Nohelia Siddons is a personal trainer and fitness coach for families – and part of what she does is teach yoga to kids.
Parents are welcome too, so Silvia Pico joined her 4-year-old son Lorenzo for one of Siddons' classes.
“It’s very important to play with them and to exercise with them and this is a way to have fun and exercise at the same time,” Pico said.
Siddons provides a bilingual program targeting Hispanic children ages 3 and up because they have higher rates of obesity.
“My specialty is to help kids and families to understand why it’s important to be healthy,” she said.
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Getting children to move, stretch, and strengthen their growing bodies is the goal. To accomplish that, the class has to engage them to want to participate.
That’s why animal themes are used.
“We did crab, crocodile, we did fish. They didn’t even know they were doing yoga,” Siddons said.
The children roar and howl. It certainly doesn’t look or sound like traditional poses for grownups.
“When you’re doing a regular class for adults you’re not playing, you’re just there because you want to balance your mind, balance your spirit,” Siddons said.
