A man who spent nearly half of his life in prison for murder is opening a yoga studio in one of Chicagos more violent West Side neighborhoods.

Marshawn Feltus hopes his new yoga studio will bring peace to the troubled streets of Austin.

On a summer day, Feltus walked past boarded-up buildings and groups of people clustered on front stoops and street corners.

He and two staff members wore matching t-shirts and carried yoga mats.

They regularly recruit people this way for their yoga studio -- the first in Austin.

The first group he approached just blankly stared at him from the front porch they were sitting on, but he pulled a teenage boy aside and started talking to him.

Feltus told his story to everyone he ran into along Chicago Avenue that day. Within a few minutes of recruiting, he had a six-foot-tall former inmate reaching high into the air and breathing deeply.

He says he knows what young people on the streets are going through because he was a gang member 20 years ago -- in the same neighborhood.

Feltus was in a gang, and what started out as an argument and fistfight over territory, ended with him seeking retaliation.

He shot a guy twice and killed him.

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Former inmate brings yoga to Chicago’s West Side