Children enjoy yoga session in cultural programme

By Gema Martinez Corrales

Kationa Matto led a ‘Yoga for Kids’ session on Wednesday at the GEMA gallery as part of the Gibraltar Cultural Services Summer Programme.

Ms Matto has been practicing yoga for 10 years, and she said how much it has helped her, and how it inspires her to teach children about it.

Her passion for making sure that children grow up in a healthy manner encourages her to teach them to not only practice yoga but live it.

“It includes, not just the body, which you see many people training, it’s the body and the mind,” she said.

“It’s also not just the yoga on the mat, but understanding the science of it.”

By making her yoga classes age relevant, kids can keep it in their minds in a way that’s useful and helpful to them, and teaches them to love themselves, which they can share with their community.

Yoga helps the children understand that they’re “not just a body”, and there is “so much more” to them.

She added that many adults are not taught otherwise and still “live thinking [and] feeling” that they’re “just a body”.

She said that by introducing children to these concepts at a younger age, it creates a deeper understanding of their mental and physical health, and helps them become “healthier adults”.

The children learnt a series of poses to help ground them and find their balance, and about different emotions using cards.

Ms Matto explained to them how they could go from feeling negatively, to being relaxed by doing yoga.

She also used a balloon on which she had written the word “worry” to illustrate this for them.

When the balloon was blown up the letters disappeared, illustrating how breathing and stretching can make someone’s worries disappear.

Ms Matto also talked about how the setting of the gallery was influential.

She said that in her own experience, it inspired her because it shows that yoga isn’t exclusive to the studio, and it’s much more than that.

“You can bring in elements like the buddhas, but yoga is much more than that,” she said.

“If you want to lead a healthy, peaceful, life, you live yoga. And that can happen anywhere.”

The session ended with a “friendship circle”, where the children spoke about how they felt, and how they had enjoyed the class.

With a gallery full of inspiration, Ms Matto said that other people’s energies shine through their pictures and paintings, creating a great environment for kids to do yoga in.

Gema Martinez Corrales is a student on work experience with the Chronicle.