What is Yoga For Kids?:

+ My young yoga students have taught me that breath, movement, and yoga can enrich and accelerate the learning process in the classroom. Yoga prepares children for listening, interacting, concentrating, and focusing. Through asana, children get stronger, more flexible and build awareness of their body sensations. Through connection, children build bridges to classmates who are similar to them as well as those who are not. Through visualization and relaxation, children get the chance to meet their best friends, themselves, and accept their own talents and limitations.

+ Equally important are the valuable tools that yoga brings to the teacher, parent, or therapist. Through simple breathing techniques, adults learn to calm themselves and their charges. They apply the information they are teaching through playing and coaching in games . Yoga postures bring physical activity and development to any venue. Finally, adults use visualization and relaxation as powerful tools to reinforce new information, to review and integrate previous teaching, to balance active learning with passive receiving, and to rest and recharge.

+ I first began to share my newfound yoga practice with the fourth graders in my Chicago classroom in 1999, one morning each week. The children practiced breathing and relaxation along with an expanding repertoire of yoga postures: standing, seated, supine. Our weekly practices deepened the children's connection with each other as well as their own bodies. Best of all, I noticed that practicing yoga was an excellent preparation for challenging academic tasks. The children breathed and stretched their ways into writing assignments, releasing their imaginations, their sensory language, their fluency, and their willingness to share and collaborate.

+ Through a regular practice of yoga, children and teens develop the self-awareness they need to maintain good health. They learn and apply techniques for self-management and self-care . When schools make fitness and well-being a priority, students build capacity for maintaining a lifetime of health and learning.

Upcoming Yoga Ed activities:

+ Assisting with Yoga Ed classes for grades 11 and 12 at Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington, MA, September 22-December 19, 2008

+ Yoga Ed Tools for Teachers professional development workshops for Physical Education faculty in Pittsfield Public School district, Pittsfield, MA, October 10 and 31, 2008

Contact me:

+ For more information about how to use breathing, movement, and yoga with children to enrich the climate of your home, classroom, or clinic. Click here to visit the contact page.