Regime change: Chris Holt on how one prisoner found his inner light

‘The inner light is fundamental to how I am now.’

Dennis was in his prison cell when a letter arrived from his daughter. ‘Dear Dad, I love you,’ she wrote. ‘Why don’t you give up this life of crime and drugs?’

Dennis had heard this many times before, but this time something got through to him.

‘My daughter and her sisters didn’t deserve this and neither did I,’ he recalls. ‘That was the catalyst for change.’

Soon after this he was introduced to the Prison Phoenix Trust (PPT), and with the charity’s help began a journey away from addiction, crime and prison, supported by yoga and meditation.

‘There weren’t any yoga classes in the prison, so I did it from a book,’ he recalls. ‘The PPT sent me resources and newsletters and one of their volunteers, Ava, wrote to me regularly advising about yoga and meditation.

‘I’d look forward to the letters from the PPT with anticipation. I responded and it was ongoing communication through letters that helped me through the early days of practising yoga and meditation.

‘The sense of yoga for me is mind, body, spirit – all three coming together. That helped me move through the space I was in and into another space. I was still me, but different.’

Now seventy-five, Dennis was released from prison more than ten years ago, serving the last half of an eighteen-year sentence for drug smuggling on licence in the community. His life of drugs and crime had lasted nearly forty years. It had started as a teenager when he ran away from home to London.

‘There were five of us children and we had a very broken family life, an alcoholic stepfather and a mother with mental health issues. I was dragged up rather than brought up,’ he says.

‘I was a runaway and I ran into all kinds of things and all kinds of trouble. I was severely addicted to cocaine and heroin. The whole thing became my life. It was a big change for me to move away from a life of crime and drugs and prison.

‘The Prison Phoenix Trust was a big part of it through yoga and meditation. It was inspiring for me to look at things in a different way.

In prison, Dennis started a daily practice that he still undertakes today, getting up at around 6.30 in the morning for thirty minutes of yoga and fifteen minutes of meditation.

He found he was becoming open to different points of view and discovering new interests. He started going to art classes in prison and, during a talk as part of a course, sat next to someone who turned out to be the Quaker chaplain.

This led to a deepening interest in his own spirituality, supported by the Quakers along with his yoga and meditation practice. It also provided material, and an outlet, for his creativity, in his painting and his calligraphy.

On leaving prison, Dennis went to live in a Quaker community. Today he is an accomplished artist, with two fine art degrees. He also works as a Quaker advisor in the chaplaincy team at a university.

‘My life of prison is now in the past,’ he says. ‘I wish it didn’t happen, but it did. I came through it, I’m still away from it now and I’ve no wish or reason to go back down that road.’

There is a growing body of evidence of the rehabilitative impact on prisoners of contemplative practices of yoga and meditation. Last month, the Prison Phoenix Trust director Selina Sasse shared some of this research with Cambridge University’s Contemplation: Theory/Practice forum, which is a network of the university’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. This network brings together the ideas, history and various applications of contemplative traditions from around the globe, exploring a rich diversity of theories and practices that are united around a particular set of characteristics.

Selina highlighted how neuroscience has shed light on the impact of meditation and yoga practice on brain development and nervous systems, and how research in prison settings has shown this to improve positive mental states. It also reduces the negative states that lead to re-offending, and increases the ability to override impulse.

She described how, in practice, yoga enables people in prison to feel more responsible and focussed, less reactive, more relaxed and empathetic. The value of the PPT’s prison group classes for social engagement and cohesion was highlighted, along with how its guidance and encouragement of contemplative practice, through letter writing, has helped numerous people over the charity’s history of more than thirty-five years.

Selina said: ‘We were honoured to be invited by Cambridge University to take part in the forum. It’s an important opportunity for a wider audience to learn about the present day value of contemplative practice in helping vulnerable people and creating safer communities.’

For Dennis, the support he found in prison for meditation and yoga was a key that unlocked a journey of great personal growth.

‘The inner light is fundamental to how I am now. The word “God” has too much baggage for me and I avoid it. I try to follow the Quakers’ guiding principles of peace, equality, simplicity, truth. Talking, listening and being is good. Whatever your age, if you’re speaking to someone in truth, you can tell if this is right.

‘I’d like to encourage other people, whoever you are. You might find a way through. You can’t really imagine what’s going to happen in your life.

‘The Prison Phoenix Trust is one of the things that helped me. Yoga and the letter from my daughter are the things that encouraged me to be open and more honest. I’ve lived the life but the whole fundamental thing and catalyst for all of it was a letter from my daughter and closely afterwards getting in touch with the PPT.

‘Now I’d like to be able to give something back to others who are recovering from prison, addiction, and crime.’

Chris is the development lead at the PPT. To find out more visit www.theppt.org.uk/donate.

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Comments

I know this story very well. Dennis is a very well loved member of my own meeting. It is good to see it getting wider publicity here. Obviously this article is about the Prison Phoenix Trust but there are also very interesting further details about Dennis journey into Quakerism.

By ljkerrsheff@gmail.com on 18th April 2024 - 10:52

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