Through weekly phone calls and shared lessons, Sondra has been working with Beau Musacco, who is currently incarcerated at the Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center, in a yoga teacher training program. Using the Smart Communications messaging system, Sondra sends lectures, reflections, and quizzes, allowing the learning to continue week by week.

Beau is a very special person indeed, and has created Yoga4Prisoners, a powerful initiative dedicated to bringing yoga and mindfulness practices to others inside. With support from MovingPotential’s Huw and Sondra, Beau is continuing to refine the program so it can reach and support more incarcerated individuals.

Beau will be featured in the first edition of Unsilencing, our new zine, coming out soon!

Beau’s Yoga Journey

“I encountered yoga back in 2010 while I was in solitary confinement (the hole) at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe, NM. Back then, we were allowed to have our TVs while in the hole under investigation. So one early morning I was channel surfing and stumbled upon a lady that was doing yoga, talking about breathing and stretching. It was quite similar to the breathing techniques I was using at the time while meditating. As for the asanas she was performing, many of them were simple stretches I was doing when I played sports.

I was spending a lot of time in solitary confinement for the violent gang activities I was partaking in and had been experiencing a mount of anxiety and depression. So I needed an outlet to funnel all of the madness I was in the midst of at the time. Dr. Barbara Wright had finally got me to submit to doing meditation after many years of recommending it to me. It helped significantly and was my new outlet for healing and to help me escape mentally out of the prison realm. Then when I seen the lady doing yoga on TV, it all just clicked.

Believe it or not, due to my circumstances of incarceration I did not step onto a yoga mat for approximately ten (10 ) years after I had been doing yoga. I began doing breathing and stretching yoga back in 2010, either on a state issued towel or wool blanket. Once I received a box of six (6) yoga mats for the first time in 2021, it was a heavenly experience. The feeling of my feet touching the yoga mat was unexplainable. It felt like the real deal. It was like night and day, from a towel or blanket to a yoga mat.

I believe that my understanding of yoga has changed significantly since my first class. Yoga is a significant part of my life. It is the temple which brings peace to my life behind these treacherous walls. I have gained a mount of positive attributes and qualities from yoga. Yoga has brought meaning to my life and has helped water the seeds of mindfulness within me. It has molded an instructor out of me. My understanding of yoga is much deeper and embedded into my heart. I’ve recently been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study yoga books, different styles of yoga, and yogis. This opportunity was not afforded to me due to my behavior and other things.

Yoga has assisted in teaching me how to love and be compassionate towards myself and others, be humble and of service to others, and wave patience. It has helped build the art of mindfulness within my temple (me). The practice of yoga has taught me how to put others first as I instruct each student to become a better man. Yoga has taught me to become a better man. I’m still growing every day.”