Foster children deal with feelings of abandonment, anger and depression, and finding a way to handle these feelings is challenging.

A new therapy group for children ages 7 to 11 will use yoga to help foster children cope with their feelings and create a positive identity based on their biological roots and current experiences. Leading the therapy group are Mike Iken, case worker at PATH Foster Program, Kathy Blohm, Ph.D., from Chambers and Blohm Psychological Services, and Susan Thompson, a social worker at Medcenter One and a certified yoga instructor.

"Any foster child has to find some sort of balance with out-of-home placement, grief and day-to-day pressures," Iken said. "Yoga gives them a better sense of who they are both emotionally and physically and be able to calm themselves when they are angry."

Yoga uses breathing as a relaxation process for the mind. The poses in yoga are based on power or animal images and increase strength and flexibility.

Blohm said yoga can give kids an outlet to deal with stress, anger, depression and emphasizes lifelong coping skills other than eating or drinking.

"These kids are amazing," Blohm said. "There is a number of poses where the kids have to trust each other for support. As adults we have so much to learn from these kids as in rising above and trusting each other."

After a 45-minute yoga session, the kids participate in a craft project relating to the poses they practiced. For example, they will practice the warrior poses and then build a coat of arms that represents their biological and foster families and a time in their lives that they had to be "strong warriors."

At the end of each session the kids are given a homework assignment that the foster families must help with. The first week's assignment was to say thank you to two people a day.

"Bad things happen that make these kids feel alone," Blohm said, "but they can do good things that make them feel better about themselves."

The therapy group has only seven kids and meets every Tuesday for eight weeks at Church of Corpus Christi. The first session was Feb. 22.

The children will be able to use some of the techniques learned after the sessions are over. Blohm said she would like to have yoga therapy for any children dealing with mental health or life stresses.

"Yoga brings a calmness that is critical to the healing process and the kids can feel more positive about themselves," Thompson said. "Being present within themselves creates less turmoil internally and allows them to be in control and figure out problems externally."

(Reach reporter Kayla Cogdill at 250-8251 or kaylacogdill@bismarcktribune.net.)