Free spirits
by Ann Chadwick Published 10/1/2005


While most of us have been looking forward to 2005, is it the same for people in prison? For Guernsey prisoners feeling the strain, a new stress and anger-management course is now available. It claims to reduce aggression and even help addicts give up drugs through the simple art of breathing.



I’LL never look at a grape in the same way again.’
It’s not the epiphany I was expecting to hear from cannabis importer Jason Seale, but it’s certainly different.
It’s Saturday morning and a handful of prisoners are sitting cross-legged in a circle. Everyone, including me, has been handed a single green grape. ‘Hold it,’ teacher Julie Madeley instructs. ‘But don’t eat it. Roll it around, concentrate on the grape.’
After a few heartbeats, she tells us to put it in our mouths but not to eat it. It’s a slow process. Then we can bite, but not chew; feel the juices of the grape. And eventually, with some relief, we can eat it.
So what’s the idea? Julie explains that people tend to eat while doing something else: watching telly, listening to the radio, reading. ‘Our minds are on everything but the food. You can get to the end of a meal and not taste anything.’
Jason is on top form: ‘You haven’t tasted the food in here then? Best in Europe.’ He’s a big man with warm Lancashire humour.
Julie continues.
‘Good, Jason: appreciation is good. When we appreciate things, they get better. Life, appreciating what we have, is important. Where thought goes, energy flows, so if our thoughts are in the future, the past, on the TV, our energy is not focused on digesting the food. Any questions?’
Jason says he’ll have another grape if they’re going round.
We’re coming to the end of a two-hour session of yoga stretches and intensive breathing exercises escalating from slow, deep, relaxing breaths to short, sharp ones – all part of the 10-day Art of Living course designed to help prisoners cope with feelings of anger and stress.
Oxygen rushing to your brain like that can leave you feeling spaced-out and Jason is no exception. When the prisoners shuffled into the education room, he was full of enthusiasm. By the last session, he was flying.
PJ, a young lad who has a sweet
face but is clearly deflated by his world, hopes the course will work for him.
‘I want to get out of this prison for a day.’ By the end of the session, before our symbolic grape, the group is in a deep meditative state and yet conscious and alert. It’s odd.
Prison officer Nicola Durkin is also engrossed. She snores and then stops abruptly. She appears fast asleep but turns to her side when instructed by the teacher.
PJ said that in the final 10 minutes of the session, he was somewhere completely different. ‘I don’t know where I was, but I wasn’t here.’
While they were zoning out, it seemed the room filled with noises from the outside. A plane, children’s voices, birdsong. And then the jangle of a big bunch of keys.
It’s hard to know what it feels like to be in prison. ‘We’re in a cage,’ PJ said at one point. Apart from him and Jason, most of the others in the group are quiet.

Viren Lavingia is an experienced Art of Living teacher who specialises in working with prisoners and runs courses across Europe. He is in Guernsey to help Julie.
‘The culture of prisons is stressful and inmates don’t know how to release emotions,’ he explained. ‘Stress radiates around you and affects other people.’
And the predominant emotion, he said, is anger. ‘If you saw this group on the first day, they were totally different. Agitated, angry.’
The course aims to control aggression and Nicola confirmed that Jason had been transformed. Although told during a review the day before that he wouldn’t be getting the TV he wanted, he remained positive.
‘It wasn’t great news but he handled it well.’ It sounds like a miracle. But what did the inmates really think? I went along on the final evening of the course to find out.
‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ said Jason, explaining why he joined the Art of Living course. ‘There’s not much to do in prison and I thought I’d give it a go, though you have your doubts. But it’s helped me clear my mind.’
So for what was he hoping? ‘That it would relax me and help me deal with my circumstances and the trials of life. It’s definitely worked for me – I’m not the aggressive person I used to be. It lets out all the pains and frustrations and gives you a chance to look at things in a different light: tackle the problem from
a different angle rather then banging your head against the wall, getting nowhere.’
Jason, who is serving a nine-year sentence, is a convert. In the past he has eased his frustrations by smoking drugs but said that the course was a far better option.
‘It’s better then any medication you get from the doctor. You can use this all the time and you’re opening your heart and pumping all the toxins out. I got more from this than doctors who fill you with tablets, leaving the problem for another day.’
Next I try to speak to Richard Barnes, whose mate Steven Tardiff tells me that he has a story to tell. But he is reluctant so I talk to quietly-spoken Steven, who is serving a sentence – his fifth or sixth – for drug dealing. His teeth are all gold.
‘There’s diamonds in there too,’ he said.
A gold chain reaffirms his bling status and he has heavily tattooed arms.
Steven, who is withdrawing from Valium addiction, said that the classes had helped so much that he had come off his prescribed medication.
‘I’ve been off for five days now and I feel more relaxed and able to deal with it. When you come off Valium, you have anxiety and the breathing makes you relaxed. I’m so happy in myself.’
Then Richard – a man who clearly has a lot of anger, much of it directed at the judicial system – pipes up. Has the course made him feel better too?
‘It gives you a self awareness and awareness of your body and pays attention to internal organs.
‘The trends of fitness are running, weight training; it’s about muscle, how you’re perceived as you walk through the door. How you look with a six-pack in the summer on the beach. This course pays attention to the spiritual side. Breathing is excellent; it’s been proved to help asthmatics, which is good for Guernsey because it’s got one of the highest asthmatic rates in Europe.’
And the breathing isn’t easy. ‘It’s challenging, believe it or not. It works the muscles around the lungs.’
Nicola told me that sleeping is a major problem in prison. ‘When the door shuts at night,’ she said, ‘that’s when they start thinking about everything.’ The breathing exercises clear the mind and relax it.
Prisoner Barry Wright has had trouble sleeping. I ask him why and am waiting for a reply detailing troubled torment.
‘Because the beds are too hard,’ he laughs.
And he can’t tire himself out in prison as he did when he worked. The yoga part of the course has seen him touch his toes for the first time ever.
The whole conversation is good-humoured, relaxed.
‘It’s broken down barriers, allowed us to laugh at ourselves,’ said Richard.
Barry said they couldn’t stop laughing in the first lesson, but Julie explained that that’s always the way: inmates at first feel awkward, humiliated, embarrassed. The turnaround is incredible.
Richard hitches a thumb at Steven. ‘It is. Normally he can’t speak to strangers,’ he said, then laughed to soften the disclosure, ‘Usually, I can’t let him out of the house!’
Richard is quick-witted. I ask him if he reads a lot, how he became so articulate. ‘I developed the art of trying to dodge police questioning,’ he said.
I didn’t intend to ask what these men’s convictions were. Nicola had told me it was important in the classroom that everybody was treated the same. She was worried the public wouldn’t sympathise with a violent person going to a breathing class.
‘In class they are people, not criminals. The public forgets everyone is human. People do make mistakes. I know what they’re all in for, but they’re a great bunch of lads.’
The course has helped her manage the stresses of the job and she’s sleeping better. And there are benefits for the prison itself: less aggressive inmates make life easier for the authorities.
‘At the moment,’ said Nicola, ‘I have a comradeship with them because I joined in. It’s great.’
At the end of my chat with Richard, Steven and Barry, Richard slipped in that he was serving his sentence for rape: earlier this year he was sentenced to six years in prison after a high-profile five-day trial.
‘For me, the course was part of self-awareness and awareness of others,’ he said. ‘Some people might not be as receptive as you are to them, but you shouldn’t let that mar your judgement and be prejudiced in any way.’
I try to keep his words in mind. Prison is not an easy place. It’s about punishment but it’s also about rehabilitation – and there is definitely an art in that.
Walking through the series of locked doors to the exit that Saturday morning,
I felt alert, hyper and amazed that breathing could have such an impact. And, like Jason, I will never look at a grape in the same way again.

* The next Art of Living course for the public begins on 20 January. For more information, contact Moira Le Huray on 239192

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