Whole Yoga for Whole Kids Teaching Patanjali's Ideas by Vicki M. Moll
In this paper I plan to explain ways I have noticed that the children's yoga instructor at Health Advantage, Shakta Khalsa, incorporates precepts of Patanjali's Yoga Sutrasinto her everyday teaching.1 This paper probably would bore anyone other than my teachers, and perhaps it will bore even them. However, in this paper I aim to explain why I want to teach children's yoga and to show that I am developing an understanding of yoga philosophy. Therefore, in this paper, I will assume the reader is fairly familiar with most yoga terms and practices.
During the winter 1999 session, I was fortunate to serve as Shakta's teaching aide during one of her children's yoga classes. The publicity she had received from the publication of her book about teaching yoga to children, Fly Like a Butterfly, originally attracted my interest in learning from Shakta.2 She has more than 20 years of teaching yoga and children and has taught children's yoga for about 17 years. Furthermore, her lifestyle is embedded in the philosophy and language of yoga because she lives in a Sikh religious community. As a result, teaching children's yoga holistically seems to come naturally to her.
Shakta teaches the Kundalini style of yoga, which introduces a side issue that I will not address very much in this paper--which of Shakta's teaching practices I plan to incorporate into my own teaching of children's yoga. Certainly, each teacher needs to choose selectively from the practices of other teachers in order to honor the self. From a practical standpoint, I am less familiar and comfortable with Kundalini yoga than I am with the blend of Iyengar, Anusara, and other hatha yoga styles taught at Sun and Moon Yoga Studio. Also, the common names for poses tend to vary from one style of yoga to another, so it would certainly be simpler for me to stick with the styles of yoga I already know. However, Shakta's teaching style entices me because of how much her students seem to enjoy her classes. Shakta enlivens her classes with plenty of singing, movement, stories, animals, and games, and kids love it.
Motivation
Before I begin to describe Shakta's teaching practices, I would like to explain why I value Shakta's practice of teaching whole yoga to kids, and as an adjunct including whole-brain exercises in her classes. First, I believe certain societal factors conspire to compartmentalize us as human beings. For example, in elementary schools throughout the United States, students have been studying individual subjects, such as science, English, math, history, art, and so forth, for centuries, without connecting the information taught in one class to that taught in another. Then they go on to high school and science subjects are even further individuated. However, from what I remember of discussions at the National Science Teachers Association where I used to work, the science education community is starting to recognize that the British style of teaching subjects by focusing on the interconnections between them helps children learn better. For example, I was able to find a couple of examples of multi- science-discipline curriculums on the internet.3, 4 The benefits of applying constructivist teaching methods are supported by educational psychology research that indicates people learn better when they construct their own learning from what they already know. I found a web site that references this theory and explains it a little bit.5 I like to think of constructivism as learning from the inside out.
As evidence that our modern-day lifestyles are causing us to feel more scattered and bombarded by unsolicited information, we see increasingly many children developing attention-deficit disorders. This is attributed to many factors including fast-food diets, more television and computer use, and less time spent exercising and outdoors. Testimonials support the benefits of whole-brain exercises to help with attention-deficit disorders.6
Finally, I also would like to teach children yoga philosophy to spare some of the next generation a vague feeling of emptiness I sensed growing up. In saying this, I do not want to diminish my gratitude for all that my parents have given me--appreciation for nature and general human kindness, value for a healthy mind and body, and most of all their love, encouragement, and support--I feel lucky to have them as parents. Perhaps at the time when I was growing up I was not yet ready to receive this information. However, at this stage of my life I feel drawn toward developing a complete, spiritual practice that connects the mind, body, and heart as a way of learning to look inward and integrate my life. I hope that I can help others to develop this tool from a young age so they can learn to navigate the world from the inside out.
Learning what's inside
Great portions of Book I of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras emphasize the value of meditating to connect with a higher consciousness. And the eight limbs of yoga are often associated with the meditative or raja yoga path toward reaching samadhi. Additionally, the eight limbs of yoga include two mind-control practices: pratyahara, or the practice of tuning out the physical world to access the wealth of the inner world and dharana, the practice of focusing the mind to train it to meditate. Shakta introduces both of these practices to her students. At the beginning of each class, she leads students in tuning in to their inner teacher by repeating the following chant several times: Ong namo guru dev namo (I greet the wise teacher within me and outside of me).2
Then, during class, Shakta often includes a meditation or meditative activity such as garbage truck, yoga ball, or windshield wipers. The garbage truck meditation helps one to dispose of unnecessary clutter in the mind. Students chant four syllables--sa, ta, na, ma (the cycle of existence or infinity, life, death, rebirth; also the core sounds of sat nam, meaning truth manifested). Simultaneously students touch the thumb to the first finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger respectively.2, 7 As an example of a meditative activity, children play the yoga ball game at the end of class to get in touch with the heart chakra. Everyone forms a circle and whoever has the yoga ball shares with the others something for which they are grateful before passing the ball along to a friend in the circle. For the windshield wiper exercise, another meditative activity, Shakta divides the class up into pairs. Then each student sits and faces his or her partner with eyes closed and palms pressed flat against their partner's. Partners silently take turns leading and following, moving their hands in different patterns to "wash windows." Through this meditative practice, children learn to follow flow and to balance action with passivity.
Finally, during savasana, Shakta often tells a story that motivates students to turn the mind inward or leads a guided meditation. For example, in one class she told a story about pirates who searched endlessly for buried treasure only to finally learn that they had been sleeping over the gold all the time they had been searching. Shakta then correlated this story to the yoga philosophy that the most valuable treasure we may find is inside of us and not in the outside world. Then she encouraged everyone to follow the breath and turn the mind inward.
In fact, Shakta even takes advantage of impromptu situations to teach her class philosophical ideas. For example, one time a student had brought into the classroom an angel card from the dish at the front desk. Instead of immediately asking the student to run and return the card to the dish, she asked him what it said. He answered, "Surrender." Then Shakta asked if any one knew what surrender means and when no one did, she defined it for the class in simple terms they could understand. "To give up something," she said. Then she asked students to give examples of things they had given up. This was a simple, yet wonderful way of introducing a central concept in the hatha and raja yoga paths toward samadhi. Through surrendering the ego, one releases the self-imposed defense system that supports a feeling of duality, or separateness from the universal whole.
Gently now
The first of the eight limbs of yoga are the yamas, a set of codes for conduct. The yamas include ahimsa, the precept of nonharming or being gentle with others and the self. Shakta encourages her students to be considerate of others and gentle with themselves. For example, once when students began running around and making lots of noise before class started, she encouraged them to jump and run very softly and quietly to avoid disturbing the people in the offices below the yoga classroom. Also she follows the practice that is fairly standard in most yoga classes of "waking up" slowly after savasana. Shakta encourages students to complete a series of gentle exercises before returning to a seated position. Students circle their hands and feet around their wrists and ankles, rub their hands and feet together, warm their eyes with the hands, twist from side to side, and roll around to massage their back muscles before rolling up to a seated position. This teaches students to nurture themselves after resting or meditating.
True stories
In following the path of jnana yoga, one studies classical knowledge to attain wisdom and discernment. At the end of class, sometimes students gather in a circle around Shakta and she tells a true story using her felt board to illustrate. For example, Shakta told the story of boy who grew up to be a saint. His mother recognized his spiritual sensitivities when he was young and encouraged their development: she spurred him to meditate every day by placing a cookie under his mat before he meditated. Another time she told another story about the Golden Temple, a sacred Sikh site in Amitsar, Punjab, and how it came to be built. According to Shakta, a man crippled with leprosy discovered the healing powers of the large pond around which the Golden Temple was eventually built and healed himself by dipping himself in the pond. He and his wife told a local guru about the pond and the guru later built the Golden Temple there. Another day she brought in a photograph of the Golden Temple, which she had visited, pointed out the healing pond, and described what it felt like to touch it, peaceful and loving. And according to the Sun and Moon Teacher Certification studio brochure, love is the agent for transmitting the essence of the healing discipline of yoga.
Teaching hatha yoga
For most of each class, students practice yoga poses, but Shakta introduces the poses in fun ways for kids. See also Yoga for Children for fun ways of introducing yoga poses to children.8 For example, she asks students to be butterflies and then the class folds their legs into baddha konasana. To get the children to twist and bend and stretch she tells a story about a plant growing, swaying in the wind and rain, and reaching up for the sun. Kids lumber around like bears, dinosaurs, or elephants to get the feeling of being in forward-bending poses such as uttanasana, adha mukha svanasana, and prasarita padottanasana. Or, students crawl around the room, bellies facing upward, like crabs to get used to moving around in a backward-bending position. When the class seems to have too much energy to focus on yoga poses, Shakta leads the class in running in place while singing a song. Kids look forward to playing the games at the end of class and sometimes request them. As the end of the session nears, Shakta gives students some of the responsibility--they take turns leading the class by going to the front of the class, calling out the name of a yoga exercise such as frog stretch and frog hop, and leading the class through it.
Conclusion: Paths started
From the teaching practices I have described, one can see that Shakta helps her students to follow at least three of the five yogic paths toward enlightenment. First, she encourages students to practice meditation, or follow the path of raja. Second, her practice of telling true stories that relate concepts of yoga gives children a start in their search for real knowledge or in following the jnana yoga path. Third, hatha yoga is ostensibly what she teaches. She teaches hatha yoga in a way that is fun for children and that keeps them active enough to tire them out, which helps to quiet the mind for savasana and meditation. From time to time Shakta will ask the children about their home practice. It impresses me that some of their families actually do allot practice time once or twice a week.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of my yoga teachers for their inspiration and patience in helping me gain the confidence, expertise, and philosophic background I need to teach yoga. I would especially like to thank Alexandra Spaith Evans for serving as my kids' yoga mentor at Sun and Moon Yoga Studios.
References
1. Satchidananda, Sri Swami (Translation and Commentary by). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Buckingham, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications,1990.
2. Khalsa, Shakta Kaur. Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children. Portland, Oregon: Rudra Press, 1998.
3. www.stclair.k12.il.us/makethelink/MLS12F1.htm
4. www.yni.org/yi/curriculum/cef.html
5. www.math.purdue.edu/~ccc/
6. www.braingym.org
7. Shakta Khalsa
8. Stewart, Mary and Kathy Phillips (Photography by Sandra Lousada). Yoga for Children. London: Webster's International Publishers, 1992.