Twenty million Americans are doing yoga. Recently (December 4, 2005), the New York Times had an article entitled “The Socialization of Yoga,” describing how yoga has become a social event for some. For one yoga group I teach, yoga is a Saturday event at someone’s apartment where anywhere from two to six friends get together and do yoga for an hour. The reward is usually something like donuts. Though yoga is meant to teach concentration and being in the moment, the participants sometimes speak about anticipating the reward that will come at the end of class. The room is generally only quiet for mountain, corpse or easy pose (and maybe not even then). During the rest of the time, the energy level is high, not because it is power yoga or vinyasa practice, but because these friends are all 6- and 7-year-olds. Despite all this, the poses are practiced, learned and improved. Meanwhile, the mothers are in the kitchen having their croissants and coffee. Saturday morning has become a joyful challenge for me.
Unlike the other two teachers I interviewed for this article, my teaching practice is almost exclusively limited to adults, with the exception of a child joining a class with a parent. This Saturday class came out of the fact that I had taught the ringleader Lily’s mother yoga privately before she had Lily. Lily had done yoga at ballet camp, liked it and wanted to continue. Some of the girls had watched their parents practice. For others, yoga was a new thing.
According to Lily Goodale, one of the teachers I interviewed, the age of the group makes a difference--at about nine, they start to grasp the whole package better. One week, we had a 9-year-old boy join us for his first yoga experience ever. He was definitely at a quieter, more attentive level than the lively 6- and 7-year-olds. Yet the regulars have quickly learned the names of the poses and have asked curious questions like, “What is the name of this pose?”, “When are you bringing the lavender oil?” and have made insightful points: “No, I don’t like that pose--it hurts” and when I ask where it hurts, it is, of course, right where the stretch is. Each week, it gets a bit better.
Partner work is equally interesting as a way to impart some yoga philosophy and to work on the practice. I ask, “How does slow, deep breathing make you feel?” to a response of, “Like going to sleep!” or remind the student, “If you do it on one side, you want to do it on the other side to create balance. Concentrate, don’t rush.” When, at the conclusion of one session, one girl asked which one of them was best, I explained that yoga is not about competition.
Another way that yoga can help children is to treat diagnosed learning disabilities and other challenges. Jane, who has studied with Shakta Kaur Khalsa (www.childrensyoga.com), believes in and has experienced the benefits of teaching yoga as a way to impart life tools. Lily Goodale also strongly emphasizes this though the two work in quite different environments with children and yoga. Shakta’s website contains numerous links and resources on yoga and children. Her own products are available for sale on her Website as well as on sites like www.yogatech.com. Jane believes that when the first opportunity for a joint, alcohol or cigarettes comes along, the children’s strength and self-esteem gained from the breath and practice of yoga will help them make wise choices. Lily Goodale also voices this sentiment, saying, “If we had only had these tools when we were younger, look what it might have done for our generation and their choices.”
Lily’s sister also teaches yoga to children, using her training from Color Me Yoga (www.yogaom.com/trainings.html). According to the YogaOm Website, “Teachers will see amazing results in other classes as children learn physical and mental flexibility, self-esteem and relaxation.” I have always said that yoga is a metaphor for life. With these tools, this metaphor, hopefully, can be carried beyond the classroom, as both Jane and Lily think it surely does.
Lily teaches in Montessori schools as well as public schools in the Camden, Maine area. Her training with www.yogaed.com (Tart Gruber and Leah Kalish out of Los Angeles) enables her to create proposals and look for grants to present yoga in public schools. It also provides for an assistant in the room, which the children and teacher like! She has found that children often prefer yoga to regular physical education classes. Children as young as 3- or 4-years-old really love yoga, as I can attest to when one of my 6-year-old students had her precocious 2-year-old sister doing warrior with us. (I have also seen a 1-year-old boy fall in love with the Yogakids video (www.yogakids.com).) Montessori already fosters the child’s individuality but yoga can enhance those characteristics of self-direction, self-discipline and focus. In public schools, the children do not have the communication skills they learn in Montessori and so yoga can make an even bigger difference. Children can learn anywhere in any school environment, with a good yoga instructor like Lily, that they can balance the over-activities of their life with peace, quiet and self-reflection. They learn to sit down and process and think (Lily calls it subtle spirituality in the age of the computer generation).
While Lily combines Kundalini yoga with Hatha, Jane’s training as a yoga teacher and children’s yoga instructor has been primarily influenced by Kundalini yoga. It was interesting for me that both Lily and Jane incorporate Kundalini in their teaching. Jane often uses the mantra work, as does Lily, so children could learn chanting and moving with the music in dance or specific hand movements. Jane uses the quote from Kundalini yoga master Yogi Bhajan that children are “big souls in little bodies.” The children of this generation have one hundred times more pressure than previous generations. Let’s face it, being a child in 2006 is not an easy task: they are overloaded with information, bombarded by the media, overworked and over-stressed with under-attentive parents who are over-stressed themselves (and possibly divorced). All these factors affect choices about lifestyle habits and direction.
If children can be introduced to tools like proper breathing, stretching and strengthening of mind, body and concentration in a friendly, fun and loving atmosphere, who knows what benefits can ensue? Better sleep, a feeling of belonging and learning compassion and nonviolence (ahimsa in yoga). Jane teaches ages 4 to 16 and says the children become like brothers and sisters, learning tolerance of others and a “toolbox of living skills.” She notes how a 13-year-old boy in one of her classes became compassionately protective of a younger girl who had some obvious issues. She was a constant talker and hypersensitive but he let her feel cared for and accepted as she was. Jane gives students little glass hearts that they could give to other people and they become friends in class. Jane says, “Just breathing a certain way can make you feel better!” and teaches the children this. She uses eye pillows and reminds them to release the tension by letting their mouths hang open.
She has a wonderful approach to the children with challenges. “Kids with learning disabilities benefit more,” she says, feeling that they were given the disabilities to bring them to yoga. One 9-year-old progressed up three reading groups after studying yoga. Another Indian girl who is quite young can do all the kriyas (yoga sets, meaning completed action). Maybe it is in her cells! Jane teaches at www.shaktinj.com and privately, as well as to groups like Girl Scouts.
Children are so eager to learn. Lily, my yoga student, says she likes to rise early to read.
When I was in my husband’s native land of Sweden, where the children are taught English in school, I had the opportunity to enter a classroom of 25 11-year-olds, push the school desks back, make a big circle and proceed into spine flexes, chanting and spotted headstands, ostensibly so they could practice their English. However, they seemed to have a lot of fun, as well. When we got back to my husband’s sister’s home, her 11-year-old immediately wanted to do more. Her little sister and mother joined us (ok, the younger girl could do a handstand into back bend immediately from her gymnastic training and I still can’t do it. But, then, yoga is not a competition, right?) Then they were so enthused that they traveled across the ocean to learn more at Sewall House, our summer yoga retreat in Maine, and the now almost 13-year-old Mimi wrote in our guest book, “The yoga has helped me to find the real Mimi.” Indeed, amazing souls in children’s bodies. Our future, so wise and radiant.
Donna Amrita Davidge runs her yoga retreat with husband Kent Bonham in Island Falls, Maine from July 4th thru Columbus Day and spends her winters teaching Kundalini yoga mostly but also hatha/astanga in New York City. More information can be found at www.sewallhouse.com.