From Prison to Purpose: Dr. Mall's Inspiring Journey

What if you could transform your darkest moments into a powerful journey of self-discovery and service? Join us on the Mindfully Integrative Show as we welcome Dr. Fleet Mall, the remarkable founder of the Heart Mind Institute and an award-winning author. From growing up in a Roman Catholic family to becoming a spiritual seeker, Dr. Mall's path took an unexpected turn during the counterculture of the 1960s, leading him into drug smuggling and a subsequent 14-year federal prison sentence. Listen as he candidly shares his tumultuous experiences and how he navigated the prison system, earning good time and pursuing higher education at Naropa University, shaping his holistic approach to integrative health and mindfulness.

Dr. Mall's life post-incarceration is nothing short of inspirational. He reflects on the profound personal changes sparked by his time in prison, driven by extensive training in Buddhism, clinical practice, and spiritual teachings. His dedication to personal transformation and service, helping fellow inmates through education and support, underscores the power of resilience and self-reformation. Despite facing overwhelming loss, including the deaths of key spiritual figures and loved ones, Dr. Mall demonstrates the transformative power of mindfulness and contemplative traditions in finding inner strength and joy amidst suffering.

Through ongoing efforts with the Heart Mind Institute, Dr. Mall continues to champion mindfulness and compassion, particularly within correctional facilities. From training correctional officers in mindfulness-based wellness to addressing the cycle of re-traumatization, his work aims to foster a more compassionate environment for both staff and inmates. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that not only highlights Dr. Mall's remarkable journey but also explores how mindfulness and self-awareness can lead to profound personal and societal transformation.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Hi, how are you? This is Dr Damaris Maria Grossman and this is the Mindfully Integrative Show. Today we have an amazing mindful chat with Dr Fleet Mall. He is the founder of the Heart Mind Institute. He is an author, award-winning author and he has many things to discuss with you and I can't wait for you guys to learn more. Thanks so much, dr Maul, for being on.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:21

So I really want you to, you know, obviously talk about your research, but also talk about your books and things that you have been doing. I call the integrative health space, but really a holistic whole health approach. And first let's see how did you kind of get into this? You know, before you know, know you were in a researcher. What did you do that got you to really dive into this?

Speaker 2: 1:43

well, yeah, I mean, um, I think growing up through school I was always interested in the mind and always kind of a spiritual seeker, just in my nature, and I grew up in a Roman Catholic family in the Midwest and the kind of family joke kind of a joke, kind of semi-serious they thought I was going to be a priest but I didn't go in that direction.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I actually became a Buddhist priest later on, but I didn't become a Catholic priest.

Speaker 2: 2:12

But you know, I came of age in the 1960s and you know kind of angry young man with a big hole in my gut trying to fill that with all kinds of experiences, and you know, came out of an alcoholic family and so I just went headlong into the counterculture and all the craziness of the time and um, so you know, I had kind of a a a very mixed life for a long time, uh, where I was always a spiritual seeker but I got involved in all the drug section, rock and roll and all the craziness of that era, the anti-war politics and all that and and uh, um, ended up uh, as living in, as a expat kind of just was fed up with living in the country.

Speaker 2: 2:51

I was very caught up in this kind of very polarized us versus them thinking and, and you know, traveling internationally, living in South America as an expat, and fell into small time drug smuggling as a way to live outside the system and justified that with all this us versus them thinking. I was continuing to be a spiritual seeker and, yeah, that eventually led me to get a master's degree at Naropa University where I did a three-year clinical training program in Buddhist and Western psychology and psychotherapy and but before I could untangle all that mess, I earned my way into a 14-year federal prison sentence.

Speaker 1: 3:37

In fact at one point how do I not have that? Was this in your bio?

Speaker 2: 3:40

It should be.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Oh goodness, I apologize, I didn't. Well, this is your story 14 years, oh gosh.

Speaker 2: 3:46

I was actually at one point I was in an isolation cell on suicide watch. I wasn't suicidal, but they just. I guess it was the night before my sentencing and I was facing sentencing the next day and I could have been sentenced. I was facing a no parole sentence. This was back when they used to have parole in the federal system. They got rid of that in 1987, but I was sentenced in 1985. And I was facing a no parole sentence of anywhere from 10 years to life. And if I had gotten a life sentence I would still be in prison today unless I got a presidential pardon, and that's just not happening, right. So that's what I was facing. I ended up getting 30, 30 years and I pretty much thought my life was over. I was 35 at the time Paper the next day said I'd be 65 before I have any chance of release.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Once I was in prison for a number of months after going through this hellhole of a county jail experience during trial and sentencing for seven months and then getting sentenced and then going to a federal prison after getting there. It took a while, but I kind of figured out how the system worked and fortunately, under what they call the old law prior to 1987, when they went from parolable sentencing to determinate sentencing. So prior to that you earned a lot of good time if you stayed out of trouble. So I figured out that if I stayed out of trouble on that 30-year no parole sentence I would be able to be released at about 18 and a half years, but not before that, whereas if it had been a paroleable sentence you come up, you go to the parole board. Starting after you've served one third right Doesn't mean they're going to let you out, but they could. But I would say I would have had to serve at least 18 and a half on that 30. I could easily serve a lot more because it's really easy to get in trouble in prison. And then they started taking away chunks of that good time.

Speaker 2: 5:35

Then it took my. You know I appealed my case. I didn't feel I was guilty of one charge which carried the no parole sentence. I would have gladly pled guilty to being involved in the smuggling I was involved in and put myself at the mercy of the court for sentencing. But this no parole sentence I didn't really feel I was guilty of it and so that's why I went to trial. Anyway, I appealed that conviction and on appeal they ended up dropping off one count. I had an aggregate sentence that amounted to 30, made up of different pieces, five different counts. So they knocked off one that reduced it to 25. And then, you know, that took about three years. So at that point then I knew if I stayed out of trouble I'd serve 14, 14 and a half, but possibly half would be served outside, which I did. I served the half outside half and a halfway house and half of it in a under house arrest. So so, but I was in federal prison for 14 years, from 1985 to 1999.

Speaker 1: 6:33

You make it sound like it's nothing. 1985 to 1999. You make it sound like it's nothing.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Well, no, it was hardly nothing. It's been a long time. I remember when I'd been out for 14 years I'd been out, or even 15 when I'd been out longer than I was in, and time has gone by a lot quicker since I've been out than it did when I was in, to say the very least. But I've been out now for, you know, going on 23 years, so it's a long time ago. But I mean obviously seminal experience in my life and it really influences a lot of the work I do today. I mean my big part of my life is still being in a very active role with the nonprofit I started when I was in prison some 33 years ago called Prison Dharma Network. It's also known as Prison Mindfulness Institute and has other divisions called Engaged Mindfulness Institute and Center for Mindfulness and Public Safety, and we bring mindfulness to incarcerated, to at-risk incarcerated and returning adults and youth citizens. We were, now we're bringing mindfulness to the correctional officers, probation and parole officers, police judges, public defenders, prosecutors, other first responders, and so that's a big part of my life still to work through the nonprofit, and so it was a seminal experience for me and also because when I got locked up.

Speaker 2: 7:49

I'd been doing deep work for a long time, I'd already been trained as a Buddhist teacher and I'd gotten a master's degree, a clinical training as a psychotherapist. And you know that begs the question well, why did I still end up in prison? Well, suffice it to say, you know, I was doing a lot of compartmentalization and I had a lot of shadow stuff going and I hadn't resolved all the you know, all the tangles of what I went through with my childhood and the counterculture and all the rest of it. And I knew it had. I knew it all that the crazy and it had to stop. But you know, and you know I, there was a lot of cognitive dissonance around getting very deeply involved in a Buddhist path and being trained as a Buddhist teacher and still having that shadow life going on. But you know, and when I was, I spent a lot of my time in retreats where I was just deep in practice. But when I was outside of that, you know, the cognitive distance was there. I was self-medicating around it with alcohol and drugs. So I just kind of crazy split life and I knew it had to end. But before I managed to untangle it on my own, actually, I did kind of begin to untangle it, but others who I'd been involved with had continued. I stopped, they continued and when they got in trouble with the law they decided to invite me to the party and so I ended up being indicted.

Speaker 2: 9:04

But at any rate, you know, I came in with a lot of training and it was a horrific experience on so many levels. I can only imagine no worries and at the same time it was like my monastery time or my ashram time, because, you know, when I got locked up, I knew the jig was up and I really had to, you know, focus on cleaning up my life and and and taking advantage of all the good I'd received in my life, even from my family of origin, and all the training I'd received my spiritual teacher and my, my, uh, my clinical training and my training as a'd received my spiritual teacher and my clinical training and my training as a Buddhist practitioner, as a teacher. And when I got locked up, my son was nine years old at the time and I was absolutely devastated over what I'd done to him because I finally had to face it. In all those years I actually thought of myself as a good father. I love my son, I'm a good father and I was a horrific you know. I was putting him at risk constantly by being involved in that and ended up he ended up having to grow up a good part of his life without a dad. So I was devastated by that. I hit that wall and went through a real dark night of the soul and I became absolutely dedicated, committed to extricating all the negativity out of my life and really focusing on.

Speaker 2: 10:15

You know, I had no surety that I would survive that prison time at all. I mean, initially I thought I was going to be there for 30 years and um, but even after I knew it would be less than that, I still had no surety that I would survive my time, even up until near the end, because people were dying there. I mean, I did my time in a federal maximum security federal prison hospital where people did die of violence, but mostly they were dying because the patients who were there for treatment, for medical treatment. They were dying of cancer and AIDS and liver disease and I saw healthy prisoners who were in the general population. Like myself, I was part of what they call the work cadre or general population, where they had to help run the place, you know, working in housekeeping or food service or up in the hospital as an orderly or in, you know, in the welding shop, whatever.

Speaker 2: 11:00

I ended up teaching school for 14 years because I had an education. So my nine to five job, monday through Friday, for 14 years, was helping other prisoners learn to read or earn their GED or study for correspondent college courses. I also taught English, esl classes, things like that. That was my day job. So I just became radically dedicated to leave a better legacy for my son than just you know, his dad went to prison or even his dad died in prison. I was just really trying. How can I show up here and serve? And I'd received so much from my teachers and you know, and here I was thrown into this kind of hell realm where there was so much suffering. I mean, I'll never forget the first day I arrived at that federal prison after being in this really hellhole of a county jail just complete chaos for seven months where I could barely sleep. But I was still practicing meditation intensively and living with the nightmares of what prison was going to be like. And I'd seen too many prison movies and hearing all the war stories from my fellow prisoners in a county jail. You know having nightmares of being raped and things like that. You know there's a lot.

Speaker 2: 12:04

I got to the federal prison and on the one hand it was a big relief because it was a huge place. You could walk around. There was a yard you could go out and walk on, there was a workout you know area. There were 10 buildings all connected by these half below ground, half above ground tunnels, so they had like windows with light. But you didn't ever have to go outside If you didn't want to. You could connect all the different buildings and so it was a relief to be out of that county jail and into this place.

Speaker 2: 12:37

But I remember the first day of walking the halls and I'm seeing men coming out of this psychiatric ward, the ones who were able to leave the ward and get out in the yard and so forth, you know kind of doing the Thorazine two-step or or out on out in the yard talking to themselves. Or I was seeing men being guided around who are blind in prison and somebody who's helping them around. I'm seeing people being wheeled around in wheelchairs who are paraplegic and quadriplegic or emaciated, dying of cancer and AIDS. And it was literally the first day I was there, I thought I was in some kind of Fellini movie of suffering, right, and it just was such a shock. But in some ways that was really good, because when I arrived there, of course I was caught up in the drama of my own situation. I'd just been sentenced to 30 years, my life was over, right. I was very much caught up in my personal drama.

Speaker 2: 13:17

And then I get to this place that I'm confronted with this incredible amount of human suffering.

Speaker 2: 13:23

It just woke me up out of my own self-preoccupation and all the you know what I'd received from my spiritual teachers who's you know as an example, especially my primary spiritual teacher, trung Phrim.

Speaker 2: 13:33

She a Tibetan master whose life, 24-7, was all about serving humanity. So you know that just kicked in and I became focused on how do I show up here and how do I serve here and how to also really focus on my own personal transformation and my own practice. I, you know, I became incredibly dedicated to my own practice and my own education and my own transformation, as well as serving in that environment. So it ended up being a very transformational experience for me, although you know it was still I mean, on a good day you only had maybe a half dozen really demeaning experiences, either with your fellow prisoners or the correctional officers. You know things just assaults on your humanity and you know so. I mean it was a very corrosive environment to live in. But you know, through using internal spiritual practices and really focusing on my own health and well-being and my mindset and doing deep meditation practices, I actually learned to live in that very corrosive environment in a very positive way and not be overly traumatized by being in that environment.

Speaker 1: 14:39

I, I can, I knew there was history but I didn't realize it was 14 years. Um, I and the, the way that you talk about suffering, think about, you know, when I, from my teachings and from my you know general experience and I think suffering you, you have it to the utmost. And to come out on the other end of this story, you know, and saying you wanted to change and make other people's lives better and that you're teaching during that, your sentence and I mean you got half sentenced I mean there has to be reason why all the work that you were doing in the prison, you know, not only did your appeal, but I mean I do believe that you were not supposed to be in there 30 years like, like your, your work, it meant something. And now your work now means something. Do you find it harder now or do you find it harder then?

Speaker 2: 15:33

Find what harder life.

Speaker 1: 15:35

Yeah, you're like I mean, or I mean that's like the word suffering as you use back then must have been. You know now the word suffering for you is it. If you could get through that, I feel like anything is, is is possible.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Well, you know, I sometimes I do. You know I do a lot of teaching and training with people. I mean, before the pandemic I was a road warrior on the road every week all over the world teaching all kinds of mindfulness-based programming and emotional intelligence training and for the general public, leadership stuff, corporate stuff, prison programs, all kinds of things, doing a lot of peace work and, uh, bearing witness work in Africa and and former concentration camps in Europe and so forth. Um, of course, you know, in the pandemic it, like everybody else, I've been home and doing everything online, right?

Speaker 1: 16:17

Right.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Um, but uh, you know I often share with people that. You know, and I've shared this with prisoners very, very frequently. You know it's really important to do all this inner work so that you know you can get to a place of being okay, healing our own trauma, you know, developing greater well-being and resilience, so we can live our lives from a place of well-being and resilience, rather from a really traumatized place, to do the work to really get in a driver's seat of our own life, rather than living in just this kind of mechanical, reactive state in the interface of our childhood conditioning that we had nothing to say about and then the circumstances that surround us. As you know, as adults right, and most of us kind of live we may think we're free thinking adults, autonomous adults, making free thinking decisions all day long, but mostly we're very habitual and we're mostly just living in this mechanical reactive state, in this interface between the world around us and our childhood conditioning. It actually takes strong intention and practice and mind training to become conscious and become aware and be able to actually live consciously and live in a wakeful way and really direct your own life and your own destiny. And I said, but even when you do all that work that doesn't mean suffering is you're not going to continue to suffer. You know. In fact, you know, in some ways, you know, the more prepared we become to take on life's challenges, it seems in some way life gives us even greater challenges and and we get called into serving. And.

Speaker 2: 17:55

But you know, since I've been out, or even, you know, before I got out, along with the process of incarceration, I lost my first and core spiritual teacher, chugun Frum Frumashe, early on in my prison years. I went to prison in 1985. He died in 1987. That was very devastating.

Speaker 2: 18:15

And then, you know, I was very hopeful, and especially once I knew that I was going to have to serve 14 if I stayed out of trouble and I did manage to, although it was, you know, a lot of it was by hook or crook. I mean, I had always had strong intentionality. I wasn't looking for trouble, but it's easy to, you know, it's easy for trouble to find you even when you're not looking for it, when you're in prison. So it's kind of like a powder keg, you know, and I lived on a unit designed for 50 people and it had usually about 185 men and no air conditioning, and you know, I mean it was just there was some kind of, you know, conflict waiting around every corner if you weren't really mindful and awake, and so forth. So I lost my train of thought there for a moment.

Speaker 1: 19:05

but with with um, um, I can backtrack from Emma to um You're, you're always talking about, you were talking about suffering, and then at that, time, oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:11

So, um, right around the time of getting out, uh, yeah, I was very hopeful that I would. Once I knew I was only going to serve for only going to serve 14, uh, I was very hopeful that I would get out, my parents would get to see me out and, you know, doing okay, right, and that was a very strong hope of mine and, as long as the deep longing to you know, to be able to be present in my son's life again. And my dad ended up dying five months before I got out and my mom ended up dying five months after I got out, and so that was devastating. Obviously, the woman who had been my kind of off and on girlfriend before I went to I separated from my son's mother many, many years earlier, long before I went to prison. But a woman who had been my kind of on and off and again girlfriend before I went to prison, I, a woman who had been my kind of on and off and again girlfriend before I went to prison I wasn't a very good boyfriend in that area but nonetheless we remained good friends. She was smart enough to go on with her life and I wanted her to go on with her life. But we became really good friends and stayed in touch. She would come to visit me every couple of years. We stayed in touch by correspondence and when I got out we were actually considering whether to try to get back together. She was living in Canada, she had moved to Canada, had a landed immigrant there, her daughter was there, she had a great job there. I couldn't leave Colorado where I returned to out of prison, so you know, trying to figure that out, and just a year after I got out she died of cancer.

Speaker 2: 20:55

And then the next two relationships that I got into both I mean, I've been blessed to meet some and, you know, have some amazing, amazing women be part of my life. But one relationship I was in that had to end because that person was having a lot, a lot of struggles and it was putting me at risk because I was still on probation and parole and and beautiful person but struggling, a lot of trauma, I think. And anyway they ended up committing suicide about six months after I, after our relationship ended. So I wasn't a direct result of us breaking up. She was already in another relationship but it was still absolutely devastating. And then then I found my way into another incredible relationship with my partner, denise, who, uh, you know, it was just and she was. We were both, um, you know, deep practitioners in our, in the same tradition, and we're very, just, an amazing human being. And, uh, you know, we were together about five years and then she got cancer and died.

Speaker 2: 21:45

So, you know, you never know what's going to unfold. I feel very blessed. I didn't know if I'd ever be in a relationship again. I am, I'm married, I'm to Sophie, an amazing, amazing woman, and I'm the love of my life and I'm so happy to share my life with her. So, you know, that's wonderful, but life is very uncertain and everything's. You know, we're constantly trying to, you know, solidify ourselves and solidify life and get it. You know, okay, now I got it, it's going to stay this way. But it's not like that. Life is, you know, completely groundless and impermanent, and so you know. But fortunately, the mind training available in the mindfulness movement and in the deep contemplative traditions underlying that, or where that was sourced from, provide practices where we can transform our mind, our way of being and our consciousness such that we're able to actually make peace with that impermanence and that groundlessness and actually thrive in it and find energy and joy in it, right, uh, which is really the amazing you're making me cry.

Speaker 1: 22:50

I love what you're saying. I said you're making me cry because I, I'm thinking about how right you are and I and and your thoughts and your words are just so proud, just so profound. Um, I think about you. Know how I look. Mindfulness for me has changed my, my whole life, you know, and I think my struggles were hard.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Your story is 100 times harder than mine, you know it's all relative, you know it's all suffering, but you're there. It's painful Suffering when you're there, it's painful.

Speaker 1: 23:21

No, but the strength that you're describing, that we have available to us within, is there that people need to know that the practice is part of what helps us heal?

Speaker 2: 23:35

It's absolutely there. Each one of us has an unconditional, inherent reservoir of strength and courage and compassion, and my Tibetan teacher called it basic goodness. And when we get beneath all the noise and you know, all the conditioning and all noise through using contemplative means to get into the depth of our being, we can have that experience of realizing that no, I'm not broken and I don't need fixing. I'm completely complete and whole and I am innately good and and I'm connected to the world and life is good and I'm good. You know, we it's not just a thought, we have that experience through these practices and that changes everything. We still got to deal with all the challenges of life and but it really shifts everything because we're not living from those lives. All of us were told in one way or another growing up that we're not enough or we're broken and we need fixing, or you know what have you?

Speaker 1: 24:26

I mean, dr Amal, I feel like your words are your legacy. I know that you had said you know you wanted something more than you know just to get out of prison right. Or you know, and get through your showing and making legacy and change, because you, you're making impact in so many people's lives, even past all of your struggles and and each of these stories that you're saying are not just one off. Things like prison is one, a death of loved one, but a death of a few loved ones, and then you're the relationship with your family. Like all of those aspects, one person sometimes can't even handle one of those and I hope that someone listening or can understand that we can get through these parts and these things and it's a work in progress.

Speaker 1: 25:14

But obviously you've been doing the work for years and I just I find you an amazing man. I'm crying, I'm thinking about it and I'm starting to get a little. I'm really I'm very emotional thinking about how much work you've done on your, on your own self, and how much now you can guide other people, and I think that that you know that must've taken so much of you. You know what I mean Yourself to go and then to be to be on a teacher Cause I feel like you're not even a teacher. You're, you're almost like, ascended here.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Yeah, and on some level, uh, in my life it feels choiceless. Uh, on many, many levels, um, and I realized all kinds of you know, people make all kinds of choices, but uh, and I certainly have made some, some, some unfortunate choices in the past and made some much, much better choices more recently in my life, but in some ways the direction of my life does. I mean, it may sound heroic to people but it doesn't really feel heroic to me. It feels more choiceless and I've been given so much by by by so many, by so many people, and really my understanding of life today is that it is about training. I'm training to be a human being and I'll be doing that training until I die, and in some sense, training to die Always.

Speaker 2: 26:34

How can we keep emerging as the best version of ourselves? Not that there's anything wrong with the current version, but we're like any life form. We're designed to grow and thrive and evolve, right? We're not designed to be static, right. So you know, and that really is an important distinction there, because sometimes when people think about making changes in their life and you know, the whole kind of idea of self-improvement can come from a place of lack, like I'm not okay the way I am, but if I do all these things I'll improve and then I'll be okay and I'll be lovable and acceptable and I'll be okay. And you know, that's not very helpful.

Speaker 2: 27:04

But if we can get in touch, through contemplative practices, with that core of basic goodness, that innate, unconditional goodness at the core of our being, then we can work on evolving and training ourselves. And you know, from a different place, right, not from a sense of lack or not enoughness, but just because it's natural to grow and thrive, and that's what we're here for. And so, you know, I don't, I never feel like I'm training to get to some point and then I'll be ready to live my life. I just think of life. That's what life is Like. Every moment is an opportunity to keep growing and and and opening and become more loving and more compassionate, more awake and less driven by unconscious shadow stuff. And yeah, and that just seems to me about what life is. The journey is about and it makes life an incredibly exciting journey really.

Speaker 1: 28:00

Do you feel like you are without? Is your life without anything? At this point, I mean relationship, wise, or like everything that you've been through. Do you feel like you are without something, like you're missing anything at this point?

Speaker 2: 28:14

No, no, I don't. I feel a real sense of fullness and richness to my life. You know, through mindfulness, practice and then going, you know, deeper into some of the contemplative traditions, ultimately we can have experiences kind of blow all the noise and you know, in some realms that sometimes people describe as non-self or or something beyond the self, or or you know, experiences of some kind of core, of of a witness that's not the small self at all, or or experience, you know, what sometimes people call ego dissolution. Through various experiences, or it can really just be our sense of self expands so much that it's no longer about me. It's like, you know, being connected with the whole world, and your locus of decision-making, your orientation, what's important to you and how you make decisions is now not just about you and not about myself, but it's about the whole world. You know the idea of kind of the ecological self, right where? So you can think of it either as a kind of dissolution, a deconstruction of the small self, or you can think of it as an expansion to where it. You know, the idea of an individuated self doesn't really seem that relevant anymore and of course we still, as long as we're alive, we still live in a body and need to orient but. But we can. But we can, you know, have those um experiences and and they connect us, uh, more profoundly, uh, to our life, right and um, and it's like you know everything. I mean it's just like the. You go outside, uh, the, the colors, the greenery, the flowers, it's all brighter, it's more vivid. I mean life just shows up in a really powerful, magical way.

Speaker 2: 30:03

The less caught up we are in maintaining that small self, you know, am I okay? Do people love me? Am I going to be okay? Am I going to get what I want? You know what's going on with me, what do people think about me? That you know that crazy conversation that goes on between our ears which today, from neuroscience we know is connected to an overactive default mode network, and we know that mind training helps to make a shift from there to, at least in simple neurobiological terms, to the task positive network, and they're kind of mutually inhibitory. So the more we become focused, then that noisy part of the brain quiets down a bit and we're able to stabilize attention and then go into deeper and deeper levels of awareness and become more embodied and more connected.

Speaker 2: 30:49

So you know, it's just a never-ending adventure. You know like and from that perspective, life is. You know still has suffering and still painful. We still experience loss. You know all the things that are going on in the world today that are so upsetting. You know, with still with climate change and species destruction and wars, and you know, and refugee crises and violence. You know it's all just heartbreaking and at the same time, we can still live life from a place of the great adventure of becoming more awake, more conscious, more loving.

Speaker 1: 31:27

Oh my gosh, I'd like you to leave with that, but I was going to say what I mean. You have so much to say. It's beautiful, um, I was actually going to ask in the realm of your helping your inmates with the mindfulness. I remember doing just small. I've, I've worked in um in doing a couple of classes and mindfulness for um inmates and and women and some veterans with a nonprofit local to me and I'm I'm thinking about the work that you do with that. That has probably been so profound and just so helpful for them to, because you were able to get past your suffering but also learned through your teachings and then to bring that teachings to others. You know, just basic mindfulness, just it's not even basic. The word basic isn't the right word. Did you find that to be? Because this is a nonprofit that you also have? Is that the HeartMind Institute or is that?

Speaker 2: 32:28

No, the HeartMind Institute is actually a for-profit company. That's why I do all my online seminars A big part of my life today. I have kind of these two parts of my life. I have a little nonprofit work, which is the whole prison work. I have kind of these two parts of my life. I have a little nonprofit work, which is the whole prison work criminal justice, public safety work and then I have the for-profit part of my life where I do consulting and I'm a seminar leader in training and mostly what we're doing there is online courses.

Speaker 2: 32:48

I have a lot of online courses that's at heartmindco and I do a lot these big summits that are free. So we're reaching tens of thousands of people and we cover the cost by offering the. You know people can have lifetime access to the recordings of the videos and so forth. So it works out and but we're able to do these amazing events. We're doing about six a year now and our biggest one so far, I think, reached 65,000 people and the smaller ones reached 30,000. And we have one coming up in October that I'm very involved with right now on this emerging field of psychedelic assisted therapy, which has offered so much promise to so many people, right, the potential for healing is just amazing, right.

Speaker 2: 33:36

So it's a really rich part of my life where I get to interview all these amazing people and and um, so that's a very rich part of my life. But also still being involved very much in the prison work. I mean I actually spend, I still go into prisons and you know the prisons were all shut down to outside volunteers and contractors during the pandemic. They're just starting to open up again, but I will go back into prisons and I will work with our fellow incarcerated citizens. But a lot of my work today is actually working with correctional officers, probation and parole officers.

Speaker 2: 34:13

I literally spend a lot of time in person and online training them in a model we have called mindfulness-based wellness and resiliency, because you know that's a highly traumatized population because they're continually faced with insufficiently managed chronic stress, both primary and secondary trauma exposure. And you know, actually there's research showing that the average life expectancy for a correctional officer who works in secure facilities for more than 20 years is like 58 years two decades less than the general population and they're dying of all the chronic stress-related ailments as well as suicidality, and so there's a lot of trauma in that world and we have our correctional facilities, where you have the prisoners and incarcerated folks, and you have the staff prisoners and, uh, incarcerated folks, and you have the, the, the staff, and they're just continually re-traumatizing each other, right, so, um, um so it's like a teaching you know you have if they're going to be there.

Speaker 1: 35:09

You're teaching these correctional officers to to have more compassion for these inmates.

Speaker 2: 35:15

Really, we don't we don't teach that to them.

Speaker 1: 35:18

No, not compassion Well.

Speaker 2: 35:22

I would love to, but, but you know it wouldn't be well received. But but no. We're teaching them how to take good care of themselves and how to develop self-compassion, because we know, if they become mindfulness practitioners and have more compassion for themselves, they're inevitably going to become more compassionate with other human beings.

Speaker 1: 35:39

I think, in turn, that's where I was coming from. I say compassion, but yes, you're right. You're teaching them their inner work.

Speaker 2: 35:45

But it's important for people to realize that everybody who ends up in prison and there are some people in prison that have done absolutely horrific, heinous things, but the vast majority of people in prison have not done those really horrific, heinous things, but even the ones who have, they just acted out of their own suffering. I mean, only you know, hurt people, hurt people and you know, and the more heinous the things they did, I'll guarantee you you'll find more heinous damage in their own childhood, really serious childhood abuse. But actually the level, the amount of prison, if you looked at the whole prison population, the percentage who experienced either physical, emotional or sexual abuse as children is off the charts. I mean it would probably be 70%. And so people are kind of programmed by their childhood trauma and suffering to end up in our criminal justice system. So people need to realize that everybody that's in our criminal justice system, in our prisons and jails and on parole, they're all just human beings like us and are suffering. Human beings and our human beings who perhaps suffer even more than we have in their childhoods and be highly traumatized. And sure they have to be held accountable. But demonizing them and thinking we can throw them away not only doesn't work because they're all going to come back out that 97 percent of prisoners will be released someday.

Speaker 2: 37:03

But you know they're human beings just like us, and when I go into prisons I want them to get two things. I want them to get and they do because it's who I am and how I genuinely feel and see the world. I want them to get that. I realize that for the most part, you know they've been victimized by their own lives. They've suffered tremendous trauma. The criminal justice system is very unjust, whether by intent or default, it ends up being very racist, and it's sentencing disparities and so forth and prosecution disparities, and so you know I want them to get. I get that they are the victims of tremendous injustices from their childhood all the way through into the criminal justice system. I really want them to get that and that I find it heartbreaking to see my fellow human beings in that situation. The other thing that I want them to also get is the only person who can turn that around is them that their future destiny is going to be determined by one and one only thing the decisions they're making today and the decisions they're making tomorrow. And you know so, sitting around and stewing around how badly you've been victimized, you know, is very reasonable, but it isn't going to take you anywhere.

Speaker 2: 38:13

And I'm not saying people should deny I think we need to have a lot of self-compassion and acknowledge the pain and the ways we've been victimized by things, but then we don't want to be stuck there and develop that mindset. We want to say, ok, I got dealt a really tough hand in this card game. I got really dealt some really tough circumstances. Ok, what am I going to do with that? You know, am I going to let that take me down? Or am I going to do with that, you know? Am I going to let that take me down, or am I going to find some way to own that and focus on training myself to get out of prison and do some good in the world when I get out there, uh? And if I want to change the system and overcome a lot of the injustice, well, I'm going to do that much more so as a trained awake person, uh, who has my own act together, than, as you know, someone with a victim mindset who's just, you know. You know, still flailing around as an expression of my trauma. Right, we all, we have to do the work and you know who knows why.

Speaker 2: 39:06

Some of us in life experience heartbreakingly the disparities. I mean all human beings suffer, right, it's no small thing being a human being, but the disparities of the amount of suffering and especially childhood trauma and so forth that people experience around where they're born, the color of their skin, you know, their sexuality, their gender, all kinds of things. It's heartbreaking those disparities. And you know we all get dealt what we got dealt and and it's not. And I think I firmly believe we all need to aspire to really change that landscape.

Speaker 2: 39:41

So fewer and fewer people are getting that really unfair level of injustice and trauma and all that any particular individual. It's up to them to say I'm not going to let this take me down, I'm going to find a way to use this as fuel for transformation and go forward in my life. And of course there's countless examples of human beings who've been able to do that from the worst circumstances you could possibly imagine and it may seem heroic, but you know, in some ways life is the hero's journey, right, that's what the human life is. You know, joseph Campbell did such a great job of drawing from many different human traditions to kind of outline the core aspects of the steps in the classic hero's journey. But we're all on a hero's journey, you know that's what life is.

Speaker 1: 40:33

I think your transformational words and the ripple effect and the thoughts that you are conveying are so important for those that one person may hear this conversation and think that their suffering is bad and or that they can't get past whatever is going through their, their bad day or their bad event, and that there is hope beyond where they're at. I think it's so necessary and I'm so glad for you being on it. There is hope beyond where they're at. I think it's so necessary and I'm so glad for you being on it. I really appreciate your time and your wealth of knowledge and all of your words. They're so deeply appreciated.

Speaker 2: 41:07

Well, thank you very much for having me and I'm really happy to have the opportunity humbled, to have the opportunity to connect with your audience, and I hope I may have shared. Whatever I've shared, I hope it can be of benefit to someone.

Speaker 1: 41:19

It definitely is, and I think there's so much more to be said and a pause for you. I feel like you need, I need like a big pause, but how can those reach you and how can they get ahold of you, dr Maul?

Speaker 2: 41:33

Sure, well, the easiest place to begin is with my basic website, which is fleetmaallcom fleetmallcom, and from there you can find your way to a lot of the other things I do. But we mentioned HeartMind Institute. That's heartmindco. And people want to find out about my Radical Responsibility book. That's radicalresponsibilitybookcom. And then, if people are interested in the prison work that I do, prismindfulnessorg is all the work that we do with incarcerated youth and adults, and then we train mindfulness teachers through the Engaged Mindfulness Institute that's engagedmindfulnessorg. And the work we do at Correct corrections and other professionals and other public safety professionals is, uh, mindful public safety dot org.

Speaker 1: 42:22

So there's those three websites so much I, I I'm gonna have all of this in the show notes, but I, you are, your work is expansive. I I don't even think there's enough that I can say about what you're doing and, and I can see you're giving like enough that I can say about what you're doing and and I can see your giving like it's like infinity. You know it's endless.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Um, it keeps me out of trouble.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I whatever that is is okay, and and I I think it's like quite profound how you've been able to see your you know your flaws and your stuff and then say, okay, how do we work through that? How do we get beyond? So thank you so much really for your time.

Speaker 2: 43:01

Thank you, thank you, well, thank you. Thank you very much, amaris.

Speaker 1: 43:04

And um, and I thank you guys for listening and for watching and, of course, as I say each day, make sure you have a mindful way. Thanks again and have a blessed day.