“I didn’t realize I was using the shame of my crime as a hard, physical shell,” says Wayne. “Through yoga, I have a chance to begin to release that.”
“After seeing a prison yoga class holding headstands, — some of them with bullet scars on their legs, — I see that yoga is an art,” said Jo Dee Davis, Executive Director of Healing Broken Circles and winner of a KIND Award for her rehabilitation work.
This week on October 2, the Central Ohio yoga community, including 20 inmates at Marion Correctional Institution, will do 108 Sun Salutations to raise money for prison rehabilitation.
Davis and Adam Wetterhan, who teaches yoga at Healing Broken Circles’ Marion facility, both know how much yoga helps people and that their prison program needs are real.
“Our mats are falling apart, we have just a few blocks donated by Manduka, and our age range is 25 to 60 years old,” says Wetterhan. “The enthusiasm the guys bring is truly inspiring. Hearing 20 men ‘Om’ loud enough to vibrate the prison walls is awesome.”
The reality of incarceration in America is grim. Being on the inside is hugely stressful, and there are many barriers to reintegration afterwards. Yoga can be transformative especially for anxiety, trauma, and addiction. In 2002, a yoga program began at San Quentin. Famous yoga photographer Robert Sturman (who partners with local athletic clothing company Bend) did a set of powerful photographs there.
Locally, Michelle Vinbury and Marybeth Hamilton created a mediation and yoga mindfulness program at Yoga on High and do regular classes at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. At Healing Broken Circles’ Marion facility, Davis finds that yoga and meditation are the two most popular classes there; Wetterhan started teaching at the request of his philosophy students.
“I came to Marion to teach philosophy and comparative religion,” he says. “There were some guys doing yoga to videos -just stretching on their day off from working out. When I mentioned that there was philosophy behind yoga, they perked up. My first yoga teacher, David Belcastro at Capital University, had me do 90 minutes of Ashtanga yoga then we sat down and did an hour and a half on the yoga sutras of Patajali. At Marion, I brought in the philosophy and healthy alignment so the yogis would really benefit from a pose and not just try and look like the pictures. They know now that yoga is a discipline for dealing with life.”
Wetterhan has trained four teachers in the Ashtanga yoga tradition. One yogi who goes by Eric, will be released soon and hopes to continue not only his yoga practice but also to become a yoga teacher in Columbus.
“I found a new meaning and a new path,” he says. “Yoga has calmed me, given me tools, so I can be the person that I was always meant to be”
Wetterhan personally found yoga helped him, too.
“In college, I was having a lot of anxiety, and my body was giving me signals that came out as hypochondria,” he shares. “Getting into my body with yoga, brought that to heal and gave me a way to heal others.”
Another of Wetterhan’s students agrees, “I learned yoga is all about my own breath, this means I can practice and care for my body, and for others, and for the earth anywhere I am …even in a place like this.”
Wetterhan has taught yoga at Marion for four years and seen men with deep problems change. Similarly, at Marysville’s women’s prison where Piper Kerman from Orange is the New Black teaches, Michele Vinbury and Marybeth Hamilton have not only taught yoga and mindfulness meditation but started a research study on the effects of the program.
“Preliminary data is exciting,” says Vinbury.
The Central Ohio yoga community is growing every day. Whether inside a physical or mental prison, yoga can be about finding freeness. The second annual 108 to Rehabilitate is a chance for us on the outside of prison to help our present and future fellow yogis inside. Starting at 10 a.m. on Sunday, October 2 at the Yoga On High Teacher Training Institute at 1020 Dennison Ave., Suite 201, a group will begin 108 Sun Salutations.
“Breaks are encouraged,” says long-time yoga teacher and anatomist Tom Griffith who will also be teaching at Marion this fall.
For more information on 108 to Rehabilitate, see yogaonhigh.com.
