LINC yoga for families: Let's decompress together
Families practice social-emotional yoga at LINC’s after-school program at Primitivo Garcia Elementary School in the Kansas City Public Schools.
That was a wicked blast of winter, closing schools for several days, everyone cooped up at home.
Try this for some relief: Close your eyes, breathe deep and let LINC family yoga and instructor Madison Sha’s “sound bath” of gently ringing bowl tones wash over you.
LINC has been growing its yoga program for its after-school students, partnering with several yoga instructors to teach the mindful joy of exercise, stretching and meditation in LINC’s classrooms.
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But what’s good for the children is good for the whole family, figures LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Veronica Caldwell at Primitivo Garcia Elementary School in Kansas City, especially after some hard winter days, with more likely to come.
So on this late January day, LINC invited its Garcia families to enjoy Sha’s yoga class together with the children.
“We wanted to give them a moment to take a breather,” Caldwell said. “They’ve been stuck in their houses for snow days. We wanted to give them a moment to take a deep breath and learn some ways to go home and decompress when they need to.”
After all, she said, “it’s hectic at home the same way it might be hectic at school. So why not learn ways to decompress together at home as well?”
This is the second year that LINC has introduced yoga into its programming, now teaming up with seven instructors to provide classes at all 45 of LINC’s Caring Communities afterschool sites, said LINC Caring Communities Supervisor Jason Ervin.
“Kids need to find a way to relieve stress and manage stress,” he said, “and find something that’s beneficial to the mind as well as the body.”
At Garcia Elementary, Sha, a yoga and fitness trainer, is teaching “social-emotional yoga,” focusing on “breath work and nervous system regulation,” she said.
The families learned new yoga poses, vinyasas, Sanskrit terms — all leading to the mystical sound bath that the families took in, lying on their backs on the colored mats spread across the gym floor.
“I do the sound bath at the end,” she said, “to accentuate the need for meditation.”
The yoga program is growing quickly at all LINC sites, drawing boys and girls, many of whom are trying yoga for the first time.
Yoga doesn’t demand any levels of skill to begin, so kids are not afraid to give it a try, Ervin said.
“It’s something different for them,” he said. And the benefits are far-reaching, for mind, body and spirit.
It’s also easy for parents to join in, which was made clear at Garcia’s family day. Some of the parents have practiced yoga many times, and others, like Mark Davenport, with his daughters Talia, 10, and Ellie, 7, were trying it for the first time.
“I’ve been wanting to do yoga for a long time,” Davenport said. “It was great. I enjoyed it.”
