Yoga Education in Prisons Trust - Help From Home 3

$8,670 of $10,000 goal

Given by 87 generous donors in 8 weeks

Our distance learning programme teaches yoga from the inside-out to help facilitate meaningful transformation for people in prison.

Nationwide

Help us teach freedom from the inside, literally. Our evidence supported, trauma-informed yoga study programme for people in Aotearoa’s prisons offers a year-long distance learning course for beginners through to peer-instructors. For many, this programme is a life-line of self-understanding, empathy, resilience and meaningful transformation.

Our mahi is an important piece in the rehabilitation process. Yoga education programs like ours are being used around the world in prisons, youth detention centers and rehabilitation centers, to help unravel the complex mix of anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction which many prisoners present with. We find that with the physical and mental tools yoga offers, paihere (people in prison) are better able to manage stress, regulate behaviour and begin to understand what’s possible beyond their offending.

Your donations enable us to continue to deliver our Kei roto i tuku kia haere : Freedom from Within course that currently has 240+ enrolments. Please support us in ensuring the sustainability of this programme, to tautoko more paihere in their quest for freedom from suffering, to heal a sense of despair, break harmful cycles, and build better futures, one breath, one body at a time.

“Yoga has shown me a new way of being. Not only am I physically stronger - I am spiritually stronger. Yoga is more than a philosophy, or a fitness programme - it is a way of being in this world. The pain of prison no longer has to be avoided at all cost. It can now be used, through my yoga practice, as a mechanism for personal growth.” ~ Tauira, Arohata prison.

Photo credit: Aisha Harley

*For this page, if you opt in to share your email/name with the charity, it will be shared with The Funding Network NZ and Yoga Education in Prisons Charitable Trust.

About us

We provide evidence-supported yoga education programmes to facilitate meaningful transformation for people in Aotearoa’s prisons. We also offer programmes to tautoko whānau and their communities.

Use of funds

The aim of YEPT is to provide education for prisoners and released prisoners and offenders in the practices and techniques of yoga and meditation with the purpose to enable personal transformation.

Other page links

Your generous tautoko 24 May 2021

“We have seen first hand how well this programme can work, it is also backed by research and hundreds of pieces of student feedback telling us how much this course has impacted prison life and brought positive change, how it improves relationships with others, and most importantly their relationship with themselves.

“You see most paihere have a history of complex, interpersonal trauma, and unless this unresolved trauma is addressed the tendency to re-offend will remain. After all, hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people.”

This quote was from the launch of our crowd-fund campaign and talks about the profound impact of investing in our students. $190 funds one paihere to complete our distance learning programme, and we’re SO humbled and thrilled to share that we raised $8,670. Ngā mihi to everyone who generously donated and shared our mahi, we don’t take your tautoko lightly, and we’re feeling a lot of aroha that will help us in immense ways as we continue to show up each week for our students.

The $8,670 raised will enable 45 more paihere to begin a journey of self-understanding, self-regulation and transformation. This will have a huge ripple effect, as cell mates teach cell mates (and it’s a big part of the later modules of our programme - we call it peer instruction), and inmates teach whānau and friends.

If you are particularly interested in our aroha mahi, we now have quite an active Instagram account @yogainprisons_nz - join us there for more sharings about how the investment you made is changing lives of those who’ve struggled, until now, to believe anything more is possible. Whāngaia ka tupu, ka puawai - that which is nurtured, blossoms and grows.

Ngā mihi nui, kia ora mai

From the Yoga in Prisons Trust team

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