Maya sits cross legged and takes a long, deep breath. Her arms are outstretched, her pudgy palms facing upward. Her eyelids flutter for a moment and then they're smooth again. Maya isn't your typical yogi. For one thing, she's 3 foot 6, about the same height as the rest of the kids in her kindergarten class.
Maya is one of an increasing number of children, some as young as 9 months old, who are doing yoga. Maya, 5, is enrolled in a weekly extracurricular yoga class for kindergarten students at Kuper Academy in Kirkland, just West of Montreal.
Her teacher, Aline Reizian, and Reizian's business partner, Stephanie Sohan, have found ways to make yoga feel more like fun than exercise. Their students meow when they do the cat posture and sing Twinkle, twinkle, little star.... when they get into star position. No wonder youngsters are eager to roll out their yoga mats when Reizian and Sohan turn up at kindergartens and daycare centres.
Teaching yoga to little kids wasn't Sohan's idea. Two years ago, the director of a preschool where Sohan was teaching fitness asked whether she could teach yoga. 'I thought, 'What the heck am I going to do?'' Sohan recalled.
By Monique Polak
THE LATEST YOGA NEWS, FROM IT IS YOGA
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