Our Garden
From late June through August, Dzamling Gar for the second time vibrated with the joyful energy of children for the second annual Yoga Kids Camp. This year, under the theme “Yoga & Art,” the camp offered a magical summer experience for 21 children aged 4 to 10 years old, including 8 community members and 13 non-community members, with 18 newcomers joining the fun.
Our days were a perfect mix of rhythm and play, expansion and contraction, inhale and exhale. We started each morning with a warm welcome and some free time on the playground, which helped everyone feel at ease. Then we moved into our Kumar Kumari classes, held in the ESPACIO Yoga Studio. Sometimes we worked in two separate groups, and other times we joined together. It was so nice to see how quickly they learned the movements; every week we could add more to our practice. Our most rewarding indicators, though, were how much more the children could relax after class and how much they truly enjoyed it!
Kumar Kumari is a truly comprehensive method, and it was clear how it made them more aware of their bodies, breathing, and minds, strongly training their coordination, memory, and concentration.
The camp was designed to be a bilingual experience, with activities in both Spanish and English, but it actually invited even more languages to join, mainly Italian and Russian!
The beautiful gardens of Dzamling Gar became our extended classroom. As we moved from one space to another, we’d sometimes ask them, “How many different types of flowers can we count until we arrive?” The answers were -surprisingly- sometimes more than 20! In the gardens, we played collaborative games and enjoyed our snacks in the nice shade, which protected and nurtured us from the summer heat.
Yoga and art: two worlds that may seem far apart, yet in reality share so much. Both are tools to connect with ourselves, to listen, to create. Both open channels where little boats filled with nutrients travel, carrying ideas, emotions, and discoveries. It’s a circular exchange, both internal and external, where our world transforms, reorganizes, and expands.
Making a movement, producing a sound, finding a color or creating a shape requires presence. And when all this happens in a relaxed environment, well-being is born… and so is joy.
This can happen anywhere, but there are special places that nurture this magic—places full of inspiration, beauty, and stories to tell. Such are Merigar and Dzamling Gar.
In 2021, with the Kumar Kumari team, we began many artistic activities to accompany Yantra Yoga for children. Nature and storytelling became an endless source of inspiration. Just to name a few experiences: *The Magical Herbarium of Merigar* or the printmaking of the story *The Four Friends*.
Dzamling Gar is immersed in a wild, powerful nature, where ocean and desert meet to create a truly magical dimension. The Calima—with its warm light and suspended air—became, in every sense, our third teacher. Alongside Nataly and Cristina, there was also Señora Calima. She wasn’t there in person, but you could definitely feel her presence!
The Garden of Dzamling Gar was an endless source of inspiration for our creative workshops. We played and created with the flowers, fruits, and seeds of this little paradise. A few examples: the black tulip tree (found in Rinpoche’s garden) produces boat-shaped fruits that became a whole fleet of colorful vessels, each carrying precious cargo; from the orchid tree, we crafted shiny “doubloons”; from the fruits of the flamboyant tree (typical of Tenerife), we made bright and playful maracas.
What made everything even more special was the wonderful space we had at our disposal: the Casita Amarilla. This cozy refuge for children was well-equipped, welcoming, filled with games, and stocked with every kind of material for painting, building, and… dreaming.
It was right there that we began to shape our garden: an inner garden made of colors, forms, movements, and stories.
A place where yoga and art met naturally—like old friends reuniting.
The Yoga Kids Camp 2025 at Dzamling Gar truly offered a summer to remember, where creativity bloomed, bodies moved with intention, and young minds found calm amidst the magic of art and nature. We cultivated not just art and yoga skills, but also presence and joy. Watching the kids increase their attention and find their own quiet moments of relaxation and creation was a true gift.
Our hope is that they carry the sense of lightness and peace they found at camp with them, knowing that their well-being begins with a single breath. We are so grateful for this experience and hope it can be repeated many more times, not only in Dzamling Gar but in other beautiful Gars and Lings of our precious community.
By Cristina Conticelli and Nataly Nitsche
September, 2025
