By Amanda Waldroupe
Staff Writer
Twenty four women gather at seven in the evening each Thursday in what could be an elementary school classroom: there is a white board on one wall, file cabinets and posters listing career and life skill goals, along with facial expressions to describe different emotions.
The women are dressed in red shorts and blue T-shirts. The only differences are their apparel are the shoes they are wearing and hair accessories. Team uniforms of sorts, but the emblem on the back of each T-shirt tells a guest otherwise: The seal of the Oregon Department of Corrections, with the word “INMATE” in large, capital letters at its base.
The women are inmates of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, the only one of Oregon’s 12 prisons that is exclusively for female inmates.
The classroom these 24 women are in is within Coffee Creek’s minimum security facility, in a building adjacent to the prison yard where dozens of other women, in the same red shorts and blue T-shirts, are walking, running, playing pickle ball or simply hanging out in the hot evening sun and conversing with their fellow inmates.
These 24 women, however, are seeking a reprieve from the noise and crowd that evening.
They are waiting for their yoga class to begin.
The lights have been turned out, with the exception of one: a garishly bright fluorescent emergency light near the door. Light streams in from a long, rectangular window in the back.
The women chat to each other and laugh as they roll out yoga mats over drab green carpet. They are all seated in cross-legged positions.
Laurie, their yoga instructor that evening, calls the class to attention. (Laurie has asked that only her first name be used for this article.)
“I always like to begin with seated meditation,” Laurie tells the class. “You can sit on your block if you want to. Find some place that is comfortable. Let your hips be heavy in the mat.”
As Laurie talks, the women adjust themselves. Everyone is seated facing forward in similar cross-legged positions, sitting as straight and tall as they can. The only movement is the gentle rising and falling of their chests as they breathe.
“Relax your shoulders,” Laurie continues. Her eyes are closed, and her hands rest on her knees. “And let a little quiet come into your heart. Let go of where you came from today or where you want to be, and let yourself be.”
“Let the quiet settle over you.”
These inmates do not often have the opportunity to have a quiet moment to themselves. “Prison is a very noisy place,” Laurie says. “Yoga can be a sanctuary for them.”
The only sounds in the classroom as the women continue meditating are the quiet rustles of breathing. But they have not completely escaped noise. The walls seep with noise from countless other rooms.
Karen Baker, 51, sits in the back of the classroom with her friend Isis Harris, 33. She says she’s aware of the noises around her before she is even completely conscious at five every morning. “I can hear at least 20 women breathing,” she says. “There are doors opening, toilets flushing. The sounds of living with many women.”
Twice-weekly yoga classes have become a retreat for Baker, Harris, and the rest of the women from the noise, chaos and constant stress of prison life.
It is taught by volunteers through the Portland-based organization Living Yoga, a non-profit providing yoga classes to prison inmates, people in drug and alcohol treatment, and other disadvantaged and vulnerable people who normally would not have access to yoga classes.
The class is one of a variety of life skills classes Coffee Creek offers to help inmates successfully re-enter society when they are released. Prison staff say the classes also keep inmates’ time structured and decrease the possibility of rioting.
The women taking yoga are not stereotypes. The women at Coffee Creek have strong spirits, are determined to improve their lives, and are even cheerful. They look forward to the day they are released, the day they will begin to live the better lives they are trying to prepare themselves for in prison. Many of them credit yoga for their personal transformation, and say it has completely changed the way they think about themselves, other people around them, and the world they live in. It’s profoundly changed their lives and given them hope that their lives after prison will be different and better than the ones they led before they entered.
Baker and Harris have both experienced intense emotional transformation as a result of doing yoga, beginning with the fundamentally simple fact that they have become friends. In any other circumstance, they might not be: Baker is 51 years old, and Harris is 33. Baker is white, and Harris is African American. Baker was a physical therapist before entering prison, and Baker worked in administrative jobs.
Baker is at least a head taller than Harris, and easily the tallest person in the yoga class, and her shoulders, though thin, are straight and broad. Baker’s long, curly hair is pulled back in a ponytail. The identification badge she wears shows that her hair was light red when she first came to Coffee Creek. Now what hair has not already turned white is graying.
She looks directly at the people with whom she speaks. Harris, the more quiet of the two, is more likely to look at the ceiling as she speaks or when she is trying to form a thought. Both of them have eight months left before their release. Baker describes their sentences as “doing Measure 11 time,” referring to the mandatory, minimum-sentencing law for violent person-to-person crimes that Oregonians passed in 1994.
Baker is serving an eight-year sentence for killing two people in a car accident while she was under the influence of alcohol. Harris is serving a six-year sentence for assault.
“I went through a real process here,” Harris says, laughing. “The first two, three years were rough. I was focused too much outside of myself.”
Six months ago, Harris missed two yoga classes. Coffee Creek has a rule that inmates are kicked out of yoga class for a period of time if they miss two classes. Harris had to rejoin the wait list, which has as many as 50 inmates on it, before she rejoined. “This time,” she says, “I’m steadfast.”
Harris says the classes she has taken for the last five years helped her become more calm, introspective, and gain a better, more compassionate understanding of herself and others. She has also lost 12 pounds and gotten off anti-depressants.
“It helps center you to feel more like you,” Harris explains. “When I leave yoga, I feel good. You feel reinvigorated after the fact. You feel looser in your body. I’m inside my whole body versus living in my head.”
“That is so cool,” Baker says.
Baker joined the yoga class after being in prison for two weeks. That was six years ago. “It didn’t take me long to realize how granite hard these floors are,” she says, and the effects that would have on her body.
Baker says her lifestyle prior to entering prison was “super active” and describes herself as an “adrenaline junkie.” At first, taking yoga was simply about competing with herself. “I wanted to strike those poses,” she says.
But slowly, she says, she stopped worrying about trying to prove something to herself and others about her physical abilities. “Now I’m working into ease,” she says.
She practices yoga every day. “It’s become a way of life for me. Every time I step off the mat, I’m not even the same person exactly,” she says, because she feels herself changing and growing after each practice.
Harris says that yoga has helped her become more introspective and understand what type of person she is. “I’m grateful for the experience of getting to know me better,” Harris says.
“It gives you the opportunity to connect your mind and your body,” Laurie says. “Often, we live in one or the other.”
Living Yoga was founded in 1998 with the intention of providing free yoga classes to marginalized and vulnerable populations of people who otherwise do not have access to yoga. The organization relies on 70 volunteers, including Laurie who has volunteered at Coffee Creek since August.
The organization believes that yoga can help its students successfully recover from addiction and re-enter society when their prisons terms end.
Yoga, in particular, can help inmates deal with the stress of living in a prison environment.
“Prison is a place where there is constant boredom and constant noise. It’s hard to find peace,” says Randy Blazak, an associate professor of sociology at Portland State University.
Baker says the peaceful mindset yoga gives her helps breaks up the monotony of meals, sitting on beds to be counted, working, and going to bed at the same time every evening.
“They need every tool available to them to keep in touch with themselves,” Laurie says.
Aside from taking yoga, Baker and Harris have used their prison terms to better themselves. It seems an odd thing to say about an institution that punishes and sequesters people from society. But both Baker and Harris feel more confident about themselves and their future because of skills they have acquired while in prison.
Baker learned hair design, and Harris took a class giving her experience in optometry. Each inmate spends eight hours each day working, and Baker works outside in the gardens surrounding the minimum-security facility. Harris works in what is called the “resource room,” helping women with their resumes and other job-related tasks.
“Being in a prison should be all about growth,” Harris thinks. It is an inmate’s only chance to reinvent their self before release into a world potentially made up of the same habits and lifestyle that led to prison. In her own life, Harris has been “more future forward.” She gives yoga a lot of the credit.
“You have to create your own prison experience,” Baker says.
“Ninety-five to ninety-seven percent of inmates are released back into the community at some point,” Blaszak says. “We have to think about what type of people we want to come back into our communities.”
Harris says being in a prison can be a punishing experience if you let. “There are a lot of people who are lost,” she says. “They haven’t found direction yet.”
“There’s a hell of a lot of depression in here,” Baker says, agreeing.
After meditating for a few minutes, Laurie leads the class in a series of yoga postures collective called a “Sun Salutation.” She demonstrates the “Cat-Cow” posture on her mat at the front of the class: keeping hands shoulder distance apart and knees beneath the hips in a “table top” position, Laurie alternates between arching her back in a “cat position” and sinking it towards the floor in a “cow position.”
“Stay here for a few breaths,” Laurie instructs.
One posture involves doing a push up. One woman pushes herself up too quickly, and Laurie stops the class to teach a “proper” push up. “Go for the straightness,” she says, slowly lowering her body to the floor.
The women do an exercise for their stomach muscles halfway through the class. Laurie tells them to lift their feet and upper parts of their body into a V-shape. Their arms stick straight out in front of them.
Everyone tries to hold the pose. Some wobble, and there are quiet gasps for air or moans as one or two women fall down to the floor, and then try the pose again.
Baker and Harris hardly flinch next to each other. “I appreciate the solitude of it,” Harris says of yoga. “It’s peaceful for me, even though it’s not easy.”
As peaceful as yoga is, it requires a lot of movement that uses the flexibility and strength of a person’s entire body. For the next pose, the women find themselves lying down on their mats again to stretch out their hamstrings, the tendon behind the knee. They raise one leg at a time off the floor and toward the ceiling, grabbing their leg at the back of the knee with both hands.
“It’s not working for me,” one woman says. She sits in a cross-legged position and looks around her. After another brief moment, she lies down and tries the stretch again.
“All it takes is perseverance and doing it a little bit every day,” Laurie says.
The last pose of the class is also the most peaceful and easy to do. It is called “Savasana,” which translates to “corpse pose.” Everyone lies down on their mats, facing upward. Their feet are slightly apart from one another. The palms of their hands face upward, or touch the mat, or are simply relaxed next to their body.”
“You have seven minutes to relax into your Savasana,” Laurie says quietly. “Release the muscles in your face, relax your shoulders, relax the muscles in your hands and fingers.”
“Feel your heart beating in your chest.”
Loud applause from the next room breaks the silence.
“Bring your thoughts around to your true self,” Laurie says, almost murmuring now. “Connect with that beauty.”
Everyone’s eyes are closed. The room is completely still.
Laurie twists around to a small black stereo she has brought, and a soft, chant begins to play. Laurie reads aloud a passage attributed to Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and the class ends.
Baker, Harris, and the rest of the women wear broad smiles as they roll up their mats and put their shoes and socks back on. The laughter and talking is more natural and relaxed than before class.
After stacking the mats onto a cart outside the classroom, the women disperse down the hallway or outside to the prison yard.