Finding peace amidst the noise with Seneca Alma
Seneca Alma on the front lawn of Retreat House Spirituality Center leading a storytelling workshop in 2021.
Throughout much of his late teens, 20s and early 30s Seneca Alma was in and out of prison for various white-collar crimes. He recalls a few especially meaningful encounters with a fellow inmate.
“This guy was all tatted up, had gang affiliations - a tough guy on the exterior,” says Alma. “I remember he approached me one day after I had done my yoga, my meditation, my whole routine. We just started talking, and the more we talked I came to see this guy’s interior wasn’t anything like his gruff and hardened exterior as I had imagined. He was a hurt, broken human, and he wanted to talk.”
Something shifted inside of Alma that day. He says he began to notice the interconnectedness of all human beings.
“We are all internally at our core dealing with our own little storms, and prison was a huge educator for me. Whatever the outside looks like - businessman, stay-at-home mom, gang member, you name it, we are all more alike than we like to admit.”
Alma now works as a business and social entrepreneur providing mental and physical fitness opportunities to others. If you’re inclined to check out his social media profiles, you’ll find his inspired hashtag #prisonchangedmylife.
And now he’s using his experience to bring transformation and change to others’ lives.
Finding peace amidst the noise
During his time in prison, Alma began a regular practice of meditating. Typically, his dorm provided a quiet place for his daily practice but on this one particular morning, the dorm was unusually noisy. Distracted, he headed to the day room at a time when he knew it would be quiet, or so he thought. About halfway through meditating, the space started to get busy - and noisy. Chess players, dominoes, voices of guards, yelling, the television. Sounds of busyness filled the room.
Alma considered stopping and moving to a different space, but something inside of him told him to keep going - to keep meditating. And for the first time, he noticed a different sensation in his brain.
He decided to try and re-create the same sensation again. And again.
Meditating in unquiet spaces became part of his rhythm of life.
“I started to intentionally put myself into scenarios that were kind of chaotic,” says Alma. “And I found that when I did this, when I was exposed to these different triggers, it made my brain feel different. Kind of like I was working out. The resistance to various kinds of noises, or triggers, felt similar to working out with weights. The heavier the weights, you end up getting stronger if you stay consistent.”
Resistance Meditation Therapy
Alma began offering guided meditations to fellow inmates. And to borrow his words, “it kind of became a thing in prison.”
The more he intentionally exposed himself to chaotic environments, the more mental resilience he noticed within himself and others who were participating in the same practice. Resistance Meditation Therapy, or RMT, was created by Alma to offer space to sit and be with discomfort. Most of us have been taught to avoid triggers, to sweep them under the rug and get as far away from them as possible. But those triggers are a part of us, and they’re in our life for a reason. They have something to teach us.
Alma provides some rich imagery around this.
“Think about couples and relationships,” he says. “It can seem counterintuitive, but I believe it is most healing (in the long run) to bring your triggers to the ‘dinner table,’ to talk about them. Don’t leave them in the closet. Because monsters are always scarier in the closet with the light off.”
Inviting those fears, wounds, neuroses or monsters into our life can be painful. And Alma doesn’t deny that. But his time in prison enhanced his neuroplasticity and mental durability to not only endure but grow in his acceptance of himself, others and the world around him as he was exposed to external stress and recovering from internal stress and began to rebuild patterns and his way of living. He now teaches that “when stress comes into a person’s life, be it emotional or physical or both, one’s vulnerability decreases because of our desire to protect ourselves. When you decrease your capacity for stress but block out noise and don’t acknowledging triggers, we limit our ability to resolve a stressful situation, because it is harder to see options.”
And options provide us a way forward helping us not to become stuck.
Full circle
When he came home, Alma was looking for a way to duplicate this model he had developed. He was spending time providing physical fitness sessions to his friend Clay Brantley, a pastor and spiritual director closely connected to Retreat House Spirituality Center. He soon shared his idea and desire with Brantley, and together, the two began to build out the meditation model.
“I wanted to duplicate the feeling I had when I was in prison. We tried several different versions of a resistance meditation, and I failed. And failed again. Finally, we got it to a good place,” Alma shares.
Resistance Meditation Therapy (RMT) is broken into a three-part series and is generally deployed over a few weeks. Alma has begun tailoring the meditation to the needs and characteristics to each group with whom he is working. Most recently, he has been in talks with DPD to provide RMT their officers. Stay tuned on those details!
Pictured: Rev. Dr. Clay Brantley (far left) and Alma with the Dallas Police Department (DPD) following a presentation on RMT.
RMT includes:
Phase 1: Exposure to triggers
Phase 2: Affirmations and grounding
Phase 3: Restoration and writing new narrative
Alma works with groups and individuals to utilize RMT like a workout regime. The idea is to build up one’s tolerance and resilience to deal with life triggers instead of avoid them. Sleep as well as exercise and nutrition recommendations are also made for those who go through his program. While anyone can participate in RMT, it can be especially transformative for people working and living in high-stress and trauma situations.
Dallas Police potentially incorporating RMT as a resource for their officers feels like a full circle moment, Alma says. He believes we are all interconnected. And offering a way for others to calm their nervous systems and connect to peace, love and joy, or oneness, is part of Alma’s vocation or calling.
He feels it is his to do. And smiles, sharing “this work makes me think of Michael Jackson’s song lyrics from Man in the Mirror.”
“I’m gonna make a change
For once in my life
It’s gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right...”
Alma approaches his work with humility as he acknowledges that it is sometimes self-centered, but for all of the right reasons.
“Whenever I show up to lead a session, I want to help others to heal,” he says. “And to the degree in which I have been able to help others heal is to the degree in which I have healed myself. I show up for workshops with the hope that I’ll always learn from those I’m teaching, and we all kind of embark on a collective journey.”
Seneca Alma is an entrepreneur who also provides mental and physical fitness to others. He is also a longtime friend of Retreat House Spirituality Center. You can reach him here.
On February 28, Alma will partner with Retreat House to offer a Resistance Meditation as part of our Conversation on Racism series hosted by Brantley and RH Co-Founder Rev. Dr. Lil Smith. To register, email Smith.
“With so much distraction in the world and in our heads, we need some way to focus and meditate, to lower stress and energy levels. Resistance Meditation Therapy helps shift me from crazy to calm. It really, really works.”
~ Clay Brantley
Pictured: Alma at RH working with some discovery questions to assist in building the meditation offered on Feb. 28.
This article was written by Emily Turner Watson. She is a trained spiritual director and writer. To schedule a spiritual direction session or to send story ideas for Retreat House, send her a note!