can all have bad days, exactly the same with us. Somedays they feel hope and some days they feel hopeless. And when they realizethat nothing needs to change in the outside world for them to change how theyfeel then they start to get it and then they start to see it more.

And then there’s all sorts of different

experiences or examples where I would have reacted to this but I realized thisisn’t my movie. Not my monkey, not my circus.

They see that and then they react less and

things move through them. And it’s an end so they can also feel a lot of hopeand they just see things more positively, that there’s are possibilities andthere’s opportunities and rather than just seeing everything is a dead end andrealizing that they are not the labels.

So if they think they’re a criminal or they

think they’re an addict, there’s no way out of that. That’s who they are. Thenthere’s not a lot hope. But if you realize that’s just a word that describesbehavior, it describes something and it’s not who you are, it’s just what youdid.

There’s something deeper than that. That

well-being is something that’s as deep as living. You’re not an addict, you’renot a criminal. It’s something that describes something and they start to seethat it’s not who they are and then they can look beyond that. They can seebeyond that rule to something else. And so therefore there’s a lot more hopeand then they get more positive and it all looks very different.

Alexandra: When you first started working

with Beyond Recovery and Jacqueline in the UK, and you had had Three Principles

training before that, were you surprised by the differences that you saw?

Anna: Yeah.

I have my own addictions and bulimia and various different things growing upfor a long time. And I’m really insecure and have a lot of self-worth issuesand all sorts of normal stuff. But it felt debilitating to me.

I’ve done a lot of therapy and I’ve done a

lot of searching and all different things; Buddhism and yoga, philosophy andDaoism and meditation and all sorts of different things.

And so when I started to see this I was

like, “Of course I’m seeing it because I’ve done a lot of work on myself.” Ihad some awareness anyway.

But in the work in prisons you realize it

makes no difference. It has nothing to dowith it.

People who’ve never done a group, have

never done a class, have never had any other possibility of any other spiritualor psychological anything have insights exactly the same as anybody else.

And in actual fact, sometimes that can be a

hindrance. But you start to see the possibility that anyone can change. Anyonewho comes into the room has the possibility to change.

We se people at the beginning of classes,

and I’d sort of get in my head as I come in wondering, no they definitely willsee it and they seem willing they got it. And then you’re always wrong. Reallyeveryone starts to get it. But this was somebody where I’d think, “Oh my God,no, he’s never going to get it. It’s going to be a disaster. It’s just too muchego and too much bravado.”

And then it’s like they drop into something

and it’s amazing. I marvel at the human spirit and its ability to kind ofbounce back off.

I heard today this woman who gave birth in

prison and she wasn’t even allowed to hold her baby. They showed it to her andthat was it. And then she went. Another woman just got through cancer and she’sso positive. And she’s in there for life and she’s so upbeat and so full of loveand full of forgiveness.

And it’s just amazing. It amazes me, the

human ability to move through things that we think could traumatize or be therefor life and not be able to get past it and all these women today have gonethrough God knows, all sorts of things, and here they are sitting in a room andthat will occur and they’re all doing great. It’s really such a positiveexperience. And just seeing everyone get over themselves and get over all thisstuff and come back to themselves. I always say I got the best job in theworld. And it’s just so fun to see.

Alexandra: You make such a good point and

I’m not going to say it as well as you did but what I think this really proves,for lack of a better word, is the fact that we do have innate well-being andwellness because if that weren’t the case then this would be the population, thegroup of people, who wouldn’t be able to feel those things, to feel that kindof freedom and peace and understand where their experience is coming from.

I think it’s such a great example of

showing the principles and how they work.

We’re almost out of time so I just want to

wrap up quickly but I wanted to ask you before we go, is there anything thatyou’re working on that’s coming up in the future that you’re excited about oryou can share about it.

Anna: At

the moment, it’s the research project but to me all of it is exciting. I’mreally excited to work with youth. We’ve wanted to do it for a long time and ittook longer to get into the way which the Oregon Youth Authority, which istotally separate from the State Department of Corrections, because it is awhole different thing. I’m really excited about working with youth.

I’m excited about our teacher training. We’ve

got some guys who have been through our teacher training who hopefully will beable to teach the youth in prison where they came from many years ago. They aredoing amazingly well. And living really healthy robust lives with a very goodunderstanding of the principles.

Alexandra: These are prisoners who are now

teaching what you taught them.

Anna: Yeah. There’s three in our first group,

three guys, who did our teacher training. They will then come and work withyouth hopefully. We’ve got to get them cleared. But it’ll happen. It can take abit of time.

They want to pay it forward and they want

to work with youth because, a couple of them anyway, went to prison when theywere quite young.

Alexandra: Wow.

That’s amazing. Thank you again so much Anna for talking with me today.

Why don’t you let everyone know where they

can find out more about you and your work.

Anna: We

have a Web site called TheInsightAlliance.org. It’s very basic. it’s verysimple. One of my jobs is to kind of actually redo that, especially with thewhat we’re doing page and stuff because it’s changed.

But that’s a good place of see what we’re

doing. We have a Facebook page I sometimes forget to post things on that. I doit on my personal page. But when I get round to it.

There’s a newsletter on our web site that I

do, Insights From Prison, so different people’s stories that are reallyinspiring I post and things like that. The Web site is the best place to gethold of us.

Alexandra: OK

great. I’ll put links to that in the show notes.

Anna: I was going to say I did a TED talk

recently and so that will that was kind of a big deal for me anyway. I spoke infront of three and a half thousand people but it was talking about the workwe’re doing in prison and this understanding. So that would be on that to somepoint when it comes out. It was quite recent.

Alexandra: Fantastic. I’ll try to a link to

it in the show notes and if it’s not available I’ll just keep my eyes open andthen put the link up when it’s available.

Anna: OK. Perfect. Yeah well thanks again so

much.

Alexandra: Take care. It’s a pleasure.

Anna: Thank you. Bye bye.

[Forest image courtesy Mike Petrucci and Unsplash.]