May-June 2006
Up, Om and Away…Over the Rainbow
Thoughts on Yoga for Children
By Marsha Wenig
Just click your heels and repeat, “There’s no place like Om...” This wasn’t Dorothy’s mantra of choice, but it is a happy and fun coincidence the words Om and home rhyme — especially as we discuss yoga for children.
We all know and love the story. After that colorful hot air balloon flies off without Dorothy, the music stops and the only one-way departure out of Oz is canceled. But then, with gentle guidance and a simple suggestion from the Good Witch of the West, Dorothy realizes the truth. She possesses the personal strength and inner power to deal with her challenges head on, entirely on her own.
At a very tender age, Dorothy connects and taps into the immense capacity that resides within her, and she intuitively knows this energy is available to the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man too. She calls upon this force to take her where she wants to go. We all can, and yoga can aid and support us in the journey--beginning as very young children and throughout our lives.
When presented in child-friendly and fun ways, yoga encourages our first steps toward self-awareness, self-care, self-esteem, self-understanding, compassion and health. Because yoga offers wide and deep benefits, it can be applied in an endless variety of day-to-day situations in our children’s lives. I find that children naturally understand how to use yoga, and they can apply it themselves almost as soon as it is introduced to them.
Here are two cases in point:
A young mother came to me recently and said her three-year-old son had just begun watching one of the YogaKids DVDs. He had been having a great deal of trouble sleeping. Without prompting from his mom, he remembered and began practicing calming poses that he saw on the DVD before bed. He would excuse himself from the family and say, “I need to go do some yoga so I can go to sleep.” He would go off to his room and begin doing the poses to calm and center himself. His sleeping improved immediately.
Another woman, a single mother of two girls, wrote me and told me she and her children were experiencing a great deal of upheaval in their lives, including the effects of post-traumatic stress. She and her children started doing yoga together, which has helped all of them manage stress and feel better. “Now, when one of us is starting to show signs of frustration or anger, my eldest will say, ‘Let’s do the Volcano because that always makes us feel better.”
Here are examples of poses designed just for children. Have fun doing them with your child:
Pose: Hot Air Balloon
When to use: Waking up
How to do: Sit on your heels and inflate your balloon (your tummy and lungs). Take little sips of breath, and raise your arms upward little by little until they are over your head. When you’ve sipped as much air as you can, your balloon is filled.
You and your child can inflate your balloons together. Time it so you fill up at the same time. Fly around together in a hot-air-balloon dance and then deflate in a gentle heap. How many times can you go up, up and away, and come back down?
Benefits: This pose, for very young children, is a great introduction to breathing.
Pose: Volcano
When to use: When you feel like bursting or exploding, use the volcano to let off steam.
How to do: Sit in a chair or stand up. Place your palms together at your heart center (Namaste pose). Breathe in as you watch your hands rise up over your head. Breathe out as you explode your arms outward. Make big, blasting volcano noises. Lower your arms to your sides and return your hands to the Namaste position. Repeat the sequence several times, erupting like a volcano.
Benefits: Children learn they can manage and blow away anger, frustration and yucky feelings by exploding in this noisy pose. It provides a way for children to release anger in peaceful ways.
Pose: Twist and blow
When to use: Before bed
How to do: Lie on your back, knees bent, and stretch your arms out to each side, in line with your shoulders, palms up. Drop your bent knees over to the right and up towards the armpits. Turn your head to the left as you breathe out with a blowing sound. Breathe in and bring your knees back to the center and across your belly. Drop your legs to the left side, turn your head to the right, and breathe out. Do five continuous rounds. Then relax for at least a minute with your knees on one side and head rotated in the opposite direction. Change sides and relax again.
Benefits: Soothes, stretches ds and intestines an inner massage. The twisting action that takes place revitalizes the spine while improving the functioning of the digestive and eliminative systems.
Pose: Polar bear
When to use: To calm
How to do: Begin in heel sitting pose. Bend your knees and sit down on your heels. Angle your toes toward each other and your heels away from each other. Open your knees wide apart, toes touching behind you. Bend forward at the hips and slide your chest along the floor. Place your chin on the floor and put your paws over your nose to keep yourself warm. Breathe in and out.
You can lie in Polar Bear pose facing your child. Gaze into his/her eyes. Mirror each other and nuzzle your muzzles.
Benefits: Self-care, self-soothing. When you feel a need to curl up or hibernate.
Pose: Brave warrior
When to use: Before a test at school
How to do: A true warrior is strong without weapons. Begin by jumping your feet apart. Turn both feet to the right. Try to bend your right knee into a right angle, so your thigh is almost parallel to the ground--that is, as level as a tabletop. Stretch out your arms. Turn your head to the right. Focus at a spot somewhere past your fingers. Say, “I am brave.”
Benefits: Fosters inner strength, determination, focus and sharpness of mind.
Yoga poses designed just for children can be helpful before a test, while riding in a car, as a quick pick-me-up, to unwind or just have fun. When we plant the yoga seeds in fun and loving ways at an early age, children blossom. I see it happen before my very eyes each day. I witnessed this amazing unfolding and development in my own child as well, my daughter Dakota, who was my very first “Yoga Kid.”
Growing up in a small Midwestern town, Dakota was often teased about being a flower child. In 6th grade, I remember her coming home and saying, “Do you know how weird it is that not just one, but both of my parents are yoga instructors? Why can’t you do something normal like everyone else?” We laugh about it now, but at that moment I felt the need to defend, to protect. Yet as I mulled over her words, I realized she was finding her own way, and I needed to allow her process — finding herself and her own identity.
Dakota is now a beautiful young woman, who brings her friends to adult yoga classes and teaches YogaKids classes for me when I travel. She and her friends are excited about the difference that yoga makes for them. Their track times improve, basketball performances go up and even stresses about school and relationships are eased. They remember to breathe and relax. The tools they rely on to surrender and find peace in the present are deeply ingrained. To this day, they still practice poses they learned as small children.
Yoga helps our children’s paths to unfold as they walk, run, sing, leap and play along the way. Reinvest in a pair of red sparkly shoes for the child(ren) in your life. Help put them on and watch them skip and dance down the yellow brick road. We all have magic shoes, dancing feet that can take us up, om and away — over the rainbow.
Author, teacher and recognized children’s yoga authority, Marsha Wenig is the founder and creator of YogaKids International, which offers yoga, fitness and educational products for children. To learn more or sign up for a free YogaKids Pose of the Week, visit YogaKids.com or call 800.968.0694.
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