Michael Huggins

Last updated

Michael Huggins (born 1957) is the American founder and Executive Director of Transformation Yoga Project, a non-profit organization teaching yoga and mindfulness as a tool for personal change in the lives of people within drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, the criminal justice system, community transitional centers and VA hospitals. [1]

Contents

Yoga practice and training

Huggins began practicing yoga in 2003 to counteract chronic back pain. In 2010 he became a registered yoga teacher with a 200-Hour Level certification from Power Yoga Works recognized by Yoga Alliance. Later that year he trained with Street Yoga to teach yoga and mindfulness to at-risk youth and vulnerable populations. He has since trained at the Kripalu Yoga Center, Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, the Prison Yoga Project, Power Yoga Works, and other organizations to gain additional skills as a trauma informed teacher, including for incarcerated populations, veterans, and individuals in substance abuse recovery. [2] [3]

Career

Huggins studied Accounting at Villanova University and received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. [4] He has worked as a Senior Auditor at Arthur Andersen and Co., Manager of Treasury Operations for Kenner Parker Toys, Vice President of Administration for Town & County Corp., CFO/COO for Spectra Science, President and COO for Synthes, Inc., CEO for Scient"x, and most recently as a Consultant for MDH Advisors. [5]

Incarceration

In July 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Synthes and a subsidiary with various offenses relating to a bone cement regulated by the federal government as a medical device. The government also charged four company executives, including Michael Huggins, with a strict liability misdemeanor offense under the Responsible Corporate Officer doctrine which holds executives responsible for activities that happened under their watch regardless of their knowledge of such activity. After pleading guilty to the strict liability misdemeanor charge, Huggins was sentenced in November 2011 to a nine-month prison term, a $100,000 fine, and three months of supervised release following his release from custody. [6]

Transformation Yoga Project

In 2010, Huggins began working with community organizations to provide yoga to at-risk youth, and as after-school programming for young people. During his first weeks in prison Huggins began teaching yoga and guided meditation to his fellow inmates. [7] The popularity of his teaching spurred him to train fellow inmates as teachers also. [2] After his release from prison, Huggins attended a Prison Yoga Project training course and soon after began returning to prisons as a volunteer yoga instructor. Huggins found that yoga could be a therapy and build emotional tools against the traumas of living in prison as well as the traumas that came before incarceration, such as homelessness, drug abuse, and domestic violence. [8] [9] In 2013, Huggins founded Transformation Yoga Project as a non-profit organization with a mission to train and provide teachers with yoga and mindfulness techniques that specifically support people with traumatic or addictive backgrounds in an effort to heal, build emotional stability, and reduce the stresses of imprisoned, rehabilitative, post-traumatic, or transitional living circumstances. [10] Transformation Yoga Project encourages the yoga teachers it trains to embrace seva, the religious concept of serving selflessly. The goals of Transformation Yoga Project include curbing recidivism rates by enabling inmates to heal, develop greater maturity, and create positive growth for themselves. Many within prison administrations embrace yoga and mindfulness programs because of the benefits to the inmate populations during and after incarceration. [11] [12] [13]

Transformation Yoga Project runs programs in numerous facilities including at the State Correctional Institute at Phoenix, State Correctional Institute at Graterford, the Philadelphia Prison System"s Cambria Community Center, the Montgomery County Youth Detention Center, the Montgomery County Youth Shelter, the Delaware County Juvenile Detention Center, the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, the Kirkbride Center for recovery, Gaudenzia house, the Divine Light Recovery House, the ODDAT Synergy House, and at the Veterans Hospital in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. [14]

Other

Huggins works with several non-profit organizations in a variety of capacities, including sharing yoga with at-risk and traumatized populations throughout the country. He has partnered with Prison Yoga Project to train yoga teachers. [15] He sits on the Board of Directors of Liberation Prison Yoga, a non-profit organization founded by Anneke Lucas, to prepare yoga teachers with trauma-conscious methods for incarcerated people. [16] He has also volunteered with the United Way of Chester County and Open Hearth where he taught career development workshops for the underprivileged. [17]

Related Research Articles

A private prison, or for-profit prison, is a place where people are imprisoned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements with governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate, either for each prisoner in the facility, or for each place available, whether occupied or not. Such contracts may be for the operation only of a facility, or for design, construction and operation.

Prison–industrial complex Attribution of the U.S.s high incarceration rate to profit

The prison-industrial complex (PIC) is a term, coined after the "military–industrial complex" of the 1950s, attributing the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit. According to this concept, the most common agents of PIC are corporations that contract cheap prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, correctional officers unions, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. The term also refers to the network of participants who, in theory, prioritize personal financial gain over rehabilitating criminals. Proponents of this view, including civil rights organizations such as the Rutherford Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), believe that the desire for monetary gain through prison privatization has led to the growth of the prison industry and contributed to the increase of incarcerated individuals, also known as mass incarceration. These advocacy groups assert that incentivizing the construction of more prisons for monetary gain will encourage incarceration, which would affect people of color at disproportionately high rates.

GEO Group American institutional facilities company

The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO), headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in private prisons and mental health facilities in North America, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. The company's facilities include illegal immigration detention centers, minimum security detention centers, and mental-health and residential-treatment facilities. It also operates government-owned facilities pursuant to management contracts. As of December 31, 2019, the company managed and/or owned 95,000 beds at 129 facilities and provided community supervision services for more than 210,000 offenders and pretrial defendants. In 2019, agencies of the federal government of the United States generated 53% of the company's revenues.

Noah Levine American Buddhist teacher and writer

Noah Levine is an American Buddhist teacher and author, son of American Buddhist teacher and poet Stephen Levine. As a counselor known for his philosophical alignment with Buddhism and punk ideology, he identifies his Buddhist beliefs and practices with both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. He has written several books on Buddhism and Buddhist practice including Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction.

Denver Sheriff Department Criminal justice agency in Denver, Colorado

The Denver Sheriff Department is a criminal justice agency based in Denver, Colorado, United States. The department is responsible for the care and custody of inmates within Denver's jail system, for the city's court services, and other responsibilities assigned by the executive director of safety. Unlike the Denver Police Department, it is not responsible for patrol or investigations.

Prison contemplative programs are classes or practices that are offered at correctional institutions for inmates and prison staff. There are measured or anecdotally reported benefits from studies of these programs such a stress relief for inmates and staff. These programs are gaining in acceptance in North America and Europe but are not mainstream.

Jennifer Storm American writer and Victim Witness Advocate of Pennsylvania

Jennifer Storm is a victims' rights expert and author who has written about alcohol and drug addiction and recovery. She is the former Victim Advocate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who served after being appointed by Governor Tom Corbett in 2013. She was unanimously confirmed by the PA Senate and sworn in for a six-year term on December 20, 2013.

Siddharth Ashvin Shah is an American physician, public health scientist and educator of South Asian origin. In the course of his work, Dr. Shah has blended disciplines involving preventive medicine, behavioral medicine, integrative medicine, humanitarian aid, East-West health systems, group psychology, trauma recovery and stress management research.

Phillip Moffitt

Phillip Moffitt is a vipassana (insight) meditation teacher, former publishing executive, author, and an instructor at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California.

Carolyn Cowan

Carolyn Cowan is a London-based yoga teacher and psychosexual and relationship therapist. Prior to her career as a therapist, she was a fashion designer and photographer. During the 1980s, she earned acclaim as a makeup artist in the pop music video industry. She taught body painting at the University of the Arts London for over 20 years. Most recently (2019) Carolyn founded and launched a new form of yoga, Kundalini Global, in answer to the rapidly growing and profound need for yoga to become more inclusive and serve a wider demographic

Incarceration of women in the United States

The incarceration of women in the United States refers to the imprisonment of women in both prisons and jails in the United States. There are approximately 219,000 incarcerated women in the US according to a November 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, and the rate of incarceration of women in the United States is at a historic and global high, with 133 women in correctional facilities per every 100,000 female citizens. The United States is home to just 4% of the world's female population, yet the US is responsible for 33% of the entire world's incarcerated female population. The steep rise in the population of incarcerated women in the US is linked to the complex history of the War on drugs and the US's Prison–industrial complex, which lead to mass incarceration among many demographics, but had particularly dramatic impacts on women and especially women of color. However, women made up only 10.4% of the US prison and jail population, as of 2015.

Storycatchers Theatre is a nonprofit organization in Chicago, Illinois, that serves adolescents and emerging adults at all stages of court involvement with creative youth development programs. Storycatchers engages groups of young people in the process of writing, producing and performing original musicals inspired by their own personal stories. Meade Palidofsky founded the company in 1984 and has served as its artistic director since its inception.

Positive criminology is based on the perspective that integration and positive life influences that help individuals develop personally and socially will lead to a reduced risk of criminal behavior and better recovery of offenders. Integration works in three levels: inter-personal, intra-personal and spiritual. Positive influences include participation in recovery programs, such as those for drug and alcohol abuse. Factors that can make growth difficult include a long-standing pattern of criminal activity, serious adverse life events, and chronic mental health illness.

Wellpath, formerly known as Correct Care Solutions is a healthcare company based in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. and "one of the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare providers for prisoners." The company was founded in 2003 by Jerry Boyle. Currently, Wellpath is owned by private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and was formerly co-owned by Audax Group and Frazier Healthcare Partners. Wellpath's facilities exist in both the United States and Australia. Currently, there are 550 centers in 36 states. Their facilities treat around 300,000 patients per day. It operates the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, Florida. Wellpath and CCS have been sued more than 1300 times for inadequate care according to a story in the Augusta Chronicle on January 12, 2019.

Central Juvenile Hall is a youth detention center in Los Angeles County. Central houses both boys and girls. The Central Juvenile Hall complex was originally established in 1912 as the first juvenile detention facility in Los Angeles County. The hall sits on twenty-two and one-half acres of land in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. The facility has 24 buildings including living units, two infirmaries, two school buildings, two gyms, kitchen facilities, a chapel, and mechanical areas.

InsideOUT Writers (IOW) is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization that conducts weekly writing classes inside Los Angeles County juvenile halls and jails. IOW also serves as a support network for formerly incarcerated young people. The program seeks to inspire personal growth and transformation through creative writing. Since 1996, more than 11,000 youth have participated in over 15,000 classes.

Center for Council is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that trains practitioners in using council to promote wellness and resiliency and utilizes the practice of council to advance social justice and restorative justice and foster resilient and thriving communities.

Susan Burton

Susan Burton is an activist based in Los Angeles, United States who works with formerly incarcerated people and founded the nonprofit organization, A New Way of Life. She was named a CNN Hero in 2010 and a Purpose Prize winner in 2012.

Trauma-sensitive yoga is yoga as exercise, adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. Its goal is to help trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection, to ease their physiological experiences of trauma, to gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies, and to augment their overall well-being. However, a 2019 systematic review found that the studies to date were not sufficiently robustly designed to provide strong evidence of yoga's effectiveness as a therapy; it called for further research.

Decarceration in the United States

Decarceration involves government policies and community campaigns to reduce the number of people held in custody or under custodial supervision in the United States. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. Home to 5% of the global population but 25 percent of its prisoners, the U.S. possess the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston.

References

  1. ↑ "Who We Are". transformationyogaproject.org.
  2. 1 2 Bense, Michelle (June 2015). "Transformation Yoga Project Uses Yoga to Heal Addiction and Trauma". Natural Awakenings. p. 20. Retrieved 27 August 2015– via issuu.com.
  3. ↑ "About Michael Huggins". yogaalliance.org.
  4. ↑ "Executive Profile: Michael Huggins". bloomberg.com.
  5. ↑ "Scient'x, S.A. Appoints Veteran Spinal Orthopedic Industry Executive Michael D. Huggins as President and Chief Executive Officer". prnewswire.com. Retrieved 22 January 2008.
  6. ↑ "Judgment in a Criminal Case" (PDF). circare.org. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
  7. ↑ Huggins, Michael. "Back to Basics: Yoga in Prison". phillyareayoga.com.
  8. ↑ Pence, Mary. "Why Teach Yoga to Prisoners?". maryspence.org.
  9. ↑ Michael, Huggins. "Transformation Yoga Project". youtube.com.
  10. ↑ "Yoga for Trauma and Addiction – Teacher Training From Transformation Yoga Project". phillyareayoga.com.
  11. ↑ "Yoga for Trauma and Addiction – Teacher Training From Transformation Yoga Project". phillyareayoga.com.
  12. ↑ Schware, Rob. "Transforming Yoga: Healing Through Empowerment In Prisons And Drug Rehabilitation Facilities". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  13. ↑ Clarke-Fields, Hunter. "Prison Yoga Transformation with Mike Huggins". hunteryoga.com. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  14. ↑ "Yoga for Recovery". transformationyogaproject.com.
  15. ↑ "Philadelphia Training". prisonyoga.org.
  16. ↑ "Who We Are". liberationprisonyoga.com.
  17. ↑ "Chester County Leadership Connection Alumni Directory" (PDF). leadershipchestercounty.org. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.