For Mental Health Awareness Week 2025, The Prison Phoenix Trust launched Give it 10 — a simple, effective yoga and mindfulness challenge for people in custody. The idea? Just 10 minutes a day for 7 days to support mental wellbeing.
The challenge was a hit, with 124 prisons and justice organisations across the UK and Ireland taking part. Prisoners and staff alike found it easy to access and genuinely helpful — especially for those new to yoga.
What’s in the Pack?
The Prison Phoenix Trust (PPT) continues to build its support for people in UK and Irish prisons, offering yoga and meditation as transformative tools for rehabilitation and mental well-being. With the recent addition of courses at HMP Liverpool and HMP Hollesley Bay, regular weekly yoga sessions are now available in 52 prisons.
In April, HMP Liverpool began the first in a series of seven six-week yoga and meditation courses with a PPT-trained yoga teacher. Supported by the prison’s healthcare department, these sessions are tailored for:
These classes are the first structured activity offered on Friday afternoons, a time when people are usually confined to their wings. This marks a significant shift toward improving the ability of people to use their time inside positively.
May saw the launch of four new six-week yoga courses at HMP Hollesley Bay, a Category D open prison in Suffolk. Within the first week, participation and enthusiasm were high. The PPT teacher noted, “It looks like it’s going to be very popular,” as people quickly began encouraging others to join.
Pictures by Andy Aitcheson of yoga in HMP Maidstone
Starting in August, The Prison Phoenix Trust will deliver an 8-month course of weekly yoga classes at HMP Maidstone in Kent. This follows a successful 42-week programme held over the past year, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from both prisoners and staff.
Four classes per week will be taught in the prison gym by experienced teachers with deep knowledge of yoga’s benefits for mental health and personal development.
Participants have shared inspiring feedback:
A staff member highlighted the programme’s impact:
“The sessions are very popular and effective; with noticeable improvements in individuals’ self-esteem, mental health, and social skills. The development of compassion, patience, and trust they are building through yoga is strengthening their ability to reintegrate into society after release.”
There are now 132 weekly yoga and meditation classes running across prisons in the UK and Ireland, all led by teachers trained or supported by The Prison Phoenix Trust. These sessions aim to reduce stress, improve sleep, and foster emotional resilience among participants.
In addition to group classes, prisoners can request:
These resources help support ongoing personal development and mindfulness practice, even outside class hours.
The PPT is a UK-based charity dedicated to bringing yoga and meditation to prisoners as tools for inner transformation, emotional regulation, and positive change. Their trained teachers and volunteers offer support across the UK and Ireland, working closely with prison staff and healthcare teams.
This month The Prison Phoenix Trust was invited to contribute to a round-table discussion in the Houses of Parliament aimed at shaping impactful policy for women in the prison, hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport and Physical Activity in the Criminal Justice System. Joining our yoga lead Victoria and prison yoga teacher Sandra was Lisa, who writes eloquently here about her experience of yoga in prison.
When big ideas have come and gone
There is no need to grieve,
It’s not about great speeches
It’s about the way you breathe.
Excerpt from ‘In-exhale’ by Benjamin Zephaniah for The Prison Phoenix Trust
12 April 2025 will be the first ever Benjamin Zephaniah Day to celebrate the life and legacy of ‘the people’s laureate’. It’s being marked by a Festival of Rhythm, Unity and Revolution, which will be held at Brunel University, where Benjamin served as Professor of Creative Writing. The PPT will be present alongside a host of other organisations who worked on causes dear to the late poet’s heart.
Here we look back on our relationship with the beloved poet, writer, actor and activist, and honour his memory. Continue Reading
Do you have a passion for helping prisons support the rehabilitation of people in their care – and their reintegration into society? Prison yoga charity The Prison Phoenix Trust is seeking new trustees to join our Board.
We are an award-winning yoga charity in the UK and Ireland, with 37 years’ experience sharing meditation and yoga with people in prison. We offer personal support to prisoners and prison staff through teaching, mentoring, peer-support and specialist resources. We work with people of any faith or Continue Reading
Celebrity chef and businessman Levi Roots offers advice to people trying to stay healthy in prison, drawing on his own experience of serving time inside.
If you have ever wanted to look and feel amazing, both in mind, body and spirit, I am here to tell you that it is possible to achieve it. Perhaps you have had doubts, lack of confidence or simply unable to focus and maintain an exercise program until you can see and feel the true benefits. Continue Reading
We spent a day with Emma, who teaches yoga and meditation to particularly vulnerable children aged 15-18 in a young offenders institution. The boys have various and complex needs, including neurodiversity, learning disabilities, special educational needs, behavioural problems, and lots of trauma. Some are serving long sentences of 15 years or more.
Emma arrives with a big bag of yoga mats at a block is made up of 4 wings, each with 12 cells down one side, doors opening out onto a carpeted communal area with a couple of sofas, tables and chairs from which windows look out onto the grounds, including a pond. There’s a staff office on each wing.
Being key-trained, the yoga teacher is able to move around freely, greeting prison officers, staff and the young offenders. She moves from wing to wing to see who’s available for yoga.
On the first wing we visit, officers ask us to come back later as “things have kicked off over lunch and there’s rice and peas everywhere.” At another wing a young person, Daniel*, was waiting with his mat ready for a yoga class, but staff asked us to come back later as there was an incident underway in one of the cells overlooking the yoga space, where staff were trying to ‘talk down’ a young person in the midst of a mental health crisis. Continue Reading
Image posed by yoga teacher
Ahead of the Women and Justice: A New Direction summit in London this week, the award-winning Prison Phoenix Trust (The PPT) has emphasised that addressing the mental health needs of women in prison is a fundamental aspect of justice reform.
And it is sharing the latest findings from its mindful yoga and meditation programmes delivered in two women’s prisons throughout 2023 and 2024.
According to recent government statistics, 82% of women in prison report mental health problems, and one third of women in prison engage in self-harming behaviours. This highlights a pressing need for effective interventions to support mental wellbeing.
The summit will explore key solutions for reforming justice for women and follows prisons minister James Timpson’s recent announcement that he aims to close a women’s prison in England or Wales, redirecting offenders to alternative forms of punishment and rehabilitation. The event will bring together influential thinkers, activists, and practitioners to discuss the future direction of justice for women.
To coincide with the summit, Selina Sasse is sharing data from 11 mindful yoga and meditation courses run by The PPT. The results of these programmes, which involved women in two prisons participating in weekly 2-hour yoga and meditation sessions, reveal the significant impact these practices have on mental wellbeing and their potential to aid in rehabilitation and successful reintegration into society.
Here Richard shares his story for The PPT Winter Appeal, giving back to the charity that helped him in prison.
Richard spent most of his early life in ‘the system’: growing up in care, his autism undiagnosed, he got into trouble, served time in detention centres and borstal, and eventually prison. But today the chaos and suffering that once surrounded him is in the past.
With support from meditation and yoga, he is leading a meaningful life: he volunteers to help others, speaking in public – including in Parliament – about his experiences and providing a role model to others who are lost ‘in the system’.
It was during a move to a new prison, at three in the morning, crammed into a prison van with six officers, blue lights flashing that he decided something had to change.
“I was looking around me thinking, how have I got into this situation? This is a battle I’m losing. I realised I needed to change the battle plan and look at why I’m here.”
He reached out for help to The Prison Phoenix Trust, the UK’s leading charity supporting yoga and meditation in prisons. He wrote – and a mentor from The PPT wrote back, offering to support and guide him from afar as he explored the healing practices of yoga and meditation.
Make a gift to The PPT Winter Appeal
“Prison isn’t a good place to drop your guard,” he recalls, “but through the letters I could talk more openly and look at myself more. I could put my emotions down on paper that I couldn’t say out loud to anyone.” Continue Reading
Support yoga and meditation in prison by buying festive cards designed for The Prison Phoenix Trust by artists in prison.
We’ve chosen two great designs from scores of entries to this year’s competition. Andrew in HMP Moorland created the snowy scene and Lindsey in HMP Eastwood Park the yoga robins design.
Mixed packs of 10 cards cost £7 (inc P&P). Payment can be by bank transfer to CAF Bank account 00029577, sort code: 40-52-40, putting reference FESTIVE.
Or by cheque payable to The Prison Phoenix Trust, PO Box 328., Oxford OX2 7HF.
