Can Yoga In Prison Help Inmates Find Inner Peace?

At a high-security prison in Maryland, 16 women are enrolled in one of the first-ever 200-hour yoga teacher trainings behind bars. Yoga Journal gained exclusive access to join them, and found out how the practice is helping the women find trust, peace, and forgiveness in the darkest of places—and chart a new course for their futures.

- Jessica Downey

It's Friday evening, and prisoners are scattered barefoot in a loose circle of yoga mats around center court of the prison gym at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women (MCIW), in Jessup, Maryland. This could be mistaken for a high school gym if not for the metal bars covering the windows or the wall displaying posterboards covered in pleas for forgiveness from God, interspersed with pictures of dozens of kids growing up without their mothers. 

A few of the women hunch over their yoga-teacher-training (YTT) binders and anatomy books, reviewing Sanskrit names for poses as well as the location and function of various muscle groups. One woman stretches and warms up her body, pushing back into a lazy Downward Dog, while others talk and joke with their neighbors. Several women simply sit tall and breathe, seemingly content to be here in the moment, preparing to have this time away from the always-watch-your-back existence that lurks outside the walls of the gym. It’s a reality that some of the women have lived with for decades. For some, it’s one they’ll live with for the rest of their lives.

The prisoners are gathered for a three-day-weekend session, a welcome reprieve from their usual routine, to practice and learn how to teach yoga. They’re months into their yearlong 200-hour YTT, one that’s helping them use yoga to seek self-compassion and inner peace—an invaluable life tool for the 16 attendees.