Saturday, June 11, 2011

Progressive Yoga Kids


As your eyeballs graze over this text, please feel free to entertain your earlobes with the pleasures of great melodic sound and lyrical genius.
Enjoy such things HERE, here, and hear.

Now I feel as though I need to go over my experience teaching a bunch of kids for a good friends daughters birthday party. Apparently her 8 (turning 9) year old daughter is super into yoga and loves things such as singing bowls, meditation, and malas. (It kind of blows my mind that she's into it at this age. Makes no sense to me)
It actually turned out quite well! We by no means did any sort of "real yoga" with mind, breath, body connection but I think they kind of got into it. I showed them a bunch of crazy poses that they could all try and fail at. Cos lets face it, failing and falling over is half the fun when you're distance to the ground is all of 3 feet.
I'm not "typically good" around kids. I act like myself. For the most part I don't really change much. I may have a bit more enthusiasm but it's so I don't bore the skulls off the kids.
There were a couple dancers in the class which was cool to see what they could and couldn't do. It's sad to think that I have more flexibility than most 8 year olds.. Does that say something about the way we raise our kids? I've been like this since I was their age though. I remember practicing to do the splits every day just cos it was interesting. I could always move my body in funky ways and was proud of it. Do kids these days not feel the same pride in being capable?
But the part I found most interesting is when we were practicing hand stand, just poppin' in and out of it, seeing what we could and couldn't do. I asked a girl if she wanted to try and she says "No, I already have a headache. I wouldn't want to be going upside down. It'll just make it worse."
Am I a freak? I never had headaches as a kid. I would never opt out of an activity because of some "ailment". Maybe it's because my mom was a nurse so she didn't allow for those nuisances to effect our daily lives.
What made me so happy though is that I asked the question "what yoga poses do you know?" and they were all so happy to give me loads of examples of this and that. One kid was actually quite mature for his age and was very logical but still enthusiastic. It was great!
I actually don't think I would mind teaching kids yoga. It's not nearly as bad as I thought. I think it just really effects me when I see the product of negative parenting. I need to learn to sort shake off that sadness that I see in sort of subconsciously taking away a kids freedom to be really childlike in the truest sense of the word.
It was a little hard to explain the crown chakra though. Haha that was interesting.
They seemed to have lots of fun though. And I think I tired them out pretty well. It's pretty sweet to think that some of the kids actually seemed to look up to me in the way I looked up to "cool people" when I was their age. Hopefully they aren't as self conscious as I was.

I know she won't see this but I am putting it out there anyway. I wish Emily an amazing 9th year of her life. May she be blessed with great friends, wisdom of loving people, and expansion in all the creative paths she feels like going down. And may she look back on this year and birthday and regret nothing.

Kids have been included in my life more than usual lately. A fellow teacher just divuldged to me the other day that her and her husband are trying for kids and my Lady Love and I were talking of being with child at some point in our lives and how weird it would be to be at the point in our lives where we feel comfortable with bringing another life into the world. It's a strange concept. Almost surreal for me, in a way. Maybe someday, but I'm nowhere near that point just yet. I have much too much growing and experiencing life to be done before then. I'm guessing 35 will be around the time where I feel ok with it. Who knows, I'm open to anything. Maybe kids at 40, maybe 26. Does it matter?

Oh parenting.
Oh life.
How crazy, wonderful, expanding, challenging and strange you are.

Well, its a sunny day here and my Dancing Queen has asked me to go dancing! (Go figure) So I shall busy myself before then.

May we all go into the world with a child like curiosity and ambition.

As my Lady Love said to me yesterday, "when your mind is strong and your love is pure, you are free".

I leave you with that.

M.

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