It's Monday morning in Unit 3 of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro, California, where they hold yoga classes in two units five days a week. A weekly class is also offered to staff. Yoga is supposed to help the teens relax in this extremely stressful environment. It's also meant to help improve their lives after they're released.
Circumstances landed them in Juvenile Hall and many are angry. Some have been traumatized by violence. Some are coming off addictions. Just about all worry about what is next in their lives. These extreme stresses experienced by incarcerated youths are why county health officials thought yoga would help.
Bidyut Bose, who grew up in India and learned yoga from his father, started teaching it to seniors in 1998 at the Downtown Berkeley Y.M.C.A. in California. As he saw the students gaining in strength and self-esteem, he started to wonder about others who could benefit. Mr. Bose began contacting treatment centers, hospitals and homeless shelters. "If millions of Americans are doing yoga, then there are millions who are not getting it, not coming to a studio, not able to afford classes," he said.
Like any other new building, Alameda County's recently opened Juvenile Justice Center had a few kinks.
With funding from the Probation Department and Health Care Services, Niroga Institute offers yoga every weekday morning to the teens housed in B-2, a unit for twelve boys and eight girls. A Niroga study demonstrated that youth participating in yoga had improved self-control and reduced stress.
Through the regular practice of Yoga, breath work, and meditation, Niroga is teaching Bay Area youth essential life skills. Jointly funded by Alameda County's Probation Department and Health Care Services Agency, Niroga began a program at Juvenile Justice Center, bringing Yoga to incarcerated youth five days a week, and to their staff once a week.
Abstract More than 75 people gathered on the lawn outside Oakland City Hall to do yoga Saturday, above, with the hope of bringing peace to a city struggling with surging violence.
If you read the March issue of Yogi Times, you no doubt saw the centerfold portrait of a rapturous Darnell Walker, a student at Rock La Fleche Community Day School, with hands in anjali mudra (palms touching at the heart). Darnell is one of hundreds of people who had little or no access to yoga until the NirogaT Institute entered their lives.
Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland is ground zero for local community transformation. On Saturday September 9, 2006, Yoga For Peace, Niroga Institute, and East Bay Community Mediation are joining forces to increase local awareness and support for programs helping to heal our fractured communities by teaching them tools to help themselves, giving a hand-up instead of a hand-out. Similar events will take place in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Maui, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and Dubai.
