Adventures in Kids' Yoga

Navigating the Challenges and Joys of Teaching Yoga to Modern Children - By Nell Shepherdson

Reading time: 4 minutes

It’s becoming more and more recognised in the West that children really benefit from the teachings of yoga and as a yoga teacher, as well as a parent, I thought this would be a great avenue to explore in my career. The modern world is full of distraction, the kind of distraction that causes anxiety and pressure like we have never experienced before, and so it’s never been more important to develop ways to cope.

Adults are realising this and there is a booming Wellness industry of which yoga is at the top. But what about kids? Could we nip the problem of anxiety in the bud by teaching the newest generation all those techniques that we are grappling with as adults? All those techniques that are generally alien to us because we are discovering them later in life?

So, with this in mind, I promptly took a course in teaching yoga to children and it was great! I came out feeling inspired and, if I’m honest, thinking that it would be easy because, as we all know, yoga is so much fun. But although I had done the course I had never actually worked with children and the prospect was kind of scary.

I really didn’t know the first thing about teaching children, let alone teaching them - the technology generation - how to just stop and breathe. However, feeling a bit confident one day, I offered to run an after-school club at my own children’s school. The whole time I am thinking ‘this is madness’ but, much like Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove, I also had this other guy on my shoulder saying ‘Yes, but this is so important! These are life skills that are largely missed today.’

I am now three terms in, and it has been the most challenging thing I think I’ve ever done. It turns out, despite having three of my own, I do not have a natural affinity with kids. But I was determined and more than anything I wanted these children to get something out of it. Something positive. But it’s quite difficult to get fifteen 8 to 10 year olds to concentrate and relax on a Friday afternoon so I found that my vision for this venture had to gradually evolve.

During the teacher training course we had observed a group of about eight children. Our teacher had to deal with a little chatting early on but overall, the kids were totally engaged and joining in. So, when I took my own session, this is what I was expecting. Unfortunately, the reality was very different. Unlike on the course, where the children only had to attend a couple of times, those I was teaching had come from a week of hard schooling and were understandably tired and just wanting to play with their friends.

But I wasn’t going to give up. I had to figure out what these children needed at that specific point in the day (something that also changes week by week). Generally, my experience has taught me that they really do enjoy doing some actual yoga for about fifteen minutes at the very beginning so, after register, my little group practice Hello Sun and Hello Moon, which I am now proud to say they have pretty much down pat. In fact, I even heard a few of them say that they practice this at home sometimes which is a major tick for me and a goal I consider thoroughly achieved. But after that it tends to descend into chaos.

The excitement of being in the lunch hall for something that isn’t lunch, assembly or singing means a big indoor space to run around in. Now, I am not for a second going to force them into anything they don’t want to do, that is completely against the whole idea but there’s excitable chaos and there’s dangerous chaos where fights happen, and people get injured. So, my lesson plan had to change.

I had to re-evaluate what yoga not only meant to me but what it means to children today. These cheeky monkeys were not going to sit and breathe like an adult would, so I concluded that this yoga had to be wild – like they were.

This wasn’t a bad thing, my whole ethos as a teacher involves incorporating the natural world into my classes. This yoga*had to be adaptable and fluid just like nature. This yoga had to provide stimulation for those who were up for it, mindfulness and space for those who weren’t.

I also needed a bit of guidance on how to handle KS2 children, I had to put my hands up to that. Thankfully, the school and the teachers were nothing short of wonderful and approachable and I received some outstanding advice that was a real game changer for me. So now, the hour long after school club goes a bit like this:

We practice the Hello Sun and Hello Moon sequence and then they drift off into a kind of controlled freedom. There is a station set up in the hall for mindfulness activities, like mandala colouring and pasta threading; a space to just relax and chat with friends; and if there are those who want to be active, we might play games like yoga musical statues or an interactive story. And that isn’t all, we keep it loosey goosey.

If the weather is nice, we might take the school tablets outside and mindfully photograph nature or go on a little walk around the field to see what we can notice about the changing seasons. Sometimes we mindfully eat chocolate and fruit or practice balancing postures on high benches (because what is yoga without an element of danger?).

This way I feel that the class is manageable, I can go around the different groups and interact with all the children individually and the kids are learning the teachings of yoga without rolling their eyes or causing disruption. It gives me space to talk to them so they know they are being heard because, as I keep learning, it’s not so easy being a kid these days. This turned out to be a really important element to incorporate into the session and made me reassess what it was to practice mindfulness with the kids as well as teach it to them.

So, this is my yoga for kids. It’s still very much a work-in-progress but I feel like all the right compromises are being made. This yoga looks nothing like the zen images conjured up by the training course but maybe that’s not what children’s yoga really is.

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