I thought I was a good yoga teacher, After teaching for five years, doing plenty of extensive studying, and taking a yoga tour throughout India, I thought I could face anything that might confront me “on the mat”. THEN I was given the opportunity to teach yoga to children - a plethora of all ages, from four to thirteen.

Can you say “YOWZA”??? It began last summer with some “guest yoga” teaching opportunities through a local, amazing church children’s camp. At first,the group was polite and open to trying some poses. We ran the gamut of children’s sequences… roaming through our imaginary forests, becoming birds, monkeys, elephants, and of course cobras… not to mention butterflies and eagles, and their personal favorite, candlesticks.

Then, there were still forty-seven minutes of the hour to fill. Later, I was asked to do a weekly class. Mercifully, at least it was reduced to a half hour each. WHEW! I already had found out that to them, this was an ETERNITY!

I learned quickly that children do NOT hold poses as adults do. Adults hold poses up to three minutes. The kids fade fast after five seconds. They like to ask questions during class, like “Why is your mat sticky?” and “Why won’t Billy leave me alone?!!”

I found out that it was unwise to even ATTEMPT to do a pose twice in the same class. Even a modified version elicited a hearty, “We’ve already DONE THAT!” from the exasperated group. Hitting, tripping, and slapping between students was never covered in my Teacher’s Training. Hmmm. Nor was crying, or spontaneous screaming.

At first this all kind of threw me. In all my adult classes, NO ONE had ever done a somersault after being instructed to hold a triangle pose. No student of mine had told me that my belly looked “fat” that day. My regular students never jumped up and ran around when told to hold a corpse pose. It was most insightful, teaching this class!

Weeks wore on and interest waned. Many times everyone just wandered off. The only thing that seemed to help calm and focus them was chanting…JUST the thing that was most resisted by my adult yoga students. Go figure.

During one recent class, when I thought for sure that the yoga was not appreciated or even sinking in, I decided to quit fighting their young energy, and instead work WITH it and allow it to lead the class, instead of my ego. What a surprise! When guided to write “yoga-related” things on the board, they wrote things like “Peace”, “Joy”, Serenity” and “Love.” They even wrote, “Tiffany is cool.” (Okay, so my ego did NEED that reinforcement at that point!) Then they proceeded to list all the yoga poses they had learned and surprised me by remembering more of them than I did. Then they made a fun game out of poses, based on “Duck, Duck, Goose.” They called it “Cobra,Cobra, Butterfly.” We never had so much fun in class.

Tiffany Weis is a soul-level empowerment coach and a yoga teacher. She teaches people to become absolutely unstoppable. Her business is called Bohemian Bliss Life Coaching. She teaches a weekly adult yoga class at Yoga Phoenix. www.tiffsterproductions.com