“During the first years of their lives, we teach children to walk & talk. Thereafter, we tell them to shut up and sit down.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
A lifelong challenge
I used to teach gymnastics and yoga to kids in schools around the San Francisco Bay Area and I remember learning that by the time kids are proficient walkers, the simple act of jumping and hopping could still be a challenge for them. As adults, it can be easy to take these basic physical movements for granted.
Until we get older, or injured, or pregnant. The body is always changing and there’s nothing like being around very young kids or elderly people to remind us of this.
Those kids, though, they loved to fall. I would have them hold Tree Pose or some other balance pose and they relished the chance to pretend to wobble and then dramatically crash down on the ground (see, there really is widespread appeal for things like ‘Ring Around the Rosy’).
Even beyond those early years, as we become adults moving quickly through our days, incorporating balance postures into our yoga and movement practice is so important. Practicing putting our bodies in different positions and learning to balance and breathe as we hold those postures is not only good for our bodies, but our brains, too.
So, this ‘kids’ yoga practice’ is not just for the littles - it’s for anyone who’s ready to have more fun doing yoga and maybe share it with some kids, too:)
Beanie babies
The thing with kids and yoga is that you gotta make it fun. Their young brains just don’t want to do it if there isn’t an element of play - and that’s a good thing, because we adults can use some play in our serious, busy days.
Enter beanie babies. I know, it’s just one more thing to have lying around the house, and then you see them at Walgreens or Target and your kid wants to buy all of them. But they really are such a great size, weight, and texture to use as balance props. Bean bags work, too, but they’re not as cute.
The most obvious way to use beanie babies or bean bags is to put one on our head and stand up tall and try to keep it from falling. But we can also put it on our shoulder, bend and lift our knee and rest it there on our thigh, put it on our arm or hand in Virabhadrasana 2 (Warrior 2), or even use it on our bellies as we lie down and breathe. The last suggestion is not so much for physical balance as it is for balancing the breath.
Using pom-poms for drishti
Try this: get yourself into a balance pose like Vrksasana (Tree Pose) or Natarajasana (Dancer Pose). Once you’re there, start looking around, either by moving your eyes or moving your whole head. Were you able to stay in the pose?
Now try the same pose while focusing on a single, still point. Was it easier?
I’ve written recently about the practice of drishti, which helps us stay poised and calm.
writes in lovely prose what it means to practice drishti. Anyways, it’s pretty basic: you just land your gaze on a fixed point and it acts as your anchor. Balancing is as mental as it is physical.With kids, poms poms can be a fun, colorful way to teach this concept. Of course, just as with the beanie babies, you can sub in other kid-friendly objects that your little one likes to play with (Hotwheels? Legos? Polly Pocket Objects?). Maybe even jazz it up by saying something like, “Now cast your magic wizard eyes on the pom pom (or whatever object you chose) and imagine you could turn it into a (fill in the blank - you know your child and what might keep them engaged).
If the pom poms drive you crazy because they just end up everywhere and then get vacuumed up, rest assured that they are worth it since they can be used for other kids yoga activities:). I’ll share more on that in a near future post.
The bhavana of landing
The current seasonal theme I’ve been working with is Landing. How can we land softly, with intention? This is something we can practice when we come out of our balance poses or when we bring our bodies down to the ground for seated or resting poses like Child’s Pose. Simply telling a little kid to land softly doesn’t always make sense to them. Once again, you gotta turn on your imagination and spark the bhavana that makes sense to them. Here is a very poetic and philosophical exploration of what bhavana is, but if you’re a busy mama like me and only have a moment to read about it, here’s a much more concise definition.
Those links to bhavana are for you, mama, to mull over for the coming days, weeks, and years. Yoga is a forever practice and it might take some time for some of these concepts to click in your mind (not to mention in your body!). But for this mundane moment, if you share this with your little, think in kids terms: you can say things like, ‘let your foot land softly on the ground like an autumn leaf on the breeze,’ or ‘bring your hands down to the earth like a feather slowly floating down through the air,’ or ‘move in slow-motion, like you’re underwater.’
I don’t know about you, but those images really hit home for me, too. I bet they’ll work with your kids, especially if they are very young and in that phase where the imagination is still very strong:)
I hope the chaos in the video was not too much of a distraction. Let it be an example of how you can practice yoga no matter what the circumstances are!
When and where?
You might be wondering how you can set yourself up for success here. If you watched either of the videos above, you might have thought, “I can’t do yoga in a satisfying way around my kids.” I’ll be real: that might be true. But my philosophy is, it’s better than nothing! And then, when you do get those quiet moments to practice solo, how much you’ll appreciate it!
I’m such a fan of spontaneous yoga and the nice thing about standing balance poses is that it’s okay to do them after eating. You may have heard that you have to wait a couple of hours after eating before you do yoga, which only applies to certain postures that put pressure on the abdomen or put you in an upside-down position.
The other nice thing about balancing standing postures is that you don’t need a yoga mat. You might need a wall, chair, or some other thing to hold on to for better balance, but I encourage you to try it away from the wall. If you’re truly worried about falling, modify it: you don’t need to bring your foot/leg way high off the ground in Vrksasana or Natarajasana in order to balance.
So, my general advice is to just try it! You don’t have to have the perfect circumstances. It might work for you to schedule it in to the day (“Okay, I’ll do some balance poses after I do the dishes or send some emails”) or you can just practice when it occurs to you. Whichever route you choose, let it be the one that suits your life the most:)
Here’s to having more fun in our yoga practices! And beyond adding more fun, I invite you to occasionally (or often) approach yoga asana in a playful or experimenting way. What feels good in your body? What makes a pose more accessible to you? Is it possible/safe/desirable to wiggle outside of the alignments a bit?
Let me know what you think in the comments below!
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Also, if you saw that chaos in the video, imagine writing with that youthful, loud vibe in the background. Yup, that’s what I do sometimes. If you feel moved to support this crazy yoga mama that just can’t not write, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber. It would help me afford the childcare to get a little more quiet writing time:)