Style Weekly
Richmond's alternative for news, arts, culture and opinion
Robbie Norris
Member since May 26, 2011
Recent Comments
Re: “Sweat and Surrender”
Dorothea, you're such a sweetheart and I know you must be loving motherhood! I learned from you, too-- just as much, I'm sure. Hope we can get that group together for a reunion practice sometime soon! Robbie
Posted by
Robbie Norris
on 05/26/2011 at 1:27 PM
Other Publications
Re: “Sweat and Surrender”
Many thanks to Melissa Scott Sinclair and Scott Elmquist for their professionalism and their talented execution of this story. I also want to thank Laura Hughes, who taught the women of the city jail for a few months in 2009, Jennifer Miller, who subsequently taught the women for a whole year, half that time driving each week from 70 miles away, and Lynn Headley, who has been teaching the women for the last several months. My hope is that circulation of this article will encourage a few of the many yoga practitioners who have thought about teaching in jails/prisons, to go and do it -- just experiment. Inmates are fun to teach (there is plenty of personality in the room), and no special knowledge is needed, only patient persistence and the desire to share one's own transformative practice with the people who need it most. This yoga practice is incredibly helpful to me, and it is intrinsically rewarding to me every time I teach at the jail, to be able to impart such a beneficial practice for the future well-being of those inmates who take it up in earnest, as well as just to make 20 people who live in a "crab pot" feel immensely better in the moment. The practice is like taking an internal bath, deep scrub, physically and emotionally.