StudentProfiles

Ashtanga Yoga New Orleans

Community
Announcements | Lagniappe | AYNO Student Section

I have worked with students with autism for several years as either a private therapist and/or as a classroom teacher. Last year, while trying to pick out an activity for my students to do in the gym, I decided to teach my students Sun Salutation A. When I shared my ideas with my friends, other co-workers, and parents of my students they thought that I was crazy; however, I decided to go ahead and attempt this.

The first day the kids and my classroom assistants watched as I tried to explain inhaling and exhaling and resting their heads and showing them the poses. The second day the adults tried to position and aide the students in copying what I was doing. By the end of the week more than half of the students were following along. I continued to do the Sun Salutation A with them over the next month and never really thought much about what effect it was having on my students outside of school. I knew that they seemed to enjoy it and they were participating, and my assistants also told me that they enjoyed doing the sun salutations. After a month, a parent of one of my students approached me and stated that he wanted to know what I was teaching his son. I asked him to describe to me what he wanted to know, he preceded with "Last night in the while giving Daniel a bath . . ." My first reaction to myself was, what in the world would I be teaching your child about bath time and then I thought oh my God, what is he going to say next. Well what he said next was, "Daniel stood up and said inhale hands to the sky, exhale head down, relax your head, and then the father told me he and his wife could not make out any other words, but that their son preceded to stand in one awkward position for awhile and then stood back up." After laughing hysterically for a while, I told the father that this was part of the yoga that I was teaching the students. A few days later the mother of the same student came to me and told me that when her son got upset, or began self stimulate she would say, "Daniel, inhale look up" and that he would proceed and do a sun salutation and calm down and regain his focus.