In a system where rehabilitation often takes a back seat to punishment, Faraji Blakeney has carved out a space for healing. As co-executive director of Yoga Behind Bars (YBB), he’s working to disrupt the cycle of trauma and stress that many incarcerated individuals face daily.

In 2007, Blakeney was sentenced to 20 years for drug-related charges. He had been drawn into selling drugs to support his young family, a path that had taken shape long before he was an adult. Raised in Tacoma, Blakeney’s early life was marked by the devastation of the crack epidemic, which hit his parents hard and left him caught in cycles of addiction, instability, and abuse. His childhood was a shuffle through foster care and temporary stays with relatives. By the time he aged out of the system, he was left to navigate adulthood alone, without the support he needed to build a stable life.

During his time in prison, he found an unexpected lifeline: yoga. First, it came through a Siddha Yoga course, and later, through YBB. Yoga became a turning point. It offered a way to confront the pain and trauma he’d carried since childhood. It was a chance to build something positive while behind bars.

“They held my humanity first,” he says, “and gave me access to my own autonomy through a trauma-informed lens.”

YBB has brought yoga to thousands of incarcerated students annually, from minimum-security units to solitary confinement and mental health facilities. Before the pandemic, that number exceeded 4,000 each year. The program has also trained more than 700 teachers nationwide to deliver trauma-informed yoga to youth, veterans, and women in treatment programs. This approach to yoga prioritizes choice, agency, and nervous-system regulation, helping participants process trauma in a manageable and empowering way.

Following his release from prison in June 2021, Blakeney reconnected with YBB. He received support for yoga teacher training, joined the board, and soon became a full-time community engagement specialist before becoming co-executive director in early 2024. His leadership marks an important shift for the organization, which is now led by Black, system-impacted individuals.

For Blakeney, the motivation for doing this work runs deep. “My biological brother is still in prison,” he says. “I’m showing up for him, for my family, for the young people who need to know they are more than a statistic.”

As a Black man who grew up in foster care, Blakeney remembers how early interventions were marked by a lack of support, and his time in foster care and prison left him carrying layers of compounded trauma, caught in cycles that are difficult to break. “It never felt safe to be vulnerable,” he says, “Black boys are often denied real connection.” This lack of support shows up later as “oversexualization, toxic masculinity — all these things that tell us to just be tough.”

YBB offers a different path. Reaching half its participants before the age of 25, YBB aims to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. It creates a space where young people — many carrying the weight of early childhood trauma — can start tearing down walls, find safety in vulnerability, connect with their bodies, and heal in their own way.

Now on the other side of those prison walls, Blakeney returns to teach in the same spaces that once held him captive. “I don’t  teach yoga for people to do the best downward dog,” he says, “I teach it so people can become more self-aware, to hold onto something that no one can take.”

While 60% of people nationwide return to prison within three years of rejoining society, that number drops to 8% for those who take four or more yoga classes. After just one class, a student in a youth correctional facility told Blakeney, “You just gave me something they cannot take from me.”

For Blakeney, moments like this are what his work is all about. “These young people live with so much uncertainty,” he says. “When they find something within themselves that’s untouchable, it changes everything.”