A donation based yoga class offered to a group of families while simultaneously raising money for Capitol City Medical Teams annual surgical medical mission to Peru.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm,” said the often quoted and rather wise Winston Churchill. In executing ‘Yoga4Peru’, a donation based yoga class offered to a group of families while simultaneously raising money for Capitol City Medical Teams annual surgical medical mission to Peru, I was able to experience the full weight of these knowing words on failure.
In the spring of 2015, a woman by way of channels of a mutual professional relationship contacted me. She being a mother who was currently home schooling her children, and amongst a small community of other families, was interested in arranging for a group yoga class for parents and kids to participate in together. The initial questions of “where” and “when” and “how much” were small barriers, all of which seemed to come to simple solutions with only little effort. Making the class donation based and using the funds for the greater good of future charitable action seemed like the best way to unify the project. So “Yoga4Peru” was coined. Next, I was fortunate enough to form an acquaintance with the owner of a new yoga studio in town, eager to host any kind of class to appeal to the community. She offered up her space and a time slot that would fit amongst their scheduling. All channels of communication were organized and executed through this one mom, and the group seemed to be in agreement. Fridays at noon, every other week, 10 families would come to UptownYOGA for a one-hour block of family friendly yoga. I was radiating enthusiasm.
Day one came, I was prepared and ready, yoga mats were purchased and acquired to host these families, music carefully selected, and then reality walked through the door. As is understandable, coordinating anything with multiple families is a challenge, let alone ten. I was not expecting a full turn out of each respective family unit, however, I was not expecting as few as two either. Neither of which were the woman I had been in contact with. Of the two families that showed up for class, one was a mom and her teenage daughter. The other was comprised of a mother with three children, two girls ages five and seven, and a three year-old boy. Poor mom spent the entire session in the waiting area with her son trying to get him to stop screaming, while the two little girls smacked each other and asked questions about everything under the sun, periodically laying on their mats and rolling back and forth. Mom and teenage girl hung in there, moving from asana to asana, with the occasional dirty look in the direction of the two young sisters with a potency only a teenage girl is capable of. This was not exactly the perfectly serene experience that I had envisioned in my idealistic mind. Clearly I was going to have to change tactics and adjust my expectations.
The next week’s session came, and it looked a little different. From two to four, increasing the amount of children in class to seven, and two tough parents, the dynamic changed considerably. In order to maintain the attention of seven kids ranging from ages three to thirteen, it was time to use the powers of charm and redirection. We made our way from seated postures, emphasizing breathing exercises, to a series of “Super Hero” poses (traditionally referred to as Warriors). All the while I found myself heckled by a tag-team of pre-pubescent girls stating “this is easy, I can do this no problem.” Oh how I shouldn’t have, but I let them get my goat. Increasing tempo and speed, we marched forward, lunging deeply, holding longer, breathing our “super powers” into the air, and then pulling them back down with sweeping arms. Questions, concerns complaints, fired at me one-by-one, I was like a stealthy ninja on a battlefield, dodging, dipping, evading, and redirecting. Onward, onward, “stay on your mat!” “the power of the super hero is only for those who can keep his hands to himself!” The end of the hour came, I found myself a disheveled mess as I walked amongst the still lying bodies of tiny humans peacefully in savasana, under blankets like heavy cocoons, waiting to emerge like energetic little butterflies. After, I watched them fly out the studio’s door back to their minivans and family sedans, joyfully humming with the rhythm of the universe, while I stared vacantly… feeling slightly hollow inside, like they carved something from my insides and took it with them. I recall sweet Lori, owner of Uptown, placing a hand on my back saying “I can’t believe you got them to hang in there for a whole hour…. That was impressive.” Yes, yes it was. Sadly, it was a one hit wonder, my swan song.
In the following weeks, for those families that did show up (which was at times none) I began to see a trend. More and more, moms would drop their kids, and then go down the way to the Food Lion and do their grocery shopping. The kids would maintain attention for shorter periods of time, and it became challenging to keep some of the younger kids on their mats. The few older kids that were excited to participate in yoga were eager to try new things, and capable of following instruction and making modifications with guidance. The downside to giving direct one-on-one attention to any participant in the class, was that the attention must equally be shared. The laws of the universe demand it, and so do five to seven year-old girls. Quickly conversations spiraled into “look what I can do!” and all hope for maintaining control was lost.
By the end of the two month time commitment, I found myself gleefully overjoyed when only one or two kids would be there at a time, and we could do person specific movement, with a controlled pace in a calmer atmosphere. These scenarios always seemed to make the participant less excited, they were always dejected when other kids failed to show up, always seeking the social aspect of these meet ups, and were a bit nervous to be spoken to directly. On the day of the last session with the home school kids group, I left the studio and felt light as a bird, and am sad to admit that in my head I was thinking, “thank goodness that’s over.”
In retrospect, I realize that every person has a different expectation of an experience. That there are many variables that go into cultivating an atmosphere, and an engaged interaction. While the group’s intention may have been one drawn from a pure place, getting the process rolling was not an ideal endeavor. Fridays were actually a pretty horrible day, given end of the work week exhaustion. The noon time slot was an even worse idea, as the mothers were starving and just wanting a few moments peace to eat lunch and get some things done without entertaining their kids. The kids were still deep in the Pitta aspect of their day, with energy to burn and attention lacking in spades. Connecting and rationalizing with my audience as to why we should sit here, be still, and listen to our breathing sounds, was an abstract concept that couldn’t be grasped. And the little ones and the teenagers, should certainly have had their own separate time slots.
As a professional with a strong love of yoga and what yoga has to offer, it’s hard to watch the process fall to seed. Many of the sessions with the kids felt like total disasters, a mental game of herding cats. The only sincere hope I have coming out of the experience, is that for these kids, when they hear “yoga” in the future, they aren’t going to place it into the mental category of “something weird, not for me.” Hopefully, rather, they will remember that they were exposed to that at a young age, and that maybe it’d be worth exploring again later in their life’s progression.
Were I able to turn the clock backward and relieve the experience, I would have chosen to structure the endeavor differently. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, as they say. If given ultimate control of all the extraneous variables, I would have first chosen a different day, midweek, possibly a Wednesday. This way we would not be battling the uphill chaos that comes with Monday’s need to “re-group”, and not yet shifted mentally into ‘weekend mode.’ I would emphasize the participation of not just the kids, but also of their parent. This would take the ultimate responsibility of re-grouping and re-directing off of me entirely. Knowing how important productive hours are for parents on the go, I would try to orchestrate the class structure in the late afternoon vata hour, when it’s appropriate to begin the winding down processes, not just for the kids, but for busy parents as well. Instead of being inside a windowless room, maybe instead in an outside setting, a beach, or in a grassy park. I would try harder to emphasize a calming atmosphere. Less movement, more stillness. Less asana, more visualization. Guided imagery in the form of a story. I would give careful consideration to the powerful message of music and melody to elicit increased calm. Use of weighted bags or eye pillows to promote deep rooting.
For me, I can say that there is no better learning tool in life than a little disappointment, and a little failure. It seems to be a common theme amongst my development on this earth. Learning to walk by first stumbling and falling is just part of the process. In future endeavors, I can’t say that I am strongly motivated to offer donation-based classes for kids and families who may like to think of me as a $5 babysitter for the next hour. Although, maybe next time I would have that ultimate control of all the above mentioned variables. I may not rule kids sessions out just yet.
Ultimately, what this overall experience has accomplished, it has given me better insight to the type of clientele I am most passionate about working with. A conscientious community of individuals seeking a better path, willing to adjust and modify their thought patterns and habituations. It’s really the moms I’m passionate about reaching. The women juggling so much, trying so hard to keep all the cogs in the wheel moving. Typically it’s the women who are the ones that nurture the family, keep the ones they love well fed, clothed, bathed. They mend scratches, kiss boo-boo’s, patch holes, clean messes, run errands. Moms are amazing. The planters of seeds consciously and subconsciously, they have the ability to grow so much more than a healthy happy home, they are seeding the future of this beautiful Earth’s next generation of caretakers. Perhaps I should reconsider my title; to realize that this is such a strong motivation, that is hardly a failure. I’d say it’s a valuable lesson…. Learned in a slightly unorthodox manner.