He took the words right out of my mouth!

There are many reasons I love Ojai. One of them is because of the organization called the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation. Its very cool to me that our community takes good care of its own. 

I feel so blessed that my path here has crossed with the OVYF. I've never had children of my own but I was graced with two step children from my marriage and in addition while in Nevada I served on the board of Sierra Arts Foundation and the Nevada Women's Fund where I did some tangential work with children. I feel so grateful that my path here in Ojai  has opened into work with kids again. From time to time I get to go teach yoga at the Teen Center in Oak View. Its a hoot!

Because I haven't had a lot of experience with kids, I find myself on somewhat unfamiliar territory. Its been so long since I was a teen myself, I've sort of forgotten what it was like. I don't ever remember having the amount of energy that these kids do. I mean, class starts at 6P, and I'm winding down for the day. Not this group. They are ready to rock. I feel a weird sense of intimidation and envy! 

Tonight I got to the classroom early and the kids all grabbed their mats and set them up for class in a circle facing in. We were casually sitting around for about 10 minutes before class chatting. Ryan, the director of the teen center introduced me, and them boom...he turned it over to me and class begins. I'd planned to start class standing and do a little jumping/shaking/dancing intro. I thought it would be a good way to jiggle some energy out of them before we did some poses. But I backed off of my plan since we were all seated and started class with a few deep breaths and some side stretching. Should have stuck to plan A, for asking these wiggle worms to sit still and breath right off the bat is not effective. I moved quicker than usual through cat/cow/child's/quarter dog and got them up to standing. I heard one of the tougher guys in the crowd mutter under his breath, 'hey, that feels pretty good!'. Everybody had an opinion. Everybody started talking. It took quite a bit of doing to get them to quiet down a bit and into Tadasana. 'These kids hate this' I heard my inner voice say. And then I remember when I had similar feelings when I just started One Breath, and Kira's advice to 'just keep going'. 

So I kept going. We did some sun salutations and lunge salutes. We played with Warrior I, Parvotanasana, and Warrior III. We ended on the floor with wide legged Janushirsanana, Ardha Matsendrasana. I was making our way to a windshield wiper spine twist before savasana and one of the kids yelled out, 'can we do Crow?'. So we played with that, which threw the class about 10 minutes over time. Ug! Not only am I dragging this out for the kids, but the teen center director will probably frown on running overtime. I wasn't at all sure about this Yoga thing at the Teen Center. Seemed like the only person in the room remotely enjoying the experience was me.

Believe it or not, these wild child teens actually chilled in savasana for almost 6 minutes. After namaste Ryan closed the session with a ritual they do. All the kids circle up and put one arm in center. I walked over and joined in, and for a brief moment I felt like a teen myself. Ryan asked me to say 'the word' to dismiss class. "Or", he said, "pick someone". The young gent next to me, who had sort of struggled in the practice,  enthusiastically squealed, 'pick ME!, pick ME! So I did. We all put our arms in the circle, Ryan gave the signal for the word,  and this young yogi shouted out "YOGA ROCKS".

Amen, my little friend. I couldn't have said it any better myself.