Hi name is Matthew Pazzarelli.
I am the manager at PRANA Indianapolis. I like to be identified as just another member of the community that fulfills a job that I was hired for.
Our community is one that has a safe place to live, where there is no violence, no judgments and absolutely no alcohol or drug use.
We hold two house meetings one on Thursday night and one on Sunday morning at 10 AM.
Our Sunday meeting is a mandatory house meeting where all the residents come. We begin by taking a two minute meditation or quiet time to collect our thoughts and center ourselves, nothing major no rules and no instructions for the two minutes.
We then generally read a passage from the "great book" and we go around the room and share about it, although we are not restricted to sharing on that passage.
After everyone has shared, and I’d like to say that our attendance is 80% generally allowing those who have jobs or are away on passes the liberty to be absent (of course that must be cleared with staff first by the previous Wednesday).
Anyway when we are done sharing we begin our discussion about the house and how it is doing in general, chores, and things such as attending outside meetings which is required by each residen.
We also bring up behavior during the week that we would not call conducive or good behavior for a sober community.
Our Thursday night meeting is a 12-step meeting and it can include anything and any substance one or substances one might have become addicted to (it is an open meeting so if you feel like joining feel free), although we believe sober means sober which means we do not use any mind altering drugs including alcohol for the rest of our lives.
Prana house is well aware that the only evidence of our success is in the success of the residents themselves.
They are the ones that determine if the house is doing good things, as a staff member we try not only to aid each other to not pick up a drink or a drug, we have a greater goal to keep each other willing to grow into live a happy and productive life thinking about others in the world rather than only thinking about ourselves.
Here is a live video we did on Facebook with Matthew: