Want to help teens cope with stress and gain confidence? Get them moving.

Two Metrowest businesses are doing just that--one through yoga and the other through a combination of personal coaching and rhythmic movement, the repetition of a single physical activity like cycling, walking or even skateboarding.

"If you stand on your head, it's pretty darn hard to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders," jokes Mary Kaye Chryssicas, owner of Buddhaful Kids Yoga in Wellesley.

"Kids need to chill out, take a deep breath and laugh. They often feel anxious and overwhelmed from their overscheduled lives, and the academic, parental and peer pressures facing them," Chryssicas says. They need time out to simply "be" with their feelings and discover who they are, rather than comparing themselves to seemingly impossible standards in today's culture.

With yoga, Chryssicas says the focus goes inward. There are no winners and losers, no rankings, no popularity contests.

"I went to a highly competitive high school where everyone seemed perfect," Chryssicas recalls of her childhood in Richmond, Virginia. Like her peers, she pushed herself to excel in sports, get voted on to every committee, to vie for homecoming queen.

It was exhausting.

"My dad suggested I focus on one thing and become great at it--yeah right. No one valued doing less."

Then her thyroid stopped working. The condition went undiagnosed for years. Chryssicas no longer had the energy to keep performing and her life became unmoored.

"I didn't know how to respond to disappointment. No one had ever talked about it."

In time, Chryssicas's condition was diagnosed and treated. She regained her drive and energy, but the importance of resiliency stayed with her. How could she teach perseverance to her own children who, like their peers, were becoming increasingly involved in competitive sports and taking more rigorous classes?

A friend suggested yoga.

"Yoga had the ability to make me focus on the present and let go of the unimportant details. I started teaching yoga to my kids. They loved it!"

Chryssicas introduced children's classes to the Yoga Spot in Wellesley and her reputation grew. Area schools and sports organizations asked her to give workshops. She describes her work as half yoga, half therapy because she talks with "her yogis" about the stresses they face in their everyday lives.

Teens benefit from the power of positive thinking in so many ways, Chryssicas says. "If you're continually focused on what you don't like about someone or a situation, you naturally attract like minded people. Eventually, you find yourself surrounded with unhealthy, negative relationships."

In her yoga classes, there are no cliques. "In yoga, we're one big happy group. Teens tell me that they take the inclusive, positive mindset they feel in yoga class into social situations, even the classroom."

Three years ago she built a home studio and the kids came flocking. Her average yoga student is about 10 years old, though she teaches children from age five to 17. She also hosts birthday parties. Far from quiet "oms" and silent meditations, Chryssicas's classes border on riotous when showing teens poses with names like one-legged dog or bound pigeon.

Since the release earlier this year of her second book, Breathe:Yoga For Teens, Chryssicas has taken her message on the road, teaching positive thinking and basic yoga skills to students up and down the East Coast. Teens are drawn to her book because of the humor in her messages about how to navigate through the wild world of middle school and high school. She encourages young people to look beyond themselves and celebrate the beauty of diversity.

This month, she opens Buddhaful Kids Yoga on Linden Street in Wellesley in connection with Jennifer Harvey and her successful Laughing Dog studio. They will have offerings for aspiring yogis of all ages, including classes for boys only, pregnant moms and even, as Chryssicas describes them, "tight dads".

The pair is having an open house Wednesday, June 20, 5-8pm, at the studio, 159 Linden Street in Wellesley. There will be a kids' class at 5pm; teens' class at 6pm. In the adjacent studio, parents will have the opportunity to learn more about yoga and various course offerings. The event is free; no registration required. For more information, visit www.buddhafulkidsyoga.com.

Empowerment Fitness Gets Teens Moving in the Right Direction

"When people are moving their bodies, the brain responds. They're more open to hearing new information and the learning really sticks," says Sharon O'Connor, co-founder of Empowerment Fitness in Needham, a program that combines life coaching and exercise. And teenagers are now reaping the benefits at Needham High School where physical education teachers have been trained in the Empowerment Fitness method.

It's been a long journey for the company's founders, a journey that started at kindergarten.

Karen Hoffman, Sharon O'Connor and Dale Sokoloff met when their children were kindergartners at the Mitchell School in Needham. While the five kids tumbled underfoot (O'Connor has triplets), the women learned that while they had very different professional backgrounds, they shared a common passion for exercise and a belief in its transformative power to gain confidence and achieve goals.

Sokoloff, an avid cyclist, is a clinical psychologist and a former founding member of the Eating Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. O'Connor is a psychologist, management consultant, executive coach and runner of marathons. Hoffman, a practicing attorney who advocates for individuals' rights in the areas of education, civil rights and employment law, had been a competitive athlete in high school and college. She now enjoys a variety of outdoor activities, including walking with her teenage daughter.

As their children-and friendship-grew over the years, they took a radical career turn and launched DKS Consulting Group together in 2003. Their mission is to empower women and teenagers. Through the empowerment fitness program, they combine the power of exercise with the best practices from psychology, executive coaching and legal advocacy to help clients make changes in their lives, both personally and professionally.

"Any activity with repetition of muscle movement can work, like walking, cycling or even skateboarding," Sharon O'Connor, the marathoner, says. While they each work with individual clients, it was their group classes at the Charles River YMCA in Needham that really gained momentum-first among adults, and later with teens.

"Parents in our early classes wanted something comparable for their teenagers who they saw as struggling with issues of self-esteem and peer pressure," O'Connor says. Or, more simply, they wanted to help their teens cope with the overwhelming stresses of growing up in today's frenzied technological age.

The trio ran their first class for teens in 2005 and were savvy enough to incorporate music chosen by the students. "The music gets them energized and then we focus on how great it is to be moving," O'Connor says of the popular spinning class.

One of the advantages of stationary bikes is that everyone sets their own pace, says Dale Sokoloff, the cyclist. There's no competition to be the fastest or the most in shape. "Everyone comes in as an equal," she says.

Once the rhythm is established, the true work of coaching can begin. The leader may use guided imagery to visualize attaining a goal or engage in conversation about day-to-day challenges the teenagers are facing in their lives.

Karen Hoffman used the example of a teen wanting to try out for the school play, but being paralyzed by fear of failure. The leader will help the student visualize trying out for the play. "The goal isn't necessarily getting the part. The goal is having the courage to try out, regardless of the outcome," Hoffman says.

Empowerment Fitness, Hoffman explains, aims to build kids up to be their best selves based on how they see themselves from within, rather than how they perceive they are being judged by the their peers.

Empowerment Fitness became a physical education offering at Needham High School thanks to the efforts of Dr. Kathy Pinkham, Needham Public School's Director of Health and Physical education-and alumna of the class at the Y. The school was awarded a grant to purchase 30 spin bikes and to train six physical education teachers in the Empowerment Fitness technique.

Hoffman, Sokoloff and O'Connor conducted a focus group to learn what concerned high school students the most. College, graduating from high school, parents and drinking topped the list.

For younger students, the partners offer classes after school in sessions with themes like "Strive For Greatness -- Not Perfection" and "Challenging Self-Limiting Beliefs".

Hoffman says she loves hearing from parents about the program's practical applications. "They'll tell me about their kids studying for a vocabulary quiz while on the [stationary] bike at home, or needing to burn off stress by shooting hoops in the backyard."

While the trio love teaching classes, they encourage parents to get moving their with their own kids, be it taking a walk after dinner, playing catch at the park, or a taking a hike on the weekend.

The thing that parents lose sight of in the business of chauffeuring kids to endless activities, Sokoloff says, is that teens really do want to connect with them, despite whatever sullen or disinterested front they may put up. "Having a physical activity you share can make conversations flow more naturally," she says. Empowerment Fitness classes, she hopes, can help jumpstart this process for teens and parents alike.

Empowerment Fitness will be running a high school age class this summer and a class for rising sixth graders the last week of August at Needham High School. Students from other towns are welcome to enroll. For more information, visit www.empowermentfitness.com.