Yoga practice with prisoners| Brian Bergman |TEDx Westerford High School, Cape Town

Meet a man who goes to jail every week ... but not for reasons you'd expect. For the past three years Cape Town yogi Brian Bergman has been visiting Pollsmoor, a high-security penitentiary, to give yoga lessons to the most hardened of inmates.

Founder of SevaUnite Prison Freedom Project, Brian speaks with optimism and passion about the value and potential of yoga as a rehabilitation tool and encourages us to view prisoners differently; to see them as having the potential to emit great light despite the dark place they currently inhabit.

He is passionate about the potential for personal growth that selfless service offers and the uplifting effects it has on society.

Intro animation by Luke Bell
Intro music by Al Bairre

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I've been given the opportunity
to speak about a project

that I got involved in
and spearheaded to -

well, as my way of helping.

The organisation that I work for
is called SevaUnite,

and what we try to do is inspire people

to get involved in doing
some kind of selfless service,

based on whatever it is
that you feel you want to do.

The reason that we do this

is we are trying to get people
to see selfless service

not only as something
where I'm going out and doing good

but as a means to transform myself.

I'm sure you've all tried,
and you've gone out, and you've helped,

and you see the beautiful synergy
that happens with helping others

is that you help yourself.

You feel good by helping someone else,
and there is a process involved in that.

I'm going to talk a little bit
about what I do,

and I really love this project.

This is really -

My Wednesday morning

is one of the most rewarding
and most purposeful times of my week.

I can be in the most horrendous
states of mind, and I go in there,

and I feel so good.

Let me tell you what we do.

We work at Pollsmoor Maximum Prison,

on a Wednesday morning,
me and another teacher,

we pull the car into the gate,
there's the booms, there's security there,

there are wardens everywhere,
and this is what happens.

The guard at the gate does this,
pushes the button, the boom comes up

and in we go, and they're just screaming,
'Yoga guys! Yoga guys! Come in, come in!'

We've never been searched.

We could pretty much take
anything we wanted in there, but -

(Laughter)

I'm not encouraging that,
and we certainly don't.

The first port of call -

because we teach three classes there
on a Wednesday morning -

the first port of call
is the admission centre.

Then we go to the male juvenile section
and the pre-release section,

but I'm going to talk
about the admission centre;

there's no time
to talk about everything -

as much as I would love to.

The admission centre at Pollsmore prison

is a centre where guys come
when they've committed a crime.

They are arrested,
and they get taken to this place,

which is kind of like the place they wait
until they are charged or sentenced,

or given off.

So they're not sentenced guys,
they just go there,

and there are currently 7,000
to 8,000 of them in this little building,

which was built for 4,000,
many, many years ago.

It is overcrowded, obviously.

The inmates, because of the short staff
situation in the department,

are locked up 22 to 23 hours a day,

overcrowded cells,
and amongst fellow criminals.

So you can imagine,

in terms of rehabilitating someone
or even giving them a chance -

I might mention that there's
only one social worker in this place,

for 7,000 inmates -

there's very little chance
of any kind of rehabilitation going on.

They are kind of sitting
locked up, cooped up,

in a situation where their bodies
are getting stiff and so uncomfortable.

You can imagine what not feeling good
in your body does to your mind,

which is already
having its own difficulty.

This is why we have situations

where 63% of the guys released from prison
re-offend within 24 hours.

80% of them are back
in jail within two months.

So these figures are crazy,
prisons aren't working.

Clearly not.

So this where I get
really excited about yoga

because it has been proven
to have incredible potential

in the rehabilitation of an inmate,

and studies have shown that it
also reduces re-incarceration rate.

Guys that start to practise yoga
while they're in there,

it starts to really wake them up
to something in themselves,

and I know that feeling
because it woke me up.

I've been doing yoga for 14 years.
I'm kind of very passionate about that.

In the admission centre,
we walk into our class,

and our class can be anything
between 10 and 35 prisoners,

or inmates, let's call them.

And we're greeted with a lot of attitude,

the guys are rough,
many haven't done yoga before.

These guys were obviously
not really exposed to it,

and there's all the attitude,
all the toughness that you'd expect,

because they've got to keep
a certain toughness about them,

because weakness in a prison
gets picked on, etc., etc.

You don't ever want to end up in there.

Don't do crime, but -

(Laughter)

That is the side message.

We start our yoga class with these guys,

and we teach them postures, yoga postures.

They're simple exercises
that move the body, stretch the body,

and begin just to wake up the body a bit,

begin to work out the tightness and
the stiffness in the backs of the bodies.

So the body begins to feel better,

and it starts to improve
in terms of how it's functioning.

The minute that happens,
already there's a bit of relaxation,

a little bit of let go
of tension in the body.

That starts to affect the mind,

it starts to affect
the feelings and emotions.

We also teach a little bit
of breathing practices.

Breathing practice
is the most simple thing

to relax the mind,
to calm and balance the body.

Simple stuff: watch your breath go
in and out, in and out, for ten minutes.

You'll be in a completely
different state of mind.

Then we teach them a bit of meditation,
something that helps them go in

and look at what is going on inside
this incredibly mysterious being

which is a human.

Obviously, they get a lot
of deep insight in that.

They start to see their negativity,

they start to see
their emotions, their anger,

they start to see and contemplate
the things that they've done

and their actions and
the repercussions of their actions.

And we always end
with the relaxation practice,

which leaves more than
half the class asleep by the end.

The guys' faces are visibly softened,

the attitude in the room
is completely different,

it becomes very peaceful, very calm.

And then my favorite part -
chatting to the guys afterwards.

Because they come and share
the most beautiful stories with me.

This, to me, makes it really worthwhile

because I'm there,
largely for myself, to connect,

to learn how to connect
to another human being.

Beyond the role of I am a yoga teacher,
or I am a privileged person,

and you are a criminal,
or my yoga student,

or someone that I'm the helper,
and you need my help.

Move beyond those roles completely.

I am a human being,
you are a human being: let's meet.

And when we meet there,

when you open yourself up to the potential
where you go beyond the roles -

magic.

Magic, and really amazing stuff comes out,

and the guys share really, really
incredible stuff with me.

One inmate that I write to
quite regularly called John,

he writes to me in his letters -

Sometimes when I have
a really horrendous day,

I read one of his letters,
and I'm uplifted

by the inspiration of him
getting off his yoga practice.

At the end of the class
we hand out yoga manuals.

We try to keep the practices
very, very simple

because you don't need
a lot of space to do yoga.

It's not weird or esoteric,

it very practical,
very scientifically proven stuff.

Simple, simple techniques.

So we give them a manual
full of these little things they can do

in an area the size of this little carpet.

And that can make radical
transformation to how they feel

and the time that they're using
inside the prison.

And a lot of these guys
are sentenced off to Malmesbury prison,

to Brandvlei Max,
to Helderstroom, Aliwal North,

and the guys continue
their practice, from this manual,

they write to us, we write back to them,

we inspire them, they inspire us.

They start their own groups.

Then suddenly, other guys
are writing to us,

"Please, can I also have
one of those manuals.

I want to practice."

So we had a Rastafarian
group of brothers in Aliwal North

start a yoga group,
they meet on their Sabbath,

and before they do their prayers,
they sit down, do some stretches,

a bit of breathing, meditate,
and then they do their Rasta prayers.

At Brandvlei North we had
a warden phone us and say,

"What are you teaching these guys?
Something has changed!"

I was like, "What is going on?"

because I was aware of some guys
who were writing to me.

These guys get up in their cells at 4 AM
to do two hours of yoga practice,

ten of them.

So they started their own yoga group,

and this is how it's beginning
to spread, from Pollsmoor out,

which we are very excited about.

Because we know that the yoga works.

And this was our contribution
in terms of how I felt I could help.

It was my skill base,
what I had an affinity towards,

but what I want to talk a bit more about
in my last two or three minutes here is:

how can you help?

Because you don't have to be
a yoga teacher,

and you don't have to do
something as crazy, maybe,

as going to Pollsmoor prison
and teaching yoga to prisoners.

The trick with this game is
to find what you feel inside you

is something that needs
to happen in this world,

and if you feel that's coming from you,
it's probably what you need to do

or need to look at doing.

So you have to ask yourself
the question: how can I help?

Then let the answer unfold,
don't try to find the answer,

don't ask people, feel it inside yourself,

because the path of service -
as a path to getting to know yourself -

is a path that will take you
through lots of different challenges,

and lots of different experiences
as you begin to push out and go -

maybe it's that, maybe it's that.

But that way you are empowering yourself

because you're motivating yourself
and looking for the answers within.

And what you'll discover there

is that you have this incredible
intelligence within your own body,

within your own heart, that's guiding you.

And that is called our intuition.

If you can learn to trust and listen
to that little voice inside you

and follow that -

and you've heard it
in all the talks this morning

because the message is the same -

if you follow that,

you might not always get
what you want in your life,

but you'll get what you need.

And what you need will be the thing
that helps you grow and expand

and to discover -

beyond becoming something,
beyond being in school, learner,

or then, I'm going to university
to study this, this, and this,

beyond these roles and these labels -

we miss the biggest gift.

And that is the fact
that we are human beings.

And for some reason,
and I still don't understand why,

we are not educated that way.

You know, to ask ourselves:

What does it actually mean to be human?
To be a human being?

As I've sort of discovered, well,
as I've discovered,

the more I've discovered,

the less I actually know
what it means to be a human being,

but it's becoming
a greater and greater mystery.

And that mistery is exciting,

and exploring that mystery
of being a human

really is a path that will bring you
to a place where you will discover ...

freedom.

Which is to say it doesn't matter
what your circumstances are in life,

where you are in life,

whether you are behind bars
or whether you are out here,

you will be free ...

to be a human being.

And that's really
something worth exploring.

So, just to end,

a very quick "Start practice,"
if you want to explore the path of service

in terms of exploring what it is to be me,

spend this week, one day a week,
go through your family members,

and without telling them
you're doing that,

find one thing that you can do
to help someone else have a better day,

something that can help your dad
have a better day, your mum, your sister,

and reflect at the end of the week
how you feel about that.

What has it made feel you like,
and what have you learned through that?

And then see, well,
if that's taught you something,

just begin to extend your family.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)