Dreamy music rises in a classroom lit by slanting afternoon light. Children lie face-up on mats, limbs splayed.

“The peace . . .” says their instructor, seated at the center, in a solemn chant.

“The peace,” respond the children, their voices soft in echo.

“Begins. . .” she says.

“Begins,” they answer, like a heartbeat.

“With . . .”

“With.”

”Me . . .”

“Me.”

A second time, and then a third, yoga teacher Rasheedah Villarreal repeats the call and response with a dozen Center Elementary School students in LINC’s Caring Communities after-school program, growing softer and more entranced each time.

In sessions like this, Villarreal and another yoga instructor, Danielle Small, are teaching LINC after-school students the power and peace of mindfulness and body awareness.

Both instructors bring an urgency to their work, determined to help children grow into adolescence with a reliable path to serenity and confidence.

“I don’t want you thinking about homework,” Small calls out to children lying on mats, getting into a yoga state of mind at LINC’s program at Truman Elementary School in Hickman Mills.

“I don’t want you thinking about chores,” she says. “Just look at the ceiling. Listen to the music. Whatever has made you mad or sad, I want you to release that energy . . . and bring your mind to stillness.”

These yoga skills, both Villarreal and Small say, are needed more than ever in a post-pandemic world that has levied more stress on young people.

They saw the youth mental health crisis in their other work in schools and each started their own yoga business with missions to bring comfort — Villarreal creating Social Emotional Yoga with Mrs. V, and Small creating Dani’s Dear You Yoga.

Villarreal was a counselor at Grandview Middle School. After the pandemic, she said, “I saw students were struggling with emotional regulation. They’re getting upset very quickly, they’re very anxious and they’re just really struggling to be in school every day.”

Small was motivated by tragedy. A former LINC Caring Communities coordinator, she was shaken like the rest of Kansas City’s Northeast Middle School community when a teenager who had been one of Small’s students in elementary school, died in a stabbing a year ago.

“It allowed me to see what our kids are struggling with — the mental health piece,” she said.

Small went into training in the past year to be certified as a yoga instructor because she saw a way she might be able to help other children.

“I really want to connect yoga to our youth,” she said.

LINC and yoga made perfect sense, they said.

LINC’s Caring Communities Coordinator Jason Ervin made the first connection with Villarreal to bring her program to Grandview Middle School and watched the LINC students — reluctant at first — get quickly absorbed.

“I thought it would be something good to implement a healthy lifestyle,” Ervin said. “To help kids relax and take their mind to a different place and learn things that could help them mentally.”

Soon other LINC Caring Communities coordinators wanted to expand yoga into their programs, so Ervin worked with Villarreal and Small to add more LINC sites.

Currently LINC is teaching yoga at eight sites — Belvidere, Conn-West and Butcher-Greene elementary schools plus the middle school in the Grandview School District; Center and Indian Creek/Red Bridge elementary schools in Center; Truman Elementary in Hickman Mills; and Hartman Elementary in the Kansas City Public Schools.

All of the LINC programs serve families in majority Black neighborhoods, and that’s important to the missions of the yoga instructors to reach children and families that might not otherwise have access to yoga.

“I’ve noticed that when you look at yoga practitioners and when you go to yoga classes, there are not a lot of people of color,” Villarreal said. “So the opportunity here is to show kids that yoga is for everybody.”

It is a new experience for many of the students, like Center Elementary student Alayshia, who was at times in silent meditation and at other times laughing with other LINC children as they learned stretches, poses and games.

“It’s my type of thing,” she declared of yoga, “because I never did this before . . . schools, like, never do this.” She completed extra work that Villarreal had offered students on skills like patience and the peace process, because, she said, “I just love it. I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn how to be patient.”

The yoga instructors are seeing the boys and girls in their programs build tangible, usable skills.

“You know how to take a deep breath,” Villarreal said. “You know how to walk away. You know how to reflect and sit back . . . (and) you can use mindfulness skills right in the classroom, right now, any day, any time.”

“You show them,” said Small, “with the stretches, that the more you focus on your inhales and exhales, it can be a very powerful tool in your everyday life.”

Listen to the roll call from some of the children in LINC’s yoga program with Small at Butcher-Greene Elementary School in Grandview, telling what yoga means to them.

“It helps me relax when I’m like kind of stressed out and had a long day at school,” said Keagan.

“It helps me calm down,” said Courtney.

“I like to be around people because it makes me feel supported,” said Dalia.

And Ry’Elle said: “It soothes me.”

They finish thinking good thoughts together, sitting up on their mats, symbolically bringing their hands — and their thoughts — to their hearts.

“I am happy,” they say, repeating after Small. “I am grateful for another day.” “And another breath.”

“Namaste.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer