{"id":922,"date":"2010-02-16T12:50:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T12:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html"},"modified":"2010-02-16T12:50:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T12:50:51","slug":"yoga-for-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html","title":{"rendered":"Yoga for Prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-left\" height=\"246\" alt=\"Indian Prison Yoga\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/84\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg\" width=\"428\" \/><\/span>The &#8220;freedom&#8221; people talk about attaining through yoga is now completely literal, with a program in India&nbsp;that lets inmates out a little sooner if they develop a regular yoga practice. As gleaned from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2010\/02\/16\/yoga-to-reduce-priso.html\">Boing Boing<\/a>, every three months of yoga training&nbsp;reduces a prisoner&#8217;s sentence by&nbsp;15 days&nbsp;in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/8472762.stm\">BBC article<\/a>, about 4,000 inmates are involved and many go on to actually teach yoga. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The state&#8217;s inspector general of prisons, Sanjay Mane, said: &#8216;Yoga is good for maintaining fitness, calming the behaviour, controlling anger and reducing stress. &#8216;When a prisoner attends yoga sessions and fulfils some other conditions, he will be considered for a remission if his jail superintendent recommends his case.'&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>One inmate said yoga helps him reduce &#8220;angry thoughts.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;It was these thoughts that made me commit crimes,&#8217; he said. &#8216;I hope that after we are released, we can use what we have learned and promote yoga in society so that people no longer commit crime.'&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>So cool, right?&nbsp;I have no illusions that sun salutes will turn a psychopath sane, but actual&#8211;and deep&#8211;rehabilitation for prisoners is something that makes so much sense it constantly blows my mind that we&nbsp;barely do it in this country. <\/p>\n<p>And I also love the&nbsp;reminder that if we can globally heal angry thoughts through simple measures, this world would be so very different. Because that <em>is<\/em> the root of it, right? Angry and fearful thoughts = the source of most evil.&nbsp;Ommmm. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Like what you see? <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=FreshLiving&amp;amp;loc=en_US\"><font color=\"#023d89\"><strong>Click here to subscribe<\/strong><\/font><\/a><strong> and get Fresh Living in your in-box every day!<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;freedom&#8221; people talk about attaining through yoga is now completely literal, with a program in India&nbsp;that lets inmates out a little sooner if they develop a regular yoga practice. As gleaned from Boing Boing, every three months of yoga training&nbsp;reduces a prisoner&#8217;s sentence by&nbsp;15 days&nbsp;in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.&nbsp; According to a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,350],"tags":[355,978,288,977],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-valerie-reiss","category-holistic-living","category-yoga-2","tag-holistic-living-2","tag-prison-yoga","tag-yoga","tag-yoga-in-india"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Yoga for Prisoners - Fresh Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yoga for Prisoners - Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The &#8220;freedom&#8221; people talk about attaining through yoga is now completely literal, with a program in India&nbsp;that lets inmates out a little sooner if they develop a regular yoga practice. As gleaned from Boing Boing, every three months of yoga training&nbsp;reduces a prisoner&#8217;s sentence by&nbsp;15 days&nbsp;in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.&nbsp; According to a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-02-16T12:50:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/files\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"vreiss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Yoga for Prisoners - Fresh Living","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Yoga for Prisoners - Fresh Living","og_description":"The &#8220;freedom&#8221; people talk about attaining through yoga is now completely literal, with a program in India&nbsp;that lets inmates out a little sooner if they develop a regular yoga practice. As gleaned from Boing Boing, every three months of yoga training&nbsp;reduces a prisoner&#8217;s sentence by&nbsp;15 days&nbsp;in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.&nbsp; According to a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html","og_site_name":"Fresh Living","article_published_time":"2010-02-16T12:50:51+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/files\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg"}],"author":"vreiss","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html","name":"Yoga for Prisoners - Fresh Living","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/files\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg","datePublished":"2010-02-16T12:50:51+00:00","dateModified":"2010-02-16T12:50:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/#\/schema\/person\/df896dd70b2001a7a331d7c0264dbd4d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/files\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/files\/import\/indiaprisonyoga.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/02\/yoga-for-prisoners.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Yoga for Prisoners"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/","name":"Fresh Living","description":"Holistic, Health and Wellness","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/#\/schema\/person\/df896dd70b2001a7a331d7c0264dbd4d","name":"vreiss","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e2\/7e2e836248d6127446bfae5802ee2a83x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e2\/7e2e836248d6127446bfae5802ee2a83x96.jpg","caption":"vreiss"},"description":"Valerie Reiss is Holistic Living Editor at Beliefnet. She was a founding editor at Breathe magazine, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Women's Health, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Lime.com, Vegetarian Times, and ABCNEWS.com. A native New Yorker, Valerie holds an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Beloit College in Creative Writing with a minor in Women's Studies. She also lived in Maui for a while where she drank green papaya juice and taught some creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/author\/vreiss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}