Spotlight on PYP UK | Prison Yoga Project Global Programs

Prison Yoga Project offers a Restorative Justice practice that focuses on recovery from trauma, development of resilience, and cultivation of empathy, compassion, and personal responsibility. Our evidence-supported, trauma-informed approach to yoga and mindfulness supports people in facing and releasing unresolved trauma safely and effectively.

PYP was founded by James Fox at San Quentin Prison where he and his associate instructors have been teaching trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness classes to incarcerated people around the world since 2002.

Meet the Director:

PYP UK

PYP UK has been growing organically since 2017, when James offered his first facilitator training in London. Three trainings later, we have a wonderful collective of facilitators and a growing number of prisons in which they are offering programming.

Additionally, we have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), through which we have been training prison staff in PYP’s methodology of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness. We have also been serving as the base for the printing and distribution of PYP’s books throughout Europe. Prison Yoga Project UK became a registered charity in 2023.

Highlights

After six years of determined growth, we received status as a registered UK charity in 2023.
We’ve cultivated a wonderful relationship with His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), through which we hope to eventually train staff from every UK prison in PYP’s methodology of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness.
We’ve received regular invitations to contribute to Michael Dooley’s conferences, “Creating Harmony Within the Community and Creating Health and Harmony in the Prison Community.”
Since 2018 we’ve served as a member of the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Yoga in Society,” presenting in the Houses of Parliament and consulting on the group’s publications.

Through these Yoga sessions, I feel brand-new.

Resident

at HMP Leicester

It’s time we emphasize healing over punishment

Our mission goes beyond rehabilitation. We advocate for a transformative shift in our culture, from punitive judgment to healing-centered approaches. By investing in healing over punishment, we strive to change society’s perspective on the root causes of harm, addressing issues at their source and breaking the cycles that perpetuate suffering.