Yoga and restorative justice in prison: An experience of "response-ability to harms"
Author: Rucker Lila
Source: Contemporary Justice Review, Volume 8, Number 1, March 2005 , pp. 107-120(14)
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Abstract:
Self-mastery is a 4000-year-old Vedic concept referring to growth in one's capacity to discover the various dimensions of one's own personhood--physical, mental, and spiritual--and to use those dimensions in a conscious, skillful way. Seven men who had been convicted of violent offenses and incarcerated in a U.S. mid-western maximum security prison volunteered to embark on a journey toward self-mastery by participating in yoga and meditation classes for three months as part of an exploratory research project. This paper draws on their journal entries and interviews. Content analysis reveals a continuum of desires and reported benefits from yoga and meditation. As the range of desires broadened, so did the benefits, including the emergence of certain individuals' "own truths" and a sense of "meaningfulness rooted in a higher purpose." It was in the spacious openness of disciplined self-awareness wherein some men found "response ability" and, thus, themselves, as well as others.Keywords: Restorative Justice; Yoga; Meditation; Rehabilitation; Prisons; Offenders
Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.1080/10282580500044143
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