Wellesley Townsman

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Anne-Marie Smolski, Townsman Staff

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Yoga? We Kid You Not

Mary Kaye Chryssicas sees herself as a kids' person. At Thanksgiving, she'd rather be sitting with the kids than at the adults' table.

"I always wanted to be working with children," she says. And this mother of three has found a way to do that, by teaching yoga to kids, including her own three, Tyler, 11, Ashton, 9 and Grant, 6.

Having resigned from a job as advertising director for Boston Magazine to raise her children, Chryssicas searched for a career that she could do from her Wellesley home. Since she had always wanted to write, she decided to pen children's books, but received many rejection letters.

Then she discovered yoga. Actually, people had always told her that she should do yoga, but when she had tried it, 18 years before, she felt that people just seemed to sit around in class, something that didn't suit her.

Many years later, she noticed that a good friend, Karen McGee, had become so confident and positive and peaceful that she wanted to know McGee's secret. When her friend credited the change to yoga, Chryssicas said, "I want to do that with you,' and we started doing it in her living room."

Because of the positive and transformational effects yoga had on her as well, Chryssicas encouraged her friend to open a yoga studio. McGee took her advice and opened up the Yoga Spot in Wellesley Hills. While McGee taught the moms, Chryssicas taught basic yoga to their kids.

At first, she says, she essentially provided day care. Then she got additional training, and today, she not only teaches at the Yoga Spot, but also gives classes to children age 6 to 14 at other locations, including the Wellesley Recreation Center, Kids' Time in Wellesley and in various public and private schools. With yoga surging in popularity, she even does yoga birthday parties.

She credits teaching yoga with helping to get her first children's book published. "I Love Yoga," published by DK Publishing and due out this November.

In this world of overscheduling children, Chryssicas says that parents and kids really don't count yoga as an activity because it's so relaxing.

In her classes, she sees athletes who want to be more flexible, kids with scoliosis, weight issues and depression, and kids who just want to move their bodies and get exercise.

Since yoga is noncompetitive, the kids don't feel any pressure. "They do feel like they can trust me," Chryssicas says, "because I'm not going to judge them, because I don't expect them to be perfect."

The atmosphere is informal. As Chryssicas says, "I make the classes crazy fun."

During a recent class, for example, she conducted the entire session using a heavy Texas accent. Another time she dressed up in a wig and played a movie star who showed up to teach the class, telling her students that Mary Kaye couldn't come that day.

In her classes, her students are allowed to laugh and talk and ask questions. Chryssicas knows they can't keep quiet for an hour and she doesn't expect them to.

In addition to all the poses she teaches them, she talks to them about social issues at school, about how to treat others and how to be a good friend.

She also shares with them embarrassing situations she experienced as a kid. "I say, 'Next time you're in an embarrassing situation and you just think you're going to pass out, I want you to first breathe and then think of what happened to Mary Kaye, and it won't seem that embarrassing."

She tells them about these memories so the kids will know they'll be fine. "You get past these things and you learn to laugh at yourself, and you don't take yourself so seriously," she says.

She also tells her students, "As long as you treat others with kindness, good things will happen to you."

Chryssicas knew yoga would work for kids because of what it had done for her. She said she "saw a difference in me and how I reacted to little things like traffic and things people said. I mean things people say that normally you would be offended (by). It just started rolling off of me. I saw a change in my body."

A former gymnast who had trained eight hours a day, she says she's stronger now from practicing yoga.

When you do yoga, she says, you open up all areas that you never open in sports. Yoga opens part of the body where stress is stored. "It changes your body and mind over time," Chryssicas says.

At a recent class at the Yoga Spot, Chryssicas started the class off by telling the young yogis to start in the lotus or easy pose. While the class bends to one side, she tells them, "If you'd like, you can tickle your friend's armpit." The kids erupt into giggles.

The students, mostly girls, are wearing yoga pants and tank tops or T-shirts. They get into Upward Dog or Downward Dog poses. There's the Tree pose, Eagle pose and Partner pose. Chryssicas even takes special requests for poses. She says the Crow is their all-time favorite pose.

The kids seem focused, but happy and relaxed. "It's not a contest in yoga," Chryssicas reminds them.

She even plays a Ricky Martin tune and asks her students to come up with their favorite moves to the song. Her class is one-third entertainment, one-third yoga and one-third relaxation and breathing techniques.

While instructing the class to do a particular type of breathing that sounds like the ocean, she suggests they use it as a little coping technique, for those times "when that friend says you can't play with us, or if someone says your socks don't match."

Chryssicas sees yoga as something that empowers kids. She says when the body and core are strong, "you stand straight and hold your head high. That gives a strong first impression and over time gives kids the confidence to be themselves."

Chryssicas wants each child "to embrace who they are and to stop telling themselves that they can't draw or can't write very well. I always talk about how we become our thoughts and try to explain that concept in kid terms so they understand...in savasana (at the end of class) we imagine the negative thoughts as clouds and watch them go away."

She has watched her own daughter, Ashton, calm herself by remembering how to breathe. One time, it was when mom was late getting to the school bus and Ashton was returned to school. Ashton told her mother, "Mom, I just took really deep breaths, and I didn't even cry."

"That was amazing to me," Chryssicas says, "because I expected to see this red-faced crying girl at the school... and she just completely sank into the yoga breathing."

Another time, Ashton sliced her thumb trying to open a can of dog food. She was crying and upset and shaky when she got to the emergency room. Her mom reminded her to do yoga breathing and she just "self calmed."

The nurses and doctors were amazed. "She was able to go from hysterical -'what are they going to do to me'- to 'take care of me'" Chryssicas says.

As further testimony to the positive effects of yoga, Chryssicas has recently received good news about her daughter, Tyler. When she was diagnosed with scoliosis, the doctors recommended yoga and physical therapy. On her most recent X-ray, the scoliosis was undetectable. Although there is no real proof that yoga was the answer, Chryssicas says that her daughter was religious about doing the exercises several times a week.

Parents are full of enthusiasm for Chryssicas' classes.

Tish Meade of Brookline, whose daughter, Laetitia, started taking yoga last fall at the Yoga Spot, can't say enough about Chryssicas' classes. "It's the highlight of her week," she says. Meade says the girls in the class think their teacher is great because she's so pretty and so full of fun. She says it's more than just physical exercise that the class offers. "I think it's very soothing to the spirit," Meade says.

Marion Mussafer, of Weston, whose daughter, Sophie, 9, also takes classes with Chryssicas at the Yoga Spot, says her daughter likes yoga because it's something offbeat and isn't competitive. Sophie knows that yoga is something she can do for the rest of her life, which is also appealing to her. Mussafer also likes the fact that Sophie has been able to meet another group of friends through the class. "I also think that Mary Kaye is a big draw. She's cool and dynamic. Sophie never wants to skip."

Now in her second year of taking yoga at the Yoga Spot, Lindsey Renner, 8, of Wellesley says she likes yoga a lot. "She makes it really fun for all the kids," Lindsey says. "She always brings surprises. One time, at the end of class, we got to make ankle bracelets."

Lindsey's mom, Mary Renner, says her daughter has become a "yoga addict... I think it's a great combination of physical exercise and great relaxation. It's made her much more flexible. She's more in tune with how her body feels."

At the Walker School in Needham, Chryssicas gives classes to children age 5 and older. The Walker School is for children who haven't succeeded in a traditional school setting, says Dave Hyman, volunteer coordinator at the school.

Chryssicas "just has an amazing ability to get kids involved who you think might not necessarily want to get involved," he says. In addition to kids getting to learn a new way of exercising, they also learn techniques to self calm, he says.

Hyman is also delighted that Chryssicas reached out to the school in another way, by being one of three chairmen of their Gala Committee for a fund-raiser that will be held on April 2 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza.

When she's not volunteering and teaching, Chryssicas finds time to coach town lacrosse in the spring. In her down time, she likes to read and sleep. She tries to go to various places to participate in yoga classes herself about four times a week.

She says that she hopes that the stereotypes of yoga -vegetarians sitting around chanting- can be erased.

She wants people to realize that yoga offers something positive for their child, that it can keep their bodies flexible and help them settle their minds.

"I think yoga takes care of them emotionally and physically."