Yoga and Meditation

Summary

The chapter discusses the significance of yoga and meditation in prisons, highlighting both their potential dangers and benefits. It emphasizes that while there are risks of these practices being co-opted by oppressive systems, they also offer opportunities for individual empowerment and critical engagement. The text explores how newer, activist forms of yoga and meditation can foster self-cultivation that challenges existing power structures.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter speaks to the theoretical concerns that animate this project. It addresses a number of debates—both historical and contemporary—that set the stage for what follows in the rest of this book. It shows us why we should care about yoga and meditation in prisons, walking the reader through the broad sweep of commentaries that reveal the darker, more insidious possibilities that lurk within yogic and meditative practices, particularly when they are taught to those routinely targeted by unequal or oppressive forms of power. Here, we find that the dangers of co-optation are very real; but so are the emancipatory possibilities. The chapter points to the emergence of newer, more activist versions of yoga and meditation, which produce a kind of individual self-cultivation that is thoughtfully critical and politically challenging.