yogaSprouts

By: Suleiky Guerrero
M&M TIPster

“Everyone can benefit from it; you just have to be willing to work,” said Rachel Greb, the owner and founder of yogaSprouts, about what kinds of people could benefit from yoga.

Rachel works with children, teens and tweens that often have emotional and behavioral disorders and autism.

She completed her undergraduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, La, in film theory. She moved to Athens a year after graduating to work on a master’s in special education. In the beginning she was told that she couldn’t do her research on kids with special needs because of the lack of “evidence” that yoga actually helps. After a while she was able to complete her Master’s Research in yoga and other relaxation techniques for kids with special needs.

Having seen that as a teacher that she was always “overloaded” with paperwork, she found that she had almost no time to spend with her students and because of this there wasn’t any time to incorporate the yoga. After being denied several times about doing yoga in classrooms she moved on to doing yoga at a family camp. Later she decided trying to do the yoga in Athens by starting her own business. After coming up with the name yogaSprouts for the program and had success on the first day.

Some positions she does with the younger children are animal positions in which they imitate a certain position that an animal makes. Some examples are frog, giraffe, mule and cat.

She stated that teens like to be challenged. They go from doing easy positions to more difficult positions and after mastering them they prefer to move on. An example she gave was of one of the harder positions called Vasisthasana, which translates to mean Side Plank with a Twist. It is also known as Side Plank Pose, Side Plank and as Side Plank Sage. They also tend to like back bends, inversions, and arm balances.

When asked what she liked most about what she does for these kids she said, “ it’s amazing to see the look in someone’s eyes when they get into a pose that they didn’t think they can do or when they change their attitude from an ‘I can’t’ to an ‘I can try’ and what happens when they do that.”

Rachel does after school programming at schools, yoga parties at houses and events, private and public classes, and classes at community centers and summer camps. The yoga session times typically range from thirty to forty-five minutes for two-year olds and for elderly mostly only thirty minutes. The amount of time yoga is done in regular practices range from one hour to an hour and a half.

Overall, yoga is a very helpful way for all kids with disabilities to be helped and rehabilitated so that they can move on in life.

Suleiky Guerrero is a 9th grader at Westwood Marine and Oceanic Academy (MOA) in Port St. Lucie, FL.