(Reuters) Down a dusty dirt road in the Amazonian state of Rondonia, prisoners convicted of murder, theft and other crimes get a rare release from the day-to-day hardships of a penal system known for violence and overcrowding.

ACUDA, a local charity in the capital city of Porto Velho, trains prisoners in spiritual and physical healing practices including Ayurvedic massage, based on ancient Hindu medicine, as well as in conventional vocational skills such as car mechanics and gardening.
“It gives inmates something to look forward to and something they can use when they leave,” says Adriano Furtunato, regional manager of the penal system for Rondonia, a poor state on the western fringe of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
The system has strict rules of conduct that must be met before inmates can take part, so the therapies also provide an incentive for prisoners to behave, he adds.

The charity, which has its headquarters within a complex of ten prisons in the city, uses local volunteers to run its courses and over the years has trained more than 2,000 inmates. About 110 currently take part in the training programme.
The therapies have one goal, says Luiz Carlos Marques, the charity’s founder – educating inmates about the possibilities of life beyond crime. “Nobody can force someone to stop breaking the law,” he says. “It’s something each person has to decide on their own.”

In a recent training session, prisoners in handcuffs were bussed to the charity’s headquarters, located within a complex of 10 prisons. Activities ranged from Ayurvedic massage to yoga, ear candling therapy and pottery painting.
From watching the prisoners, their favourite seemed to be the clay therapy that’s designed to improve skin health for the prisoners, who spend most of their hours in dank, dark cells.
Family members join the detainees on the last Friday of each month. Everyone shares a meal and prisoners, some of whom show their Ayurveda certificates to their mothers, then use their new skills to massage family members.
Aponte says the therapies offered by ACUDA have helped him achieve much more than he ever did as a free man.
“Today I am a mechanic, a sculptor, a masseur and other things,” he says. “I didn’t know how to do anything before, only wrong.”