Going deep inside
Sam Settle reveals how prisoners find hope and healing in silent meditation and yoga
Inmates have, traditionally, favoured bulking up at the gym as a strategy for surviving incarceration. So, why are yoga and meditation also popular in prison, and why are prison managers still choosing to fund weekly yoga classes in times of unprecedented cuts to their budgets?
The benefits
Craig, a prisoner at HMP Perth, was sceptical of the Tuesday morning yoga and meditation class in his jail. ‘My perception of yoga was that it was just for girls. But some of the guys who go to the class were telling some of us who go to the gym how good yoga is at relaxing you after a workout and that it can also get you ready for one.’ After giving it a try, his mind was changed. ‘It was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I found it liberating, relaxing, physically stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable… I have now been to three classes and I feel a lot more relaxed, and it helps me get a better sleep.’
From HMPs Perth and Aberdeen, down to Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs, over to Swansea and across to the prisons of Belfast and Dublin, inmates are discovering the benefits of yoga and meditation – either as part of a class or on their own. Kelly, in HMP Holloway, says, ‘I have been practising meditation and yoga every morning in my cell around 6am as I’m in a four bed dorm and there is not much time during the day for me to find peace and quiet… Life has changed for the better and I’m now on the path which I’m hoping will lead me to a better place.’
Getting back on track
Since 1988 The Prison Phoenix Trust (PPT) has been in touch with people like Craig and Kelly, prisoners who want support in their spiritual lives, through yoga and meditation, working with silence and the breath. There are currently 145 weekly classes in eighty-seven UK and Irish prisons and the PPT also sends free books and CDs to inmates who request help in starting a daily discipline in their cells. Volunteer letter writers offer personal support to prisoners who want to stay in touch after their initial contact. Last year 5,100 books and CDs were sent to inmates who wrote for help ‘sorting out their heads’ and ‘getting things back on track.’
Why do inmates take to silence and yoga so enthusiastically? The best answer I’ve heard was when I was teaching a weekly class at HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire. Eight men on a drug treatment programme had just spent an hour doing yoga postures to strengthen and stretch their bodies, ten minutes of relaxation, ten minutes of breathing exercise and ten minutes of silent meditation, focusing on the breath. As people began to speak again, Jim said, with an amazed and pleasant face, ‘That was the first time I’ve forgotten I’ve been in prison in my seven months of being locked up. I could hear the bird chirping out the window, and people messing around in the hallway outside. As I watched my breath, all that was still there, but it was all just happening: not in a prison, and not not in a prison.’
His words, but more importantly perhaps his face and body language, indicated a tremendous sense of relief. Prisons are uncertain, precarious places. Overcrowding, staff shortages, bullying, drugs, lack of control over one’s circumstances, and feelings of guilt, uncertainty and anger all conspire to create a vast amount of mental pressure for inmates – and for prison staff. Yoga and meditation help to reduce that tension. Yoga postures are fantastic for releasing tension in the joints and throughout the body, and are done while focussing on the breathing, helping attention to stay present. Meditation – sitting still, putting yourself fully in the breath, not visualising anything, nor trying to make anything happen – allows the normal activity of the mind – thinking, planning, worrying, reliving events – to slow down or perhaps even halt: a great relief.
Something else
We often ask prisoners if there is something more to human beings than body and mind. They easily and quickly come up with a variety of answers: soul, spirit, mojo, God, black hole, emptiness. Everyone seems to have a sense of that ‘something else.’ The great joy is sharing silence when the whole room is concentrating firmly on letting go of thinking and of normal concerns, and delving into that part of us that exists before thought and concept. It is also a great joy to not only listen and talk with them afterwards, but to see actual changes in their behaviour.
At the class in Bullingdon, for example, when the men arrived for their first class, they split into several separate groups, talking boisterously. No one was hostile, but there wasn’t any respect or appreciation for the setting, the other people or themselves. After that class though, in addition to being calmer and listening to each other when they spoke, they put the room back in order without being asked. It’s as if by forgetting the self when focussing on the breath, the sense of responsibility and identity is expanded to include others.
Changes
Prisoners are often pleasantly surprised by this shift. A man imprisoned for theft and pickpocketing, who had been practising meditation for several months, said that while walking down the landing one day the person in front of him dropped his watch without realising it. Without any thought, this former pickpocket picked up the watch and gave it to the owner. It was only a few seconds later that he thought, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’
Inmates facing dramatic challenges are also helped by their daily discipline of finding stillness within themselves. Wayne had come off drugs while in prison, partly through meditation and yoga practice. He was given a chance to test his belief in nonviolence that stemmed from his practice when he was moved to a new wing. He refused the offer of free drugs from the dealers there. Frustrated in their attempts to get him hooked again (everyone knows everyone else’s history in prison) and to become a paying – or indebted – customer, they beat him up badly in his cell. But even as they were kicking and punching him, Wayne felt no animosity, and kept a place for his attackers in his daily prayers in the weeks and months that followed.
The power of silence
As an attender of a Quaker Meeting and a yoga teacher, I stay inspired and motivated by these stories of silence playing a pivotal role in spiritual transformation. The effect of yoga and meditation on prisoners is also visible to prison managers. They must, in the face of increasingly scarce funding, find money to pay the yoga teachers that the PPT trains for prison work. A large body of evidence in the form of prisoners’ letters also helps to convince prison authorities.
To test this anecdotal evidence, Oxford University recently ran a randomised control trial with 167 prisoners. The prisoners randomly allocated to a ten-week yoga and meditation class had improved mood and reduced stress and anxiety afterwards, and were better able to override impulsiveness, compared to a control group of inmates. Also, the yoga group were better able to pay attention, sustain that attention and make decisions.
As prison governors and managers try to meet immense challenges in their prisons, they may welcome these research results. The implications are that staff can use these disciplines in their regimes to effectively fulfil some of the key aims of the prison service: treating offenders with dignity and humanity, improving staff/inmate relationships and reducing violence.
Mike, from HMP Featherstone, speaks for many when he says, ‘Since starting yoga and meditation, I have never felt this stress free since I was a child. It’s made me slow down and have more patience. You don’t need Oxford University to tell you that yoga and meditation works. I know it does!’
Part of me agrees with Mike. Another part of me is delighted that the research echoes what prisoners have been saying for years.
Sam is director of The Prison Phoenix Trust.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.