Yoga As Complementary Therapeutic Care for Forensic Psychiatry Patients and Therapists
We are so excited to host Prison Yoga Project’s Program Director and Training Coordinator, Europe- Josefin Wikstrom! Let’s dive in- Josefin has been pushing the envelope forward in Sweden for 15 years in Sweden by bringing yoga and dance into prisons. She has been working as a full-time teacher focusing on yoga for trauma-exposed populations since 2003.
She has recently assembled a team to lead clinical research studies on working with incarcerated populations that are in special psychiatric care facilities. This study is expanding to the US!
Join us as we speak to real forms of facilitation, sequencing, and space holding working with people who suffer from severe PTSD, dissociation, schizophrenia, and psychosis.
Josefin Wikström
Program Director and Training Coordinator, Europe
Josefin Wikström, E-RYT 500, TCTSY-F, Yoga Therapy for The Mind, YACEP, RCYS, has been bringing yoga and dance into the Swedish prisons since 2008. She has been working as a full-time teacher focusing on yoga for trauma-exposed populations since 2003. In 2015, she began working with Prison Yoga Project to coordinate European training and has been teaching Prison Yoga Project training in Mumbai, India, and Mexico.
Josefin has been the primary teacher for the Swedish Probation services and co-developed the Swedish Krimyoga program together with Eva Seilitz, a program that is today evidence-based through the research study- Yoga in correctional settings. She is now creating national trauma-informed yoga programs for the Swedish forensic psychiatry units, the Juvenile justice system, and stress-reducing programs for children in the Swedish schools.
Josefin trained as a Yoga Therapist with The Minded Institute in London with a particular focus on complex trauma and mental health. Through the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute in Boston, MA, she has completed the Traumatic Stress Studies Certification with Bessel van der Kolk and is a certified TCTSY- Facilitator (Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga) and the certificate training Global Mental Health- Trauma and Resilience with Harvard Medical School in 2021. She has also studied trauma-informed dance/movement therapy with Katia Verrault and Tripura Kashyap in India. Josefin is a professional member of ICPA-International Corrections and Prison Association.
