Our Goals & Objectives
  • To promote and advance the physical, mental, and spiritual development of inmates in Canada through the practice of meditation and yoga.
  • To train, develop, and support meditation and yoga teachers who offer classes in correctional facilities.
  • To develop and deliver a program of volunteer correspondents who will reply to letters from inmates to support them in their practice.

A POWERFUL EGO COMBINED WITH POOR SELF-IMAGE OFTEN LEADS TO OFFENDING BEHAVIOUR. MEDITATION AND
YOGA HELP TO LESSEN THE POWER OF EGO AND ENHANCE SELF-IMAGE . IT IS OUR BELIEF THAT THESE TWO SAFE AND THERAPEUTIC DISCIPLINES CAN ASSIST IN THE REHABILITATION OF INMATES.


Meet Our Founder

SISTER ELAINE MACINNES,
Founder (2004) &
President
of Freeing the Human Spirit;

Sister Elaine is a Catholic Nun and Zen Master of the Sanbo Kyodan based in Kamakura Japan,
who spent 32 years in Asia learning the healing power and spiritual experiences that yoga and
meditation can bring to inmates.

On November 14, 2005, a gala screening was held in Toronto to premiere the documentary of her life and work, "The Fires That Burn". The film was produced by The May Street Group in association with VisionTV and aired on VisionTV.

It won a Silver Chris Statuette at the Columbus International Film & Video Festival, a Wilbur Award, and was nominated for Best Biography Documentary Program at the 2006 Canadian Gemini Awards.

 

How We Began

WHILE IN THE PHILIPPINES, SISTER ELAINE WAS ASKED BT A GROUP OF
POLITICAL DETAINEES WHO WERE BEING TORTURED IN THE
BAGOG BANTAY DETENTION CENTRE, TO TEACH THEM HOW TO MEDITATE.



In 1980, Sister Elaine began teaching meditation to a group of tortured political prisoners. When she saw them change from an angry, tense, lethargic group, to a relaxed, sociable, energized and effective team, she became an enthusiastic advocate of Restorative Justice -- of prisons as places of help and healing, and not simply places of punishment.

In 1993, Sr. Elaine was invited to Oxford, England to become the Executive Director of the Prison Phoenix Trust, which, at the time, had two or three yoga teachers working in U.K. prisons. When she retired in 1999, the Prison Phoenix Trust had placed meditation and yoga teachers in eighty-six prisons and had over five thousand readers of the Trust's quarterly newsletter. In 2001 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her work abroad.

Upon her return to Canada in 2004, Sr. Elaine founded Freeing the Human Spirit to bring hope, healing and rehabilitation to inmates in correctional facilities in Canada.

Freeing the Human Spirit was designed by Sr. Elaine MacInnes and by Laurel Scott, a yoga teacher and founding member of Yoga Outreach, which operates in south-western British Columbia, and teaches yoga to men and women in correctional facilities.

 

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