This Tuesday we are going to learn some more yoga you can do with your children! Durga-Go, or Cat and Cow Pose; it’s a great back releaser for you, helps to expand the lungs for better, deeper breathing, and kids like this one because of the recognizable animal names! You can even do this one if you are pregnant!
• To begin you should be on all fours, legs under hips, toes flat on the floor, arms under shoulders, fingers spread wide. Remember to keep your shoulders back: don’t wear them as earrings!
• Inhale, exhale, inhale and on your next exhale, tuck your pelvis, push with your arms, drop your head and round your back up towards the ceiling. This is Durga or cat..
• On an inhale, arch your back, imagine your sit bones reaching towards the sky, keep the shoulders rolled back, press your hands into the mat while pulling back and look up. Don’t compress the spine. Imagine your spine is lengthening out, out, out in both directions. You will feel this stretch all along the front body. This is Go or cow.
• Complete a few rotations of Durga-Go and continue into another posture, or keep going! This is a fabulous stretch to do first thing in the morning and a very easy, albeit brief practice. Durga-Go also helped me get to sleep during both of my pregnancies. The gentle rocking soothes the little one back to sleep and the breath matching with movement (vinyasa) helped calm my already overactive mommy brain.
In order to teach children this pose you have to get down on the floor with them. You can meow as you come into Cat (the one where your head is down) and then have them look up at the ceiling for Cow. Their backs will naturally arch as they look up. You may need to adjust their shoulders, but probably not.
The first time I taught my kids this asana(posture or pose), they kept mooing and dropping into child’s pose. While oddly appropriate, it wasn’t what I wanted them to do. I had to abandon the lesson/practice for that day and try again another time. Try to remember they are kids and toddlers are toddlers. There’s no point pushing everyone. They will get it eventually! Remember to relax and have fun. Soon your little ones will be asking to “do the yoga” and you will have mini-yogis keeping you in your practice!
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