The yoga move known as child’s pose is taken to a whole new level each Thursday at Newmarket’s Maple Leaf Public School.
That’s when up to 40 students in grades 1 to 8 quietly file into the gym after a short lunch, take off their shoes, and lay down on their yoga mat in shavasana, lying still with their eyes closed.
Teacher Madison Macken, who leads the once-a-week, 40-minute session and who created the Maple Leaf Yoga Club last October to share her passion for the benefits of the practice, issued only one suggestion at the beginning of the class: “Don’t lay beside your friends if you think you might be silly,” she said.
Turns out there was no silliness, talking, squirming around or hands raised to use the washroom, all of which one might expect from this age cohort.
Instead, as the gym lights were dimmed and soothing sounds wafted through the room from Macken’s cellphone music app, the students settled onto their mats, focusing on their breathing. About 35 mats were donated to the school’s yoga club by Lululemon Newmarket.
“They just do it, they love it,” said Macken, who has worked at the school since September 2018 and teaches grades 2 and 3. “I rarely have to tell them to stop something, they know when they come in that it’s a quiet space.”
Macken has observed student behaviour change for the better with the extra-curricular weekly yoga practice. Some students are also taking the breathing and stretching techniques home with them and incorporating the poses into their daily lives, she said.
“Some parents are telling me their child is doing yoga instead of watching TV, which was my main goal with this,” Macken said.
Parent Dimitra Pelekis, whose two children attend the school, said her daughter, Kaitlin Pelekis-Murray, 10, has taken to yoga in a big way.
“She does it at home now and talks about yoga all the time,” she said. “And Kaitlin asked for her own mat at home. She has so much self-esteem now, and yoga helps her a lot with anxiety. She’s able to calm herself. It’s done wonders for her.”
Kaitlin, who is in Grade 5, said she likes the yoga class so much that she volunteered recently to lead members of a local Brownies group in a yoga session.
“I also showed some of my family how to do the yoga moves,” she said, adding that she takes dance lessons and enjoys the dancer’s pose in yoga the best. “It helps with my balance.”
Grade 5 student Nevaeh Bassoukos, 11, said she likes all the poses, but especially the tree pose.
“I do a little bit of yoga at my house in the morning and at night,” she said, adding her sister does yoga, too.
Emma Parsons, 8, who is in Grade 3, said she likes learning all the different poses, but she can really feel the stretch with the butterfly pose.
“I feel calm and sleepy after doing yoga,” she said.
Jireh Andrews, 7, who is in Grade 2, said he looks forward to the class, and even the walk through the school to get to the gym is fun because he looks forward to it.
“I like the pigeon pose. It makes me feel calm and energized,” Andrews said.
Macken is not a certified instructor, but she has learned a substantial amount about the practice from her own years-long participation at Moksha Yoga Newmarket.
She begins each yoga practice with deep breathing exercises, ensuring the students feel comfortable each step of the way.
“Get those muscles awake,” she said gently. “Now, let’s move into tabletop. Remember you want to have a very flat back, knees should have space between them. ...And now, let’s go into cat’s cradle, dip your back low and look up to the sky. And let’s curve our back like a rainbow. Make sure you’re taking deep breaths the whole time. ...And let’s go into downward-facing dog, take one foot into the air and point it up to the ceiling. Push it up, push it up. And bring your leg down and go right into pigeon pose.”
Macken introduces a singing element into the lunchtime yoga class by inviting the students to sing along to You Are My Sunshine. And there are smiles all around when she does a short segment to get students’ legs moving to the smash success, Baby Shark.
A meditation story wraps up the class as students are encouraged, once again, to lay quietly in shavasana on their mats.
“Allow your tummy to fill up like a balloon. Take five deep breaths in, and five breaths out. As your body relaxes, imagine you’re a butterfly, fluttering high in the sky. You see the lovely green valley below, with lots of colourful flowers, just waiting for you to enjoy. As the wind touches you, it gently blows away any worries you have and any stress you feel.
"Your mind is clear and calm. You’ve left any worries far behind. You are completely peaceful. You are beautiful as you allow your true happiness to shine through. … You are ready for a wonderful peaceful sleep later tonight, and a wonderful peaceful afternoon. Give your body a big stretch. Say these words to yourself: I am peaceful and I am calm. Namaste.”
Principal Amanda LeBlanc said that during the mindful moment at the beginning of school assemblies, you could hear a pin drop.
“Madison brought the club as a new club to the school last fall and it really fits in nicely with our mindfulness and self-regulation, which are calming tools for students to use with their own self-regulation,” LeBlanc said.
Vice-principal Linnet Richmond said that mindfulness and meditative moments are taking place daily in kindergarten to Grade 8.
“Usually, it’s just after a transition, for example, when the kids get back from lunch and they’ve been outside running around, they will have some meditative time to help them regulate, that’s part of our zones of regulation program that is in every area of our school,” said Richmond.
Across the board, the educators said yoga and mindfulness practice are a common language used to support students in bringing calm to themselves when they’re having some challenging moments. It ties in with one of the board’s pillars of mental health and well-being, they said.
Zones of regulation is about recognizing how the body feels in different states and then knowing what tools you have to help you get back into that healthy green zone, Richmond added.
“And yoga, for a lot of our kids, it’s the mindfulness, it’s the breathing, it’s just being present and recognizing here’s where I’m feeling my tension right now and here’s a strategy I can use to help regulate that,” Richmond said. “So, we have calm students who are ready to learn.”
