E-Books →Freedom Inside Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

Free Download Farah Godrej, "Freedom Inside?: Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State"
English | ISBN: 0190070099 | 2022 | 368 pages | EPUB, PDF | 2 MB + 22 MB
An estimated forty million people in the United States regularly practice yoga, and as an industry it generates over nine billion dollars annually. A major reason for its popularity is its promise of mental and physical well-being: yoga and meditation are thought to be spiritual paths to self-improvement. Yoga is also widely practiced in prisons, another large business in the United States. Prisons in all fifty states offer yoga and meditation as a form of rehabilitation. But critics argue that such practices can also have disempowering effects, due to their emphasis on acceptance, non-judgment, and non-reaction. If the root of suffering is in the mind, as the philosophy behind yoga and meditation suggests, then injustice (including mass incarceration) may be reduced to a mental state requiring coping techniques rather than a more critical mindset. Others insist that yoga can heighten people's attention to structural violence, hierarchy, racism, and inequity. In fact, some of history's most radical activists, including M.K. Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, traced their ethical and political commitments to their grounding in yogic or meditative traditions.