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March 05, 2015 Letter from Warden Dona Zavislan
Washington Department of Corrections
Dear James,
I am writing to thank you and express my sincere appreciation to you and Prison Yoga Project for assisting me in bringing yoga to offenders at the Denver Complex and the Fremont Correctional Facility. I have practiced yoga myself for several years and I know firsthand the many benefits. When I became warden of three Colorado Department of Corrections facilities, I quickly determined that there is a significant need to offer yoga to our offender population, many of whom have long histories of exposure to violence and trauma and have issues with mental illness and substance abuse. These challenges, which are difficult enough to address, are often magnified in the prison environment.
I was thrilled to learn that Prison Yoga Project existed and that you were offering training for potential volunteers in the Denver area. Your many years of work teaching and practicing with offenders, makes you uniquely qualified to prepare volunteers to teach yoga in the prison environment. We wardens can be skeptical and reluctant to try new things, especially using volunteers. Your program takes away those worries. In my experience, your written materials are exceptional and volunteers trained by you are well prepared to work with an offender population with complex needs. I witnessed the very smooth implementation of a quality yoga program at my facility. Martha, our volunteer trained through your program, provided excellent yoga classes for women at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility with significant mental health and substance abuse needs, populations that are often underserved.
I believe yoga helps offenders with many of the fundamental needs that prevent them from progressing in the challenging prison environment to include impulsivity, anxiety, anger and errors in thinking. Your work has helped many offenders develop the skills necessary to prepare for successful release and you have also assisted those with long sentences to manage their situation in a healthy way, making our communities and prisons safer.
We have a great need to infuse our prison environment with those human qualities such as compassion and empathy that bring out our very best and help to restore the human spirit. The work you are doing brings hope into the prison environment and exposes members of the general public to the realities of incarceration.
Best wishes for your continued success. I admire you and appreciate your commitment to doing this worthwhile work.
Dona Zavislan
Superintendent, Larch Corrections Center
Washington Department of Corrections
Former Warden
Denver Women's Correctional Facility
Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center
Colorado Correctional Center
Colorado Department of Corrections
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