Why Are You Bending Funny?

We’ve been having a wonderful time with our friends and their two children from Edmonton. It’s their first visit here, so we’ve had fun spending time with them and showing them around our beautiful city – even the weather has been cooperating with our sightseeing expeditions.

But of course, whenever people come to visit, we usually end up eating more and exercising less. I actually thought we were doing a fair bit of walking, but it obviously isn’t the same as exercising regularly. And we’ve been so busy doing things with our friends that I’ve missed the last couple of sessions at the gym and have also stopped my regular morning yoga practice at home.

The other day, we went for a long walk that included a walk up a relatively steep hill. Now, I’ve walked up this hill many times and haven’t had a problem since I started exercising regularly. This time, however, I was only halfway up when I began to realize that my breathing was becoming shallow and I was starting to struggle a little. Well, that was obviously my wake-up call to get in some yoga.

So the next morning while my friends were still asleep, I unfurled my mat and started to do a gentle yoga practice. I was so immersed in my routine that I didn’t even notice that I had an audience until I heard a little voice pipe up.

“Why are you bending funny, Auntie Fran?”

“I’m doing yoga” I explained – to which my little friends responded succinctly “Huh?”

Well, we all know that you’re never too young or too old to learn yoga! I asked them if they wanted to try this new “game” with me and they enthusiastically agreed.

Okay, now what? How do you teach a nine-year-old and five-year-old how to do yoga? I started by going through some easy basic yoga routines that I knew they’d have fun doing – bending and stretching. Before long, they were both executing some pretty nifty yoga moves and having a great time.

A little while later, their parents came to see what their kids were up to. “Were you bothering Auntie Fran?” my friend asked. “No, mommy, of course not!” one of my newfound yoga buddies replied. And then the five-year-old promptly cracked me up by enthusiastically proclaiming “we’ve been having lots of fun playing the yoga bear game!”

Ahhhh – it’s never too early to learn….

[tags]yoga for kids, yoga for children, daily yoga practice, mommy and baby yoga, baby yoga[/tags]