116 Yoga for Speech-Language Development
the sound of a geyser gushing hot water and steam for a child
practicing the pose of the same name.
In children’s yoga, some of the same movements of the body
can serve multiple poses. For example, children, especially those
under three years, could wiggle their bodies as they pretend to be
objects as different as jello, a rag doll, or a jellyfish. More specifically,
children could pretend to be jello by wiggling their bodies while
standing or sitting. Children could portray rag dolls by wiggling
their bodies as they gently sway their arms and torso side-to-side
while standing. This same wiggling movement could also depict
a standing variation of jellyfish, a pose previously mentioned. The
use of visual supports, such as picture cues, could be helpful for
children with language disorders, intellectual disabilities, ASD,
and AD/HD. Some children with developmental challenges
might not understand that the same movement can represent
different objects, which mirrors the notion in language that words
such as “fall” can have multiple meanings.
Organization
The third dimension, organization, refers to the coherence and
logic of play. This component concerns the schemas and sequences
of children’s re-enactments (Westby 2000). Children’s play
develops from single action schemes (e.g. pretending to stir food
in a pot) to combined sequences of actions (e.g. first stirring the
food and then pretending to feed it to a doll or other play partner).
At more advanced levels, children have the capacity to integrate
several themes into their play, such as shopping for food, cooking
it, and then serving it for dinner. Such coordinated sequences,
when hierarchically organized, reflect the greater complexity of
symbolic play during the later preschool years. In yoga, children
can move from one pose to another, creating dynamic sequences.
The transition from mountain to chair is an example that was