KENYA YOGA BEHIND BARS

Yoga Behind Bars

epa05613680 Prisoners strike a pose as they practice yoga inside the Athi River Prison in Kitengela, the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, 26 October 2016 (issued 02 November). Yoga is not something you will find in ordinary communities in Kenya. Its practice and benefits are limited to more fortunate and affluent members of the society. But one Kenyan yogi has been changing that landscape.

With their instructor Irene Auma, the founder of the Peace Within Prison Project, some thirty inmates gather twice a week in their striped uniforms to practice yoga in the Athi River Prison, in the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

'Everyone needs a second chance in their life', says Auma, a 29-year-old full-time yoga teacher who took special yoga-training courses in Seattle, USA, to learn how to teach yoga to prisoners. 'I started yoga in prisons to bring inner peace and give them (prisoners) something to detach themselves from the stress they have inside. And they love it. They keep asking me when I'm coming back next'.

David Mwangi, who is serving seven-year sentence without a remission for an attempted robbery, says it's been 'totally different' since he started yoga with Auma. 'We have a lot of stress in prison. It's not like outside. But after the exercise, my body is different. My thinking is different', says Mwangi happily. The feeling is shared by his fellow inmate George Willis Owino who will soon be finishing his ten-year sentence he's been serving for indecent assault. 'When I go outside, I will keep practicing yoga because it's a part of me now. I'll help people out there. Those who are doing drugs, we will bring them back and teach them yoga', Owino says with his fists raised.

Auma's project is appreciated by the prison authority as well. Bison Madegwa, the officer-in-charge at Athi River Prison says the yoga gives his inmates the time to reflect on themselves and their negative past. 'And that helps them reintegrate back into society well and thereby reduces

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