Prompted by a flashcard with a picture of a dog on it, Melisa Milne smiles as she helps her five-year-old daughter Megan hinge at the hips, forming an inverted V so to touch the ground with both her hands and feet.
Melisa later admitted she never thought her non-verbal and wheelchair-bound daughter would be able to practice yoga poses such as the downward dog.
Megan suffers from high muscle tone, which is a result of an injury to motor pathways in the central nervous system that leads to an increase of muscle tension and a reduction in the ability for the muscle to be stretched. A result of high muscle tone can be a stiff or rigid body.
“Because of her limited physical abilities, it wasn’t something that I considered would even be a possibility,” she said.
Once the Children’s Services Centre in Red Deer started offering classes, however, Melisa realized that Megan could do yoga with some assistance.
“I love it,” Melisa said. “The more that she can do, the happier that we are.”
Children’s Services Centre, or CSC, recently added yoga to the lengthy list of services it offers to benefit children with special needs.
“We were really looking for something we could provide families that would kind of be the whole package,” explained Melanie Harris, a physiotherapist at CSC.
“That’s how we feel about yoga. Yoga is kind of the blend of the mind, body and spirit.”
Having personally experienced the benefits of yoga, Harris thought the practice that focuses on strength, flexibility, concentration and breathing would have a positive result on children diagnosed with cerebral palsy, autism, visual impairments, Down syndrome and various mobility issues.
The centre first started offering the ancient India practice this February in its Early Access to Supportive Education program and were so impressed with the results that it decided to end each day of its inaugural FAST Summer Program with 20 minutes of yoga.
Twelve children between the ages of three and six attended either the morning or afternoon camp this week and Harris said they hope to offer the summer program again.
After spending half the day playing, storytelling and making crafts, the kids gathered in the gym area and held different yoga poses after being prompted with visuals of animals and nature on flashcards.
For example, the children got down on their bellies and propped themselves up on their hands for cobra pose after Harris showed them a picture of a snake.
Shown an image of a tree, the kids stood and stretched their arms towards the ceiling in true tree pose form.
“We’ve just seen some really amazing things with doing yoga consistently with our little guys,” Harris said.
Retaining information, ability to relax and calm down, and having fun are the key benefits she said CSC staff and parents are observing in the children who have been doing yoga.
Wanting to expand this program, Harris and rehab assistant Twyla Galisky completed all three levels of the Radiant Child Yoga Program in Edmonton in June.
The certificate program focuses on sharing the benefits of yoga with children, training that Harris and Galisky have now combined with their knowledge of working with special needs children.
Harris said CSC will continue offering yoga in the Early Access to Supportive Education program this fall.
The centre also plans on offering an evening yoga class for special needs children between the ages of three and six starting in October.
Siblings of participants will also be welcomed to attend the evening classes.
For more information, contact Children’s Services Centre at 403-340-2606 or visit www.childrenservices.ca
ptrotter@www.reddeeradvocate.com
