Prison Yoga and Meditation

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Prison Yoga and Meditation

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We are a 501c3 bringing yoga, meditation, and breath work to promote healing for thousands of men, women, and LGBTQ individuals in County, Federal and State facilities in the greater Los Angeles area.

03/24/2026

❤️❤️❤️Every single dollar counts. Yes even one.

🙏🏽Incarcerated women are one of the most underserved populations in the correctional system. Many enter custody with histories of trauma abuse addiction poverty and loss. Yet inside they often receive fewer wellness and rehabilitation programs than men.

Yoga and meditation are not luxuries in these spaces.
They are tools for emotional regulation accountability nervous system healing and hope.

🕊️We are trying to raise $10,000 in the next five days to sustain weekly programming for incarcerated women.
So far we have raised $150.

💲💲💲Here is what your donation can do:

$1
Helps provide basic program supplies and moves this work forward.

$10
Provides mats straps or blankets women can use week after week.

$25
Helps cover travel and gas for teachers serving facilities far from home.

$100
Supports multiple trauma informed yoga and meditation classes reaching dozens of participants.

$500
Helps train and prepare new volunteers so programs can expand.

$1,000
Can sustain consistent programming at one facility for an entire month.

This work restores dignity.
It builds accountability.
It creates real second chances.

☀️ If you believe in healing and human potential please donate today and share this post.

03/03/2026

On this International Women’s Day, we honor our incarcerated practitioners at the California Institution for Women and the Century Regional Detention Facility, and the women in facilities where we are preparing to expand (CCWF, etc).

Women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. Since 1980, their numbers have increased by more than 700 percent. Yet most correctional and reentry models were designed around male populations, leaving women’s specific histories of trauma, caregiving, and economic marginalization comparatively underserved.

At CIW and CRDF, more than 200 women practice with us each month in consistent weekly classes. They are asking for expanded access and formal training pathways. Structured yoga and meditation programming, grounded in contemplative discipline and supported by research on neuroplasticity, offers practical tools for regulation and preparation for reentry.

We are raising $10,000 by March 31, 2026 to sustain and expand this work. Funds support mats, blankets, teacher stipends, travel, gas, and the infrastructure required to maintain weekly classes and 200 hour training pathways.

We ask you to help us meet this goal.❤️

03/02/2026

💲💲Service within our prison programs is generously reimbursed.

Prison Yoga + Meditation is expanding and welcoming experienced yoga teachers to serve in California state facilities.

Participation requires completion of a virtual training intensive provided at no cost. The training ensures continuity of method, institutional fluency, and ethical clarity.

We welcome teachers with established personal practice and the steadiness required for carceral settings.

📧 [email protected]

12/22/2025

🕊️We are really looking forward to sharing more with you in the new year at Prison Yoga + Meditation. We will be launching new ways to stay connected so you can hear from us more regularly and follow the work as it unfolds. We are also taking steps to expand into additional juvenile and women’s facilities. Research shows that women’s incarceration in the United States has grown at roughly twice the rate of men’s since 1980, even though women remain a smaller percentage of the overall prison population.¹

🕊️One moment that has stayed with us came from a woman who told one of our volunteer teachers that she felt safer being in her facility than she did at home. That speaks to the importance of shared community and consistent presence. Not because peace is brought in, but because it can be found together.

🙏🏽🙏🏾🙏🏻Thank you for being here. We are excited for what is ahead.

¹ The Sentencing Project, drawing on Bureau of Justice Statistics data, reports that since 1980 the rate of women’s imprisonment in the United States has increased at roughly twice the pace of men’s.

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09/04/2025

✨ Idā Nāḍī Mudrā: The Gesture of Lunar Flow ✨

In the Haṭha Yoga tradition, the subtle body is said to be woven of three primary channels: idā, piṅgalā, and suṣumṇā nāḍī. The Haṭhapradīpikā (3.6–3.8) reminds us that idā, associated with the moon, governs the cooling, receptive, and calming currents of prāṇa. To balance the nervous system, one does not always need complex postures; sometimes the subtlest gestures, mudrā, become the gateway.

Idā Nāḍī Mudrā, formed with simple placement of the hands, draws awareness to this lunar current. Beyond its energetic symbolism, idā is said to calm restlessness, ease agitation, and prepare the mind for clarity and meditation. This is why mudrā is profoundly accessible: whether seated in a cell, a hospital bed, or a meditation hall, it asks nothing more than one’s own hands and intention.

For those who are incarcerated, where external freedom is stripped away, mudrā offers an inner space of sovereignty. Yet this truth extends to anyone living under the weight of systems, patterns, or inner prisons that confine the heart. Yoga here becomes not only a path for the incarcerated, but also a practice of liberation for us all—a reminder that inner freedom can emerge even in the most restrictive conditions.

✨ Mudrā is a doorway: into the subtle currents of the body, into stillness of mind, and into the radical truth that peace is possible anywhere.

08/26/2025

🕊️ Volunteers Needed 🕊️
Prison Yoga + Meditation is seeking passionate yoga facilitators in SoCal, Fresno & Bakersfield to support our mission of bringing healing and empowerment to incarcerated individuals.

✨Join us for our Virtual Training
✨ Sunday 9/28 | 8 AM – 1 PM
✨ Get certified to teach yoga and meditation inside prisons

Prior 200-Hour certification or dedicated personal practice is a plus🙌🏿🙌🏾🙌🏽

Help us bring dignity, regulation, and presence to the most forgotten.

📩 Email: [email protected]

08/18/2025

In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, a father places salt in water and asks his son to find it. Though invisible, the salt is present in every drop.

This is what we remember each time we enter spaces like California State Prison in Lancaster, Corcoran, Valley State Prison, Metro Detention Center, Regional Detention, and Central California Women’s Facility. The Self, the essence that makes us human, cannot be locked away. It is in every breath, every body, every being.

Your support keeps these circles alive. Each offering sustains practice in places where it is most needed, where dignity and connection are too often denied.

🔗 in bio for information and donations ❤️

.lorenzo__

08/08/2025

Incarcerated bodies hold stories of survival.
Inside our correctional facilities, chronic stress, unresolved trauma, and the absence of restorative spaces erode both body and mind. Research shows that yoga and meditation reduce cortisol levels, improve emotional regulation, and build resilience in those navigating extreme confinement. When paired with sound practices such as Himalayan singing bowls, whose vibrational frequencies stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, participants experience nervous system recalibration, better sleep, and reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Prison Yoga + Meditation brings this work to incarcerated people across Southern and Central California. Every mat, every mindful breath, every resonance of the singing bowl becomes an act of reclamation, helping participants release stored tension and remember their humanity.

Your donation funds mats, bolsters, sound instruments, and teacher travel to facilities where these resources do not exist. The impact is immediate, evidence based, and transformative for those inside and for the communities they will rejoin.

📿 Give today and stand with us in restoring dignity, health, and hope behind bars.

07/31/2025

🎶Sound behind bars is not silence. It is survival.🎶

At PY+M, we bring sound medicine into incarceration facilities across Southern and Central California—not as performance, but as practice. Gongs, singing bowls, and guided mantra become subtle, powerful tools for nervous system regulation, trauma resolution, and reclaiming inner space.

The Mandukya Upanishad reminds us: “Om is the bow, the Self is the arrow, and Brahman is the target.”
In environments of surveillance and suppression, even a single vibration of Om becomes an act of liberation.

Nāda Yoga teaches that ❤️anahata nada❤️the unstruck sound❤️is always present, waiting to be heard within. In spaces where touch is restricted and freedom denied, sound becomes touch. It becomes breath. It becomes memory. It becomes hope.

Your donations help us continue bringing these sacred tools to those too often forgotten. Every dollar supports the work of trained teachers offering restorative, evidence-based yoga and sound practices behind walls most will never see.

Let the healing resound. Support Prison Yoga + Meditation today.

www.prisonyogaandmeditation.org

07/12/2025

Father Greg Boyle from said something along the lines of standing with demonized, marginalized communities in order to erase the margins. Here we believe this.

At Prison Yoga + Meditation, we believe in this deeply.

Yoga isn’t just movement. It’s a radical act of belonging. In a world that punishes, isolates, and forgets the incarcerated, we bring breath, stillness, and humanity to the mat behind bars.

We don’t come to fix anyone. We come to hold space for what’s already whole. Transformation doesn’t come from the outside in…it begins with the practitioner. With one breath, one practice, one moment of remembering their worth.

The margins disappear not through charity, but through connection, shared presence, through showing up, again and again.

Yoga reforms. Yoga heals. And we believe that practice, commitment, and compassion we can facilitate the beginning of real change.

01/21/2025

This weekend, the Prison Yoga + Meditation team led a 5-hour Transformative Healing Workshop at the California Institution for Women, welcoming 44 women into a space of healing and connection.   The workshop emphasized the mind-body connection, creating moments of peace and self-awareness. One woman shared it was the best experience in her 11 years of incarceration; another echoed this after 15 years. Their gratitude and openness deeply reminded us of the transformative power of yoga. 
A defining element of this workshop was the introduction of yoga blankets. The comfort and grounding these simple props provided illuminated the deep need for even basic tools of healing in prison settings.  
Through mindfulness, movement, and shared humanity, we’re offering more than yoga—we’re fostering resilience, self-compassion, and the possibility of renewal. It’s an honor to witness the profound impact of these practices in such a challenging environment. 💜 

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Los Angeles, CA

Website

http://www.prisonyogaandmeditation.com/

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