Celebrating The First International Day of Yoga
Yoga_Life_Winter_2015_WEB
Yoga_Life_Winter_2015_WEB
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Prison <strong>Yoga</strong> Outreach Project<br />
<strong>Yoga</strong> Teachers’ Training<br />
Course Goes to Prison<br />
Sivananda TTC Enlightens Inmates at Otisville Federal Corrections Institute<br />
By John Ittner<br />
“A robber robs for getting freedom from want – though his<br />
movement may be crooked and long-winded. Every movement<br />
<strong>of</strong> your foot is toward freedom or Sat-chit-ananda.”<br />
– Swami Sivananda, Bliss Divine<br />
Everybody wants to be free. “Freedom is man’s<br />
birthright”, says Swami Sivananda. But what about<br />
the millions <strong>of</strong> men and women who are in prison,<br />
can they be free while behind bars? <strong>Yoga</strong> says they<br />
can and <strong>The</strong> Sivananda Prison Outreach programme is proving<br />
it with the first ever Teachers’ Training Course given in prison.<br />
<strong>The</strong> drive from the Sivananda <strong>Yoga</strong> Ranch Ashram to <strong>The</strong><br />
Federal Correctional Institute, Otisville, New York, takes about<br />
half an hour and passes through the lush forest-covered hills<br />
<strong>of</strong> the southern Catskills. Mahadev Chaitanya now makes the<br />
trip once a week, arriving there at 7am. His mission is to bring<br />
yoga to the prisoners and he recently took me with him to visit<br />
the Institute.<br />
Mahadev Chaitanya, who runs the day-to-day operations<br />
at the <strong>Yoga</strong> Ranch, and Srinivasan, the long-time <strong>Yoga</strong> Ranch<br />
director, are showing the inmates at Otisville prison how to<br />
follow a straight path to freedom. <strong>The</strong> course they are following<br />
is the same as the one designed by Swami Vishnudevananda<br />
and taught to all Sivananda teachers. <strong>The</strong>y are learning Hatha<br />
<strong>Yoga</strong>, philosophy, anatomy, meditation theory and practice,<br />
chanting, mantras, Bhagavad Gita and nutrition. <strong>The</strong>re is one<br />
difference. Instead <strong>of</strong> the one month <strong>of</strong> intensive study between<br />
start and graduation, it will take the inmates about eight<br />
months to complete the course. At the time <strong>of</strong> my visit they<br />
were already six months into the course and it showed. <strong>The</strong>y had<br />
the shiny look about them that comes from practising <strong>Yoga</strong>.<br />
This programme did not materialise like magic out <strong>of</strong> thin<br />
air. It all began in 1996 with a letter from an inmate to Prison<br />
Life magazine, who had a copy <strong>of</strong> Swami Vishnudevananda’s<br />
Complete Illustrated Book <strong>of</strong> <strong>Yoga</strong>. His letter <strong>of</strong> appreciation was<br />
so influential that hundreds <strong>of</strong> other inmates were inspired to<br />
write to the Sivananda organisation asking for books. <strong>The</strong>y were<br />
taking a step in the direction <strong>of</strong> freedom. Intuition told them<br />
that <strong>Yoga</strong> <strong>of</strong>fered a path that people behind bars could take,<br />
a way to set the spirit free while incarcerated. It’s like the verse<br />
in Johnny Cash’s “Grey Stone Chapel” from his Folsom Prison<br />
concert album. “Behind the walls <strong>of</strong> prison my body may be /<br />
but my Lord has set my soul free.” <strong>The</strong> spiritual path has always<br />
been there for prisoners and <strong>Yoga</strong> is another expression <strong>of</strong> it.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Sivananda Prison Outreach Project has continued and<br />
grown over the years. In the first six months <strong>of</strong> last year about<br />
$3,000 was raised at the <strong>Yoga</strong> Ranch and 200 books were sent<br />
out to prisons all around the country. During this time classes<br />
have been taught at two prisons. <strong>The</strong> next step was for the<br />
inmates to become their own teachers.<br />
In February 2015 a proposal to teach the Teachers’ Training<br />
Course was presented to Otisville Federal Correction Institute and<br />
was accepted, and soon after the classes began. <strong>The</strong> rationale<br />
68<br />
YOGALife |Autumn/Winter 2015