The jail where I volunteer-teach has an enormous, homemade wooden cart that I put the exercise mats into and lock with a padlock. (Apparently if you keep something useful or expensive in a jail, you must keep it under lock and key or it will wander off.) This sign is taped to the top of the cart and as you can see, someone has added their opinion.
"Yoga, really?"
Yes you doofus. Yoga really. As opposed to that yoga imaginary or the yoga incorporeal. This indicates the degree to which people aren't used to changing the way they think about things. What puzzles me is who wrote it? An inmate doing laundry where the cart is kept? A guard who thinks incarceration shouldn't include rehabilitation?
If this was written by a staff-member, I'd like to say something. Even if you believe jail should be a punishing experience, isn't there room to consider some inmates are going to go home at some point and they will be returning to society and (hopefully) choosing a new path? Where do you think they are going to learn those coping skills? How to make different choices? How to recognize that they ARE making choices every day? Shall they learn this from their family? Gangster friends? The student psychology center?
And if this was written by an inmate, I'd like to say something to that person too. The voice in your head is not telling you The Truth. It's just the machinery running itself and it's not interested in you doing something different, even if that something different is good for you. No, the voice in your head is just the voice of your past experiences. And apparently, that past doesn't include yoga or Pilates or self-inquiry or meditation. So you don't know what you don't know, but I challenge you to find out what is out there when you stop being distracted by that little voice in your head.
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