Shuman is offering meditation and yoga

New health initiative focuses on holistics

When the door of a secure, all-male unit at Shuman Juvenile Detention Center was unlocked Friday for Felicia Savage, she was greeted by loud welcomes echoing off hard floors and walls.

“You game for a class?” she yelled back, rolling a cart stocked with yoga mats and blocks, essential oils, an iPod and speakers.

Ms. Savage started offering voluntary yoga, aromatherapy and meditation programs Jan. 12 at the detention center in Lincoln-Lemington.

“We think this is one of their great unaddressed needs,” said project director Steven Albert, chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Public Health’s Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences.

During this particular Friday afternoon class, Ms. Savage, 51, led five residents through

aromatherapy and yoga poses.

For a fleeting moment, her voice and flutes and nature sounds from her iPod were the only noises in a usually dissonant environment.

It’s a sparse space, with an office, some showers, a common area and rooms with tall, narrow windows that give a view of a bed and toilet. Books are stacked and strewn in a corner, a Connect Four game is abandoned on a table by the windows.

After the five young men and boys stretched, Ms. Savage — they love her name, she says — asked them to relax. The boys lay on their backs, and she placed a tissue and eye pillow over their closed eyes.

Her classes are fluid and can be one-on-one or as large as eight and last from 15 minutes to two hours. Some days, the residents want to move and break a sweat. On others, they just want aromatherapy. She only asks that they be respectful.

“I come in and meet them where they are in the moment,” she said.

She also works with residents on fronts such as nutrition, navigating conflict and respectful dialogue, but isn’t expecting huge behavioral changes.

“It’s about being able to be in that moment, and feel whatever they’re feeling and being OK with it,” she said.

Complementing primary care offered at the center, Ms. Savage’s holistic health component is sponsored by the Violence Prevention Initiative in the Graduate School of Public Health at University of Pittsburgh and funded through a twoyear, $125,000 grant from the Highmark Foundation.

In time, texts will be sent to participants after they leave Shuman to reinforce messages and track responses to referrals. The grant also funds work Ms. Savage does with gunshot wound survivors at the Kingsley Association in Larimer.

Ms. Savage is training Shuman staff so her program outlasts the grant.

“If we show that something like this really helps, with less violence or less injuries in a place like Shuman ... we can show it’s worth investing in,” Dr. Albert said, adding that such programs could be built into a budget.

Art therapy and exercise are used in detention facilities nationwide, said Jim Rieland, a former director of Allegheny County probation who worked in juvenile justice for decades.

“It’s not like it’s going to wipe out delinquency, but it might keep kids busy and get them interested in something new,” he said.

The population at Shuman is constantly changing, as residents have an average stay of seven to 10 days before heading home, into a group home or to a secure juvenile correctional facility.

There were 46 male and female residents Friday morning, a bit below the average of 60, though well-below capacity, 120, training manager Damian Wiles said.

Ms. Savage estimates that she’s taught about 35 residents so far.

Residents — who range in age from 10 to their early 20s and could be there for anything from a probation violation to a felony — can be especially reserved and apprehensive when getting involved in something new, said Earl Hill, director of the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.

But he thinks the program has gone “extremely well” so far, and Ms. Savage is hopeful.

While she was packing up to leave the unit on Friday, residents asked when she would be back next.