Yoga helps students escape their hectic schedules
Yoga helps city students escape hectic schedules

By Jeff Raymond

Published: February 26, 2008

CAN 8-year-olds ever find a quiet place inside themselves? Kerry Ann Richards thinks they can: Her yoga class of subdued, engaged 8- to 11-year-olds is her proof.

She teaches "Yoga for Kids” and "Mandala Arts” at Integris Health's James L. Hall Jr. Center for Mind, Body and Spirit.

The two-hour classes, offered five times a year, typically for eight weeks, are intended to provide children with tools to deal with their overcommitted lives and the sensory overload of video games, televisions and iPods.

Talk to children at the class, between yoga poses and imaginary field trips, and it's obvious they need a little downtime from soccer, basketball, singing and piano lessons, advanced math classes, homework, bullying and all the other difficulties that come with childhood these days.

Hannah Roberts, 9, said yoga helps her relax.

"It can calm you down when you're all stressed out,” she said.

Jacob Hughes, 9, said his grandmother signed him up for the class. He wasn't interested at first but came around after his first visit.

"I like most of the poses in the yoga. I mostly like all the arts,” he said. "The first time I came, I completely changed my mind.”

If they come away with the ability to breathe deeply, step away from a difficult situation for a few seconds and feel better about themselves, Richards believes she has done her job.

"They just have so much on their schedules,” she said.

The kids also get some exercise: Richards takes adult yoga and adds some child-specific poses such as the "peanut butter and jelly” and the "swinging pretzel.”

"This is about being present, being focused and paying attention,” she said.

During a Feb. 13 class, the nine children there picked up marbles with their toes, depositing the marbles in small baskets.

"This one's going to be a slam dunk,” said Christopher Ooley, 8, as he attempted to deposit a marble in a basket on a chair.

They later sat in imaginary roller coasters, lifting their arms as the amusement park ride climbed.

They worked on sand mandalas, which are colorful, circular representations of the interconnectedness of life and a common sight in Tibetan monasteries. Children chose mandala designs from templates they were shown and then picked the colors. They used spoon straws to lay sand on wet glue to set and later be framed.

Perhaps most importantly, the kids relaxed, barefoot, on yoga mats as they imagined going on a trip to the circus.

"Breathe in, relax, all the stresses of the day float away,” Richards told the children before asking them to write in their journals about their days.

She teaches them to breathe deeply, to "belly breathe,” when things get tough or when they get angry. She also has a time-out drill when children get rowdy or start picking on each other.

"If ‘take five' is all they walk out of here with, I'll be happy,” she said.

Each class has a theme, although all include yoga and imagination games. They follow a children's yoga curriculum.

Jenny Gaspard, a licensed counselor with a master's degree in art therapy, helps the children connect with mandalas. The circle is one of man's oldest symbols, and one children quickly identify.

"When kids start scribbling, a lot of times the first shape they make is a circle,” she said.

The intricacy of mandalas and their soothing shape cause children to relax, she said. Using sand forces them to take their time and be precise. Tibetan monks destroy ornate sand mandalas after they finish them. Participants in the children's yoga class get to keep theirs.

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