BY FRAN SMITH
Judge Eleni Derke cuts an imposing figure, shrouded in her black robe and seated behind the elevated wood-paneled bench in the county courthouse in Jacksonville, Florida. From the jury box and lawyers’ tables, you can’t see what else she’s wearing: wildly patterned yoga pants.
More than 25 years ago, Derke discovered yoga. She was suffering from the searing abdominal pain of Crohn’s disease. Her doctor recommended surgery. Hoping to avoid it, she went to see a cousin who was a yoga master. He taught her the upside-down poses known as inversions. They are said to clear the body of toxins, though there’s no scientific evidence to support the claim. Derke’s symptoms quickly subsided. “Yoga saved my life.”
In the West, yoga often focuses on the asanas, or postures, of hatha yoga, one of its many branches. In India, where the discipline began more than 4,000 years ago, followers of Krishna perform bhakti, or devotional, yoga, by moving 108 stones the length of their body during repeated prostrations on a 13-mile circuit of Govardhan Hill.
She trained as a yoga instructor, and if it’s not too hot, she holds free monthly classes on the courthouse lawn. When lawyers drone on at trial, she will order a break and lead jurors in standing stretches and breathing exercises. But she’s best known in legal circles as the judge who sentences offenders to take yoga behind bars.
Derke handles misdemeanors, such as shoplifting, minor drug possession, and driving under the influence, punishable by up to a year in jail. Offenders can cut their time by 40 percent or more if they take a weekly program called Yoga 4 Change. She sees yoga as a way to quiet self-defeating chatter in the mind and quell rage, fear, anguish, and compulsions that drive bad behavior.
“Once you let go,” she said, “you make room for the positive things.” Her colleagues, though, didn’t buy it at first. “Come on, yoga?”
Followers of the late Yogi Bhajan, a spiritual leader who brought kundalini yoga to the West from India, chant and walk with their eyes closed at an annual summer solstice celebration in the Jemez Mountains near Española, New Mexico.
Many offenders had a similar reaction. “I thought it was really weird,” said Cecil Reddick, an inmate at Jacksonville’s Montgomery Correctional Center.
An evaluation of the program in three Jacksonville facilities found that after six weeks, participants reported significant improvements in sleep, overall health, and the ability to manage anger and anxiety. At least two more county judges now offer the yoga option.
Some offenders choose to do their full sentence rather than try yoga, but Reddick grabbed the get-out-of-jail-quick offer from one of Derke’s colleagues. He was surprised by how much the classes relaxed him, soothed his sore back, and stirred a sensation he’d never felt: “Serenity.”
Yoga, a spiritual practice that began in India, has extended its limbs widely. In the United States, it’s held up as a fitness regimen, a path to transformation or enlightenment, and a treatment for so much that ails us—from addiction, headaches, and hearing loss to post-traumatic stress disorder, heart disease, and yes, Crohn’s.
In a state prison near San Diego, California, Patrick Acuña rests in Savasana, a deep relaxation position, with Zeus, a service dog he’s training, during a class sponsored by the nonprofit Prison Yoga Project. Acuña has practiced yoga behind bars for more than 20 years.
More than 14 percent of U.S. adults used yoga for health reasons in 2017, up from 9.5 percent five years earlier, a government survey found. Since 2018, Harvard Medical School students have studied it as part of a required course on building resilience. Parents tote infants to Itsy Bitsy Yoga, which purports to improve a baby’s sleep, digestion, and brain development.
Validating health claims for yoga is difficult. Most studies involve too few participants to be conclusive, in large part because yoga does not generally attract big government grants or have an industry like drugmakers to finance research.
Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, a yoga instructor, Harvard neuroscientist, and expert on the science of yoga, acknowledges the research has a long way to go. “But I would say we have demonstrated our credibility.” Khalsa has investigated yoga for insomnia, PTSD, anxiety, and chronic stress, where he’s seen the most compelling evidence of yoga’s benefits.
Stress plays a major role in many illnesses that kill us. It also drives unhealthy eating, poor sleep, alcohol and drug misuse, and other bad habits. “Modern medicine really sucks at preventing chronic disease,” he said.
Khalsa, who took up kundalini yoga in 1971, told me with excitement that epigenetics and neuroimaging are revealing how the body and brain interact—and unraveling the mysteries of yoga’s power. In other words, the benefits aren’t just in a devotee’s mind.
Researchers in Norway analyzed blood from 10 volunteers before and after two-hour sessions of a yoga practice with rhythmic breathing and saw significantly increased gene activity in circulating immune cells. Scientists at UCLA studying breast cancer survivors discovered yoga decreased the expression of genes involved in inflammation, believed to be a root of many complex diseases.
Sri Dharma Mittra practices asanas with aspiring teachers at his studio in New York City. Born in Brazil, he served in the country’s air force and ran a bodybuilding gym before leaving to study yoga in the U.S. more than 50 years ago. He’s devised his own approach to yoga.
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