Founding Director
James Fox, MA, CYT, is the founder of the Prison Yoga Project. He is a certified yoga instructor who has dedicated himself to developing a trauma informed approach to teaching yoga in correctional facilities that has resulted in the establishment of yoga programs in prisons throughout the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Australia. A practitioner of yoga and mindfulness meditation for more than 30 years, upon receiving his teaching credentials in 2000, James began his mission of sharing the benefits of yoga with incarcerated people.
James has taught yoga classes at San Quentin Prison since 2002. He is also trained in restorative justice principles and practices, and has experience facilitating victim/offender education, emotional literacy, and violence prevention courses with prisoners. He is the author of Yoga A Path for Healing and Recovery, and co-author of Freedom from The Inside – A Woman’s Yoga Practice Guide. He is also a contributor to the book, Best Yoga Practices for Veterans.James has served on the faculty for Loyola Marymount University’s (Los Angeles) Yoga, Mindfulness and Social Change program and was an advisor to the National Institute of Health sponsored Chicago Urban Mindfulness Program. He has been awarded U.S. State Department Grants to advise and train governmental and non-governmental personnel in Central America involved in prisoner and ex-gang member rehabilitation programs. In 2015, he was honored by Yoga Journal Magazine with a Karma Yoga Award.