Yoga Kids

I took my sons to yoga yesterday. They have varied relationships with yoga. My youngest loves it with his whole heart. He can even name poses using Sanskrit. He's been around a lot as I've studied and practiced, and he's picked it up like three year olds pick up anything they are around a lot. My oldest twin also loves it. He shares my hypermobility, and he could be a contortionist. We can fit him into tiny places. He can do poses I will never be able to do, just flop right into them. He loves meditation and can take himself from hyper to calm in seconds just by tuning into his breathing. His twin brother has an on-again, off-again relationship with yoga, depending on who is in class with him. If he's trying to look "cool" (he's very concerned with this already), he will refuse to practice, but he still sits, watches, and takes it all in. If it's just him and his brothers and random other kids, he practices and wants to be a good student. I'm proud of him. Often, if there's an activity that he cannot do immediately as well or better than his twin, he gives up on it. But he really tries in yoga on some days.

The boys take yoga from Checka. She is a powerful teacher and really never ceases to amaze me. I would like to have her here as a yoga nanny or yoga mother's helper. She gets the kids all crazy hyped up, doing made up poses like rockstar (still not sure what this one is - some sort of hopping three-legged dog is the best explanation I can give), then getting them to sing Peace Like a River, then getting them all to drop right into savasana. A classroom full of crazed three to seven year olds! As a former teacher, I can honestly say that I have never, ever seen that happen before. Checka is like a yoga pied piper.

Yesterday, after yoga, we came home and the boys just chilled out to dinner time, through dinner (they happily, calmly ate chickpea pesto burgers with potato salad and green beans and a dessert of blueberries? whose children are these??), bath and dreamily into bedtime. Checka, will you marry me? Or at least train me. Once I'm done with this other yoga training, of course.