good evening to alameda county is giving back program it's a wonderful time to be in alameda county right now because this program that we have is a program of inspiration and inspiring young people and greg for mind and body and what is the acronym for body awareness it is truly a program that i know is something that with the experience when you see the demonstration guys describe a little bit about your program ok sure well the m b a project we operate in alameda county juvenile hall and we were in my for the space youth groups where we have about six to ten you sitting in a circle with two of our instructors and we teach them mindfulness meditation and we encourage them to share about what's going on in their lives talk about the trauma that they've been through share their gifts with each other and our goal really is to create an atmosphere where they feel comfortable disclosing what's really going on with them so that we can then use the tools of mindfulness and meditation and group connection to kind of plant those seeds of healing so that they can get on the human impact themselves and we so we're doing all we do mostly groups in there and we're also in the school system in oakland unified school district and some other school districts where we do those same types of groups and one tori and our goal really is to develop a continuity of care model where youths who are in the juvenile hall when they get released to the transition center we want to stay with them and track them so that that relationship that we have with them in the and and greg tell us as the instructor what actually goes on in some of the classes and what do you feel they are getting out of the classes will yeah i think that a lot of what they get is taking themselves out of sight of the the thing that their situation they're angry and focusing on their breath and focusing on their body and using that those kind of tools and skills to calm themselves down other situations where they might be in it like the immediacy of an argument or an altercation and just have like an emergency emergency thing procedure that they do just breathing in something anything different than what's going on right there but also to maintain a sofa awareness where you know you r concepts to you know what surrounds you you know what you're faced with so it's not being like oblivious to the situation is actually mean even deeper that it's just in recognizing and keying in to your triggers exactly the things that trigger you and able to mind in body focusing on making you listen deescalating the issues my question to you is in dealing with younger people in our juvenile hall and dealing with their ability to cope how do you plan how is it that the process itself is going to continue once you get out what is your program designed to do and how many instructors you know how excuse me or definitely a program in development we have about five or six and truck tours to go it's like i was saying before to have that kind of when they get out tracking system to track them back into school if they're going back to school or into the community into the home and right now our programs are an oakland unified school district and we do want on one ment me and my from the space group says well our office is in oakland right right across the street from the ground like the eight are and the goal is to one day have a center there where you can also come to us do internships  mentor just really develop their own practice the reason why we believe in meditation is because it's something that you can teach somebody and they can go on and do themselves and develop their own path and it's something that they can take with them for the rest of their lives if they want to in their life tools right absolutely i mean any situation maybe if they get when they get older and they have a job the stressful they can revert back to some of those tactics they use and we were talking about in my particular unit that it was a male or female they came in that was getting some of the kids to relax with music having them do their portree are rap whatever you want to call it and it also opened them up to a trust level because so many times when you're in a group you don't know if somebody is from the lower bottoms are from lacy  whatever but when you come into an environment where you work in together you can trust and you start sharing your poor tree and started rappin and put it to music and it develops a whole new type of base for them to communicate when you talk to the young people about their anger and or their emotions what you're going to demonstrate to all of us here the techniques that you use and are these techniques just something that came about practices and many different spiritual traditions and you know they've been around for thousands of years and they're there's a lot right now especially in the united states there's just a lot of press around the benefit of mindfulness meditation there's a lot of resource a lot of research evidence supporting the fact that yes it really does reduce stress increase self regulate calm you down relax better decision making so the methods you know for the  know two three thousand years the techniques they really haven't changed much because they're that work you know you just got to put time into it and do that mental type training you know practice makes perfect type of thing you got to put time into it to get stuff out of it so so we definitely did not make them that's a good thing because i did have someone say or do they make that that's made up it's not made up in your organization could you just possibly just give us kind of a description of how you got started your funding and if those out there can help you with your your program and putting it out there is for as far as they can with possibly time as well as money so let's talk about that and give your address and see how we can spread the news start ok so we'll start in early two thousand two thousand two thousand and one i believe a couple acts incarcerated youth who went through the system their cells in different counties not now let me to to got other and said you know we really want to start a program like this because meditation changed their lives so they wanted to bring it to people that were in a situation that were similar to them they got together and formed a nonprofit form the m b a project and over over time it got more and more serious it was just a couple of people good arts that first and a few years later they hired an executive director and our programs continued to develop and we have been in multiple counties in the bay area santa cruz the san francisco alameda sa then from there it just took off and you know we're at a place where we're still a small nonprofit but we know that we're doing good work the people that work here like greg and our other instructors are extremely talented and they love this work  that's how we got started definitely people can support us on funding mainly comes from government contracts such as probation department health care services agency school districts but we are looking for more individual donors who might want to support us on the individual level because we do have programs that we want to get up and running that we don't have funding for for example one of the programs that we did that was very successful was it was a three day tonight retreat and we did that with some young people from richmond and my goal is to take young people from oakland from maybe not when they're in the juvenile hall but when they get out doing that those of you out there i hope that you hear that you can participate even though you might not want to try the meditation which i think is such a wonderful wonderful thing to do but your time can volunteers come out and assist too we don't we can't take long to years into the juvenile hall because people need to be that weird you know but we do it in school they have to  procedures that you'd need to take to be able to do that but right now i'm looking at the volunteer in coming out and seeing if there's something you could do office work i'm absolutely bringing a book of stamps where they can put something out  the best e mail to get at us would be info at and be a project that org which i gave to one of the young man over there so hopefully it comes up on the screen and then our web addresses w w w dot m b a project dot org we're located right on santa clara of an oakland but if you go to the web site that's probably the best way to donate to get involved email us to start a relationship or connection a relationship with a connection ok mind and body something that really connects and with the understanding that we now know it is going to be wonderful you're going to be doing a demonstration for us on one of our young people and could you just kind of explain the you know the low drop that we give people with their mind from this is a way to developing cultivate more self awareness and just like understanding our bodies and our minds a lot better how they're working and in combination with one another one of the m do in a minute pretty soon is we're going to bring on the young person and possibly while we're doing that you could make it go ahead greg and explain how stanley is taking him through the process right those  out there please stay tuned to something that's wonderful mind capturing and we'd like for you to learn and see and take advantage of what this program is all about th mind and body that's where we are strengthening encouraging and making it happen where everyone is buying say good i mean i'm bunny everybody everybody had to learn to close my eyes and see the blue sky see the water running because that mind is water and you know the process of it all is just intense for everyone awareness and we can do that through the practice of meditation you don't have to necessarily practice meditation but the different things you can do to be more mindful and to cultivate a kind of more balanced mind state and one of the metaphors that we like to right and like to ask the question if i was standing in front of a dog and had a bone in my hand and was waving it around and you think the dog would be focused on me or the focus on anger it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger yes and so we react upon anger and you know whether getting physical on other occasions say something that we don't mean to somebody else and what we're trying to do is cultivate the lion mind which is a more calm or more balance in a more non reactive mind state where we can say where we can see that anger and we can feel it arise but rather than react to it we kind of step back and not just notice it's presence yes and not saying one of the things we do to cultivate that mental training is formally meditate so what i'll do is i'm just going to take you guys through a five minute meditation and then after that we'll talk about what the experience was like for you guys so i want to encourage you to just sit in a comfortable position a lot of people come to you good it's good to see straight but you know a lot of them can think you need to be in a very know like you were like that and i actually don't have an idea for a lot of people also think you need to close your eyes the reason it's good to close your eyes is because it helps you not be distracted but you don't have to close your eyes if you keep them open you could just kind of let them rest on the floor a couple feet in front of you so just get in a comfortable position what i'm going to do is i'm going to ring this bell and when you hear the bell just take a couple of deep breaths and a couple of deep breath out and then just wait for some more instructions or maybe it's easiest to sense the breath in your chest or barely noticed in the actual expansion and contraction as you breathe in breathe out wherever it's most easy just list your you may notice that it's just after a few breaths your mind wanders you start to think about things other than the breath what happened in the past or what's going to happen in the future whenever the mind wanders there's no need to think you're doing anything wrong no need to get frustrated no need to get annoyed it's the nature of the mind to wander off like that but when you notice it just gently redirect your mind back to the breath breathing in and breathing now that redirection that's the mental train you might notice as you're breathing in and out that thoughts start to come up in your mind just let those thoughts come in let those thoughts and go just as if you're on the stoop watching the cars go by on the street the cars in the car hours ago thoughts will come and thoughts will go no need to get in the car no need to let your thoughts take you of using the breath as an anchor and anchor to the body and anchor to this present moment just keep as much of your awareness on your breathing as possible anytime the mind wanders off no need to get frustrated no need to think you're doing anything wrong just whenever you notice that just gently bring your awareness back to the breath breathing in and breathing  and as we come to a close for this meditation i'm going to ring the bell again and when i bring it when i ring the bell just shift all of your awareness to your hearing and see if you can hear the bell and two you can't hear it any longer  and then when you feel comfortable if your eyes were closed and you can slowly open them expanding your awareness from the internal  them or for experience but you know i start thinking when you say the thoughts start coming in the million thoughts and i was able to relax and concentrate on those thoughts and the things i needed to do but it wasn't so hurried because of hyper so wasn't so hurried it was kind of paced ok i gotta do this i can i can do this and then i have to do that so it wasn't so hurried it was more relaxed and organize you know a lot of people kind of have a misconception at least for mindfulness meditation they think it's about blocking thoughts out and that's not actually the case to cases to just be present to whatever is but that this is really something because like i said i'm so hyper and i was able to categorize all the little things that i have to do and realize they will get done use this sense of smell with that we generally don't bring in any type of incense when we do it with the young people but smell is one of the senses and mindfulness is all about being present to what is in the moment but you know what i mean and it wasn't so much the instance it was like the natural herbs like lavender and bonilla since that's coming so we don't we usually don't bring it in but it's something we definitely teach in terms of like being aware of smells and how we react to them or not react to them use was really good so can you tell the audience your email address and if they want to send donations where they can send the donations to or th website you know there's a million kind of donation signs on there you can just click on go to the bottom of the page click on donation in there is anything from ten dollars to one hundred dollars a thousand dollars you know whatever you can contribute it helps  two hundred fifty dollars for example will send a young person on three day to night meditation retreat and i'm going to be a really profound experience so ok also if they want to do volunteer work they need to go to that website and that way they those things too much meditation you know what we're doing it i mean you know you've got to it's a unique pat you know what i mean so you got it you really got to figure out what's right for you sometimes you know we work with some kids who have a lot of trouble and of time because the trauma can get reactivated yeah that situation we wouldn't tell them to meditate too much we would have their eyes open and and do much more of a more like a talking meditation  informal mindfulness activity so that that trauma doesn't get reactivated so what i would recommend is start off with you know ten minutes a day five ten minutes a day if you do that for a couple of weeks you'll probably see a difference in your life just how you react to stress and stuff and then from there it's all about just figuring out what's right for you some people meditate an hour a day some people just meditate for five minutes a day but it's really quality over quantity you know if you can get take those pauses throughout the day in britain mindfulness into your daily life it will be to have much more of effect than if you just meditate for thirty minutes you know how some people say that saying go to church on sunday and act a fool for the rest of the week it's the same kind of thing right it's like if you just meditate and try to concentrate your mind but don't bring those principles into the rest of your life and throughout the day it defeats the purpose in the sense you know and then when you were saying quality over quantity it seemed like