Omward Bound: Moms and Their Little Ones Do Yoga Together

New yoga classes let you make the mind-body connection with yourself – and your kids

As an avid exerciser, I know that it’s important to do cardio, strength training and stretching. But as a working mother of two, that’s not realistic. When I have time to work out, I opt for torching calories on the treadmill or toning with free weights. But then I heard about family yoga, classes where moms and dads get into pretzel poses side-by-side with their kids (usually those ages 3-8). Being able to downward dog with my 7-year-old daughter, Lily, sounded ideal. I could add yoga to my life without taking time away from her and could teach her a few things about staying healthy. Plus, if she learned how to exhale at this age, I was hopeful that she wouldn’t follow in my stressed-out footsteps. Still, I was skeptical that I could reap any mind-mellowing benefits with one of my kids on the next yoga mat--especially when those kids can, well, be the cause of some of that stress. But I decided to try.

During the Family Yoga class at YogaWorks Soho studio, Lily and I were joined by our instructor and four parent-child pairs. The class started with us saying “om.” To make it interesting, our teacher told us that we could say any word instead of “om” as long as we all said our words at the same time. Afterwards, she asked the kids which word they picked--which led to hysterics as one child said gummy bears, another bird and a third a favorite potty word. Next, she led us through sun salutations, an energizing series of poses that are done in a single flow and repeated several times. The kids got excited trying to keep up with the Simon Says-like twist and silly faces that our teacher added to this traditional yoga move; I got excited that my muscles were getting a nice stretch.

Throughout the class, our teacher continued to take traditional yoga poses and make games out of them. The goal of each was yoga-related, but the kids simply saw it as having fun. For example, in plow pose we used our feet to pass a ball to one another. During the cat/cow back stretches done on all fours, Lily climbed on my back for a little ride, and while I did a plank on the floor, Lily did one on top of my outstretched body. We also placed our hands and feet together to do a flower pose and did back-to-back downward dogs with her feet resting on the back of my legs.