Carolien Pentinga – PYP Netherlands
Program Director and Training Coordinator, The Netherlands
Carolien Pentinga, LLM, Mindful Hatha Yoga Certification 200, is a yoga teacher and an attorney at law in The Netherlands specializing in criminal law and the defense of juvenile offenders. As an attorney she takes a personal, compassionate approach to her often young clients, who she truly aims to understand beyond their offences, translating this understanding into the court. Carolien believes in the power of restorative justice and promotes the importance of a more inclusive approach to justice both in her work and as an individual. Carolien worked on problems of prison overcrowding and access to justice in Malawi (Africa). She has worked with a non-profit law office established to represent indigent death sentenced men and women in Louisiana ( both in state and federal post-conviction). A resident of Amsterdam, in 2015 Carolien combined her experience with her passion for yoga when she co-founded Prison Yoga Project Netherlands. She has taught yoga to young men in Lelystad Prison (2015-2016 ) and witnessed the results first hand seeing how the yoga and meditation very quickly had a profound impact on the mental and physical well-being of the prisoners. She has been working on expanding the PYP Netherlands program ever since as its Program Director and Training Coordinator.