100 Yoga for Speech-Language Development
Figure 7.2 Bridge pose with toy boat
The beanbag could also be used to identify the place on someone’s
body where the object is balanced such as “on my shoulder” or
“on his thigh” incorporating locatives, personal pronouns, and the
names of body parts. School-age children could also be instructed
to go “through” a tunnel created by a child (or adult) who is
positioned in an inverted “L” shape, or handstand, against the wall.
Several of these words coding linguistic concepts comprise
polar opposites. These antonym pairs include the spatial/
positional terms “up” and “down,” the temporal terms “before”
and “after,” and the modifiers “big” and “small.” While providing
the instructions for mountain pose, for example, the adult could
ask the children if they are “big” or “small” mountains, using
adjectives to modify the noun. While leading children into
airplane pose, the modifiers “left” and “right” could be used to
enhance vocabulary as the children alternate leaning in opposite
directions. The temporal pairs “first” and “then” as well as “before”
and “after” could be incorporated into yoga classes as the adult
describes a sequence of poses, breathing exercises, or directions
related to the children’s movements. Table 7.3 lists the lexical
items that code these additional linguistic concepts.