BY DANA RASMUSSEN
Imagine being away from home, lying on a cot in a cell. You can’t open your door, you can’t turn on the TV for some company or go out to the kitchen for a snack. You’re incarcerated, you’re alone and you’re just a teen.
That’s the reality for many teens at West Central Juvenile Detention facility and at David L. Brown Youth Center. On top of that, many have the feeling that they are bad and that nobody cares about them, according to meditation guide, Nancy Neal. But Neal cares about them.
Neal goes to the detention facilities and leads the inmates – who she calls students – in meditation. She goes to West Central every other Thursday and goes to David L. Brown every other Tuesday. She does it for free and because she feels she has a gift for working with young people.
"One boy in a facility told me he felt like everyone had given up on him except for me," Neal said. "Hearing things like that motivates me to keep going. It touches my heart."
Neal began meditating when she was just a child. She said she would go out into the forest near her home and sit with her back against a tree. She said she could feel the ground beneath her and the bark against her back and it made her feel relaxed. Neal never fell asleep in the forest, but she was able to clear her mind and free herself from stress. That state is what she tries to get the teens in lock up to achieve.
"Sometimes they have a hard time sleeping and sometimes they’re just stressed," Neal said. "Especially ones who are incarcerated. It’s obviously a stressful environment and the beds aren’t particularly comfortable, so they use the relaxation techniques to help them sleep and to reduce their stress."
Before each meditation session, Neal creates a lesson plan that she hopes will benefit the teens. On May 4, Neal led a meditation class at West Central. She had two statements for her students to think about. The first was "it’s my life and it doesn’t matter what I do because it only affects me;" the other, "everything I do impacts everybody else." She had her students think about those statements and decide which one they ascribed to. All of them chose the latter.
"You impact me daily," Neal told them. "I pray for you daily. I think of you daily. Think of the impact you have on other people’s lives. Your butterfly wings could be causing a tornado someplace else."
Her students said she impacted them as well. One girl shared what she’d learned from Neal’s lessons.
"I’ve learned not to be so judgmental," the girl said. "Being in (West Central) has an impact on everyone else in here."
After the lesson, Neal began the meditation. She had everyone sit on the floor and breathe deeply. They inhaled through their noses and exhaled through their mouth. She had them concentrate solely on their breathing so they could clear their minds. Then she had them visualize a place where they could find peace.
"The subconscious doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t," Neal said. "You decide where your place is. You decide where you want to be."
She told the students to think about what sounds they could hear in their places and to continue to visualize it.
"You control this place," she said. "It’s where you find peace. It’s a place where no one and nothing can get to you."
The students continued to relax. Neal had them pay attention to the muscles in their bodies and relax them. She told them to allow any tension or tightness to drain into their feet then into the floor and out into the earth where the tension could drain away. After she led them through their muscle relaxation she had them think again about their safe place, but this time she had them think about the things they say and do.
"Think about any habits you want to change and goals you want to achieve," Neal said.
To finish there was one minute of silence. When Neal brought her students out of their meditative state they all remained calm. Some kept their eyes closed, many stretched and yawned and others began to talk about the safe places they had visualized.
"My happy place is being inside my house in the middle of winter when it snows," one girl said.
When Neal left that day the students were all smiling and asking her when they’d get to see her again. Neal also left smiling and glad that she’s able to come in to help the children.
"I look at them and what I see are the little children in them looking out," Neal said.
Neal never asks any of her students what they are in the facilities for – she’s not allowed to by the administration and she doesn’t want to know. To her, the students are all children who just need someone to love them, she said.
"I just look in their eyes and see that sweet child inside," she said.