By Thelma Natasuwarna Wuisan

Human bodies need to move and exercise in order to stay fit and healthy. Exercise is important for our bones and muscle to work properly; for our joints to function properly; for our circulation to work effectively; and for our metabolism to function efficiently. Adults and children, all need to be active in order to keep in their best shape.

In this modern society, our children have been drawn in to television programs and computer games that made them less and less active every day. Too much of these things may cause our children to develop poor posture and balance, lack of focus and discipline, lack of social interface, less energetic and easily gain sluggishness and may also develop obesity. Due to the intense competition in the society, some children may take up sports or any physical activity to achieve a winning performance. Rigorous training in competitive activities may also create long-term damage to children’s vulner-able bones. Too much competition could drive the children to reject themselves if they do not work hard enough, win enough, looking good enough, or not having enough. Ba-sically, too much pressure of competitive activities may cause children not to like them-selves, not to accept themselves if they are not up to the “standards”. Then, in a very young age, they would be exposed to stress and depression.

That is a sad reality. We need to understand that our children need to be physically active within their limits and having fun with themselves by exploring possibilities. Yoga offers our children a holistic activity that includes physical postures, breathe exercise, mind focus and emotional management. Yoga is a non-competitive activity where the children are enjoying themselves within their own capabilities.

By having fun in their activities, children grow to accept and love themselves and others. Their positive outlook toward themselves and the world around them become an important foundation to face future’s challenge in life.

The Benefits of Yoga and Have Fun Doing It, Too!

Part of yoga is physical exercise, although, yoga actually offers more than just physical exercise. Children who learn yoga usually have a healthy self-confident, they also grow the ability to focus and concentrate. Yoga allows children to express themselves and fosters their imagination by mimicking animals, objects and nature.

As a physical exercise, yoga increases muscles and bones strength and flexibility. Through yoga postures, children learn to balance their bodies and using breaths as the source of energy and balance.

Breathing exercise is taught in yoga to help children to integrate themselves and become attuned with their bodies. Simple breathing technique such as “Balloon Breath” (from Wai Lana’s Little Yogi) when conducted with concentration and focus on the inhalation and exhalation could help managing children emotional and mental state as it pro-vides some sense of calmness and steadiness.

At first, we could find some children are reluctant to do yoga poses. Some of them could be shy and could limit their physical movement, some others may feel silly to make some strange poses and having questions of why they should do that at all. But in after few sessions, children will immediately get hooked up to yoga because they enjoy them. Children are usually excited with the challenge, and later enjoy themselves when they are able to perform they poses.

Yoga is for all boys and girls in all sizes. It can also be taught for children with physical disabilities (hearing impair, in a wheel chair, etc) and mental problems (ADHD, ADD, Autism) with some special skills from the teacher and may or may not require a spe-cial class setting e.g. private class with no toys or distraction in the classroom. For normal children or for other regular/normal yoga classroom setting, we basically only need to have proper mats, some blocks and straps when necessary. In addition to that, it would be in-teresting to stick on some simple yet colorful sketches of yoga poses on the wall to inspire the children. They tend to be more excited if the teachers are sticking new poses on the wall.

The short-term and long-term benefits of yoga for children are good posture devel-opment, better physical coordination, good connection between physical and mental, somewhat have a better understanding that their physical state will influence their mental state, and vice versa. Yoga builds healthy confident for the children, the children will not be judged while practicing this confident in yoga sessions. Basically, yoga helps building physical strength as well as mental stability.

Yoga induces children’s curiosity and creativity. When children are encouraged to modify the poses within teacher’s guidance, they would feel some sense of acceptance in yoga practice. That will foster their curiosity and creativity, knowing that they have freedom to be who they are. Responsibility is practiced through their effort in performing a pose. They are encouraged to give themselves some challenge as they progress in yoga, but they must be responsible by not forcing too far, causing injuries for themselves and others. Focus, sensitivity and compassion are practiced simultaneously when children are guided to listen to their inner-selves and to behave with respect.

All the benefits that yoga provides to its practitioner are to be experienced inside and outside yoga classroom. In school, in music and art, in other physical activities, and even in relationship with other human beings, yoga has given contentment and confidence for someone to carry him/herself as who he/she is. In my personal experience, there was a young student who used to have problem at school with her friends and teachers, she got into troubles with boys and girls at school. She is athletic and strong, but did not recognize her physical energy when she interacted with others. From time to time, she admitted that she had difficult time avoiding fights. After a few months of yoga practice, there was a rec-ognizable changes emerged in her. She got more centered and had not been into a fight for quite some time. Her yoga asana also changed dramatically and she could maintain a better focus for the whole yoga session. Other students mentioned that they could manage their emotion better and stay calm.

These stories are very encouraging, opening our eyes that yoga could really work for children – not merely for their physical health, but also for them to present themselves while interacting and connecting with others in the society. Eventually, it is for our children to cope with challenge in life and enjoy living, loving themselves and others in respect.

Kids Yoga Teacher – What Does It Take?

- Have sufficient experience in yoga and practice regularly, also have the spirit to continue learning about yoga and its aspects.

- It is important (and required) to have a YT Certificate and also to have understand-ing in basic anatomy.

- Must have love, compassion and patience for the children. Seeing and understand-ing that each child is unique, even the most difficult child has a glowing light in him/herself – awaiting to be radiated.

- Have good teaching ethics and behave accordingly, never harm the children in any way.

- Creative, dynamic, humorous and flexible (not in physical sense, instead having flexibility in facing ever changing situation with children, teachers may not be able to stick to the teaching program of the day).

Challenges in Kids Yoga Classes

- Maintaining their interest: children usually have short-term attention and mostly are only interested to the things that are easy and make them feel comfortable. This is human nature – but in children particularly, they can quickly coming out of the pose and start to ignore teacher’s instruction, they would only do what they like or what they want to do. That could distract other children or sometimes it is “contagious” as other children may follow this behavior. Therefore, engaging with the children should help maintain their interest throughout the practice. The following tips may help:

o Always prepare self with program syllabus. Sometimes children are not in the mood for practice or some of them are tired because of the previous activity, the teacher needs to be flexible and make improvisation here and there to re-late with children’s condition yet keeping the practice going. Ask children to do poses that are more “playful” and restorative if mood and stamina are the issues. Partner yoga such as “Rooftop” (Tara Guber and Leah Khalis) or “Partner Dog” (Yael Calhoun and Matthew Calhoun) or group yoga such as “Group Butterflies” or “Group Flowers” (Thia Luby) usually bring back the fun element and capture children attention. If children have lots of energy and cannot be in order, we should ask them to do challenging poses “Double Dog” (Tara Guber and Leah Khalis), “Knapsack” (Tara Guber and Leah Khalis), or Wheelbarrow (Thia Luby).

- Being discipline and keeping the routine: some children could easily get bored and wanting to do new things every time. Although it is recommended to include some new activities in the sequence every now and then, children must practice all the “old poses” so that they trained to ‘perfect’ them and discovered the benefits. So the challenge for the teacher would be to continuously remind the children the purpose of practice and at the same time to be creative by changing the sequence of the practice to keep it exciting.

- Having tolerant and compassion, being non competitive and non-judgment: children are unique individuals with different characters. It is important for the teacher to fo-cus on yoga practice and not pushing, punishing, or judging the children from where they come from. As much as possible, not to directly call out their names when some pose’s adjustments were required. It it better to ask them all to pay attention to what the teacher said and try to adjust themselves. Otherwise, approach them and discuss it quietly. Putting a child under focus of attention may caused uncom-fortable feeling for him/her.

- Parents support: parents are suggested to continuously encouraging children to yoga (or any practice, for that matter), encourage them to attend yoga class on-time (this includes the arrangement of dropping-off and picking-up routine) and support them during the days they don’t feel like to practice.

The Role of Music, Graphic and Short Story Telling

It is suggested to play music in Kids Yoga classes. A mixed of instrumental New Age music, common children songs and some nature sounds (rain drops, waterfall, bird cirping, etc) could be useful to guide children into different stages i.e. active poses, games in group and relaxation time.

Simple graphic or sketch of yoga poses could guide children to do their own poses. Or, interestingly, graphic could be a teaser for children’s imagination and creativity. In partner yoga, for instance, children may afterward come up with their own interesting ges-ture, sound, interaction etc.

I found short story telling very helpful to engage with children in yoga classes. The story could be about yoga practice, about living and eating healthy, about managing emo-tions such as anger and anxiety. This session, however, needs not to be longer than 10 minutes to capture children’s enthusiasm. They would listen and respond according to the subject. Some of them may tell their own stories about the related subjects. It is good to listen to them and be responsive, that way children are encourage to be confident with themselves, and also developing trust among all yoga students and the teacher. **tnw**

REFERENCES

Luby, Thia. “Children’s Book of Yoga”. New Mexico: Clear Light Publisher, 1998.

Guber, Tara & Kalish, Leah. “Yoga Pretzels”. Cambridge: Barefoot Books, 2008.

Guber, Tara & Kalish, Leah. “Yoga Planet”. Cambridge: Barefoot Books, 2005.

Pupperhart, Helen. “Yoga Exercise for Teens”. Alameda: Hunter House, 2009.

Stewart, Mary & Phillips, Kathy. “Yoga for Children”. London: Webster International, 1992.

Singleton, Mark. “Yoga for You and Your Child”. London: Duncan Baird, 2004.

Calhoun, Yael & Calhoun, Matthew. R. “Creating a Yoga Practice for Kids”. Sunstone Press, 2006.

Lana, Wai. “Wai Lana’s Little Yogi Fun Exercise”. Wai Lana Productions, 2005.

Thelma Natasuwarna Wuisan is a certified Yoga teacher. She teaches Yoga classes in Jakarta, Indonesia.