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October, 2004

Tune-in, De-stress & Enhance Academic Skills

By Barbara Sansone

Newborn babies doing yoga? Two-year-olds sitting patiently and staying focused? Children learning about ecology, anatomy and the natural sciences by practicing asana? Adolescents find a way to de-stress from peer competition and expectations by (guess what?) practicing yoga!

Children’s yoga is a natural and healthy way to exercise, relax, focus, build confidence and strengthen their mind/body/spirit connection. Yoga games, breath meditations, and deep relaxations are wonderful antidotes for hyperactivity, and have helped children with ADD/ADHD and autism, as well as children with cerebral palsy.

Meet the Pioneers

Marsha Wenig began teaching yoga to children in the 1980s and established the first teacher certification program in 1997. One of Marsha’s early students, Jodi Beth Komitor, founded the first yoga center exclusively for children.

Marsha Wenig was teaching first through fifth graders in the California Poets in the Schools program in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Like writers of any age, the kids often were plagued by writer’s block. Being a long-time yoga practitioner herself, Marsha decided to try yoga as a method to alleviate that “stuck” feeling. It worked! Anxiety and fear were released and the children’s minds were filled with wondrous, wild, imaginative poetry. Marsha discovered, quite simply, that movement is a universal language for children. Movement is a child’s natural state. Guided movements and practicing a set pattern of movements, as in traditional hatha yoga, can have the same benefits for children as for adults. Children as young as three years old can learn how to clear the mind and enjoy a sense of peace and well-being.

In 1989, Marsh moved to Indiana, where yoga was not popular. She and her husband built a small yoga studio in their home for their own private practice. Before long, their neighbors were calling, “Can we come and watch?” “You can come join us!” Marsha replied.

The following year Marsha attended a Unity in Yoga Conference. Yoga teacher Amy Kline Gage taught Yoga Mudras for Children. Marsha was fascinated. “I had an epiphany,” she says. “Upon returning home I asked my children’s preschool if I could teach the children yoga.” Thus the YogaKids curriculum was born.

The Wenigs never expected their home studio to spawn the birth of a yoga center called Dancing Feet Yoga, and they certainly didn’t expect that center to become the headquarters for one of the few schools in this country that offers a certification program for teaching yoga to children -YogaKids.

In YogaKids classes, traditional yoga techniques have been recreated in playful, simple and fun ways. Using the Multiple Intelligence Theory of Harvard educator Howard Gardner as a foundation, each pose becomes a springboard for activities that open the doorway to fully integrated learning.

While doing Triangle Pose, or Trikonasana, children sing a popular nursery rhyme, renamed by Wenig, “Om a Little Teapot.” Wenig changed the title of the poem and the last line of the rhyme so that students remember how to do the asana. Instead of saying “tip me over, pour me out,” the students sing “tip me over” as they bring one hand down their leg to hold their ankle, and “pour me up,” as they raise their opposite hand up toward the sky. “Children learn by linking the new thought to something they already know,” she explains.

In YogaKids classes, asanas are performed with a reverence for animals and nature, and recognition of the unity of all living things. Students are encouraged to make sounds with the poses. “When we do the Snake Pose, we hiss. When we do the Lion Pose, we roar. We don’t just show the cobra like we do in adult classes. We are the cobra. Then we lead the kids to that meditative place of silence.”

A yoga practitioner from her teen years, Jodi Beth Komitor began her professional life as a special education teacher. While earning her Masters degree in learning disabilities, she completed a teacher training offered by Sonia Sumar called Yoga for the Special Child. It changed the course of her life.

She immediately began offering children’s yoga classes in her apartment. It started with up to four students at a time. After two and one half years, the popularity of her classes meant she needed a larger space. Her current studio offers twenty classes per week with over one hundred participants.

Baby Yoga, Yoga for Two is for newborns up to the just crawling stage. It is designed for the post-partum mother as it strengthens the bond between baby and mother as well as rebuilds abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. It helps alleviate colic, promotes restful sleep and stimulates movement and development for the baby.

In Family Yoga, there’s much laughter and bonding as participants try yoga poses, animated breathing exercises and relaxation techniques.

There are also classes for the children without adults starting at two years of age and up to 14. These classes are educationally based and poses are age appropriate. Integrated into the practice are counting exercises, languages, environmental awareness, rhyming, story telling and lots of music.

Meet the Teachers

Janet Muther, CYKF (Certified YogaKids Facilitator), teaches six yoga classes per week for children ages 3-11 years.

“Let’s get small like a bug,” she directs. The six pre-schoolers, participating in their weekly yoga session at Mill Valley Montessori Preschool, in Mill Valley, California, immediately go to the floor and curl up in Child’s Pose, quiet as can be.

“Okay now we will practice our deep breathing. Let’s sit criss-cross applesauce. Take a deep breath in, put your hand on your heart to hold the breath. Now hold your hand up as we cound the outgoing breath nice and slow. One, two, three, four, five...”

After the deep breathing, each child selects a card from a pack of animal images and the class has a chance to move about the room and get a little wild, playing the various animals to the accompaniment of lively music.

“There are elements of nature integrated with yoga,” Janet explains. “We roar like lions, curl up like snakes, flap our wings like birds, stand on one foot like herons, stretch up to greet the sun and wriggle our noses like bunnies as we practice short fast breathing through the nostrils. The children relate easily to these images.”

Near the end of the half-hour energetic session, Janet tells them to get relaxed like spaghetti. She then goes around picking up each limb and shaking it lightly to make sure they were like ’wet noodles." Big blissful smiles are on every face.

Bodyworks Yoga studio, in Petaluma, California, has two classes for children as well as prenatal yoga classes. Finishing a flow series, Janet directs, “Let’s close our eyes and take a breath. Stretch up with our arms, down to our toes, leg back to Warrior and back to the top of the mat.” The children followed the sequence effortlessly. They practiced Tree Pose next. One girl could balance with ease, but one of the boys asked to do it with a partner. The class held hands in a circle, lifting one leg to tree then letting go of one hand. The boy needing assistance quickly lost his balance. No one mocked him or even seemed to notice. He giggled and Janet said, “Good work!” Eye pillows came out next for Savasana. Sitting in a circle, the class ended with bows to one another as they joyfully recited namastes.

The eight-to-eleven year old class is quite advanced. The pace and level of asanas practiced is equivalent to an adult beginner class. The class starts with a flow series including Cat, Downward Dog and Child’s Pose. They do backbends, Table, Fish, Cobra, Warrior, Triangle, and ShoulderStand--all with an attentive, yet playful focus.

Near the end of class they practice headstands against the wall. They end with Savasana, this time with Janet reading an imagery story, and then a round of namastes.

Lani Rosen teaches daily yoga at two of the Whitney Young Child development Centers in San Francisco. One center is located in Bayview and the other is in the Western Addition area. These are the neighborhoods of housing projects, drugs, street gangs and drive by shootings. The children she teaches are ages three to five. The “yoga room” is a small storage room.

A first grade teacher in Brooklyn, New York, from 1998-2003, Lani became a certified yoga teacher in 2002. She introduced yoga in her first-grade classroom between lessons to get the children refocused. She then taught yoga at an after school program. At this point, teaching yoga to children became her passion and priority. She could see how much they benefited in so many ways. Lani completed the Next Generation teacher certification in 2003 and taught classes at Next Generation yoga studio for several months before moving to California.

Lani’s regular education teacher training and her yoga teacher training have become well integrated in her yoga classroom. The yoga asanas flow seamlessly one to another, capturing the children’s imagination, focus, and openhearted energy toward each other.

Lani passes out bright yellow paper suns to each child. “Let’s reach our sun to the sky. Now try to balance it on your head. Put your sun on your heart, your knees and down to your feet. Now reach over and try to kiss your sun.” The children follow along with big smiles.

“I have a special treat for you today. We are going to use our magic wands.” Our come brightly colored metallic stars glued to long plastic straws. Sitting cross-legged in a circle, the children wave the wands in the air as each child has a turn to name the animal they will become. “Abra Cadabra, turn us into a lion. Ding.” They giggle as they touch their heads with the wand, get up on their knees and roar like a lion. The game continues until each child has a chance to name his/her animal or object. Lani explains, “I like generating activities from the children. Using the wands, for example, gives them the ability to dictate the class. Most other classes are totally teacher directed.”

There is always a song at the end of class. “Which one is your favorite?” she asks. “The namaste song,” someone shouts. “No, let’s do Goldfish,” counters another child. “Last Night I Had a Dream,“ a third child bounces up enthusiastically. In closing, the children sing om together, and, with hands in prayer position, bow and say namaste to each other. Then they give themselves a great big hug and say aloud, “I love myself!”

Barbara Sansone is a free-lance writer, photographer, documentary film producer and owner of Spirit of India travel company.

© Yoga 4 Everybody 2004