STARTING THEM YOUNG
Life skills and healthy living for kids at One Life Studio San Juan
For most of the week, Dr. Raissa Paje dons her white coat as she goes about her routine as a pediatrician at St. Luke's Hospital in Bonifacio Global City. The work of health education and preventive medicine continues through the weekend, but with fun, games, music, and a less sterile outfit this time, as Raissa takes on the role of Kids Yoga teacher at the newly opened One Life Studio in Greenhills, San Juan.
It’s Raissa’s Sunday ritual of growling like a tiger, vroom-ing like a car, and crawling on her arms and legs as she simulates various yoga poses while leading a precocious group of young people in the studio’s serene environment. It’s a roomful of boundless energy in between squeals and giggles with six kids ranging from three years old to almost-tween. For a good part of the hour, the group is immersed in a fantastic make-believe world of zoos, animals, and city transportation, winding down to a calm period of listening to music and coloring pages, before happily exiting the class, balloon in hand.
“I absolutely love kids!” exclaims Raissa, the dedicated teacher of the Happy Heart Kids Yoga Program. She is joined by Ferds, the studio’s founder, and Tanya, a fellow yoga enthusiast who gave up a lucrative corporate career to teach as well as manage One Life Studio’s daily affairs. Raissa’s understanding of child development, a sound mind, and a healthy body go way back as an undergraduate student of BS Psychology at UP Diliman. She then proceeded to University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center (UERMMC) for her medical studies, then to San Juan Medical Center for her training in pediatrics.
It was in the midst of her studies and training that her stress, not to mention, weight, ballooned. Seeking to balance an extremely demanding occupation with something a lot less stressful, she turned to yoga for comfort. Adding to an already hectic work schedule did not make any sense at all at that time, but Raissa immediately saw and felt the wonderful benefits that yoga had on her health and overall well-being. As surmised, it was love at first class. In her journey of balance and well-being, Raissa has found the perfect blend of living a productive lifestyle and advocating health education, along with her love and passion for children.
Primarily a means to better her own health, yoga wound up influencing and enhancing her practice of medicine. Instead of pursuing a pediatric fellowship, Raissa chose to further her yoga practice and signed up for a Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher’s Training Course with Lei Sadakari last April.
“It’s a very stressful life for kids nowadays. They live a fastpaced life of school and other extracurricular activities,” says Raissa. “They don’t get a lot of active time either as today’s modern world has seen the surge in iPads and all sorts of video games.“
She shares beautiful stories of how kids in her care showed marked improvement through yoga, like the child with Down syndrome who had difficulties with motor skills but, after just a few sessions, could stretch his arms up high. Raissa finds it a “real blessing to be able to interact with children, and share with them the value of taking care of one’s self even at a young age, of having fun while being healthy, of balancing work and play, and of living a life of learning and self-empowerment— so that they will grow up to be healthy, productive, well-rounded, and happy adults in the future.”