RALEIGH, N.C. –

Every Sunday around 1 p.m., Dr. Steven Landau invites inmates at Wake Correctional Center to his yoga class.

“Learn how to be happy here in the present and even happier when you get out,” he says over the loudspeaker.

Louis Allen, a Durham man who is in prison for the third time, walks in.

“At first I was real hesitant because I thought it was a girl thing. And I didn’t want that reputation being in the prison system,” Allen said.

He has now been practicing yoga for about two years. He is also studying to become a yoga teacher.

He and other inmates say the class offers them a break from the anxiety of prison life.

“Being away from your family, being away from your friends, the anxiety of reentering society, the current situation right now in the world with the economy, the joblessness, all that plays a part in an individual who has a strike against him. So the anxiety tends to build,” said Wesley Moliere, an inmate who has attended the classes for about three months.

“You get a sense of calm and relaxation through it. And in a situation like this, calm and relaxation doesn’t come easy,” he added.

Dr. Landau says yoga accomplishes something that other prison programs don’t.

“The data shows, from other studies, that simply giving them the skills of reading, writing, arithmetic, air conditioning, GED, does not improve their recidivism rate. It does not improve the rate at which they come back. But shifting the personality does,” he said.

Landau did a study that shows that inmates who took his yoga class more than four times had an eight percent chance of returning to prison within two years. The inmates who attended less than four times had a 25 percent chance of going back to prison.

Louis Allen says the class has taught him to think before he acts.

“Once you learn to deal with your mental thoughts and control them better, it’s a lot easier in life. And as far as going out, I don’t think I’ll have no problem staying out this time,” he said.

That is Dr. Landau’s hope.

“To give people the opportunity of changing the mind so that they can exit back into society as a free person and actually be a free person,” he said.

Click here to read Dr. Landau’s study. Scroll down to “Prison Article html”

Source http://johnston.mync.com/site/Johnston/news/story/26720/prisoners-turn-to-yoga/