'Lie down on your belly ... lift your chest up ... take five breaths ... exhale ... and down,' Sanjukta Sharma tells her five yoga students at South Island School as soothing music plays in the background. Aged 14 and 15, they are a group of special needs students with moderate attention deficit and hyperactivity problems, and the class is part of a programme to help them control their emotions and responses.
An experienced yoga instructor, Sharma began introducing yoga as a form of therapy for special needs children at Island School four years ago. She had been working with the youngsters as a learning support teacher and was convinced that they, too, would benefit mentally and physically from the practice.
'I started learning yoga early, at about 11 years of age, and felt the benefits of yoga myself. Intuitively, I knew it would work for them as with anyone else,' says Sharma, who also teaches in regular studios.
Her idea found favour with Carol Chapman, head of the individual needs department at the school, and yoga is now on their weekly timetable, making it arguably the first in Hong Kong to incorporate yoga into the curriculum of special needs students. The results so far have been encouraging.
Chapman says they hope the practice will calm the students, and improve their fitness and balance.
'When the children are feeling under stress, they now have something that they know they can do in order to alleviate that. For a lot of our kids, their first reaction to anger [or other emotions] is to be physical or verbal. Through yoga, we're hoping that there's a reduction in that first impulse - they know they can actually do a breathing exercise or go and sit quietly somewhere, which will stop them erupting,' she says.