OUR GORGE : VENTURES
Yoga on the Inside A new program at NORCOR brings weekly yoga classes to inmates in The Dalles
STORY AND PHOTOS BY DAVID HANSON
“
B
e honest with yourself,” Shannon Red Cloud calmly implores her class of nine women in pink and orange outfits. “If you go into a position that is hurting you, don’t go so deep. Through that honesty is where change happens. As pretty or ugly as it is.” It’s surprisingly quiet in the recreation room of the adult complex at Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility in The Dalles. No distant cell doors clanking or orders being barked. There’s not even a guard in the room. Cinder block walls painted pale yellow rise more than 20 feet to the vaulted ceiling. The room’s back windows open onto a concrete courtyard with a basketball hoop and the same towering walls capped in chain-link fence. Other than the ceiling fence and the overly bright fluorescent lighting, this could be a yoga studio anywhere in America. Red Cloud’s calm, soft voice shares a message familiar to most of the 35 million Americans who practice yoga: be present, make adjustments, get a little better each time. But in here, behind these locked doors, her words take on a deeper significance with the women who have chosen to come to the Friday afternoon class.
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SPRING 2018 : THE GORGE MAGAZINE
As yoga’s mental and physical health benefits become increasingly mainstream, it’s no surprise that prison yoga programs have been on the rise, as well. Kay Alton began the NORCOR yoga program in 2016. Alton, a social worker and yoga instructor who pioneered inmate yoga programs for youth and adults in Minnesota, had moved to the Gorge that same year. She cold-called NORCOR’s new administrative lieutenant, Brian Brandenburg, who happened to be looking for new activities for inmates. Alton received grant funding and began a six-month program of bi-weekly classes for men, women and youth. She brought on Red Cloud, owner of Pure Yoga in The Dalles and Hood River, and Burt Wyatt, a former middle school principal and the only male yoga instructor in The Dalles. “There’s this assumption that teaching yoga at NORCOR or any prison setting is an opportunity for a beginner or volunteer,” Alton says. “I value really good teachers with backgrounds in mental health or trauma-informed yoga. There’s nothing easy about teaching in a prison. And I pay the instructors a fair amount because that’s the only way to make it sustainable.”