Snoring Pigeons and Barking Up Dogs

I taught yoga to a group of kids this weekend, and it was pretty hilarious.  If you have a chance to teach yoga to kids, or at least attend a yoga class taught to kids, I would strongly recommend it.
Here are some things I learned from my students:

Try it.

You should have seen these kids go for whatever pose I said we were going to do next. I had to slow them down because they wanted to jump into it. I’ve never seen such excited yogis. My class intention was to challenge themselves to try new things, since most had never tried yoga before, and they certainly followed that suggestion.

Be creative.

Some of their poses looked nothing like the pose I was demonstrating and describing. Who cares?! You prefer to do chair pose in a low squat? Go for it! Your up dog likes to bark as she shines her chest forward? Why not?!? As long as you’re not causing injury, do you.

Giggle.

I laughed through the entire class. So did they.

It’s okay to get teary.

One little girl of about four came in crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said she “didn’t know how to yoga.” I told her none of us did and we’d learn together.  She got into the first game and got on board.

Stray off course if it feels right.

When we got to pigeon pose, and then sleeping pigeon, some of them started fake snoring. That lead to talking about how we each sleep at night and they all demonstrated their sleeping poses for a minute before we moved on.

At the end of class, they did have a hard time staying still in savasana. I didn’t force it — even adults have a hard time letting everything go and not wiggling. I heard movement to my right and opened my eyes. A cute little yogi was face to face with me. “I lost a tooth,” she told me. “I left it for the tooth fairy and she gave me a receipt.”
Namaste, friends. Namaste.