March 18, 2003

Children ease stress with a yoga stretch

By Lini S. Kadaba

Inquirer Staff Writer

Rowan MacFarlane, 9, practices a pose at the Yoga Garden. Some say yoga is not good for children’s growing bodies but the American Academy of Pediatrics says there is no data on any negative effects. Photo by Laurence Kesterson/Inquirer

With her palms pressed together, Tav Ohayon inhales deeply - a yoga breath she practices by imagining she is slurping her favorite drink - then exhales.

Her favorite drink is strawberry milk. Tav is 3.

For the next 45 minutes, yoga instructor Seena Elbaum will lead the 10 preschoolers at the Play School in Society Hill through various asanas, or yoga poses. The children will stretch like cats, fly like birds (while chirping, “Tweet! Tweet!”) and stand like dogs.

Such is the path to nirvana.

Toddlers to preteens are chanting om, relieving tension with stretches and meditating on a favorite place, often following in the barefoot steps of their parents.

It is all part of the surge in yoga’s popularity among Americans, and that includes the littlest. There are yoga camp for children, yoga videos for children, yoga books for children (including the recent Babar’s Yoga for Elephants). There are even yoga birthday parties, where the candle pose (think shoulder stand) is the thing to do.

With great enthusiasm, stressed-out parents enamored by the ancient Eastern practice are introducing inner peace to the packed schedules of their stressed-out children.

“We give them tools to relax,” said Faye Rose, owner of Art & Soul Yoga in Blue Bell, which began offering children’s yoga classes in the fall and runs a summer yoga camp.

Not everyone has found bliss in a pond of little lotuses.

“Yoga was meant for adults,” said Stephen Grant, vice president of the American Yoga Association, a group based in Sarasota, Fla., that teaches yoga.

On its Web site, it emphatically states that “yoga exercises are not recommended for children under 16.” According to Grant, certain postures - bending at the waist, lying on the stomach and lifting the arms and legs, done for extended periods - may interfere with the glandular system and affect the natural growth process.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says there are no data on any negative effects of yoga on children.

Yoga, a 5,000-year-old form of physical and mental exercise, has its roots in the beginning of civilization in the Indus Valley.

Now, the practice - from the traditional hatha to the decidedly yuppie power yoga - is proving fashionable, as it moves into the mainstream. Yoga Journal estimates that more than 15 million adults practice yoga, a number that has tripled in five years.

A growing body of research shows the exercises, long associated with flexibility and stress relief, can help alleviate serious ailments, including depression, back pain and hypertension. Some health insurers even pay for it.

No wonder then, that yoga’s stretch has reached children.

Instructors like Marsha Wenig swear by its benefits. “It is a wonderful tool for self-soothing,“ said the founder of YogaKids, an Indiana-based program that trains children’s yoga instructors.

The program expects to certify 100 new teachers this year, doubling the number of graduates since the program started in 1997. “The demand is so great,” said Wenig, who has sold about 150,000 YogaKids videos and will add to the shelves of books on the subject with this fall’s YogaKids: Educating the Whole Child Through Yoga.

“A lot of yoga postures are very accessible to children,” said Kate Healy, director of Yellow Springs Yoga in Chester Springs, which has classes for all ages, including infants. “They come out of natural human movements.”

Her own 10-year-old daughter, Sarah Gleason, has practiced meditation for two years. “When she has a problem she’ll go to the moon or under the water - all in her mind,” Healy said. “She’ll say, ‘Now I know what to do about this problem. I’ve meditated.’ ”

Children are facing many pressures, agreed psychologist Philip C. Kendall, director of the Child and Adolescent Disorders Clinic at Temple University, and yoga may be just the path to relief.

But, he said, any activity - from religious attendance to sports - could do the same, depending on how it is handled. “If you have a parent saying, ‘You have to be the best at yoga’ then that could be another source of stress,” Kendall said.

Nikki Demech, 34, of Chester Springs enjoyed her own yoga class, especially the mental release, and sought the same for daughter Alexis, 8.

“All she does is school work, school work,” Demech said. “It’s just crazy.”

Now, the girl takes yoga after school. “It makes me feel good,” she said.

Yoga also is making inroads into schools. Roosevelt Middle School in Philadelphia, for one, includes yoga in its physical-education curriculum, and the YWCA in Princeton has incorporated it into its after-school program at two elementary schools to help children relax.

“A lot of the families are high-achieving families, and a lot of the kids are as stressed as the adults,” said Pamela Elmi, an assistant director at the Princeton Y.

Yoga was well-received there.

But in Aspen, Colo., parents have criticized a pilot yoga project at a public elementary school, contending that it violates the separation of church and state and promotes Hinduism. The program is under review.

Classical yoga predates Hinduism and is not a religious practice, said the American Yoga Association.

Children’s classes tend to focus on noncompetitive aspects and nature, with animal poses the dominant theme, instructors said.

“It’s up to the children how much they want to put into the exercises, so there’s no pressure,” said Izabela Piasecki, who teaches the Princeton Y’s after-school yoga class.

She also runs yoga birthday parties, where children talk about feelings, pose like favorite animals, and visualize rainbows. (The fare at such “healthy parties” is still pizza and cake.)

On a recent afternoon at the Yoga Garden in Narberth, several barefoot 6- to 10-year-olds settled cross-legged on purple yoga mats arrayed like the sun.

The path to harmony was littered with giggles and wiggles. Soothingly, a patient yogi Elbaum suggested, “Tell me one thing nice that happened to you this week.”

One boy said, “I forget.” But another shared, “I went to the museum with my dad.”

Next they practiced breathing, “nice and slow,” with hands together and lifted “to the sky” and heads touching the ground. “Feel everything melt,” Elbaum said. “Beautiful.”

“This is relaxing,” Kathy Gerhart, 10, said. The yogi smiled, serenely.

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