Everything Under The Sun: Starting With The Young

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Starting With The Young

This drawing accompanied announced schedule of yoga sessions by Child's Pose Yoga.

Dana Mahon, who has been practicing yoga for more than fifteen years, realizes how useful the practice has been in her life as an adult. But the effects have also stretched back to helping alleviate her childhood anxieties. That gave her an idea. As Dana said, "Had I been taught these lessons at a young age, I suspect I may have avoided certain struggles."

She decided to focus on providing the peacefulness of yoga practice to the young. While it can take many years to be able to utilize all of the tools of the practice, a beginning practice of yoga can help children develop a mindset of wellness and give them some abilities to find calmness in an all-too-hectic world.

In the beginning, Dana focused on spending time with students in grades K-5 at QUADRA ELEMENTARY in British Columbia, Canada. Then the work expanded into a yoga camp in the summer of 2013. That actually doubled the amount of children that she was able to reach. Then, Dana was able to add what amounts to a room of quiet, a place where students could collect themselves if they were having a difficult time, even if all they wanted to do was to get away from the noise, and that became the Mosaic Room.

What Dana had started became CHILD'S POSE YOGA, with its own website and a set of offerings for children, provided to a wider community. This allows Dana to reach further out into the community and provide services for more people, as well as providing information in the wider online world. So, someone who is interested can engage Ms. Mahon for a private session, or have an all boys or all girls group, or combine the movements with music, or even bring classes into the school their children attend. Plus, there are a few offerings for adults.

Meditating outdoors on a buckwheat-filled cushion.

Dana gives a specific reason for why she developed her greater reach, "Life is trending towards busier and faster, so if kids are taught to take even a few moments to calm their minds, breathe and return to their centre, they can transform the way they experience the world and how they respond, in turn creating more peace, more compassion, and more love." Also, as she notes, there is no finish, or end, to the work she started. There will always be that continued effort to create, to live fully, and to leave the world a better place because we were in it.