How to Get Started…

From my own experiences in the classroom, you can spend 5 minutes or 15, and you can make a huge difference in the atmosphere, the willingness and openness to learn, the happiness level in the room, and the feeling from the students that you care about them. Children will ask for it, and not just as a distraction, but before a test or quiz (Can you ring the chime? Can we do four-square breathing? Can we be elephants for a few minutes? Can I stand up and do a yoga stretch?). They want to begin the class with it and end the class with it, because they know and they feel that it sets the tone.

5 Easy Ways to Begin:

1) Breathing exercises (5-10 mins.) at beginning of class or as a lead-in to a creative project (i.e. poetry writing), or to calm before a test (practiced leading up to standardized testing). I still have former students come back to visit me, or I run into them in town, who tell me they use the breathing techniques and that they help them.

2) Sound: Use a chime to get their attention, but also to invite a moment of calm. Explain that they need to remain quiet and raise their hand when they can no longer hear the chime. Eventually, they will learn to close their eyes and feel the vibration of the chime, and you might want to ring it more than once. This is great for a class that comes in after a transition and is out of control. (Class changes, after lunch, after special classes).

3) Short guided meditations/creative visualization: Some remind me of a creative visualization/meditation I do, called “A Room Inside Your Head”. Sometimes used as a jumping off point for creative writing or project, or just to calm and center. Take them on a journey to the beach, or on a walk through the forest. Be creative, and use your experiences of what is relaxing to help them learn to imagine and visualize.

4) Basic postures/stretches: These can be used as needed and as you learn them yourself, such as when you look at a sea of faces who are tired, or have heard too much information, or who look a little lost. I would often take this moment to stop, stand up, lead them through a few stretches (5 minutes), a posture or two, end with head to toes and roll up, often saying, “We’re getting our energy from our feet and our seats to our heads, where we need it!”

5) Longer relaxation (Savasana) posture: Once in a while, it’s nice to take 15 mins. for a guided relaxation, where they can spread out on the floor and take a journey. This can be used for a treat, after a test, or after a long week/finishing projects, etc. There are many books and cd’s available with guided relaxation and meditations.

Why Yoga?

Yoga is really growing in use in schools. Overwhelmingly, research has shown its’ benefits in both the short term and the long term. Yoga for children helps with concentration, better sleep patterns, improved digestion, immune system health, better test scores, calms their nerves, helps them deal better with stressful situations, helps with focus, balance, self –esteem, body-image, and compassion. Children practicing yoga are more inclined to eat better, make smarter choices in their lives about self-care and how they care for their environment.

Studies Show…

The studies also illustrate that centered, calm and focused children learn more easily, have better social skills and, in general, are much happier kids. Studies show that exercise facilitates children's executive function (i.e., processes required to select, organize, and properly initiate goal-directed actions) by increasing activation in the prefrontal cortex and serotonergic system. Because of the integration of physical movement with breathing exercises and mental focus practice, yoga may prove to be an ideal form of exercise to enhance those aspects of children's mental functioning central to cognitive development.

Here are some of the challenges American kids are facing and how yoga can help:

1) Competition: When children are taught that their value is based on external rewards, they can lose willingness to be curious unless they get something out of it. Yoga teaches them to discover the moment, then find innovation and self determination.

2) Trauma: When children are traumatized, which can be as simple as getting hurt on the playground or as horrible as physical and emotional abuse, their little nervous systems, when already stressed, get locked into the body/mind, causing isolation, aggression, violence, frozenness, stomachaches, headaches and other more serious illnesses. Yoga is soothing, calming the nervous system, boosting immunity, helping children move through difficult feelings, turning on the parasympathetic system, reducing ADD, and fostering cooperative environments.

3) Anxiety: Anxiety can be caused by stress, competition, trauma, lack of sleep, over scheduling, too much homework, relationship issues at school, tests, family problems. There is an endless list. Yoga, especially the practices of creative visualization, meditation, slow breathing, and deep forward bends, can really help reduce anxiety and recondition the nervous system, allow children to form their own inner connections and self empowerment.

4) ADD/ADHD: (the inability of children to stay focused, be comfortable in their surroundings, have ease in social situations, and have follow through). Yoga, because of its slow progressive methods to engage the entire being, teaches children how to regulate themselves, build an internal sense of rhythm and express their energy creatively.

5) Violence and Aggression: There are many roots that trigger violence and aggression. Yoga class may provide the one safe place for a child to find their inner language and experience healing. Children’s social- emotional development depends on a balanced, harmonious learning environment, which yoga creates. DHEA(what keeps us young!) is raised astronomically in people who live by loving compassion. These people also have lower cortisol production levels thus allowing them to live more fully in the parasympathetic nervous system, our “here I am and it’s all okay!” nervous response.

6) Inability to express emotions: When a child does not experience the necessary steps of social- emotional development, mental illness can develop, violence and aggression can increase, and frozen feelings keep children uninspired, bored, restless and experiencing poor health in bones, joints and organs. Yoga engages all the senses, creates a loving learning environment so children can relax, be more receptive, allow confidence, curiosity and comfort in relating to others. A relaxed receptive body produces a relaxed receptive brain, willing and most importantly, able to learn.

7) Childhood Obesity: Children who suffer from obesity have more adult health issues as children now than ever before. They can lose their innate ability to make creative choices. They can develop language skill issues, lose their energy, hence their vitality. Yoga for children, which involves creative play, gets kids off their seats and on the yoga mat. Their brain develops more rapidly. Learning coordination in movement increases brain power, according to a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Movement and creative play stimulates brain derived neurotrophic factor, which stimulates healthy bone growth.

How to Get Started…