Sidelines:

The Q & A of play

Stretching the imagination

By Allison Gorman

Photos by Tiffany Quarfordt

Here’s what you won’t see in Claire Mooney’s “Kids Yoga” class: tidy rows of tykes sitting perfectly still in the lotus position, eyes closed, chanting a mantra.
Here’s what you will see: children pretending to be cows or dogs or cats, singing silly songs or leaning forward, eager to guess what’s on the next page of the book Mooney’s reading aloud. Children touring a farm or taking a plane ride—at least, in their collective imaginations.
“Yoga for kids is absolutely nothing like yoga for adults,” says Mooney, who teaches the class at North Shore Yoga. “I think most parents have the impression that it’s very serious and very still, holding poses for a long time. But kid’s yoga is just way more fun than that.”
The native Brit and mother of two began teaching the class after years of working with kids. Educated in child development and psychology, she has been a nanny, a preschool teacher and a preschool director. Six years ago, as a sideline, she began taking adult yoga classes and “absolutely loved it.” So when she heard about Next Generation Yoga, a program developed solely for children, she was intrigued, traveling to New York City for teacher training.
What she found, she says, was a program offering the same physical and psychological benefits of traditional yoga—strength, flexibility and relaxation—but achieving those ends through play, not lengthy “poses” and meditation. The environment in Mooney’s classroom is anything but the austere scene most people associate, fairly or not, with yoga. “Even though there’s sort of a structure to the class,” she says, “we really can go in any direction that the children want to take us, which is limitless. The only limits are their own imaginations, really.”

Q.
What age children can attend “Kids Yoga”?

A.
We have two separate classes. I teach a class of 2- to 5-year-olds and a class of 5-to-11-year olds. There are three classes for the older children and two classes for the younger group.

Q.
Is there a big difference between what happens in the classroom with the two groups?

A.
The younger ones have much more imaginative play, and the yoga concept is really introduced through pretending to be certain animals or certain vehicles. If we’re talking about transportation, for example, we could pretend to be an airplane or a boat, or pretend we’re hopping on a bus and do chair pose, which is a very well-known adult pose. But the poses are all introduced very subtly.
In the older children’s class, there’s more detail about how to pose, how to stand correctly, how to breathe correctly. We also really develop the imagination by going deeper into a story or a journey—for example, going through a farm, we’ll choose a mode of transportation and we’ll all do each pose, and then we’ll walk through a field and pretend to be cow pose or a pig or a chicken. With the older group, we can go deeper into the adventure.

Q. How many children do you usually have in a class?

A.
It varies. The most I typically have is 10; generally it’s between five and eight.

Q.
To what degree do you explain the philosophy behind yoga?

A.
It’s very basic. In adult classes you’d go much more into the yogic lifestyle, which gets very complicated. But with children, we just emphasize treating each other well, using nice words—just being kind to one another, really, is what it all boils down to. There’s no religious connotation to yoga, though some people have that misconception.

Q.
“Kids Yoga” involves the use of puppets, books—items that definitely aren’t considered conventional yoga props.

A.
Yes, especially for the younger ones, this is particularly helpful. One of my lesson plans involves using the Eric Carle book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear. It lends itself perfectly … every page has a different animal and a yoga pose we can introduce. They want to see what’s coming next, and we have to keep them interested and keep things moving. We use a lot of Laurie Berkner’s music; it’s wonderful for kids and also very much lends itself to yoga as well. For the goldfish page we use her song “Let’s Go Swimming.” It’s a really fun song, and we get up and run around the room.… Things like that really help engage their interest.

Q.
A big benefit of yoga is that it teaches you how to de-stress and focus through meditation. With this more energetic form of yoga, do children see that same benefit?

A.
I really think that they do, because being able to completely let their imaginations run wild is very freeing for them. We also do the traditional rest time at the end of class, and I’ll admit I was shocked when it became one of the most requested poses that we do. But I think because children are so busy and so structured, they don’t have time just to relax. There’s no set amount of time, they don’t have to think about what they just did or what they’re going to do; they can just be there in that moment and relax.

Q.
And you have that for the older children, too?

A.
Yes, and I think they actually enjoy it more than some of the younger ones. There’s relaxing music, and they unwind, and it’s just a really nice way to end a class.

Q.
The physical benefits, of course, are core strength and especially flexibility. Children are already flexible; why would they need to become more so?

A.
You can definitely overstretch and overstress your muscles and joints, and yoga, through all of these different poses, teaches you the proper alignment of your body to make it feel its absolute best. So “Kids Yoga” uses the flexibility they already have to teach them a better way to use it.

Q.
Is this something children can start at any time?

A.
You can jump in whenever you’re ready. The same with adult yoga classes, actually.

Q.
Is it possible to coordinate classes so parents and children take a class at the same time?

A.
That’s actually what they have done at the studio, which I thought was brilliant, where the child can come in and take a class with the parent right next door, and everyone can meet up afterwards and talk about their yoga experiences together. So it kind of brings them a little closer together, which is really nice. And yoga can be very beneficial for parents, by the way. It’s relaxing and rejuvenating, so you’re able to go back to your children after a yoga class and be calmer and more patient. That’s a benefit for everyone.