Front Page article
Boston Sunday Globe December 25, 2005
Eileen McNamara
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Quiet time, soft touch
Needham. The scene outside is pure pastoral. Fields covered in unbroken snow, the river under a thickening layer of ice.
The scene inside is controlled chaos.
Children tugging off boots, wriggling out of jackets, teachers catching mismatched mittens in flight.
It is just days before the Christmas holidays and the prospect of persuading 26 rambunctious grade-schoolers to settle down seems remote, until Mary Kaye Chryssicas begins to speak. It could be the softness of her voice or the lingering drawl of her native Virginia but the cavernous gymnasium at the Walker Home and School falls quiet almost as soon as she says "namaste," a Hindu salutation that means "may the light in me greet the light in you."
Inner peace is contagious, confides the traveling yogi.
Chryssicas brings her unique brand of humor and yoga to Walker as often as her schedule permits. The children here, like all the children she teaches, revel in the chance to move their bodies in ways that make them feel at once fluid and strong. The rewards for her, though, are greater at Walker, where her young charges are not combating overscheduled lives but wrestling with severe emotional and behavioral problems. "When we get nervous we breathe really fast; have you noticed that?" she asks to nodding assent. "The most important part of yoga is the breath. If someone hurts your feelings or if you are very sad, you breathe deeply and it can calm you down."
At her urging, a roomful of children with developmental, psychiatric, or neurological disorders take her at her word and fill their bellies with air and then "breathe out, as if fogging up a window." Some exaggerate the sound of exhalation. Others laugh at the idea of invisible windows floating in the gym.
On her instruction, children who have been abused, or who suffer from bipolar disorder, or who arrived at Walker after a succession of failed foster placements actually do quiet down. On a patchwork of purple, blue, pink and green floor mats they fold themselves into lotus position and arch their backs in cat pose. They imagine they are butterflies, flying off to favorite places --the beach, the Super Bowl, McDonald's, home.
The 13-acre campus of this former dairy farm is home to half the students enrolled at Walker, children too troubled to live with their families. Some parents will take their child on overnight visits this weekend; others will trust Santa knows to find them at Walker, where brightly wrapped gift packages donated by area businesses, schools and community groups will fall into eager hands on Christmas morning.
On this day, though, Chryssicas brings a gift of a different kind to children who come from families as diverse as their individual challenges. Some have loving, supportive parents. Others have no families, but the embracing staff that tucks them into their dormitory beds each night in this prep school-like setting.
"It can be difficult this time of year," says Andi Brown, the development director at Walker who notes how dependent the school is on contributions of time and money from volunteers like Chryssicas. "Some come from families with tremendous financial resources; others are from DSS (the state Department of Social Services) with the worst kind of trauma. The unifying factor is they cannot function in a conventional school."
Chryssicas, who left a career in advertising to pursue her passion for yoga and children -- her first book for kids, "I Love Yoga," just hit stores -- is sensitive to those realities as she walks the gym floor, draping eye pillows filled with lavender seeds on each child's closed eyelids. She asks permission before she touches anyone. "Is this the only flavor?" asks one especially excitable boy.
"Some pillows smell like peppermint but peppermint jazzes you up and I didn't think you needed that today," she tells him as the class winds to a close and a more tranquil group of children rise from their mats and head into the holiday weekend.