My First Yoga Experience {Storyland #Yoga DVD}

I have always appreciated the meaning behind yoga and admired people who regularly did it. I just never thought much about it other than it was something I might like to try someday. Over the years, though, I began to hear a lot of people talking about how much they enjoy their yoga time and even about how it calms their kids. I began to feel a pull toward it - I needed something, anything, to help me relieve some of this stress. That's when Storyland Yoga came into my life.

Now, Storyland Yoga is not made for mommies, it is targeted at kids between the ages of 3 and 8 years old. The DVD I received has two different kids' yoga sessions that last about 20 minutes. I thought that if I could get Little Guy to do yoga with me. We'd have some solid one-on-one time while learning something together. I wanted to see if he'd be interested in the DVD before I got my hopes up, though, and got my chance one very energy-filled evening. As I was making dinner and little guy was letting off steam by way of jumping on the bed and making train sounds at the top of his lungs, I put the DVD on TV. The little intro played and his train became slightly muted. By the time the first session began, my rambunctious little boy was sitting on the bed, enthralled and even attempting to mimic the poses he was seeing.

Why did it capture his attention so quickly and fully? It's a quiet DVD with gentle music and even voices. It's not the usual attention-grabbing loudness that he usually stops to check out. Here's why: This isn't just a DVD with people in a room doing yoga - it's stories that children act out through yoga postures. The first session is entitled "Condor Trek" and has participants enacting a story about finding condor eggs and returning them to their nest. Along the way, children must walk through tall grass, act like a snake, row a kayak, become a bear, and much more. The story jumps between Children's Yoga Instructor, Ahmed Fahmy, and a group of children acting out the story & animated clips of the story. It really helps get kids watching the DVD to become involved. By the time the first session was over, dinner was done!

The next afternoon was rainy and cold. Little Guy's energy levels were through the roof and I was on the brink of losing it. I decided we'd try out actually doing yoga together. In the special features section of the DVD, there is a great resource: All of the poses are shown. Yes! I'm one of those people who needs to see these things being done before attempting to do them. I was kind of apprehensive about just jumping into a session with absolutely no idea of what was going on. So, Little Guy and I practiced the poses. We had a good time and, when I got a pose wrong, he noticed right away, "Silly Mama - Like this!" Yeah, his visual-spatial learning is amazing. He could just look at the TV screen and, at almost 3 years old, he could replicate what he saw happening. Once Mommy learned how to do the positions from Little Guy, we started up the "Save the Whale" session. It was fun! We both felt confident after trying out the poses beforehand, so we kept up with the story rather well (and it's a good story!)

One of the things I like best about this DVD is the group of children that you follow along with aren't all doing the poses perfectly. I have to admit that, if they were perfect, I might have ended up frustrated because I wasn't getting it right 100% of the time. And I could see that Little Guy was trying out the positions of the different kids', finding what was most comfortable for him. Just seeing these kids all doing the poses in their own way helped me remember the reason we were doing yoga in the first place - to become focused and release some energy, not to perfectly do exactly the same thing as everyone else. After the session, we were both in a happy place and ready to snuggle with some books. He actually ended up taking a nap!

All I can say is I highly recommend this DVD. It's a great change from all of the regular TV shows that are on all day long. We've been doing afternoon yoga for about a week and a half now and it's resulted in a nice snuggle session afterward every time. Little Guy feels pride that he has become such an expert on doing the poses. I even saw him playing with one of his teddy bears the other day - he was showing the bear how to be a snake! And I get to do some yoga, myself. The more used to the DVD that Little Guy has become, the more I am able to tune out and focus on doing my own thing.

Storyland Yoga is a product of Playful Planet. This company was created by Karen, a mom looking to raise her daughter to be a healthy person - on a healthy planet. Teaching children and their families about health and sustainability are the main goals of the company. Now, I've seen companies that claim these to be their own goals, but when you check out their Web site, the only "green" you see is a little box toward the bottom that says their packaging is made from recycled materials. Not true here! There are many more links to pages about how to live healthy and natural and how to teach young ones to do so than selling going on. For instance, I love Playful Planet's ABC's of Green

So, "vote" with your dollars and support a green business and give a little one you know a wonderful gift! You can buy Storyland Yoga at Amazon.com for only $14.99 (free shipping for Prime!)


I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.