Abstract
Yoga, together with other so-called holistic spiritual practices such as reiki or meditation, is one of the most popular spiritual disciplines in our contemporary society. The success of yoga crosses the boundaries between health, sport, religion, and popular culture. However, from a sociological point of view, this is a largely under-researched field. Aiming to fill this gap, this article analyzes the impact, meaning, and implications of the practice of yoga by taking prisons as the institutional context of the study. The growth of yoga in penitentiary settings is a recent trend in many countries and raises new questions concerning its potential to foster well-being and self-transformation. The research presented here applies Schutz’s concepts of “finite province of meaning” and “stock of knowledge” to understand yoga’s role in inmates’ lives. The main argument of the article is that yoga is a body technique that affords inmates the possibility to enter into a “finite province of meaning” and transcend their everyday prison lives. However, the impact of yoga upon inmates’ lives is not limited just to its physical effects as learning yoga also involves the acquisition of a “spiritual stock of knowledge” made up of Eastern philosophy, holistic concepts, and self-help therapeutic narratives. Indeed, physical movements and spiritual accounts constitute one another in the practice of yoga, thus opening up a pathway into a different reality; movement and spiritual discourse inform one another—and it is precisely in this reflexivity that “transcendent experiences” are created and yoga is made meaningful and important in the improvement-setting of the prison. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork developed carried out in two different penitentiary institutions.
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Notes
In this regard, the Spanish Constitution (art. 25) states that “criminal punishments involving deprivation of freedom should aim towards rehabilitation and social integration”.
The research project was designed in collaboration with Anna Clot-Garrell (sociologist) and Marta Puig (criminologist and yoga instructor).
The project was structured around three dimensions: (a) the analysis of the impact and meaning of yoga for inmates; (b) the conditions that have enabled the emergence, legitimacy, and dissemination of yoga in prison and its institutional success; (c) and the role of “yoga entrepreneurs” and socially engaged forms of holistic spirituality in contemporary society. Due to space and scope limitation, this article focuses primarily on the first objective (see Griera et al. 2015 for a development of the second dimension).
Most of the volunteers are instructors of Kundalini yoga, with an age range from 28 to 48 years and an urban middle-class background. There are similar numbers of men and women, and their motivations for teaching in prison are framed in terms of altruism, apprenticeship, and personal growth. Volunteers are among the principal carriers—in the Weberian sense of Träger—of holistic therapies and activities in prison.
Internal rules such as not using the class to ‘flirt’ with other inmates—which was especially an issue in mixed-gender classes—or to exchange letters (often ‘love letters’) between inmates living in different units. Several inmates were expelled for these reasons.
When designing the surveys we had doubts about whether or not to include a question about this. However, due to security, confidentiality, and ethical reasons we decided not to ask. However, we got to know almost everyone’s offense after some weeks of fieldwork since usually inmates themselves or prison personnel disclose it in informal conversations or interviews.
All the personal names used in this article are pseudonyms.
This is reflected in the surveys conducted by the authors to course participants’ in the last week of the courses. They described it in terms of “inner peace,” “connectedness,” “flying,” “mental and spiritual well-being,” etc.
As Spickard notes, “the meaning of a written passage, however, can be grasped all at once—monothetically to use Husserl’s term. One understands a philosophical conclusion without having continually to recreate its proof. Unlike conceptual thought, however, art is polythetic: it takes as much time to reconstitute the ‘meaning’ of a piece of music as it did the first time one experienced it” (1991: 197).
In a similar fashion, McGuire observes, “if we combine Schutz’s insights about the complex way people can transcend everyday boundaries between self and other with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the immediate connection between a person’s body and consciousness, we get clues about how religious experience can be a deeply subjective yet shared experience” (2008: 113).
To some extent, it is said that in order to find harmony, balance, and peace it is necessary to become connected to the “all-pervading ‘Force’ or ‘Energy’ which is seen to be sacred and which is not believed to be separate from the individual” (Rose 1998: 13).
Through our research the crucial role of intersubjectivity in the acquisition of new knowledge and the construction of new life meanings becomes evident, a fact that raises more arguments against practices such as solitary confinement (Guenther 2013).
Indeed, as stated in Griera and Clot-Garrell (2015b) the role of the prison staff is crucial in promoting and guaranteeing the success of yoga and holistic activities in prison. The success of these types of activities in the current penitentiary institutional context would not be possible without a strong personal interest in making it succeed.
In this regard, the most shared petition among inmates after the second yoga quarantine in the prison was to be able to get training for becoming yoga instructors while in prison. Inmates perceive it as a suitable future employment option. World Prem volunteers positively received the petition, and started to explore its feasibility.
I owe this formulation to an anonymous reviewer whom I thank for the comment.
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Acknowledgments
This work received a grant from the Centre d’Estudis Jurídics [Centre for Legal Studies - Government of Catalonia]—Generalitat de Catalunya. The research project was conducted together with the sociologist Anna Clot-Garrell and the criminologist and yoga instructor Marta Puig. I am deeply grateful for their insightful comments. I am also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for their relevant and inspiring comments.
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The article is part of the special issue on Alfred Schutz and Religion.
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Griera, M. Yoga in Penitentiary Settings: Transcendence, Spirituality, and Self-Improvement. Hum Stud 40, 77–100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9404-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9404-6