Best Practices For Yoga In The Criminal Justice System

Yoga is rapidly gaining acceptance as a valuable resource for physical, psychological, behavioral and spiritual health in the U.S. criminal justice system and worldwide. Best Practices for Yoga in the Criminal Justice System is a user-friendly guide that explains how to develop, implement, and sustain high-quality yoga programs appropriate for jails, prisons, youth detention centers, and court-ordered programs. Synthesizing the knowledge and experience of 29 leaders in the field, this book is a must-have resource for anyone interested in yoga in the criminal justice system, including yoga teachers and yoga service organizations, correctional officers and other criminal justice professionals, and physical and mental health providers. Key topics covered include problems of mass incarceration, institutional context and culture, teacher training requirements, curriculum and teaching guidelines, adapting trauma-informed yoga to correctional facilities, staffing and developing yoga service organizations, and establishing yoga teacher training programs for incarcerated individuals "on the inside."

Yoga and Resilience is part of a larger series put out by the Yoga Service Council in collaboration with the Omega Institute. To date, there have been three texts published: Best Practices for Yoga in Schools, Best Practices for Yoga with Veterans, and Best Practices for Yoga in the Criminal Justice System. This body of work takes a unique and groundbreaking approach of co-creation, calling on a diverse array of leading experts in the fields of trauma and yoga, to collaborate and distill best practices that will inform the fields of mental health, trauma-informed yoga, yoga service, and yoga more generally. Contributors and authors met during two symposia and engaged in an ongoing collaborative process resulting in the current text. Yoga and Resilience: Empowering Practices for Survivors of Sexual Trauma: Supports a holistic approach to ameliorating the impacts of traumatic stress, and specifically the impacts of sexual trauma. Serves as a resource to survivors, yoga teachers and practitioners, yoga service providers, trauma practitioners, and agency administrators among others. Presents a foundational understanding of sexual trauma and illuminates current best practices for integrating trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness practices into work with persons and systems impacted by sexual trauma. Explores an approach that moves beyond trauma-informed practice to a focus on resilience and universal inclusivity. Provides concrete tools to serve survivors better and to ensure that teachers and administrators not only seek to minimize harm but also combat sexual violence and its perpetration within yoga contexts. Contributors to the book: Keyona Aviles, Jacoby Ballard, Lisa Boldin, Maya Breuer, Regine Clermont, Colleen DeVirgiliis, Alexis Donahue, Pamela Stokes Eggleston, Jennifer Cohen Harper, Dani Harris, Nan Herron, Daniel Hickman, Diana Hoscheit, Beth Jones, Sue Jones, James Jurgensen, Mark A. Lilly, Jana Long, Anneke Lucas, Amanda J.G. Napior, Amina Naru, Emanuel "Manny" Salazar, Austin K. Sanderson, Lidia Snyder, Nicole Steward, Rosa Vissers, Kimberleigh Weiss-Lewit, Ann Wilkinson

"Freedom Inside? offers a combination of personal narrative and scholarly research in order to examine the role of yoga and meditation in U.S. prisons. It offers a glimpse inside the system now known as mass incarceration, which disproportionately punishes, confines, and controls those from black, brown and/or poor communities at exponentially higher rates, diminishing their life-chances and creating a vast underclass of disempowered, subordinated citizens. How do self-disciplinary practices such as yoga and meditation work when they are taught inside unjust systems? Do they produce political passivity, quietism, and compliance, if offered as palliatives to accept, cope and comply with unjust power structures? Or, might they prove disruptive to mass incarceration, if offered as tools to develop awareness and attunement toward injustice, to engage in non-conformist responses that include critique and challenge? The book explores both the promises and pitfalls of yoga and meditation when taught in prisons in different ways. It is based on four years of immersion in prisons and prison volunteer communities, along with ethnographic work inside a detention facility, and many in-depth interviews with those who teach and practice inside prisons. It interweaves academic narratives with personal experiences of collaboration with volunteers and incarcerated practitioners"--

Lynn Stoller, OT, MS, OTR, C-IAYT, RYT500, E-RYT200 and outstanding expert contributors skilfully synthesize theoretical concepts and research findings from the fields of occupational therapy, trauma psychology, neuroscience, and traditional Eastern yogic philosophy to produce a Transdisciplinary Model for Post-Traumatic Growth for healing symptoms of combat stress, PTSD, or other unresolved trauma or anxiety disorders. The model is informed by the highly successful yoga treatment protocol used with U.S. military personnel deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq, which the author co-developed (Stoller et al, 2012) and by her experiences teaching yoga to veterans in her local community. Sensory-Enhanced Yoga (R) is designed to help meet the following goals: Decrease hypervigilance and overreaction to sensory input (e.g.visual, crowds, touch, noise, movement). Improve quality of sleep and energy level to support wellness and enhance daily productivity. Decrease intrusive thoughts by learning to become present through breath and body awareness. Enhance one's sense of self-worth and personal empowerment. Whether you are a therapist looking for effective treatment tools for your clients or are seeking healing for yourself, this insightful book will provide you with effective strategies to help promote peace of mind and full engagement in life. Lynn's website: www.sensoryenhancedyoga.org

“A treasure trove . . . what Yoga, capital Y, is all about.” —Donna Farhi “Nothing less than a gem.” —Judith Lasater “A vital tool.” —Book Riot This daring, visionary book revolutionizes yoga practice, making it truly accessible to everyone—in every body, at any age, and in any state of health Yoga practice has so much to offer us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. But many of us feel discouraged to practice because we see young, slim, flexible, well, and able-bodied people dominating yoga spaces. Yet, yoga is truly a practice for all—conferring enormous benefits to our overall well-being as our bodies change, age, and navigate various health challenges. Jivana Heyman, founder of Accessible Yoga, views yoga as a basic human right—saying we all deserve to practice it in whatever state we find our body or mind. Accessible Yoga offers a simple, clear, and wonderfully adaptable practice for all people regardless of ability, health, and body type. Heyman has spent over twenty years sharing yoga with people of all abilities and backgrounds, and in this book, he shares his knowledge by breaking down complex yoga poses, breathing practices, meditation techniques, and yoga teachings into clearly understandable and practical tools we can use every day, regardless of our limitations or challenges.

It is time to address the dissonance between the often superficial way yoga is currently being practiced and the depth of yoga’s ancient universal spiritual teachings. In this clarion call to action, Jivana Heyman offers a blueprint for cultivating a practice based in the ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras in service of those experiencing exclusion and oppression. Heyman illuminates the yogic mandate of seva—or acts of service that see, care for, and uplift those around us—as a way to serve the world without losing your way. Through pose sequences, practice prompts such as “Embracing Failure,” and stories from yoga teachers who are implementing seva in their classes, Heyman shows you what it means to serve, how to serve, and how to promote inclusivity through your service. Our job, says Heyman, is not to clear our mind through yoga practice, but rather to expand it so widely that it can embrace the entire universe.

Consisting of curated interviews with yoga pioneers including Gail Parker, Heather Mason and Neil Pearson, this book shows the transformational benefits of personal yoga practice and uncovers a collective deepening, resulting from accumulated practice and conscious application at scale. These interviews were collected with the 'presencing approach', used by the author in the dialogue and the interview process itself. The yoga narratives that form the heart of the book are inspirational stories from elders who have created transformational change in their own lives, or incorporated yoga into a bigger vision to benefit society and the planet. The book also presents a toolkit of actionable steps for readers to create social action and/or change. A unique example of moving from the 'me' consciousness to the 'we' consciousness, Yoga Radicals invites readers to join pioneers on a path of social action through personal transformation.

Pop Culture Yoga: A Communication Remix was born out of a series of questions about the paradoxical nature of yoga: How do individuals and groups define yoga? What does it mean to “practice yoga,” and what does this practice involve? What are some of the most important principles, guidelines, or philosophical tenets of yoga that shape people’s definitions and practices? Who has the power and authority to define yoga? What are the limits, if any, of shared definitions of yoga? Kristen C. Blinne explores the myriad ways “yoga” is communicatively constructed and defined in and through popular culture in the United States. In doing so, Blinne offers insight into the many identity work processes in play in the construction of yoga categories, illuminating how individuals’ and groups’ words and actions represent practices of claiming—part of a complex communicative process centered around membership categorization—based on a range of authenticity discourses. Employing popular culture writing styles, Blinne ultimately contends that the majority of yoga styles practiced in the United States are remixes that can be classified as pop culture yoga, a distinct way of understanding this complex phenomenon.