During a children’s yoga class late last year the children and I were exploring yoga poses of animals you might find at the zoo. We tried lion, tiger, butterfly, elephant and kangaroo just to name a few. Then the children started to get a little more creative coming up with animals they had seen at the zoo but ones I didn’t have a yoga pose for. As a class we played around with some different ways we could make our bodies into penguins, rhinos, koalas and hippos.
One child suggested meerkat pose and I got the children to show me what they though a meerkat pose would look like. They came up with a version of Hero Pose (virasana) with the arms up like paws against the chest, wide eyes and a head looking this way and that. It was an amazing site they really looked just like a bunch of meerkats, not only that but I had been looking for a good way to bring Hero Pose into my children’s yoga classes to keep range of movement in their hips. One of the best things about children acting like meerkats was that their spines were so straight. Even when I ask adults to pull up through the crown of their head I can’t get them to sit up as straight, maybe I should ask my adults yoga class to pretend they are meerkats.

Since playing around with this pose I have discovered that children love meerkats, almost every class will list meerkats as animals at the zoo and it’s a great way of having fun with an old favourite.