Yoga helps release stress, inmates say
“Ommmmm … ” Lawrence Huff hummed as he led his class of yoga students on a recent Friday afternoon.
“Ommmmm … ” the students responded choruslike.
Dressed in matching orange, the practitioners sat up with their legs crossed on blue and purple mats.
Their hands were clenched and pointed up, their eyes were closed. The sounds of crashing waves poured from a small portable radio.
“Listen to the sound of Om in your breath,” Huff instructed, his eyes closed also. “Check how you feel. Relax any place that feels tense.”
In the back of the classroom, a security guard sat with his arms folded, watching everymove. In the corners of the room, mounted cameras monitored the action.
EveryFriday, Huff volunteers to teach yoga to inmates at the Metro West Detention Center just outside Doral in southwest Miami-Dade County. The 71-year-old has been trekking here from his Miami Beach apartment for the past five years simply to share his love of yoga— and the centeredness it brings— with inmates whose cases are pending in court.
Their cases run the gamut: armed robbery, burglary with assault, cocaine distribution.
“I come here as a volunteer and they are my students,” Huff said. “I really don’t [get nervous]. I know where I am, but I don’t perceive them individually as criminals, but just as people participating in a class, so I have a feeling of respect for themas a soul, as an individual.”
There are two separate classes, for men and for women, and both are popular, say jail officials.
With the detention center housing about 1,800 inmates at any given time, there’s a waiting list to get into the class, which can have asmany as 40menand 40women per session.
“I know this is a jail and we are known to house inmates, but we also rehabilitate folks,” said Juan Diasgranados, a public affairs manager for the MiamiDade Corrections & Rehabilitation Department, as he watched the yoga class on this day.
“One day or another, these folks are going to get released, so we want to make sure that they are productive members of society.”
Inmates must show good behavior to get into the class and stay in the class.
“Spending 24 hours in a jail, you have a lot of down time. So we want to make sure they are engaged, so that when they do go in front of a judge, or when they do get released, they are better than they were coming in,” added Diasgranados.
Yoga is notanuncommon offering within the South Florida jail system. For example, the Broward Sheriff’s Office also offers yoga and meditation classes to male and female inmates at the Paul Rein and Joseph V. Conte detention facilities. Volunteers from the Yoga Center of Deerfield Beach and the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Miami teach those classes, according to BSO.
Huff teaches yoga at two other jails and several libraries in Miami-Dade. When he’s not teaching yoga, he works as a substitute teacher at Miami-Dade public schools, including Miami Beach Senior High and North Miami Beach Senior High.
He said he got the idea for the yoga classes because he knew someone who had gone to prison andHuff had never seen one. So he reached out to the jails and began offering his yoga services.
But what keeps him coming back to the detention centers eachweek?
“Because the people are so appreciative. You wouldn’t expect people accused of crimes and males to be that interested in yoga, but they are very, very enthusiastic about every aspect about it, the exercise, the meditation,” he said.
“Because they are cooped up in a dorm, they are undergoing all kinds of stress, trials, family messups, being in jail. This is like an oasis for them, an oasis of peace.”
Someinmates at theMetro West Detention Center said theweekly yoga classes have offered them something to look forward to on Fridays, something that helps them focus, a break in their routines.
“It centers me, it recharges me, it charges my mind,’’ one 42-year-old inmate from Miami said. “It makes me forget about all the little things. It’s just focusing, trying to keep my mind silent. Quiet.”
Because their cases are pending in court, jail officials did not allowthenewspaper to photograph the faces of the inmates or reveal their names.
He hadn’t practiced yoga before arriving three years ago, but nowhe’s a fan.