Kids can love yoga too

 Photo courtesy of Camp Aim.

I've been wanting to blog on my work teaching kids yoga for a long time now, but I felt I needed more personal experience doing it first. As you may know I work in the special needs sector, with either people having physical, cognitive, or both challenges. When starting my yoga immersion back in 2012 it was a personal journey, alongside a change in work responsibility which I knew would be harder to let go, when returning home each day. I never toyed with the idea of teaching, or even combining my skills of movement therapist with yoga. But on graduation there was demand and need for it.

I first tried in a private setting with individual children with ADD or autism, and wow did I see it work. I saw focus at the end of just a short practice. Particularly one girl who just needed a boost in confidence, I saw she needed something to make herself feel good, and when she learnt new poses she resonated a new confidence. She learnt to understand if you want something, you need to work for it, which she did, versus how she was often frustrated in school. Each day we played yoga games, we held asana's we did a breathing activity, and more importantly she was able to be still and focused at the end. It also promoted bonding moments for mother and daughter as she would show her mom, teach her mom, and they would congratulate one another.

I decided to try and create some classes of my own, to see the need for classes for children with physical disabilities. I had contacts to a yoga studio in North Toronto through the special needs community and a ran a small camp for girls with cerebral palsy. The girls seemed to love it, and I played around with themes and focuses each class. The camp was for an hour a day for one week. I was delighted with some of the feedback, and I had a physiotherapist email me, saying she could even see one of the girls she was also working with, looking stronger. I loved teaching the classes and I was hooked on wanting to teach more. Yoga is cool for any child to do, so why should these girls miss out.

 The biggest challenge as with all aspects of my life was trying to fit everything in, I am one of those people who just never has enough hours in the week to do everything I want to do. Proposing to a yoga studio you want to run a class which potentially, to begin with, has such a small audience, is hard. As people running a business they often want more numbers, so when I looked into setting up something alone, it was hard trying to fund the studio rental, ensuring I could cover the cost's if I was initially only going to be able to support a small clientele. I am also adamant that this should not be another expensive intervention my parents should invest in, but something that any typically developing child would pay too. I was sure to try to give myself at least one full day of rest a week, so logistics of when I ran class, was hard, plus I was affiliated with interested families from all over the GTA and realized people were tired of travelling for more programs for their child. They wanted it in their area, so finding the perfect spot for me was also hard to find.

 I was blessed to get acquainted with Camp Aim who ran an after school program, on Mondays. Perfect for me, a day not in my regular job, but a day I was often busy with appointments, so turning out was no problem at all.

I admitted to the program director, the yoga teaching side of special needs was new to me, although in the field for over 10 years, I was just thankful for the opportunity, the classes were short, often 20-30 minutes, and when working with a class of children with down syndrome , and on the autistic spectrum, some days were predictably harder than others. I again played around with the way I spoke to the kids, the firmness needed to find the right balance of choice and that of making them follow direction and instruction. I introduced new concepts and brought back what they knew so they could see progress, and I learnt when things needed to be changed (often after the harder classes) At times the program supervisors said they were amazed how long the children were able to stay on their own mat for such a long time, or were able to interpret abstract images or work with new people. Travelling to the location was long for me but I loved it, and felt most days the children got things out of it, even if just a short period of time.

I was able to work with Camp Aim over the summer months and opened up to teaching more students yoga and again things came with success, and every child made each staff member smile at least once which their engagement into the activity at hand, either a moment they understood better breath awareness, listening, sharing or gross motor balance. I saw why every parent is considering yoga for their kids now, and I see the market is needed and feel sad I couldn't bring more to families in Toronto, but will continue to explore options here in Calgary for one day being able to help others just experience, explore and try yoga and see how it can help in many more ways than they think.