The Yoga Of Freedom — An Interview With An Ex-Con.
“How do you know an ex-con when you see one? Do they look any different from anyone else walking down the street?”
These are the questions Robert posed to me as we stood in the parking lot alongside Crissy Field on a beautiful spring day, with the timeless Golden Gate Bridge glistening behind us.
Robert Sturman, a prolific photographer and artist, and I had just spent the morning at San Quentin State Prison observing and documenting the altruistic work of the Prison Yoga Project, founded by James Fox in 2002.
After speaking with a handful of yogis that are restricted to doing their Yoga practice behind bars, we came to Crissy Field for Robert to do a photo shoot with one more yogi who had gone thru the Prison Yoga Project. His name is Adam Verdoux and he had just recently gotten out of prison after 17 years.
Amidst the flurry of people and activity at Crissy Field, we weren’t sure who exactly we were looking for. We connected with Adam via phone and as he began to walk towards us, Robert and I commented that he looked just like any other guy. Just like any other guy.
But Adam was not just like any other guy.
This was a man who had spent close to two decades in prison, resulting from a series of armed robberies of gas stations, liquor stores and later banks, across several states.
His time in prison and his four and a half years in solitary confinement were exacerbated and extended by his tendency towards violence. But from where did this tendency towards violent criminal behavior stem? Was Adam simply a violent soul? Was it nature or nurture, or a toxic mixture of both?
Adam’s story begins not unlike many others. A child of the ’70s, he was raised in Flint, Michigan at the height of Detroit’s auto boom. His community was an average working class, urban ‘hood in the middle of industrial Americana.
But unfortunately, Adam’s version of Americana was not the idyllic one. Quite the contrary. Adam grew up in an abusive home, the scene of regular domestic violence inflicted on his mother by his father. In his own words,
“I truly believe that I was locked up long before I experienced a prison cell.”
Adam’s first violent episode occurred when he was a tender eight years old. One day, in the kitchen, he found his father bent over his mother, beating her.
Adam recounted the experience, “Something in me just snapped and I was like ‘Get him! Just make him stop.’ And I did. I ran at him and I was able to jump on him to choke him to make him stop.”
His father was the first man that Adam ever attacked.
I wanted to hear more about Adam’s story: about his childhood, the experiences and traumas that may have contributed to the bad choices, and ultimately the crimes he committed.
I wanted to hear about his years in prison, his discovery of Yoga, how the practice changed his life and how his inner transformation led him to his present day job working as a Violence Prevention Facilitator, only seven short months after his release. This was a story I wanted to hear, and share.
I sat down with Adam over a lengthy dinner to hear him recount his story:
Jeannie: Tell me about your childhood.
Adam: My first memories are of crying, arguing, and fear and anxiety. So I knew what these were, these feelings… before I actually knew what they were. My life has always been very uncomfortable. I remember people used to say, “You were such a good child. You were always quiet.” I never cried.
It’s probably because I was scared to death. I was probably playing dead.
Jeannie: There was violence in your home? Was it someone specifically?
Adam: My father. My father hated me. He was a very mean man. He hated my mother and he hated my little brother as well.
Jeannie: Was he physically abusive to everyone in the family?
Adam: He was physically abusive more to my mother than to us. His violence towards us was more emotional. He wouldn’t talk to me — like the silent treatment; the labeling, asking me what was wrong with me, calling me an ignoramus. I always remember he used that word quite a bit.
For years I tried to figure out what was wrong with me… if I could figure out what was wrong with me, then my father would like me. So this person that was, you know, like a God, a superhero, this beautiful muscular, masculine person that I loved so much… hated me. And it was just horrible.
I used to relate to those experiences like sort of how a little dog, a puppy, will always come up to his master wanting to be petted, you know what I mean? But then a cruel master will push it away.
But I would always return hoping that my father would be sitting on the couch and we could sit next to each other, snuggle and watch TV. Just like little kids do. And my father was just very unemotional, just very unfeeling.
My little brother was born when I was four and I made a decision that I was never going to let my father hurt him. So we used to hide in my closet when my mother and father would start arguing.
I remember crying in the closet holding my brother but telling him, before he could ever understand, that ‘everything’s going to be alright.’ So you know, I really felt I had this innate part of me that wanted to protect someone, even though I was never taught to protect.
It was just my nature to protect my little brother and so I did.
Jeannie: Tell me about your brother. It seems like he was a pivotal figure for you.
Adam: So my little brother — part of the whole story about my little brother is that even though I was there for him, I was very violent to him. I taught him how to fight. I taught him how to smoke weed, drink alcohol. I was mean to him. I never let him hang out with the guys.
But I realized through James (founder of Prison Yoga Project) and doing Yoga that I was just trying to make him tough so he would survive in the world. I never really hurt my brother. I made him fight. Like if somebody hit him, I’d make him fight if they were his size.
But if they were bigger than him, nobody could touch him. I mean, I took so many ass-whoopings for that kid it was unreal. It was really hard for me to forgive myself when I started doing this work, because I wasn’t there for the one person that I just loved so much in this world.
And he died at the age of 21 in a car wreck. So that’s when I went on my first really big armed robbery spree.
Jeannie: Why armed robbery?
Adam: I’m just that type of person where if I’m going to do something, I do extreme things like holding up gas stations, liquor stores, banks, you know what I mean? Also I felt like that money was insured, so even though I’m stealing… I told myself that they could recoup the money.
Jeannie: Did you ever hurt anyone? Shoot anyone?
Adam: I hurt them emotionally. But no, I didn’t shoot anybody. But that was part of that whole image of violence, thinking I wasn’t hurting anyone when I traumatized people.
Both of the women that I held up for the bank robberies, when they came to court and identified me and were on the stand during the prelim, they were just in tears, terrified, shaking.
Jeannie: How did that feel?
Adam: Horrible. I mean because here I am priding myself that I don’t hurt women, I don’t put my hands on women; I’ve never touched a woman. And here are these women that clearly I probably hurt them worse thru this emotional violence of robbery than putting my hands on them.
I’m looking at them like, ‘I just hurt women.’
Jeannie: And the death of your brother you think is what triggered this?
Adam: Well, I mean No. I had always wanted to die and I had always been dysfunctional; I think it just allowed me to want to escalate my violence to the point that I really didn’t care.
Jeannie: So you had nothing to lose really at that point?
Adam: Yeah, ’cause actually my first armed robbery was before my brother died. I just really lost control and my goal was I was gonna eventually get caught, ’cause everybody gets caught. And I was going to commit suicide by cop. I was gonna draw, and then make them kill me.
Jeannie: You were looking for an out. And this is why you started committing crimes?
Adam: Yeah, I think that I always wanted to die and I couldn’t kill myself. I tried a few times. I’ve held guns to my head and just couldn’t pull the trigger.
So when I started doing armed robberies, I pretty much came to the conclusion that eventually I would get caught and that would be how I could do it. I could just commit suicide by cop. But when it came time to do it, I wasn’t ever able to do it.
*****
From that first act of violence at age eight, Adam had continued on a dark, angry and destructive path. At age nine, his parents divorced, and although his father had been the abuser, he had wanted and needed the acceptance of a male figure in his life.
He blamed his mother for the divorce, which deeply impacted him to the point where his mother had to put him into foster care. When he was 15 years old, Adam got in a fight with a teacher. He quit high school and never returned.
As a teenager, Adam was involved in a cat-burglary ring, and at age 17, he landed himself in juvenile detention. When he got out, he tried to get his life back on track and even attended the Atlanta Institute of Music. But despite his positive efforts, Adam continued in a state of emotional dysfunction.
He struggled to identify with his peer group. He had trouble making friends. He rebelled against his authority figures. While attending the Atlanta School of Music, Adam got a DUI and held up an Amoco gas station, and the cycle began all over again.
Jeannie: You were drunk when you robbed the Amoco station?
Adam: Yep. I was. I ended up getting put in the county jail for that. This was in Atlanta, GA in 1992. I actually ended up getting probation for that. But then I got out and got into an assault in a bar and ended up going to prison for a year, from age 24-25.
When I got out at the age of 25, I was out for a month, I talked to my little brother and that’s when I got the call: January 28, 1996: that my little brother died. One of his friends called me and she told me, ‘he’s gone.’
I destroyed my bedroom. I renounced God. I just kept it together long enough to go up and bury him up in Michigan. I came back and went on an armed robbery spree which landed me 10 years in prison in Florida. I had gone on the run to Florida from South Carolina.
I did nine years and eight months in Florida and then got extradited back to South Carolina for a year. So ten years and eight months. I was out for like two and a half months, and violated my parole in South Carolina. I told my mother that I landed a gig playing in the West Indies on cruise ships.
And then I came to San Francisco. I was trying to send the cops south and I went north. I came north, got to San Francisco. I came for the history of music. But I realized I was running from the law and I couldn’t do good. So I started robbing banks.
Jeannie: So they had a warrant out for you at that point?
Adam: Yeah. I started robbing banks and after robbing a couple, I eventually got caught.
Jeannie: So at this point you’re in California and you get caught out here.
Adam: Yep. I served another seven years; two years was in county jail where I was part of a program called Manalive™, a violence prevention program. That is when everything changed. I was actually sitting in solitary confinement there, in the county jail, for getting in a fight.
And I was trying to get into this other program, but they came down and they were like,“Well, look, Roads to Recovery won’t take you, but the Violence Prevention Program will accept you.”
And I’m like, “But I’m not violent.”
And she says, “Adam, you’re in solitary confinement right now for getting in a fight. But based on the fact that you’re in here for bank robbery, that’s violence. And I can get you into this program.”
So I went in and I stayed in for two years and I said to myself, “You know what? I’m just going to learn this curriculum and I’m going to fight for my life.”
And that’s what I did. I memorized the curriculum. I internalized it. I became a peer advocate. And from there, I ended up getting my charge, because I was a 3-strikes case and the plea was first 45 to life. My lawyer got it reduced down to 15 years with 2-strikes.
That also went on for another two years. My lawyer was able to do some more litigation. They offered me six years and eight months with a strike. I took it.
So fast forward — I went to San Quentin for four more years. While I was there, I became a clerk and I went to college, and I plugged into the Restorative Justice programs there. That is where I met James (founder of Prison Yoga).
But I actually started doing Yoga when I was part of that Violence Prevention program in the county jail for two years. It helped me to go back and revisit the traumatic experiences that I experienced as a child.
So through doing Yoga, I’d be able to process it and so that pain was able to move into healing and a shift was taking place. I felt like a shift was also taking place in traumatic places in my brain; new neural pathways were forming… so revisiting core issues, the Yoga facilitated the process.
It made it easier. So I followed that up when I got to San Quentin. I worked with James, doing Yoga for four years.
I did Patten College, which was huge and I was able to study all of these phenomena that I learned in Violence Prevention.
For example, I studied how violence affects the developing brains of infants; how it affects the synaptic pruning process, the release of hormones… and the nervous system of the child.
And in my research paper, I researched masculinity in the form of domestic violence and what the effects of domestic violence were, thru empirical data, on children. There have been cases where children develop epilepsy, eczema… not thriving in life. You know? And I’m relating.
Sociology and labeling theory; psychology and affiliation and the need to belong. Part of our genetic makeup is that we need to belong and it goes all the way back to the hunter-gatherer era.
Now you take a social structure growing up in a family where my father hated me, where I wasn’t allowed to belong.
Well, now in neuroscience, it also shows in MRI scans that the same area of the brain is triggered when you’re not allowed to belong that is triggered when you feel physical pain, when you’re hit. So just not being allowed to belong hurts. Physically hurts.
So I learned all of these things that just sort of cemented that violence is a learned behavior. And it’s a big reason why I have literally destroyed my life for decades. But on the other hand, the brain is totally resilient.
And plasticity exists to the point where we are able to create new neuropathways, correct what is impaired for so long. So that, along with psychology and learning that people are very resilient and that people can bounce back and recover from these horrible things.
It was just cemented in me, the fact that I could really redefine my life. The last seven years that I was in prison, it was my mission from the day I went into the Violence Prevention program, to figure out how I could fix myself.
So when I realized that I could and I went to college and really backed that up with empirical data, I’ve really just been on this journey of self-healing.
And now that I’ve learned how to heal myself, I feel like in order for me to continue in that process, it’s very important that I pass this on to other people. So that’s why my life is an open book and I can tell you all of the good and the bad and how I went about doing this.
My experience of being in very traumatic situations — I view that as a gift now because I’m able to reach out to people and pay it forward and maybe stop that next person from pulling the trigger, or stop that next rapist from raping. Based on the knowledge that you can free.
You can be happy. And not only that — you deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved. I believe, for the most part, that people want to be loved. They want to be happy.
We are taught how to speak, what words mean. We are taught who we are in this world and what kind of behavior is acceptable. These are things we learn. We can all redefine that and become our authentic self; somebody that really loves ourselves.
And then from there we can begin to love others and create healthy relationships. But it does start with self.
Jeannie: So how many years have you been practicing Yoga now? And how has the Yoga practice changed you?
Adam: Seven. I would say that it’s sort of like eating food.
So I’m doing all of this work on this therapeutic level, but Yoga has been the protein, the vegetables, the nutrition that has fed me internally in a way that I can’t even explain — but that has facilitated this process and helped me to go to levels of healing that I couldn’t have reached without it.
I think there are things that Yoga has helped me do, mentally, that took getting silent, allowing energy to come in, energy to leave; forcing blood to my brain. And so I think that biologically, Yoga aided in the process in ways that I probably don’t really understand.
Jeannie: So, you’re going to take a Yoga teacher training. Is your goal to be a teacher?
Adam: Um, my goal is to be a good student.
Jeannie: Would you like to say anything about James and the Prison Yoga?
Adam: I would. James, while I was at San Quentin, was my mentor. After practicing with him for my first year, I really saw something in James that was parallel to the Yoga practice itself — something that I really couldn’t explain.
I felt like he was the big brother that I never had… And so I was able to really process things with him and when I would have difficulties that I couldn’t ask anyone else, James was always my go to person. He was always there for me.
And so I was really able to develop a connection and a practice with him that I really cherish. I really love James. I can only imagine what my life would have been if I had grown up with a father that was really healthy and nurturing like James.
So I now seek out people, like James, as a surrogate family, this family that I never had. And I’m really happy to say that I have a lot of sisters, brothers, surrogate uncles and aunts, amazing people that really love me and I really love them.
Love is something that I’ve really had to learn in the last seven years. And it’s still something that I really struggle with.
*****
Adam has now been out of prison for shortly over eight months and remains on parole for two years. He struggles with the re-entry process and often feels like a stranger in society, but he is taking all of the right steps to not only keep his life on a positive path, but to be a force for good in the world.
In addition to working as a Violence Prevention Facilitator for the San Francisco County Sheriff’s office, Adam is also enrolled in a Yoga Teacher Training course at Avalon Yoga in Palo Alto, as well as a Mentorship program at Yoga Tree in San Francisco.
On top of all of that, Adam is also working to finish his Associate’s Degree in Social Work and plans to continue on to get an advanced degree. Starting over at age 43, Adam hopes to find love and one day have children. For the first time in his life, he feels like he is finally starting to live life.
Having served his time and done years of deep emotional work, Adam firmly believes: “People need to take responsibility for their life; put in the work, revisit core issues, work through and process them.”
When asked what he wants his legacy to be, Adam replies:
“I want my legacy to be that of one who helps, of being part of the solution.”
*Adam Verdoux is available for speaking engagements and can be contacted at a.verdoux@yahoo.com.
**Photography courtesy of Robert Sturman.
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