What It Feels Like to Walk Into a Prison

Reflections from volunteer mindfulness teachers working inside correctional facilities

Our job is to walk in grounded and present, even when the environment is anything but.

Walking through the gates of a correctional facility for the first time is not something you can fully prepare for. The metal detectors, the control room staff, the locked doors — it all carries a weight that settles on you before you even reach the people you came to teach.

And yet, for many of us who keep going back week after week, something unexpected happens inside those walls: we find genuine connection, humility, and growth.

Arriving With Honest Eyes

It would be naive to pretend there's nothing to be afraid of. People in correctional facilities are navigating enormous stress — and so is everyone around them, including staff. Chaotic situations can arise without warning. Acknowledging that reality doesn't make us fearful teachers; it makes us honest ones.

What we've learned is that fear, when it's there, doesn't have to define the room. Our job is to walk in grounded and present, even when the environment is anything but.

One teacher describes her first visit vividly: "The place looked like a concentration camp. I took a chair in the middle of a semi-circle of convicts, all staring at me." But very quickly, their enthusiasm for the practice changed everything. "Their unbelievable zeal for meditation, chi gung, and yoga changed my fear into great love."

Learning to Let Go of Control

For those of us accustomed to structured, predictable environments, prison teaches a very particular lesson early: you are not in charge of the timeline.

One teacher recalls realizing on her third visit that no amount of urgency was going to get her through the gate any faster. The staff at the front — ranging from deliberately unpleasant to aggressively indifferent — operated on their own rhythm. The only option was to be present and at ease with that.

That lesson turned out to be useful far beyond the entrance. When a student doesn't show up for class, it's tempting to search your memory for what you might have done wrong. It took time to understand that court appearances, unit lockdowns, and countless other factors have nothing to do with you. Releasing that kind of ego investment opens up a lot of space.

The Teacher Becomes the Student

Many volunteers come in expecting to offer something. What surprises them is how much they receive.

"The teaching is reciprocal," one mindfulness instructor writes. "I get a lot of inspiration and knowledge from exploring topics like fear, judgment, pain, and listening with the people I teach. I have experience educating physicians and the public on topics I'm scientifically confident in — but teaching mindfulness, when I'm still learning it myself, challenges me to show up more fully every single day."

Another teacher, who has spent years volunteering in a prison that houses many male sex offenders — something that might seem unexpected, given that she identifies as a lesbian and feminist — describes a profound expansion of compassion. Every week, she hears stories that make clear how the harm people have caused is often rooted in the harm they once experienced. That understanding doesn't erase accountability. But it makes space for something more complicated than judgment: real love for people most of society has written off.

People who are rarely offered stillness find it. People who feel forgotten find someone willing to sit with them. And teachers who thought they were giving something discover they're receiving something they didn't know they needed.

What Happens When We Sit Together

When we actually get into the room, something shifts.

Sometimes the focus in the group is extraordinary. Other times, restlessness fills the space, and we work with whatever is there. When there's a lot of acute pain in the room — a group of women recently incarcerated, still processing the shock of their first day — a loving kindness meditation can bring a noticeable calm. We sit around a table. We begin with posture. We breathe.

"I feel a great spiritual energy meditating with them, almost like a retreat," one teacher reflects. "There's no sense of me being better or more special. I feel awed and humbled to be with such dedicated, powerful people."

The Shadow Side We Don't Talk About Enough

Honest reflection means looking at our own motivations, too.

One teacher puts it plainly: part of the reason she runs around to jails and prisons is a rescuer complex. Part of the payoff is an ego boost. That's the shadow side, and it's worth naming. When we sit in practice together, that sense of hierarchy dissolves. But it's important to acknowledge it exists — so it doesn't quietly drive decisions about how and why we show up.

Staying With It

These environments ask a lot of volunteers. The logistics are unpredictable, the emotional terrain is heavy, and the systems we're working within were not designed with healing in mind.

But week after week, teachers come back. Because what happens in those rooms — however imperfect, however constrained — is real. People who are rarely offered stillness find it. People who feel forgotten find someone willing to sit with them. And teachers who thought they were giving something discover they're receiving something they didn't know they needed.

Walking into a prison changes you. Not because it's dangerous, though it can be. But because it asks you to be present with the full weight of human complexity — and to keep showing up anyway.

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As our volunteers share above, teaching in a correctional facility is a reciprocal experience that challenges you to show up more fully every day. Interested in learning the unique skills required for this work?

Path of Freedom offers comprehensive training for those looking to bring mindfulness to incarcerated individuals and staff alike.

Join an upcoming 2026 Cohort: Register for our six-week online Introduction to the Path of Freedom (POF) via the EMI Community & Courses site.

Spring Session: March 2nd – April 13th

Fall Session: October 5th – November 16th