Yoga helps even little ones channel energy, emotion

Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.

It's close to 6 p.m. She's had a long day.

She collapses on her mat, rolls on her back and closes her eyes. And then sends one finger digging up her nose

What? C'mon, she's only 5.

This is yoga for kids. Once an oddity reserved for only the crunchiest communities, downward dog for the grade-school set is now being taught in studios from Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Moscow, Russia. And educators, including Chicago's Namaste School, which serves mostly poor kids who speak a language other than English, are turning to yoga to connect with a generation that many say has been dismissed as deficit this or hyperactive that.

At Decatur Yoga and Pilates studio, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dylan Laakmann, sits quietly next to his mother. The lanky 12-year-old whose fashionably shorn hair hangs in his face, describes himself as a "downer" before he started taking yoga two years ago.

"I wasn't really that happy a kid, I guess, and my grades, they weren't that good," he says, his taut mouth easing as he relaxes in conversation. "I wasn't that joyful."

Dylan goes to an Atlanta school known for its highly serious curriculum that offers German to first graders and lessons in "circle games" and "beeswax modeling." His mother, Hanlie Laakmann, wanted her son to get involved in something and thought his sensitive nature might take to yoga. She's been especially glad about the move lately since she and her husband told Dylan that they are divorcing.

"Like, it's hard, with the divorce," he says, sitting on a yoga mat, replying to a stranger asking him to open up in front of a television camera. He tunes it all out for a moment, crosses his legs and closes his eyes. He begins to breathe deeply and then slowly lifts himself into a headstand. When he comes down, he's ready to answer more questions.

Dylan's stoicism is broken for a moment by a dozen miniature yogis who've been unleashed in the studio. Kids like Gigi, some as young as 3, can take seven-week long sessions with names such as Charlie and the Chakra Factory and the Wizard of Ohm.

Yoga for Children

by Karin Wettimuny

The question always is why do we do Yoga for children and not any other excercise.

Today it is very alarming how many children are suffering from psychosomatic disorders such as sleeping disturbances, eating disturbances, headaches and very often wrong posture like drooping shoulders as well as stress related to pressure, competition and aggression in school. To help children cope, we must find a way of excercise that involves the whole body, the unity of body, soul and mind.

Yoga is the way to come back to this unity, to come back to perfect balance. Yoga is movement combined with correct breathing and meditation. With Yoga we discover our spirit again, through the body. It makes the child alert, flexible (in mind and body), stronger healthier and more confident. Yoga greatly helps to cope with day to day pressures.

Yoga for children is taught different from the way we teach adults. Some Asanas are not taught at all, especially to children who go through puberty. In the following I will give you an idea how I structure a lesson for kids.

We always start off sitting in a circle and chanting OM. All kids love to chant together and to feel the strong vibration the OM creates when chanted together. If the Children are very young, I wrap the lesson into a story. Often our stories take us to far away countries and in order to get there we must fly. So first we board a jet and all kids 'fly' around and land on their mats. Kids like to spread their 'wings'.

Since many Asanas have names of animals we can meet the animals in the country we visit. It's amazing how many new Asanas are created (we had a dog that did a pee, which is Adho Mukha Svanasana with one leg lifted). Sometimes we create famous buildings with Tadasana, Trikonasana etc. When I teach children I use a lot of affirmations. 'I am strong like a warrior' in Virabhadrasana or 'I am alert like an eagle' in Garudasana etc. Children don't do Bhujangasana they are a dangerous cobra they don't do Natarajasana they are poised and beautiful dancers.

I wind down with sitting poses. We 'close a book' in Paschimottanasana for example. Also I do not teach Sirsasana to children younger than 16 years, because of their delicate necks and also the strong effect on the glands, but I teach Adho Mukha Vrksasana with me as a wall or the real wall. Through relaxation I tell them a story that deals with finding courage, letting go of tension etc. A favourite ending of the yoga lesson is when each child tells about her/his one good thing and one bad thing of the day. Finally we strongly breathe out all the bad things and happily inhale all the good things. Kids love to talk about their problems, it's a great relieve when they see that they are not alone with their problems. When we meditate I use a candle and we look at it for only a minute as a start (later longer) than we close the eyes and see the image of it, later we draw a picture of the candle. Sometimes I use soft music to focus only on the sound.

Yoga for Kids

 by: Marsha Wenig  Yoga Journal

A Child's Way

Yoga with children offers many possibilities to exchange wisdom, share good times, and lay the foundation for a lifelong practice that will continue to deepen. All that's needed is a little flexibility on the adult's part because, as I quickly found out when I first started teaching the practice to preschoolers, yoga for children is quite different than yoga for adults.

Six years ago, I had my first experience teaching yoga to kids at a local Montessori school. I looked forward to the opportunity with confidence—after all, I'd been teaching yoga to adults for quite a while, had two young children of my own, and had taught creative writing for several years in various Los Angeles schools. But after two classes with a group of 3- to 6-year-olds, I had to seriously reevaluate my approach. I needed to learn to let go (the very practice I had been preaching for years) of my agenda and my expectations of what yoga is and is not.

When I began to honor the children's innate intelligence and tune in to how they were instructing me to instruct them, we began to co-create our classes. We used the yoga asanas as a springboard for exploration of many other areas—animal adaptations and behavior, music and playing instruments, storytelling, drawing—and our time together became a truly interdisciplinary approach to learning. Together we wove stories with our bodies and minds in a flow that could only happen in child's play.