We all know the benefits of a regular yoga practice for ourselves, but what’s all this about yoga for kids? Is that really a thing? How can kids benefit from a yoga practice?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to introduce the children and grandchildren in your world to the joys of yoga in a way that is accessible and engaging for them? A way that is designed specifically for them? A way in which adults and children can practise yoga together and have a lot of fun in the process?
This is exactly what Jaime Amor, alongside her husband Martin, had in mind when she founded Cosmic Kids Yoga. Cosmic Kids Yoga is yoga for kids like you’ve never seen before. Jaime’s aim is to bring yoga and mindfulness to kids all over the world and it’s working: with up to two million hits a month on the Cosmic Kids Yoga YouTube Channel, Jaime is bringing yoga for kids to a worldwide audience.
Here at Yogamatters, we were delighted to have the opportunity to connect with the woman behind Cosmic Kids Yoga, Jaime Amor herself, and to find out more about her yoga journey and her work.
Can you tell us a little first of all about your own yoga journey? When did you start and what has yoga meant for you in your life?
I first practised yoga when I was at drama school. I picked it up again when all the Bikram studios popped up in London, just as a way to stay fit. Then I had a big change in my life. I met Martin; we moved to the countryside; I stopped working as an actor and I didn’t know what I was going to do for a living…and this was scary! I felt like I was losing my identity. At this point, I discovered yoga in a deeper way. It helped me know myself – to feel stronger, more grounded, more peaceful and tuned in to myself. I was lucky to find some really inspiring yoga teachers who have helped me understand the mental journey as much as the physical experience of yoga.
What did life for you look like before Cosmic Kids Yoga? What job were you doing?
I was an actor, but it was intermittent. I had a range of theatre jobs and odd TV bits, but to make ends meet, I was mostly working as a children’s entertainer. I would dress up as a fairy, princess or pirate and run parties for kids aged from 3 upwards with lots of stories, magic and games. This was where I started using yoga for kids with storytelling (which sits at the heart of Cosmic Kids), to keep the kids at the party engaged.
What prompted you to set up Cosmic Kids Yoga and what were some of the early challenges?
I knew from my parties that kids respond brilliantly to this mix of yoga and storytelling, so I trained as a kids yoga teacher, and started running classes. In the early days, it was tough to fill up private classes and convince schools to give me a slot to run an after-school club, but as soon as I got one class, I had a foothold. After a couple of years, I had a good number of classes going, and was really enjoying teaching my own stories. The kids and parents seemed to really like what I was doing too, so Martin suggested we should try filming them. We hired our local Sports and Social Club and filmed me doing three ‘yoga adventures’ (stories told in yoga poses). Eventually, we plucked up the courage to post them to YouTube and from that moment, people started discovering us. Around then, I also decided that I wanted it to be ‘proper’ yoga – so I did my adult yoga teacher training too. Like anything new, it was really small when we started it, but we believed in it and we were prepared to do the work, and good things have happened!
How do you feel kids can benefit from practising yoga?
Of course, there are the many physical benefits of the asanas, but the thing that I find most exciting about kids yoga is that it has the story element. The adventures we go on put the kids at the heart of a fun story – as the heroes – acting it out with yoga poses. We encounter challenges and characters and we explore our responses to them. It’s fun and there’s lots of laughter, but we also learn about life-changing qualities like resilience, right and wrong and compassion.
What can parents do to encourage their kids to practise yoga?
I think kids need to feel a sense of ownership, so it’s good to let them feel like they’ve discovered THEIR yoga. Go slowly, let them see you practise to build their interest, and then help them discover if there’s some special yoga for kids out there for them. There is! Check out the Cosmic Kids YouTube channel!
We hear a lot of stories about kids climbing all over a mum or dad who’s trying to do yoga, saying ‘I want MY yoga’ – and then there’s this big moment when they discover Cosmic Kids. Another thing we’ve seen working really well is parents joining in with their kids on a Cosmic Kids yoga adventure. Doing it together creates a wonderful bonding experience and the kids are then more likely to want to carry on.
How do you come up with the stories that you tell? Do you start with the yoga poses and build a story around them or start with a story and then find yoga poses that work in that story?
It usually starts with the message I am trying to communicate – something like being yourself or supporting your friends. Then I think of an animal that has a yoga pose associated with it that could be a role model for that message. Yoga and the animal world are deeply connected and animals provide a wonderful canvas for learning as kids naturally adore them. By giving the animal human qualities, the kids can relate to it too. Every story has a warm-up, an adventure and a relaxation at the end. I try to make the kids laugh too, do funny voices and sing the odd song. It’s 20-25 poses – a hero’s journey with a bit of silliness thrown in.
How do you keep your online content free for kids to enjoy? Why is that important to you?
It’s really simple – we are bringing free yoga for kids and mindfulness to as many children as we can around the world. It costs money to do this of course, so we’ve had to be quite smart about earning enough to keep going, while staying freely available. At the moment, we are getting between 1 and 2 million views on our YouTube channel every month and the revenue from advertising on YouTube goes some way to covering our costs. Over the past 5 years, we’ve also created a sort of eco-system of products around Cosmic Kids to help people deepen their relationship with us and to help us fund it.
Our main focus is actually training people to teach kids yoga through the Cosmic Kids Teacher Trainings. We have a online Free Kids Yoga Crash Course that nearly 10000 people have done and a brilliant online course which certifies people to teach kids yoga professionally. We also sell DVDs, books in our online shop and class plans for kids yoga teachers. We have a way to watch our videos without adverts too for a few pounds a month on our Cosmic Kids Ad Free Platform. We’re currently looking into the world of licensing – exploring how we can partner with companies who want to use our brand to make products which encourage mindfulness and yoga, and we’re selling our content to broadcasters so it’s on TVs all over the world. We also plan to make foreign language versions of our yoga adventures.
How do you find working with your husband Martin every day? How do you stop your work taking over the whole of your lives?
Cosmic Kids is like a hobby that we look forward to doing whenever we can. We make a good team. We do talk about Cosmic Kids a lot, thinking together about what we can do to help it grow – but it doesn’t feel like ‘work’. We’re incredibly proud of what we’re doing and find it really stimulating. We’ve built it up from nothing and never taken any investment from anyone, so if we want to change something, we can just get on and do it. The only rules are that we don’t talk about Cosmic Kids in the bedroom and we take the weekend off!
What do you do to relax?
We live peacefully in the countryside. We have our dogs – Mini and Spence – who are always ready for a walk. We do the garden, and love getting into a good boxset. We both love food and cooking. We also love going away for little breaks and adventures. We keep fit. I’m trying out calisthenics at the moment and it’s amazing how much of it relates to yoga and vice versa.
Do you have to be a special kind of person to deliver yoga to kids? What do you look for in the teachers who train with you?
I think the key is playfulness – being OK with being silly! I think it’s important to have a regular yoga practice too. If you’re curious about teaching kids yoga, please do our free crash course – it’s online and it’s a perfect way to dip your toe into yoga for kids. Bringing yoga to kids is worth exploring – it is incredible the impact a yoga teacher can have on a roomful of kids.
What three words best sum up yoga for you?
Home – coming back to ‘me’
Connection – between my body and mind
Journey – there’s always more to explore
We want to let you into a secret: yoga for kids is fun for the whole family! During these school holidays, why not take some time each day to take your children and grandchildren on a Cosmic Kids adventure?
