Abstract
Drawing on a qualitative research conducted in Catalan prisons, this chapter explores what role holistic spiritualities such as yoga, Reiki and meditation activities play in contemporary Spanish prisons. These practices located at the limit of the secular are increasingly present in prisons. In this regard, the chapter particularly examines the success of such holistic activities—understanding “success” to mean the non-problematisation, acceptance and rapid diffusion of such ideas and practices—in the penitentiary context. We argue that holistic activities and therapies become symbolic resources through which inmates can make sense of their uncertain situation in prison and (re)construct their self-image while also working as a “peace-making mechanism” that fits in with the institutional order. Prison staff—specifically social workers—plays a crucial role as carriers, in the Weberian sense of the term, of the ideas and values that underlie holistic activities.
For me yoga is one of the things that everyone should try in their life before dying. No one should miss out on the feeling of this connection that you have with yourself, because you work in a mental, physical and spiritual way. Yoga opens a door towards your inner self by moving away from the material and everything that is external. (Inmate)
I want to show them [inmates] their potential as human beings so that they can construct their own reality. (Social worker)
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Notes
- 1.
The Project entitled “GEDIVER-IN: The governance of religious diversity in prisons and hospitals in Spain” was funded by the Spanish National Research Program (2010–2014), reference number CSO2010-21248.
- 2.
- 3.
In this second phase, the research was funded by a grant from the Juridical Studies Center of the Catalan government and done in collaboration with Marta Puig, a criminologist and also a yoga teacher.
- 4.
All the names used in this paper have been changed in order to protect and respect the anonymity of the informants.
- 5.
A flow is defined as a process “[…] in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. We experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present and future” (Csikszentmihalyi 1975: 43). The specific differences between flow, finite provinces of meaning and religious experiences are interestingly addressed by Spickard and Neitz (1990) and also by Bloch (2000).
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Authors’ translation.
- 7.
Authors’ translation.
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Griera, M., Clot-Garrell, A. (2015). Doing Yoga Behind Bars: A Sociological Study of the Growth of Holistic Spirituality in Penitentiary Institutions. In: Becci, I., Roy, O. (eds) Religious Diversity in European Prisons. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16778-7_9
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