BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTES, June 23, 2006: A cramped room inside a locked school for juvenile offenders does not seem like the ideal setting in which to find inner peace. And yet, five teenage boys, each with a history of violent behavior, have gathered here to focus on their breath, test their strength in yoga poses and to escape. “You lose all the worries, you know what I mean?” said Jason, one of the youths, after an hour of yoga.
Yoga for juvenile offenders is relatively rare, but yoga and similar stress-relieving practices such as meditation have been used in prisons for years. A study last year on mindfulness in Prison Journal, an international publication, evaluated 1,350 inmates who completed 113 courses. Improvement was found on “less hostility and mood disturbance, while self-esteem increased.”