Calling everyone for Kids Yoga Day!
With everything changing in the outside world, at least we had one constant activity that gave us a creative outlet in the midst of a pandemic through Little Yoginis. This semester, our team of 7 yogis presented 9 daytime sessions to approximately 225 K-5 children in their teachers’ zoom rooms and offered an additional 44 children in zoom after school sessions from their homes. Our students learned the calming benefits of ocean breath and joined us in our sun salutations from their homes. For many of these students, it was their first time doing yoga and yet they enjoyed it as much as we did. One student from Team Goddess, one of our daytime sessions, expressed how he felt after our savasana final meditation: “It felt like lightning in my heart, then it spread over my whole body”.
In addition to our regular weekly sessions, we celebrated Annual Kids Yoga Day, founded by Teresa Ann Power with two special sessions on Friday, April 9th, connecting children all over the world in mindful breathing and yoga poses. In each of the two zoom rooms, one yogi read Teresa Powers’ newest book, The Night Before Kids’ Yoga Day, as the kids tried to sit still without being tempted to follow along with the poses in the book. Afterward, we went through all the poses in the book from the flamingo pose to the tree pose. We had so much fun sharing our practice with the kids, laughing as we collapsed every now and then as we practiced balancing in airplane pose. By the end of the session, some of the kids even asked if they could join more sessions because of how much fun they had.
We were so excited to share our yoga practice with so many students remotely and saw that they reaped the benefits of focus, relaxation, and mindfulness, as is evident in this comment from another student as they reflected on how they felt after their final resting pose: “First my body felt hard, but then it became soft”. The lovely smiles and positive feedback from the teachers and parents drew us back every week, excited to share more lessons with them, and we can’t wait for next semester to join the kids again!