Embedded Files
Auxilium's Prisoner Support program helps individuals in the criminal justice system find roads to resolution and build resilience needed for successful reintegration into their communities. With nearly 2 million Americans currently incarcerated and hundreds of thousands returning to society each year, effective reentry programs are essential for breaking cycles of reoffending and creating pathways to meaningful, productive lives.
Approach
Approach
Our program centers on sharing Rohini Ralby's book, Living the Practice, Volume One: The Way of Love, through facilitated discussion sessions with small cohorts of participants at partner correctional facilities. Our volunteer facilitators engage in authentic dialogue about spiritual practice, personal growth, and the practical application of the book’s lessons to daily life.
These sessions create space for participants to explore fundamental questions about identity, purpose, relationships, and resilience. Topics have included grief and loss, discipline and non-attachment, family dynamics, creativity and self-expression, and the nature of Love. Participants also engage with the book's poetry and artwork, and many pursue and share their own creative expressions.
A Volunteer's Perspective
A Volunteer's Perspective
One of our volunteers shared their experience:
Together with Dr. Ian Ralby, Dr. David Soud, Tammy Merther, Harold Barnett, and Dr. Joe Romano, I have been a volunteer with Auxilium Worldwide’ s Prisoner Support program since February of 2025. From the very first session, the project has proven to be rewarding and engaging in ways that are nothing short of amazing.
As part of the program, we read from Rohini Ralby’s Living the Practice, Volume 1: The Way of Love, and discuss the spiritual practice it teaches with a small cohort of inmates at the DC Central Detention Facility. Sharing this book and our own experiences of spiritual practice has allowed us to relate with the guys in our cohort in ways that are deeper than merely relaying information, or working through a curriculum. We get to share what is meaningful to each of us—a practice that has changed our lives for the better—and we get to relate with each other as human beings, regardless of our background in life.
Prior to volunteering with Auxilium’s Prisoner Support program, I had never worked in a jail, and I was somewhat anxious about how it would go. I wondered how the inmates would respond. Would they care about what we were discussing? And what could I contribute? On the evening of our first session, as soon as we entered the room where we would be meeting, we noticed one of the guys in our cohort was angry. He was so agitated that he could not stand still; he paced back and forth as he vented, nearly shouting. This was how it began. Yet once we started that first session, introducing ourselves, Living the Practice, and sharing our experiences with spiritual practice and studying with Rohini, this particular inmate’s demeanor completely changed. His anger disappeared. He tuned into what we were discussing–the fundamentals of spiritual practice and how it can help us in the world, no matter our surroundings–with an eagerness that proved contagious for the others in our cohort. The rest of the guys participated according to their own abilities and interests, and later told us that they too had noticed a remarkable shift in this particular inmate from the very beginning, which piqued their curiosity and made them more eager to participate. I found this first evening to be one of the single most rewarding experiences of my life. I was blown away by the response and level of interest in our group, and how fulfilling it was to be in their company discussing a practice and teachings that have transformed my life for the better.
Our subsequent sessions have been similarly engaging, as we work with Living the Practice in a non-linear way, pulling from passages or topics that are of interest to each of us. We’ve covered many topics, including grief and death, pleasure and pain, discipline and non-attachment, our family systems and the individual characters we identify with, the nature of God/Self, love vs. Love, the role of the Guru in spiritual practice, creativity and self expression, non-dualism, and others. We’ve engaged with the prose, poetry, and paintings in Living the Practice and explored the relevance of their content for living a more harmonious life. We’ve even written and shared our own poetry! On a few occasions, some of the guys have asked particular questions about life and spiritual practice, and Rohini has responded to them directly.
It is beautiful the way the program sessions unfold, and it is also unpredictable. Minds do wander, and emotions do change, so it requires agility and adaptability to meet the guys where they are, every time. There has been plenty of heartfelt laughter in our sessions, but also sadness, and anger. The living conditions at the jail have been downright awful at times, and the men in our group carry this with them.
For our recent session on Tuesday, July 1st, it had been nearly two months since we last met, and it felt really good to see everyone again. One of the guys in our cohort explained how he has been able to detach from and channel his anger because of what he has learned from the program. We explored this further with a reading from Living the Practice on accepting our vibrations like anger and redirecting our attention as a way to detach from and ultimately still them. What I found most moving about the session was that each of the three guys in our cohort passionately articulated how this project has impacted their lives for the better. And at the end of the session they took it entirely upon themselves to make the case to jail staff to be able to continue the program longer than originally scheduled, right in front of us. Not only do they want to continue the program, they want to serve as mentors to a new incoming group of inmates, as a way of sharing what they have already learned and deepening their own understanding.
- Seth Dorcus, 2025
Current Partnership
At present, we are proud to partner with the DC Central Detention Facility to implement this program in the United States capital. This partnership allows us to reach participants during a critical period in their lives.
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