Our Community Investment Team are committed to building healthy communities in our neighbourhoods. This has seen a real shake up in Richmond Park, with Healthwatch Sheffield consulting with local residents to find out what provisions they’d most like to see, as well as hosting drop-in wellbeing events. One key theme that kept coming up was the need for more activities for children – and this is where Kids Love Yoga come in!
The local club started eight years ago, when its founder, Jo, was working as a Primary School Teacher. With a passion for yoga, Jo wanted to explore how it could support children’s emotional wellbeing in schools. After gaining her Yoga Teacher Training Qualification and training as a Children’s Yoga Teacher – Jo started to introduce this into the classroom, soon setting up an after-school club. When other schools got wind and requested sessions for their pupils, Kids Love Yoga was eventually born, with a team of 25 instructors working in schools.
The benefits of getting active is well known in Sheffield, with many locals making the most of the green spaces and close proximity to the Peaks. However, uptake among children is lower than the national average. Getting children into activities like yoga is a great way to combat this, as Jo explains:
We feel that introducing sport to children at the earliest stage possible can play a crucial role in improving health and wellbeing through to adulthood. The sessions we run provide children with an alternative to mainstream sports but also give them techniques to cope with stress and remain calm, and help them to become fit, active and healthy.”
This spring, the initiative has come to Richmond Park. After running some sessions during the school holidays at the Pat Midgley Community Hub over in Wybourn, our Community Partnerships Manager, Felix Dyer, reached out to see if they could do the same in Richmond Park with funding from Great Places.
Through our funding of £2,200 via our Neighbourhood Initiatives and our Yorkshire Board’s Community Chest, they’ve been running free fortnightly sessions at the Richmond Park & Birklands Community Centre since April – with additional sessions over the Easter break. The sessions are designed to be inclusive, accessible to all natural abilities. They introduce children to yoga and mindfulness, with each session focusing on new poses, exercises and breathing techniques to help them feel calm, healthy and happy. With the overall ethos being to promote healthy living in general, the sessions also include healthy snack-making activities. The sessions are made more fun by the yoga-based games and are a great way for the children to make new friends – and for parents to come along and maybe learn a few poses too!
Sessions at Richmond Park are in their early days so far, but take-up has been very positive, with around a dozen children attending the first session. And feedback from their more established sessions elsewhere in Sheffield is certainly impressive:
This session has helped my daughter to build relationship with kids and built the confident to do the activity”
“‘S’ is always motivated and happy to attend yoga classes every Saturday. She has developed this habit, and yoga has improved her mental and emotional strength.”
“The lessons are brilliant. My daughter needed a few weeks to come out and be confident but being persistent and patient she did it. The yoga class made her confident and wanted to do the exercise. She likes to play with kids now and can’t wait to come back.”
These ever-popular sessions are free to Richmond Park residents thanks to the funding from Great Places. Commenting on this, Jo said;
With funding provided by Great Places Housing Group we have been able to run our Free Children’s Yoga and Wellbeing sessions in the Richmond Park & Birklands Residents Community Centre. The sessions are open to all and provide children in the local community a great opportunity to come and take part in sport, discover new exercises and calming techniques, meet new people and learn about healthy lifestyles. The sessions are fun and engaging and our fully qualified children’s Yoga Instructors cater for all levels and needs. Great Places Housing Group is doing a fantastic job in bringing the community together to promote healthy living and we’re very pleased to be part of it!”
Kids Love Yoga hope to become more of a mainstay in the area, now also applying to Sheffield City Council’s Holiday Activities and Food Programme to be able to run sessions well into the summer holidays. Felix Dyer, our Community Partnerships Manager, commented…
Youth provision and health are our focus areas in Richmond Park. Combining the two to provide a regular Saturday activity in the area was a natural conclusion as we continue to develop our offer to the local community.
“The additional linkage with and promotion of these sessions by the local school, Athelstan Primary, only enhances the impact of this work. When children take the learnt practices home, making them a regular part of their routines, their ability to concentrate and engage in learning improves.”
