Why Yoga is like food

As far as Emily Davidson, MD, MPH, RYT is concerned, claiming to not like yoga is like saying you don’t like food. “There’s a really big range of what kinds of yoga practices you can do,” she explains. Davidson, who is the director of Boston Children’s Down syndrome Program, speaks from personal experience. She started practicing yoga in 1998 after she was diagnosed with coronary artery disease and discovered that, along with improving her flexibility and strength, yoga helped manage the stress of her diagnosis and treatment. In fact, she liked it so much that she went on to complete a 200-hour yoga teaching program and set out to offer her patients with Down syndrome the same benefits she got from practicing it by launching a yoga class at Boston Children’s Primary Care at Martha Eliot. Like most of the children in Davidson’s weekly class, 10-year-old Delilah Sheehan was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth. Delilah has a cognitive disability but it doesn’t get in her way. “It’s been great with her,” her mother Julie says. “The struggles we have with Delilah are not much different from the struggles that we’ve had with her younger sisters and I can count on her to be responsible.” Part of that may be because Delilah studies in an inclusion setting—meaning that typically developing children and children with disabilities are in classes together full-time. Among other things, inclusion settings can help children like Delilah model appropriate beh...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: All posts Down syndrome yoga Source Type: news