Presenter

Ann Moxey

Parinaama Yoga Teacher Training in Mexican Prisons

Parinaama Yoga is the yoga for stress, attachments and addictions. It consists of a holistic complementary therapy and was developed for Drug Dependency Disorder and Prevention. Also known as Yoga for Freedom, Parinaama uses resources from the eight limbs of yoga as well as emotion management from Cognitive, Behavioural, Humanistic and Body Mind Psychology. The Parinaama Foundation objectives are: 1. to take Hatha Yoga behind bars as a tool for stress management and drug abuse prevention. 2. To offer 200 hour Teacher Training for teachers either still in detention or on the outside. The main achievements of the Parinaama Foundation are to have put together and managed to sustain for over 14 years a group of teachers from a wide variety of yoga schools who give their time and resources giving classes inside the jails of Atlacholoaya, Morelos without any kind of pay. Some of them had to spend six hours of their time travelling. 2. Apart from the incalculable effects this work has had on a multitude of lives, it has also been an inspiration for other teachers to copy the idea not only in the majority of the Mexican States but abroad, in Argentina and Uruguay. 3. Having offered the first ever Yoga Teacher Training behind bars. The inmates who took this training and are now free are the teachers who are helping the foundation giving classes inside both the prisons, in juvenile detention centers in Mexico City, in high risk neighbourhoods in Cuernavaca. They have made yoga part of their life style. 4. The 200 hour Parinaama Teacher Training has been offered in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Monterrey, as well as in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata in Argentina. 5. Parinaama Yoga was selected as one of the ten most interesting independent projects in the country by the BiCentenary Atlas de Innovacion Ciudadana and was the subject of a documentary financed by the UNAM.