Parent Savers
Yoga for Kids

Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Kids can do so many activities that are good for them these days. The challenge is getting them to participate on a regular basis and to do it because they love it. The idea behind the activities like kids yoga is for kids to learn the value of practice and to develop trust in their own instincts about what they enjoy and the secret is fun. Today on Parent Savers we’re talking with Jaime Brodie from Cosmic Kids Yoga about kids yoga and the big picture around their participation.

[Theme Music/Intro]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome right back to Parent Savers broadcasting from the birth education centre of San Diego. Parent Savers is your weekly online on-the-go-support group for parents from the newborn years through kindergarten.

I’m your host Johner Riehl, thanks for joining us. Thanks again to all of our loyal listeners who join us week in and week out and thanks also to those who are listening for the first time. As you may know you can join our Parent Savers club and receive access to special bonus content after each new show plus special giveaways and discounts from time to time.

If you haven’t already please make sure to download the free Parent Savers app, available on the Android and iTunes market place and for Windows phone so you can automatically have access to all the great parenting advice and conversation we have on Parent Savers every week.

Let’s start today’s conversation by meeting everyone who’s joining us to talk about kids yoga and getting them to participate. My name is Johner and I have three boys, a 7 year old, a 5 year old and an almost 3 year old and that we have taken sample kids yoga class and they really, really loved it and they’ve enjoyed the Cosmic Kids video as well.

STACY SPENSLEY: My name is Stacy Spensley. I’m 31 years old. I’m a holistic health coach and I have one son who’s almost 15 months old. He has not done yoga yet but I like to drop him off at the child care centre when I go to yoga.

ERIN ESTEVES: My name is Erin Esteves. I have one boy. He is 2½ and he loves Cosmic Yoga, Cosmic Kid Yoga definitely.

JOHNER RIEHL: And Jaime, tell us a little bit about yourself.

JAIME BRODIE: Hi, yes, I am Jaime Brodie and I’m 34 years old. I’m a kids yoga instructor and I don’t have any children of my own but I teach about a hundred kids a week live and about 50,000 virtual kids every day by Youtube.

JOHNER RIEHL: Nice. Great, well thanks so much for joining us.

JAIME BRODIE: Pleasure.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: From time to time on Parent Savers we take a look at the best apps that we found for Parents and things that we would definitely recommend for you to check out and that could be a benefit to your family. And today we’re going to talk about an app called Imagination Questions Fun Deck and it’s from Super Duper Publications, it’s available on iTunes only, It’s $3.99 which is kind of a premium price for an app but I actually, we got this app after I saw my son play it in his speech class. And he enjoyed it so much and it just kind of blew me away on what it does and it’s something that I’m not even sure I would’ve guess before him.

He would thought it was cool but it just completely blew his imagination wide open. It was great. And so what it basically is it’s a series I think 56 different questions and the app is really slick because you can add as many different “players” as you want and they are automatically generate sort of a question with a picture and they don’t have to be able to read. He can’t read but he can play this. And so this one has like an alligator inside a prison and all you got to do is touch it and it will read it to you.

“You got a pet alligator for your birthday. How will you take care of it?”

Seems like a really basic question but the kids love when it’s their turn and getting the kind of share how they’re going to take care of something like an alligator. Another question is like this.

“Imagine you were the king or queen in a castle. What is your day like?”

Now on one hand I feel kind of bad that how come I as their dad can’t just engage them on this level but it was really neat to see them get engage. We were able to play with our 7 year old, our 5 year old and our 2 year old. And the two year old was having just as much fun but loved it if it was his turn and be formulating the senses and that’s actually really important skill for kids that are learning to talk.

And I think that’s why he did it in speech class too because it really made them force, it forced Whitaker to say his sounds. So definitely if you have, if you’re looking for something to either engage with your kids or for them to practice their speaking, would definitely recommend Imagination Questions Fun Deck from Super Duper Publications.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Today on Parent Savers we’re talking about kid’s yoga with Jaime Brodie from Cosmic Kids Yoga. So Jaime what is different about kids yoga versus regular toga your regular yoga not toga. Toga toga… What’s different about kid’s yoga than regular yoga geared towards adults.

JAIME BRODIE: It’s all about the togas. It’s all about the Greek mythology.

JOHNER RIEHL: Right.

JAIME BRODIE: No. So the main difference between kid’s yoga and adult yoga is this great sense of fun and silliness that you get in a kids yoga class. In an adult yoga class you tend to get quite a serious group of people whom will take themselves very seriously.

You want to do the yoga as well as they can and then got a lot of focus when they practice and that’s great. But with kids it’s about sense of humour, it’s about silliness, it’s about falling over and it’s also about learning about yourself which is actually what yoga is about. But it’s also a story, it’s fun, it’s something that they can follow a sequence through and that’s what makes it really fun to kids to participate.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah I’ve enjoyed the few regular yoga classes I’ve taken but I also thought it was super fun when we have done kids yoga and I think that this would be fun to kind of translate some of these concepts to adult. How did you get started working with kids in yoga? How do you become a kid’s yoga instructor?

JAIME BRODIE: Yeah. Well I start practicing yoga myself as a teenager and then I went to drama school to train out becoming an actress. And I carried on practicing yoga as I was acting and living in London. And in between my acting jobs I would entertain at children’s parties so I would dress up as a fairy or a Disney princess and I would have to tell stories in these parties.

And I found with my yoga practice I could combine those yoga poses with the stories that I was telling and the kids would follow it along and loved it and just adore what was going on. And I felt there was something in it and then I came across this woman called Shanella Linsa who over here whose really pioneered kids yoga. And I went and trained with her and I found her training enlightening and at the same time I also trained to become an adult yoga teacher.

And then I started going into schools and offering this as an idea for an after school program and got some really good responses. Initially the teachers and the schools where a little devious as to how it work but all it took was them to see a trial and see how the kids got engaged and participated and then I grew it up from there. Building in to lots of different schools programs, physical ads, building into breakfast programs and lunch programs so now I teach at in schools and nurseries all around the area where I lived.

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s great and you have these Youtube videos too, how does that work?

JAIME BRODIE: Yes so Martin knew that there’s got to be away of getting my stories out there and he said why don’t we just go down to a local village hall and put up a green screen and film it. A

And we can drop in any background we like, you know a cartoon background of some description and nice that’s a great idea but I like the idea of wearing something that isn’t kind of you know archetypal yoga teacher kind of tight fitting licara and lets wear something that makes me just as fun, and I told a few of my stories and the first one was Squish the Fish and it was about the fifth yoga story that I’ve written and we just trialled it.

We put it out like everyone does in Youtube, you just put it out there and see what happens. And it grew really kind of steadily but quite quickly so yeah we have this little team of us, there’s me who writes the stories and performs them and then I tried them out with my classes in my real time classes for kids at schools to see that they work and then we go down to our local village hall.

JOHNER RIEHL: The village hall is so British to me.

ERIN ESTEVES: It really is.

STACY SPENSLEY: Yes.

JAIME BRODIE: It really is.

JOHNER RIEHL: And so you still do it in the…

ERIN ESTEVES: In the community centre.

JOHNER RIEHL: In the community centre basically the village hall.

JAIME BRODIE: It totally is. Yeah absolutely it stages a lot of time so we’ve actually just in the last couple of months changed and now I’m going to this college which is brilliant because it saves us about two hours of setting up which is brilliant.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah because of the green screen and that’s so important on what you do with the green screen to have kind of backgrounds.

JAIME BRODIE: Indeed and our friend Dylan who lives in Sydney in Australia, he’s a brilliant graphic artist and he is also a drum and base producer which is quite cool. He creates these amazing backgrounds for Cosmic Kids.

JOHNER RIEHL: So obviously the colourful backgrounds and these great fantastic stories sort of attract kids but what do you see for parents and kids? Do you see hesitation in them getting started in participating?

JAIME BRODIE: In terms of the live classes, I see them needing to check it out first. Definitely they need to watch it and understand what it is first before they step in and have a go and I think that’s the same with the Youtube videos. All it takes is seeing it and then you just either feel compelled to join in and join along or you don’t. But what we want to do is make it as available.

Make it free and make it something that can be put on whenever a child feels they want to because that’s what I was finding with my prescribed time classes, timetable classes, is that the kids don’t necessarily feel like doing it at the time that you prescribed. So having it available on Youtube means you take that pressure off and the kids can participate when they feel like participating. It’s a question of making it easy enough for them to do. If the kids feel they get a sense of achievement from doing it, then they want to come back and try it again and again.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah. And not only it is so a neat thing about being able to do at Youtube videos is you know with things like imperson music classes or imperson classes is it timed right with a nap or if the kids not like right in a good spot especially young kids like coming up on two years old around there even older too. If they’re just not on the right spot I mean it’s not even necessarily worth it to force them to do something. It needs to be something…

JAIME BRODIE: Well exactly.

JOHNER RIEHL: It needs to be something that they are happy and feel good about.

JAIME BRODIE: That’s totally right I mean I think that’s the thing as you just can’t force a child to do anything really. I mean they will kick and scream and they don’t want, no one wants to be told what to do. If I can make what I do fun then that will attract the kids. That’s like a magnet to get.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well you know going back to what you were saying earlier about having to have a look and see before stepping in and that you really focus on making it appetizing or you know tantalizing with the fun to the children.

So I decided to look, to watch one of your videos before presenting it to my son but as was the case he was in the room when I put it on I did not expect any sort of reaction from him and I was floored literally, floored when he dropped on the floor into the poses. And he’s pulling me down and patting on the ground saying “mama down, mama down” because he wanted me to do the yoga with you and I was like I said floored so I think it was great.

JAIME BRODIE: Right. And that something that I think is also about the concept because I wanted to really make it feel that the person on the other end of that screen it feels like I’m really connecting with them so I do look directly into the lens of the camera thinking about looking into the eyes of the child that I’m teaching. And I think you know that connection can be felt by the children and they understand kind of instinctively like you say Erin that they are able to follow along and they see it’s easy and kids love using their body.

Set any opportunities to where they get to stick their leg in the air or go upside down, they are there.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah.

JOHNER RIEHL: Even when they shouldn’t be doing that stuff they like to do it. Yeah. Let’s take a quick break and then let’s look at for different age group and I know that it changes a bit from like a 2 year old or 5 year old some of the stuff they think is fun has overlapped maybe some different stuff too. So we’ll take a quick break and we’ll be right back and talk about yoga for different age kids.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome back everybody. Today we’re talking about kid’s yoga and the big picture around their participation and why it’s so important with Jaime Brodie from Cosmic Kids Yoga. So let’s talk about yoga for different age kid. Stacy you had a question?

STACY SPENSLEY: Yeah. I’m just curious. My son is almost 15 months old and he’s like any toddler very active and runs me rugged and I know that a lot of the classes here that are like mommy and me yoga are for you know babies because it is you know when they are having mommy do it mostly and then they start around like age 2 or so and so I’m kind of curious but when do you recommend starting or you know how young can they be in kind of what is it entail because I mean he’s a toddler, he kind of does what he wants.

JAMIE BRODIE: It’s an interesting one. I mean I found so different I’ve got some toddlers who have walked in to the class and their pretty much the same age as your son and they are more sorted than the 4 year old and the 5 years olds.

They will sit down and they will get on and do it. And I just firmly believe that every child is different. You can’t have a hand and fast rule for anyone of them. Hence giving them a shot in front of a YouTube video, just put it in on like Erin found with her little boy and he either drops into it or he doesn’t. He watches it, he walks away, you got to give him time really and like what Johner was saying about not forcing them.

And I think that freedom for to them to choose and decide is the big factor in it and because if they choose and decide to do it then they’ll do it. That’s so from I found is giving them time.

ERIN ESTEVES: And also if I can interject I think it’s not expecting them to do the sequence in its entirety you know, Cash, some of your videos are about 15 minutes and he won’t - he doesn’t stand through the whole thing but he does have fun in the bits and pieces that he goes along with.

STACY SPENSLEY: At this point like his main yoga move is chewing on my yoga mat so…

ERIN ESTEVES: But he’s really good at child’s pose right?

JAMIE BRODIE: I mean when you think about that on 15 months it’s not long to have existed on the planet and to get them kind of coordinating on what is going on in front of them on what’s going on around them. It’s incredible actually that they do anything and chewing on your yoga mat is a good start and is the tasting very good.

STACY SPENSLEY: Yes he likes on rolling it too.

JOHNER RIHEL: So aside from eating the subway sandwich bar I mean the yoga mat, what is yoga look like for 2 to 3 year olds? What kind of poses do you do? How your stories kind of unfold?

JAIME BRODIE: They tend to be very repetitious and very simple. I’ll use stories that I know that they are kind of familiar with so I’ll use stories like the very hungry caterpillar and stories they all have had read at bed time. And they may not be even be stories that age because actually the idea of them following a story with a beginning and middle and an end is quite a tough concept for someone under the age of two and so I tend to just repeat postures and we’ll just move our bodies.

We’ll say “Hello sun” reaching up or reach down and say “Hello earth” and I’ll go through a bunch of kind of postures I know they related to. They’re often learning with board books at that age about cats, dogs, balls, boats, and things like that but wonderfully all of those things often can correlate to a yoga posture.

So I’ll tend to use books, pictures and music. Singing is a really good one to use in when they are younger.

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s great. And so then as they get older like coming up on 4 years old or 3 or 4.

JAIME BRODIE: As they get older as they get up to 3 and 4, I tend to find that their much more chinned into sharing things. Under the age of 3, sharing isn’t a concept they get so 3 and 4 means you can have a much more dynamic class because they understand the concept of turn taking.

So I will actually introduce more of a basic story. I’ll still use lots of singing. I’ll still use lots of nursery rhymes and that sort of a thing. Anything that I know they have knowledge that they can join in with is going to help them connect with the yoga.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah they may enjoy, they may understand it but it doesn’t mean that they like it but when they are engage in something that’s fun, well that’s what’s cool about things like home, if you try to get a kid to share or take turns can be really hard but in a new dynamic fun experience like kids yoga or Cosmic Kids Yoga, I feel like their accessing different parts of their brain and they’re really tuned in and that’s when they…

JAIME BRODIE: Yeah.

JOHNER RIEHL: Put that stuff in action.

ERIN ESTEVES: Also I don’t think they realize that it’s a technique…

JOHNER RIEHL: Right.

ERIN ESTEVES: You know or that it’s a sport of sort. For them it’s just fun. It’s a funny story about a frog…

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah.

ERIN ESTEVES: Or Squish the Fish and you know who’s that monkey?

JAIME BRODIE: Yeah. It’s actually I think the other thing that really helps 3 and 4 year olds is when they see other kids doing it. I think that’s the sign for 2 to 3 year olds because often when they see an older child doing it they want to copy them. You know they do that monkey see monkey do thing you know. They want to copy and want to be like that child maybe there, so that can also be a really encouraging thing to kids.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah and especially with like siblings too. You’ll see kind of the younger sibling pulled up by the older one.

JAIME BRODIE: Yeah.

JOHNER RIEHL: So then are, do you have different videos for each of these age groups?

JAIME BRODIE: I don’t necessarily because I mean I do recommend certain videos that are better because they go a bit slower and once that are more complex we save for the older kids. But I tend to find it is best to leave it open for the kids to choose and I don’t really think grading them in anyway helps the kids. Because I think some kids at the age of 3 are perfectly capable of doing like the Cosmic Space Monkey which is a video I really and the story I really tuned in for kids that are also 5 and up over.

But you can get 3 year olds to actually adore the story. So I don’t really like sticking a label on them and saying this one is for this age, this one is for this age. I think the fact that they are all there and the kids can try them out is the main thing, the freedom.

JOHNER RIEHL: Would you have a recommendation for someone like Stacy who wanted to check one out or is it kind of the same thing? Just look at them and see what feels good.

JAIME BRODIE: I mean I always I was thinking actually that Squish is a really good one to start with only because it is so steady and the flow of the story is pretty simple and it’s not got much complexity to it and I think it’s usually quite a good start out for the young gland.

JOHNER RIEHL: Have you seen any benefits for yoga for kids with special needs?

JAIME BRODIE: I have actually. Yeah. I’ve got a little boy called David. He’s got [inaudible] in my classes and he is he absolutely lost it. The thing that he loves about the most is the quality he has with other children in the room. So he’s a mainstream school.

What he loves is he can follow along just the other kids. He’s not judged, not competitive and he gets this amazing sense of achievement from every time he practices. The other that’s great for him is he has this stiffness as is the [inaudible] which is really ease by learning how to relax his muscles. So he takes so much away from the relaxations we do at the end of the class.

The breath work we do which really helps regulate and settle himself. And it’s a coping, it helps him with coping strategies because often children with special needs they have this coping strategies where they shake their hands can go get wild and having tools to know how to calm down is a really incredible thing.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah. It’s incredible.

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s awesome. I think it’s so neat that were as Stacy was saying like there’s yoga classes for like with babies that are basically tailored towards mom to be able to keep doing yoga but it’s neat to see it focus on the kids and helping them get the benefits and also have fun as a fun activity that’s also exercise too.

JAMIE BRODIE: Yeah totally. I mean that’s the best the magic of yoga really is that the fact is it is the connection of your body and your mind and you do that via your breath and for kids to be able to get them to do it is the fun. But when you synchronize these things together, you’re body, mind with your breath you’re in flow, you’re strong, you’re powerful you got direction and purpose. And it’s the root to mental health really and to be able to connect those parts of your body and brain.

ERIN ESTEVES: I also think it’s excellent for helping children recognize their individuality. You know because a lot of kids especially children of stay at home moms, you know they have a lot of difficulty in recognizing that they are a person unto themselves you know and that’s where the separation anxiety comes out from. So I think that being able to really embrace the yoga the mind the body and the breath helps them realize that they are themselves.

JAIME BRODIE: That is true and often you find with kids that actually like taking ownership of the activities they’re in like every child take some indifferent from it their own independent way of doing it and they take ownership with it and it gives them this amazing independence to write, dance…

JOHNER RIEHL: Well we need to wrap the conversation up unfortunately. Is there anything else you want to make sure to talk about, about either kid’s yoga or about Cosmic kids yoga or really about just tips to getting kids to participate in activities like this.

JAIME BRODIE: The way that we can get kids to really engage and participate is by making it as free and available as we can. And by like you say, said at the beginning by not forcing them to do it, by just making it available to them. So they can try when they want too.

One thing that’s quite, quite nice about regular practice of it is that the children will start to notice themselves the benefits that they’re getting and they’ll start to notice that they’re feeling much calmer. They’ll start to notice that they’re feeling much stronger. And it’s really nice to hear that feedback from them.

When you see a child starting to participate, ask them what they love about it, ask them to put words to it and also another good thing is to be really impressed by them. So praised them because when they get that praise, they are filled with confidence and that confidence is something that will take them to the next stage and the next stage. And it carries through in everything.

I really believe that children’s yoga, kids yoga is a great way of increasing the child’s learning ability.

JOHNER RIEHL: Well thanks so much for joining us Jaime.

JAIME BRODIE: Pleasure.

JOHNER RIEHL: And thanks so much for the conversation. For more information about Cosmic Kids Yoga and getting kids to participate, please check out the episode page on our website. The conversation will continue for members of our Parent Savers club after the show. We’ll talk about a little more creative ways to work yoga into y our family routine. For more information about the Parent Savers club, visit our website www.parentsavers.com .

[Theme Music]

DAMIEN JACKSON: Hey Parent Savers, this is Detective Damien Jackson with the Escondido police department’s family protection unit and the internet crimes against children task force here in San Diego California. As part of the Escondido police department’s on-going series of community outreach education to help families enhance their personal safety.

I’m here today to talk to you about what I call Facebook floaters. In one of our previous segments, I talk about how unfiltered Facebook settings will make your personal information available to any stranger on the internet, very bad news indeed. Well now that you’ve taken that advice and cleaned up your settings so that only those on your friend list can see your information, let’s talk about another issue to address, those people on your friend list that I refer to as the Facebook floaters. What is a Facebook floater? Let’s dig in to it.

Amassing a huge number of friends on Facebook is very important if we’re talking about a page for your business, or four our police department for example. This is a good thing as you wanted to get the word out and gain as many followers as you can to promote your business or the services you provide for the community.

However Facebook for business and Facebook for personal use are two very different animals. For a business page, you’re not going to include your personal information or pictures of your family. For your personal page, you probably will include these things. My suggestion is this, look at all the people on your friend list and go through each one individually. As you pull up each person, ask yourself what exactly is my relationship with this person and how comfortable in my having this person know all the same information that I would share with an immediate family member.

You might be surprise how many people are on that list that you either don’t really know at all and have never even met in person or you haven’t even seen them in 20 years. Again if it’s someone you’ve never met in person, how comfortable are you really in sharing your personal information with them.

Removing them from your list is no lost at all and it protects you and your family members all a much more. For more information on how you can keep your family safe, visit us on Facebook or Twitter at /escondidopolice. With the Escondido department and the San Diego internet crimes against children task force, I’m Detective Damien Jackson, reminding you and your family to be smart and be safe.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: That wraps up today’s show. Thank you so much for listening to Parent Savers.

Don’t forget to check out our sister shows:
• Preggie Pals for expecting parents
• The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed and
• Twin Talks for parents of multiple kids.

This is Parent Savers empowering new parents.

[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.

SUNNY GAULT: New Mommy Media is expanding our line up of shows for new and expecting parents. If you have an idea for a new series or if you’re a business or organization interested in joining our network of shows through a co-branded podcast, visit www.NewMommyMedia.com .

[00:26:19]
[End of Audio]