Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.

It’s close to 6 p.m. She’s had a long day.

She collapses on her mat, rolls on her back and closes her eyes. And then sends one finger digging up her nose.

What? C’mon, she’s only 5.

This is yoga for kids. Once an oddity reserved for only the crunchiest communities, downward dog for the grade-school set is now being taught in studios from Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Moscow, Russia. And educators, including Chicago’s Namaste School, which serves mostly poor kids who speak a language other than English, are turning to yoga to connect with a generation that many say has been dismissed as deficit this or hyperactive that.

At Decatur Yoga and Pilates studio, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dylan Laakmann, sits quietly next to his mother. The lanky 12-year-old whose fashionably shorn hair hangs in his face, describes himself as a “downer” before he started taking yoga two years ago.

“I wasn’t really that happy a kid, I guess, and my grades, they weren’t that good,” he says, his taut mouth easing as he relaxes in conversation. “I wasn’t that joyful.”

Dylan goes to an Atlanta school known for its highly serious curriculum that offers German to first graders and lessons in “circle games” and “beeswax modeling.” His mother, Hanlie Laakmann, wanted her son to get involved in something and thought his sensitive nature might take to yoga. She’s been especially glad about the move lately since she and her husband told Dylan that they are divorcing.

“Like, it’s hard, with the divorce,” he says, sitting on a yoga mat, replying to a stranger asking him to open up in front of a television camera. He tunes it all out for a moment, crosses his legs and closes his eyes. He begins to breathe deeply and then slowly lifts himself into a headstand. When he comes down, he’s ready to answer more questions.

Dylan’s stoicism is broken for a moment by a dozen miniature yogis who’ve been unleashed in the studio. Kids like Gigi, some as young as 3, can take seven-week long sessions with names such as Charlie and the Chakra Factory and the Wizard of Ohm.

Watching a class is like watching puppies. It’s adorable. They bark in Downward Dog and hiss on their bellies in Snake pose. They imagine aloud what color their gum would be while repeatedly breathing deeply for “Bubble Gum Breath.” They act out “Go To Your Room” by bending over, grabbing their ankles and stomping backward, squatting down and mimicking slamming a door.

Except for a few tears and a brief tug-of-war over a mat, it all seems nothing more than cute until this stunning moment: Many of these first and second-graders remain completely still and quiet, in a meditative pose, for nearly five minutes.

“It’s just incredible,” Al-Yasha Williams said, shaking her head in disbelief when her 6-year-old daughter Sole Williams-Brewer walks out of class much more dialed back than when she bounded in. “My daughter has a lot of energy and this has channeled it.”

Marsha Wenig saw the calming effect yoga breathing gave her young students more 20 years ago when she taught in a California school. “I thought, yoga calms me so why wouldn’t kids get the same thing out of it? Yoga works for people willing to open their minds and you don’t get anymore open-minded than a child,” she said.

“Parents heard about it and wanted to know what I was doing. I just invited them over, shoved the furniture aside and showed them some poses they could do with their kids.”

Though radical at that time, teaching yoga to kids still isn’t entirely free of controversy. A Baptist minister complained a few years ago that a public school in Aspen was teaching a form of Hinduism.

But the objections are rare and don’t appear to be hurting business. Wenig’s company YogaKids has sold millions of how-to flashcards, books, DVDs and board games — think Twister with a Yoga twist — and hosts training seminars (9 for four days) to certify instructors in its 200-pose practice.

At least 150 U.S. schools follow YogaKids’ extensive lesson plan. For example, “Polar Bear” — sitting on the heels, knees apart, chest to the floor — can lead to discussions about where polar bears live and why they hibernate. The balancing pose “Flamingo” asks children to calculate how the bird’s wingspan in feet and meters.

There are several other entrepreneurial kids yoga endeavors — the Decatur studio teaches a style called Grounded Kids that offers bandanas much like karate belts for students who master increasingly difficult poses. But though styles differ, they stay faithful to one tenet: There is no baby talk in kids yoga. If a pose is meant to stimulate the thymus — like Tarzan’s Thymus Tap, a light tapping on an organ in the chest cavity that regulates immunity — then that anatomy is explained.

Lynda Meeder appreciated that directness. She quit her job as a guidance counselor in the Boston, Massachusetts, area to teach yoga to children and teens in a studio and the classroom.

“The older a kid gets, 13, 14, 15, we all know how hard it is for them to understand their bodies. It’s especially difficult when you have a child that’s been told they have ADHD, they’ve been told they cannot because that’s the way they are,” she said. “I’ve seen yoga give kids their control back. They feel like they’re taking it and they can steer again.”

In Columbia, Missouri, mom Sarah Wells Kohl heard about yoga for kids and enrolled her 9-year-old, Dakota. She had been struggling for months, trying every alternative arts program she could find, to address her son’s exceptionally high energy.

“He couldn’t settle himself, he was just very high-strung and bored with everything,” she said. “But, wow, yoga opened something in him. Pranayama breathing (slow, steady deep yogic breaths) put him in his space. When things get too tight, rough and crazy, do his own little Eagle pose.

“I once found him in his bedroom chanting,” she said. “It almost seems like we put him on a yoga mat instead of putting him on medication.”

Cultivating Positive Energy

Most of us who study Yoga have been taught that an abundance of Prana (vital air or vital energy), can be found at the ocean, lakes, large open fields, and in the mountains.

Although the air is different, this same energy can be found where people assemble for a positive reason. For example: when people assemble to meditate or pray.

You can feel it in your home, at a church, mosque, temple, shrine, ashram, seminar, martial arts hall, etc. This is when people bond in a mass for the common good. The energy can be used to help humanity and our little planet for the best.

You can project this energy outward by acts of kindness every moment of your life. This is not to say, you allow yourself to be abused. You can be kind to everyone who comes into your life, without becoming a “doormat.”

You have influence over a limited number of people who you see in a day. Why not make every contact a harmonious and positive experience?

Some examples would be:

Stop making foul gestures, becoming angry, and swearing when another driver on the road has irritated you.

Don’t take advantage of respect with anyone.

Treat everyone as special – no matter what their economic status.

In regard to your next question: What is the mystery behind attracting positive energy?

To be honest, there isn’t one, but I will give you the formula.

Firstly, you have to realize that you have infinite potential, and it comes from within. You also have unlimited potential from the outside, when you engage in prayer, and meditation, on a daily basis. Prayer and meditation will positively charge you, and you will contribute to the benefit of others as a result of it.

In turn, all of this helping of others will result in finding people around you who are more than willing to give you a helping hand. For more on yoga capri pants

The following ideas will cultivate positive energy around you.

Make it a point to wake up in the morning with excitement and say hello to everyone you come into contact with. This goes for the security guard, janitor, maid, garage attendant, cashier at the store, and anyone you may overlook in the course of your day.

Stop criticizing your family members, co-workers, friends, and associates.

Be diplomatic first, before giving any advice.

Let your family know that you love them everyday.

Be sincere and treat everyone as important.

Take time to give to people. This doesn’t have to be expensive. You could give a sincere compliment, a card, a letter, or flowers.

Become a trustworthy partner with family, friends, co-workers and associates.

Set goals – whether they are tangible or not. It is a healthy practice to have goals at any age.  The final results will be that your positive energy will attract positively charged personalities and successful people will seek you out. If this is a major change for you, it will not happen overnight.

Let me share a related Zulu saying: “Patience is an egg that hatches great birds.”

Why should you become an eternal optimist?

Every one of us has a choice. When you fall down, you must pick yourself up. You can’t blame life’s hurdles or obstacles – you have to find solutions to get over, around, under, or through them.

Focus on your past achievements and learn to be happy with yourself. Everyone has failed, at some point, but we must constructively learn from our past experience.

Your individual approach, to life’s daily obstacles, is the gateway to success or failure. Therefore, success is a matter of choice.

Building Positive Energy

In relation to what most of us see as possible – success is unlimited. When primal man first discovered fire, could he imagine the concept of a forge? When modern man discovered the forge, could he imagine sky scrappers?

To build positive energy for pursuit of common goals and success, you need a support group. Find and seek out like-minded people. For more on yoga capri pants