FAQ
What?
Yoga Pipeline endeavors to offer a daily yoga class to imprisoned women and girls. When detained class participants are released from prison/detention, they will be offered a full scholarship to a registered yoga school and learn to teach yoga. As a condition of accepting the scholarship, the newly trained teacher must agree to teach one class per week (for a period of 10 months) to the women who are still imprisoned. The new teacher will be paid for the classes that she teaches.
Where?
The program began in Charlotte, NC, and quickly launched in St. Louis, MO. Our hope is to make Yoga Pipeline a national model.
Who?
You! This project was developed to bring the entire community together, city by city, studio by studio, one by one. This is how we unify. Every studio that participates by either offering donation classes to our program and/or encouraging their teachers to participate, will receive a window cling for their studio front and logo for their website. Our goal is to have each teacher per city volunteer to teach a class no more than one day per month.
Why?
Women are now and have been the fastest rising demographic being incarcerated in America today. Studies now show that people who practiced yoga while they were in prison have a much lower rate of recidivism (relapse into criminal behavior) than those who did not practice yoga. And this program model is how we reverse the current pipeline and create a new one!
This work is messy and draining. It is also full of love and it is our dream. I won’t stop until every public school in St. Louis has a yoga program and BIWOC are no longer the fastest growing population being incarcerated.