Yoga and Children

I have been reading several articles over the last few days regarding bringing yoga into schools to help with children who have behavior or anxiety issues. Can you believe there is controversy? as with everything else this is somehow taboo. Why I am not sure, there has been some chatter that it promotes Hinduism. Umm ok these days that may not be such a bad thing, but to each his own. All I can talk about is my experience, when I was a director for an after school program a few years back, I worked with children ages 5-17 who were living in a homeless shelter. Talk about a forgotten group, I made it my mission to make the 4 hours kids spent in my program every day the best it could be. I had about 6 kids all boys diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Teachers were at their wits end because the kids were not focused, could not keep still, or were labeled as "unruly". All of these boys were under the age of 10 the youngest being 6. Having conversations with their parents they were all advised by the school that their child should be medicated. I am not anti medication, but when it comes to kids it should not be the first remedy. I told the parents they should talk with the school in depth about other measures before resulting to meds. I told them ask questions, like how much physical education does their child receive every day/week?, how long has the teacher been teaching?, how many kids are in their child's class?, was behavior therapy recommended? In other words advocate for your child, be the voice they need before pumping drugs into their system. The FDA just passed that children as young as 4 years old can now be medicated for these issues. I am so glad this practice was not as rampant when I was a kid because i probably would not be writing this post right now. In my program I used everything as a learning experience, and being that I was in the South Bronx a lot of children and adults for that matter have never stepped foot outside the Bronx. I decided to bring the world to them and open their eyes to new things, I remember going out to dinner with friends at one of my favorite Japanese restaurants and after eating I took about 50 pairs of chopsticks. The next day at my program everyone kids, and staff had to eat their snack and dinner with chopsticks. It was messy but fun. Kids are easy to please, if people take the time to do it. The sillier you are the better. The boys with the behavior issues, when they would come for program I made sure that after their snack instead of getting right into homework they had 15 minutes of mediation and then we all did Yoga together as a group. Again staff and kids, it was great. The boys loved that they did not have to jump into homework like everyone else, they were special, they got to sit on the brightly colored mats, take their shoes off, they took turns ringing the makeshift chimes I had to start our mediation period and end it. It helped them so much when it came time to do homework, it also helped how they played with their peers. Some of the kids that parents did choose to put on meds I would hate when they would come to program, they would do nothing they looked like little zombies. I stayed there for 3 years and eventually had to move on and a day doesn't go by that I don't think about those kids. Some of them I still see, and I check in with them to make sure they are OK. That's my biggest challenge I always want to know that people I care about are OK, but its not something I always have control over so I have to stop stressing myself out about it, and just believe they are OK. Working in education now, in public school in NYC all I can say is I don't know how people sleep at night with all that goes on especially with our boys of color. Everyday I am thinking of ways to raise awareness about the issues that plague or kids before they even leave the womb. As with everything else, I can't worry all I can do is my part and believe that one day it will all be OK.

Namaste,
The Diva