How yoga is helping female prisoners in NH prepare for life on the outside

CONCORD, N.H. — Imprisoned behind the coils of wire for months or years, a group of New Hampshire women is still learning how to spread their wings.

"By definition, yoga is uniting the mind, the body and the spirit," Jen Lindgren explains.

Earlier this year, Lindgren founded the New Hampshire chapter of the Prison Yoga Project, a national initiative to empower prisoners.

"It’s allowing a safe place for women, who the majority have had some type of abuse in their life, whether it’s sexually, mentally, physically/and giving them a safe place to reconnect with their body," Lindgren said.

So these female prisoners are now practicing yoga as part of their rehabilitation.

"If you had asked me three months ago, I would have been like yeah, yoga is a joke," prisoner Holly Wilson admitted.

But Wilson now says practicing every week with Lindgren has helped her not only accept responsibility for her mistakes but given her strength to beat the drug addiction that put her in prison in the first place.

"Missing the ones I love, realizing that I hurt a lot of people, and I hurt myself, that was the hardest part," she said. "I messed up, but I can fix it."

These women aren’t just healing on the inside, they’re learning a valuable skill that can help them once they’re on the outside.

Lindgren is coaching the group to be instructors. They’ll undergo 200 hours of training with the hope to work as a yoga teacher once they’re released.

"I’m okay with finding myself and bettering myself because of this program and I will be okay with that for the rest of my life," Wilson said.

The New Hampshire Prison Yoga Project is raising money to expand the program to halfway houses and assist the newly released teachers with securing employment.

Cox Media Group