Calling all Kids to Practise Yoga With Mo

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]onetta Wilson carries both a bachelors and masters degree in environmental science and once taught Mathematics at Vieux Fort Secondary School. However, Monetta chooses yoga as her breadwinning strategy by offering private sessions and running the Sayana Studio in Mon Repos, a decision which gained her the national Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2015.

Monetta began practicing yoga during her stint in New York where she often tuned into Denise Austin’s programme, Fit & Lite, that was based on yoga. “It was the only time my body responded to fitness activity,” she said. She also participated in her college’s yoga progrmme, which she enjoyed. But, it was after the untimely shooting of her brother, Leezy Wilson, during the 2012 carnival that Monetta had no other choice but to turn to yoga for life. She developed a condition called fibromyalgia—an incurable, painful illness—from the trauma of the incident and her doctor recommended yoga to ease the symptoms. Monetta also suffers from asthma and endometriosis, also incurable conditions that she claims practising yoga greatly helps to keep at bay. During her interview with the STAR, she smiled and laughed so much and sat upright, looking strong and healthy, not once betraying any of her health conditions, so I suppose the yoga must be working!

While obeying her doctor’s recommendation she decided, “I always wanted to train to be a yoga teacher so I thought, why not do that?” Monetta left Saint Lucia for a 200-hour training course but returned to no vacant teaching position. “So I made a business out of yoga,” she said. Her first participants were from Mon Repos in an after-school programme where she tested children’s responses to yoga. Then the scores of little cousins and godchildren in the vicinity of Monetta’s living space all wanted to be yogis too.

When her responsibilities and commitments grew and she was no longer able to practise with all her original students, Monetta tried her best not to leave them without yoga. Eventually, she decided that she would develop a programme from which all children could benefit: “I trained teachers to use yoga in the class and the training programme is built around a poem.” This month Monetta officially launched a picture book of the poem, called Yoga with Aunty Mo, that children can use anywhere to help them remember the positions for their yoga routine. And who best to be featured in the photographs? Monetta’s home-based Mon Repos yogis!

Monetta’s love for children, especially her young relatives, is deep but she doesn’t have any of her own. And she attests that the pleasure of contributing the gift of yoga to them might be greater than any feeling she might get from serving in environmental science.

Her book is available for purchase at the Daher Building in Vieux Fort and by contacting Yoga with Mo on Facebook.