Yoga instructor Jill Cummings took on some third graders at H.B. Wilson Elementary School in Camden. I was almost as fidgety as the kids as I moved around teacher Joan Trojan's classroom trying to capture their exhuberance on film (memory card). More photos are here, or if you click on the photo of Xavier Diaz.
Cummings teaches both child and adult classes at her studio in Collingswood. Once a week, she visits a Camden school to teach children, a therapeutic experience she thinks is invaluable to any child, but especially to inner-city children. "They have so many external challenges," Cummings told Inquirer reporter Megan DeMarco. "They can learn to find some sort of relaxation." At the end of every lesson, she instructs the children to lie down on their yoga mats, close their eyes, and breathe. She tells them to breathe in the feelings "you really deserve to feel," like happiness and joy, and "let go of the feelings that don't feel so good," like sadness, anger, and jealousy. I wasn't even on my back and I could feel it.