Free People Are More Imprisoned Than Those Behind Bars | Shaka Senghor & Christian Howes
episodePreviously titled “The Hidden Prisons Trapping You & How to Break Free” — renamed by the publisher on Sep 1, 2026
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to the School of Greatness.
What personal experiences shaped the guests' views on freedom?
We have a very special episode with two inspiring men with two different yet very similar stories, Shaka Senghor and Christian Howes, two men who learned how to rewrite their story and find purpose after time spent in prison. Shaka is a New York Times bestselling author, internationally recognized speaker, and leading voice on resilience and redemption. Christian Howes is my brother. He is an award-winning jazz violinist, a composer, an educator, and an inspiring teacher. Today, they're going to share their stories. for anyone who's feeling trapped physically mentally emotionally or spiritually and you feel like you can't break free within your own mind in your own heart or in your body this is the episode for you it's all about how to become a free human being we've got two amazing individuals on here who are going to be talking about their experience from overcoming so much
before prison, during prison and after prison and there's so much that the world does not know about on what you guys have gone through and how you've overcome the lives that you've had and there are a lot of people, Shaki, you talk about this that there are a lot of people that are imprisoned who are actually not in prison. Yeah. And they are living an imprisoned life even though they're not behind bars and yet Both of you were behind bars and I think both of you became free at some point in your own minds behind bars but you've also been prisoners outside of bars. Absolutely. And so, I want to start with a quote from your book Shaka and then let you guys open it up from here. This quote says, prison is designed to break you.
The walls, the rules, the routine, it's all meant to strip you down until you forget who you are. but what I discovered is that the most powerful prisons aren't the ones made of concrete and steel. They're the ones we carry with us built from grief, anger, shame, trauma, and self-doubt. And I'm curious, how have you learned and how both of you learned how to overcome the prisons that you created within yourself outside of prison or that you started?
That's such an incredible question. You know, when I think about my journey to actual physical incarceration, where I spent 19 years, seven years of those was a solitary confinement. What I discovered through that process of freeing myself was that I had been incarcerated before I had ever been in handcuffs. because I inherited a narrative that said, you'll be dead or locked up before you're 21. I was sentenced to prison, I was 19 years old. So I fulfilled that prophecy that I thought about. You manifested what you thought. Absolutely. And the negative, right? It was like this whole thing that, oh, my life can only have this outcome. So let me just live within the framework of that mindset. Interesting.
And it was when I was in solitary confinement that I went on this journey journaling, trying to unpack, how did I get here? I wanted to be an artist and a doctor, but here I was serving out my most promising years in prison, in a prison inside a prison, which is solitary confinement. And what I did is I started journaling to ask this question, how did I get here? And what I discovered was mind blowing because I realized that the mindset that I had accepted based on that narrative led me to that path. And what I began to challenge was if this works absolutely in a negative, then it has to work in a positive. And that's when I went on this journey to discover my mind, which I eventually fell in love with.
How did journaling and creativity help in overcoming trauma?
And that's where I found myself getting free. When did you first fall in love with your mind? How old were you? I would have been at that point, probably 27 or so. I was in solitary. So 1999, 2000. And it was through the journaling process. And I found this incredible human being who had been covered up by trauma, shame, grief, all the things, anger, the things, this cloud that I carried around. And I found myself working through that cloud. And I was like, oh, this beautiful human being exists.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:01
2
What personal experiences shaped the guests' views on freedom?
0:01–3:53
3
How did journaling and creativity help in overcoming trauma?
3:53–10:05
4
What are the hidden prisons we create in our minds?
10:05–19:45
5
How can we transform our relationship with failure?
19:45–32:03
6
What role does forgiveness play in personal healing?
32:03–38:51
7
How do we define and pursue our purpose after incarceration?
38:51–44:04
8
What are the biggest lessons learned from prison experiences?
44:04–1:59:44
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The School of Greatness
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