Corrections Officer on Transcendental Meditation in Prisons

"I knew we needed something that helped all these groups and that's what brought me to the Transcendental Meditation program. Transcendental Meditation is not a religion and it works with Muslims, Catholics, and Buddhists."

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Tom O'Conner talks about Transcendental Meditation in prison.

I've worked in corrections for about twenty years and I have two strands in my training. So for about nine years before I got into corrections I lived as a Carmelite which is a catholic religious order where I studied philosophy and theology and was ordained as a deacon in the catholic church. So I have a religious, spiritual background. In the last twenty years I have also been trained in corrections in terms of treatment – what works with people what doesn't work with people to lift them out of crime. So I have a whole treatment correctional side of me and I've always seen my work as crossing these two domains and the research into the field. So I'm able to read research and do research but what I love doing is actually working the field and bringing that work into the field and implementing it in a way that brings about some change and development in the field.

Question: How can Transcendental Meditation work with religion?

I knew that the men needed something in their lives and we have all sorts of people, men and women. Some of them are very involved with their own faith group. Some are not particularly drawn to religion at all, in fact they're a little afraid of it but they are drawn to nature, they're drawn to spirituality, maybe a higher power that's a second group and then there is are some people who are clearly just not even interested in that they're just interested in humanity and life. So you might call them humanists or secularists they don't have any interest in religion or spirituality. But each of these three groups make meaning in their own way. One is religious, one is spiritual and one is for humanity. I knew we needed something that helped all these groups and that's what brought me to the Transcendental Meditation program. Transcendental Meditation is not a religion and it works with Muslims, Catholics, and Buddhists.

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