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Prison yoga
In 2010, I taught my first yoga class in prison, which resulted in my
founding the non-profit Liberation Prison Yoga. I thought I was going
to meet the men of my childhood and work on my forgiveness,
but those people don’t end up in prison. Instead I met traumatised
people like myself; further traumatised by an impossible top-down
system that is run by people who are just like the perpetrators of
my childhood: corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen, and the one
percent elite. The American justice system has yielded the current
incarnation of slavery, that targets people of colour and the poor.
The heart-to-heart connection that the Liberation Prison Yoga
teachers and I make with our students is beautiful and heals us all.
We have yoga and mindfulness programmes in 10 facilities in New
York and Connecticut.
At the same time, after 40 years of silence I finally started telling
my story. I understood that as a child I was a victim, too young and
impotent to rebel to my mother, who was in fact too sick to be a
mother. She was the ultimate product of a patriarchy which devalues
women, often through rape. My mother was herself abused, and she
didn’t have the resources to stop the cycle. Today there is much
more awareness about the subject, and resources abound. Not
everyone is capable of healing, but all of us are capable of learning
more. We want to create an egalitarian society where we see the
mental disease behind the antics, manipulations and lies made by
politicians and world leaders. We want to all look inside ourselves
and explore our inner power dynamics, so we can meet both victims
and perpetrators with the understanding they need to begin healing
the planet.
Find out more about Liberation Prison Yoga at:
LiberationPrisonYoga.com