New Blog: The Kids Yoga Resource

Hi Friends,

Just letting you know of the launch of our new Blog - The Kids Yoga Resource Blog at: www.thekidsyogaresource.com.

This new blog will replace the blogspot blog effective immediately. Hope to see you there!

All my best,
Lisa Flynn
ChildLight Yoga

Seacoast Mom & Baby Wellness Event - free!

Attention new moms and moms-to-be! The 3rd annual Seacoast Mom & Baby Wellness Sampler will be held on Friday, November 20th from 1 – 3pm at Yoga East Yoga Studio in Portsmouth, NH.

Come learn about natural approaches to family wellness. Chat with local business owners about products, services and issues that are important to you and your growing family. Enjoy the serenity of Yoga East's beautiful studio while meeting other like-minded parents at the same stage of parenthood. The afternoon will be filled with product demos, free screenings, information gathering, meet-n-greet, free samples & gifts, refreshments, and a drawing for amazing raffle items and gift certificates provided by the featured vendors and others. Vendors include The Dinner Goddess, Gypsy Mama, Slings & Baby Things, La Leche League, NYR Organics, Seacoast Doula Group, Gymboree, Stroller Strides, Cardea Chiropractic, Beth Devlin, ND, Essentia Botanica, Coastal CPR, Heartful Birth, Tracy Miller/Nutrition Counselor, Safe Steps Childproofing, Mommy Be Well, and many more. First 40 moms will receive a free gift from the New Mother’s Resource Guide.

Lisa Flynn is Founder of ChildLight Yoga and creator and co-sponsor of the event. “In addition to providing information about our yoga-based programs for babies and children, we are happy to be able to include over 25 other wellness-related vendors and business representatives this year. And of course, we are excited to announce Stonyfield Farm, the maker of YoBaby, as our corporate sponsor for the 2009 event. Stonyfield is a perfect fit for the event’s focus on natural health and new families.”

“We are thrilled to be part of the Mom & Baby Wellness Sampler and be able to share with Seacoast moms our newest arrival, YoBaby Meals,” says Jeff Pillet-Shore, Brand Manager for Stonyfield Farm. “YoBaby Meals offers a delicious 3-in-1 combination of yogurt + fruit + veggies in one convenient cup, making it easy to feed your baby or toddler a nutritious meal.”

ChildLight Yoga was founded to encourage an early practice of yoga and relaxation, providing children with a foundation for life-long wellness - body, mind and spirit. The company provides yoga classes for babies, toddlers, families and children, as well as teacher trainings & workshops held nationwide. Its mission is to spread the amazing gifts of yoga, mindfulness and relaxation to all children everywhere.

Stonyfield Farm, the maker of YoBaby, has spent the past 26 years supporting healthy food, healthy people, and a healthy planet. As the world's leading organic yogurt company, Stonyfield's certified organic yogurt, smoothies, milk, cultured soy, frozen yogurt and ice cream are distributed nationally, and 10 percent of profits support initiatives that protect and restore the Earth.

For event information, please visit www.childlightyoga.com or call 603-781-3323.

Contact:
Lisa Flynn
21 Academy St, S. Berwick, ME
603.781.3323
lisa@childlightyoga.com
www.childlightyoga.com

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Halloween Yoga for Kids

Teaching yoga to kids at Halloween time is a wonderful and super FUN opportunity to stretch the imaginations of the children in our classes. Halloween adventure stories make for a perfect themed lesson plan. Here is a basic story I've used in the past with preschool to first graders:

Note: Set the ambience by dimming the lights and placing a carved pumpkin in the center of the circle with a battery operated candle in it. Halloween-themed music with no vocals is nice too - just make sure it's not too scary! You can find lots of themed music CDs this time of year for as little as $1 at places like Wal-Mart or Rite-Aid.

Halloween Night….

What are you being for Halloween this year? Don't say it out loud. Think about how you can create a yoga pose to demonstrate who you are goinng to be. Take your time. Let's take turns showing our pose and everyone else can guess what you are going to be. (Note: Once the pose is correctly identified, have the entire class try out the new pose.)

Let’s go for a walk around our neighborhood and stop at each house to see if they’ll give us a trick or a treat! WALKING, WALKING SONG

What do we see? TREE, MOON, STAR

Up in that tree is a BLACK CAT…hisssss…meow!

We keeping walking and come to a BRIDGE – let’s cross!

On the other side of the bridge are four scary-looking creatures!
The first one is a LION (Lion’s Breath)
EVIL WITCH, SPIDER, GHOST

The creatures all start giggling and soon you realize that they are actually your friends dressed up their Halloween costumes! They want you to come with them to a Halloween party – So you all hop on THE BUS and go! (WHEELS ON THE BUS SONG w/movements around the room)

The bus stops and you all get off and see a spooky, old creaky GATE. You open the gate…creaaaaaeeeaaaK and walk through it into a dark yard with lots of viny TREES everywhere.

Up ahead is a sign that say’s ‘Take the BOAT across the river to the party!’ and you notice that there are indeed a bunch of boats lined up along the bank of the river. So you get in and paddle your BOAT across. (While holding boat pose, sing the orginal Row Your Boat song or use ChildLight Yoga's version from the I Grow With Yoga CD.)

As you and your friends come to the other side, you see that you have arrived at a wonderful party. There is a swarm of happy people that come down to greet you when you park your canoe, yelling ‘Happy Halloween!!!!!’


For some other awesome Halloween yoga ideas, please read The Prana Mama's related post titled, Halloween Yoga: Yoga in Disguise and Yoga in My School's post highlighting some great SPIDER pose variations, perfect for this age group.

The Candy Dilemma

Due to allergies and family's personal preferences, I skip handing out candy at yoga class and instead give out treat trinkets such as sticky pretend spiders and the like. You can get these really inexpensively at places like Oriental Trading Company online.

Outside of class, Halloween can be a time where overindulgence is common. Candy and sweets are fine once in a while, but at our house, we often have lots left over after trick or treat, and that isn't healthy for any of us. Recently I just read a good article in Raising Maine about how to handle the influx of candy at halloween. Another idea that we've used is to decide which candies are our favorites and give the rest away (a great lesson in aparigraha, or non-attachment and bramacharya, or self-control/moderation). I like this idea better than just throwing it away, which is wasteful. We put the candy in recycled containers, such as yogurt tubs, and bring it to our service providers like the local bank, post office, etc. so that they can give it away as they wish...and make someone's day a little sweeter.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

What is Yoga 4 Classrooms?

No child wants to feel uncomfortable, cranky or anxious, or to get in trouble because of hyperactive behavior. Children are intrinsically joyful, peaceful, and compassionate. But as the distractions of the external world increase and stress takes over, it can become challenging for many of them children to connect with their authentic, peaceful selves. In fact, it is my belief, and one of the cornerstones of ChildLight Yoga's Yoga 4 Classrooms program, that without having the time and space for reflection and connection, children ‘forget’ that they have the ability to do so at all.

To be successful, creative learners and compassionate, respectful and self-aware human beings, children must be given opportunities to draw their awareness back away from the sometimes overwhelming distractions of the outside world. In doing so, children are brought into the present moment, a place where they can pause, truly hear and feel, reflect and learn. A few deep breaths, physical movement or stretching to reconnect the body/mind, and moments for quiet reflection, are often a quick and easy way to ‘reset’ the nervous system for calm and focus. It is also in this place that children develop the ability to know, understand and appreciate their true nature. Empowering children to connect within at will, is giving them the gift of knowing inner wisdom, confidence, joy, compassion and contentedness.

Science has shown, and educators have experienced first-hand, that when children are anxious, frustrated or stressed, it is nearly impossible for them to learn. It is only from a relaxed, present state of mind and body that our children can be psychologically and physiologically learning-ready. Right now, more than ever before, school teachers and admistrators are searching for a means to this end.

As Founder of ChildLight Yoga, I have had the privilege of sharing yoga with thousands of children and families in yoga studios, gyms, and schools. Trained in part by Yoga Ed.™, a nationally-recognized company focused on bringing the benefits of yoga into schools, I was inspired and challenged by the classroom teachers I encountered to create a program specifically designed for the classroom environment. There was no such program in existence, so after two years of research, development and test piloting at local schools, Yoga 4 Classrooms™ was born.

Yoga 4 Classrooms™ is a low-cost, fun and effective tool for teachers to use with their students for a peaceful and productive classroom. Through the use of Yoga 4 Classrooms activities, teachers can provide their students with opportunities to grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This, in turn, will help them to connect with themselves and others with compassion, understanding and clarity. The activities promote self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-confidence - the foundations of exceptional learning and a lifetime of health and wellness.

Y4C™ features 65 yoga and mindfulness-based activities, divided into six categories: Let’s Breathe, At Your Desk, Standing, Loosen Up, Imagination Vacation, and Be Well. Each activity includes fully-illustrated instructions, discussion points, sub-activities, and educational tie-ins, for a total of over 200 beneficial classroom practices.

The activities were specially chosen for their suitability for the typical classroom space. That means all activities can be done standing beside or sitting at desks, while bodies and hands remain off the floor, away from dirt and germs. A mix of yoga postures, breath exercises, visualizations, mindfulness activities, creative movement, community-building games, and wellness and character-building discussion points such as the power of positive thinking, nutrition, and being a peacemaker, address the whole child – physical, social and emotional – making this the most unique and comprehensive program of its kind.

Yoga 4 Classrooms is easy for teachers and students to use, and helps to create a more harmonious, learning-friendly school day. And its benefits go well beyond the classroom. Yoga 4 Classrooms provides children with life skills they can use in and out of the classroom for long-term health and well-being. Absolutely anyone can use the Y4C program – teachers, students, parents, therapists – no yoga experience is required.

Yoga 4 Classrooms Teacher Workshops are being scheduled now. Teachers can attend a public seminar or bring the seminar to their school as a staff development workshop. Visit the website for more details.

The Power of Visual Imagery for Children

What do children enjoy the most in yoga class? 8 out of 10 of my students would say it's the visualizations we do at the end of nearly every class. In fact, I have many students come into yoga class and immediately ask for them. When I teach in schools, it's the same thing. "Are we going to go on an imagination vacation today, Miss Lisa?? Can we please?"

The use of visualization or creative imagery during relaxation can be quite powerful for kids. Many children find it difficult to quiet their sometimes very overactive minds. Using creative imagery can give these children something to focus on, easing their way to relaxation. In ChildLight Yoga classes, we help children to concentrate, focus and/or relax by guiding them through visual imagery exercises or stories. Children can also be guided to bring their awareness, or energy, to various parts of their bodies. This is the practice of yoga at its best – the unifying of body and mind!

But, when chosen and scripted with care, visualizations can do much more than help to quiet the mind. That is why we are thrilled to have discovered Dr. Charlotte Reznick in our online research! She has written a new book titled, The Power of Your Child's Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success (Perigee, 2009, $14.95).

Here are some interesting quotes from other authors regarding this book and it's focus on giving children the gifts of visual imagery:

“Simple, practical, brilliant. What a wonderful world it will be when all families give their children the gifts presented in Dr. Reznick’s book. Joy, success . . . and health and happiness are just around the corner!” — Harvey Karp, MD, FAAP, creator of the book & DVD The Happiest Toddler on the Block

“Dr. Reznick offers a revolutionary approach for parents to help their children handle fears, worries, and self- doubt. Her simple, accessible advice allows kids to develop their self- esteem while creatively tackling problems. This book is a must- read for any parent who hopes to arm their child with the tools to handle life’s daily struggles.”— Jack Canfield, coauthor of The Success Principles™ and coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series

After reading the following article, I was very encouraged to note the direct ties to the many themes that are emphasized in both the ChildLight Yoga program (and teacher training) and to yoga philosophy in general. In fact, our Yoga for Classrooms program includes every one of the nine tools mentioned here as individual visualizations and specific techniques we use with our students to help them gain self-esteem, mind-body awareness, self-trust, and the ability to self-help and problem-solve. The concepts of having gratitude, imagining a 'special friend', power of the breath and others are incredibly powerful in their ability to help transform thought patterns, reduce anxiety and ultimately, create joy. Take a read...

NINE IMAGINATION TOOLS TO HELP CHILDREN COPE
By: Charlotte Reznick PhD
(Reprinted from Edmonton's Child online)

As a parent, you may not realize that your child possesses many of the answers to life's challenges—right in her own imagination. Through learning and practicing visualization, kids can develop emotional self-care skills to help themselves with a variety of everyday, practical concerns. These imagination tools can help your child:

• Love, accept, and appreciate himself.

· Reduce pain and heal other physical ailments.

• Overcome fears, such as fear of the unknown, abandonment, doctors, disasters, and dying.

• Deal with bedtime issues such as insomnia and bedwetting.

• Cope with death, divorce, and other losses.

• Handle anger, hurt, and frustration.

• Achieve success at school and in sports.

• Live peacefully with siblings and parents.


Here are nine imagination tools you can teach a child to help her deal with stressful times and navigate the challenges of growing up.

TOOL #1: Use the Balloon Breath

With her hands around her navel, have her breathe slowly and deeply into her lower belly so it presses into her hands like an inflating balloon. The balloon breath has calming effects and facilitates a waking state of focused concentration and receptivity to positive suggestions. Kids can use it to calm down before musical performances, soothe anger or hurt feelings, or wind down at night, for example.

Tool # 2: Discover A Special Place

This is a safe, special place within your child’s inner world where he can relax, regroup, or take mini-vacations from the stresses of life. It's a place to pose endless questions about life issues, and create numerous positive, possible solutions. Your child might visit his special place to find courage before taking a difficult test at school, or to get away from a bully's harsh words.

Tool # 3: CONSULT AN ANIMAL GUIDE

This is an imaginary guide—a kind, loving, and protective creature—that helps children tap into their wisdom. It's often safer and easier for animal friends to offer solutions to problems in creative ways, than expecting logic and linear thinking to do the work. Your child's animal guide can help her fall asleep, or practice patience at school in long, boring classes, or be brave before a trip to the doctor.

Tool # 4: Conjure up a Personal Wizard

Wizards come into play when animal friends "just won't do." His Personal Wizard is a mentor and magical teacher in human form who brings a different level of wisdom: human but extraordinary. A wizard can give advice, conjure up special powers such as math answers, and even cure troubling feelings like jealousy, anger, and grief.

Tool # 5: Receive Gifts

Gifts from imaginary helpers can be thoughts, objects, or ideas that symbolically provide children with exactly what she needs in the moment to help her. Gifts can be obvious or require further explanation by the animal friend or wizard. Sometimes gifts are hidden and need to be unwrapped or dug up. When a child goes to her special place and asks a wizard or animal friend for a gift containing the solution to her problem, she often finds the answer.

Tool # 6: Check in with Heart and Belly

This tool is comparable to suggestions of "listen to your heart" and "pay attention to your gut feelings." Children are encouraged to take a few minutes to "check in" with their heart and their belly, and to notice what messages are there for them. The heart and belly often have two different, but equally important, messages to relate.

Tool # 7: Talking to Toes and Other Body Parts

The body is a repository for lots of hidden information. With this tool, children discover where and how they stash different feelings in their body. Kids then find they can have a dialogue between emotions and/or symptoms to find answers to their concerns. For example, your child might discover that his stomach knows exactly why it hurts every day 30 minutes before school starts—it doesn't want Mom to leave, and it's afraid she won't come back.

Tool # 8: UsE Colour for Healing
Color is especially helpful in healing pain. Feelings and symptoms often have different colors associated with them. They can be unique to each individual and change over time. You can teach children how to imagine a color, such as ice blue or deep forest green, cooling down his hot fever. When a child imagines color inside or surrounding her body, it can be a remarkable tool for transforming pain, shifting emotions, and accessing healing energy.

TOOL #9: TAP INTO ENERGY

When words are insufficient, a loving touch from a parent can do wonders to restore calm and well-being. For example, you can help a child "pull the pain" out of his head by holding your hand about three inches from his forehead to give him a direction in which to send his pain—out and away.

You're now armed with nine simple, efficient, and totally free options to mix and match—depending on the situation and your child's favorite. When we teach our kids effective imagery techniques to solve their own problems, it can transform their world.

Charlotte Reznick is a child educational psychologist, an associate clinical professor of psychology at UCLA, and author of a new book, The Power of Your Child's Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success (Perigee, 2009, $14.95).

Baby Buddhas? Baby yoga explained.

Baby buddhas? Well, not exactly...But I still couldn't resist posting this adorable photo! ;)

Yoga for babies typically looks much less like a quiet meditation than it does a precious sight of interacting and bonding gestures, beneficial song and movement combos, and coos and smiles between baby and caregiver (yes, baby must bring an adult along to yoga class).

Our favorite yoga program for moms and babies (or dads, grandmas or other caregivers) is the Itsy Bitsy Yoga program created by Helen Garabedien. Below is the Baby Itsy Bitsy Yoga class description pulled right from her website:

Baby Itsy Bitsy Yoga classes contain dozens of unique yoga postures designed to support baby’s development. Each class is filled with calming, nurturing ways to enhance bonding and improve baby’s sleep.

During a Baby Itsy Bitsy Yoga class, babies enjoy yoga while on their backs, tummies, or held in loving arms. For parents, this class is a special opportunity to meet other moms, get support, and learn about baby's emerging personality. Most of the yoga we do in Itsy Bitsy Yoga is for baby, but you will also learn breathing and relaxation techniques as you practice a bit of yoga yourself. No yoga is experience required.

I can attest to the benefits of yoga for babies and their caregivers as I have been teaching Itsy Bitsy Yoga classes for several years.

About one half of the 1 hr. class is dedicated to sing-songy postures and simple, gentle movements, guided by parents. Helen Garabedien is a infant developmental movement educator and infant massage specialist, so it's no surprise that her trademarked song and movement combos are not only fun and easy to learn, but also extremely beneficial for baby. In fact, the tagline of the related book aptly titled, Itsy Bitsy Yoga, is "Poses to Help Your Baby Sleep Longer, Digest Better, and Grow Stronger."

Timely spaces between movements with baby are other important components of a typical Baby Itsy Bitsy Yoga class. These 'breaks' are primarily focused on community building and creating a nurturing and open space where moms (about 90% of the moms attending my classes are first-time moms) can share questions, concerns and stories about their journeys into motherhood and parenting. A typical first class introduction might involve sharing birth stories. Over the next several weeks, community building questions might be posed to start a discussion - questions like, "What do you do to take care of yourself", or "What is the best/worst parenting advice you've ever received?" These questions serve two purposes - 1) They support the moms in showing them that they are not alone in their experiences as new parents (what can often be a lonely place, especially if there is a lack of family support around), and 2) Create a sense of community in the group. In fact, many wonderful friendships and playdate schedules got their start at our Itsy Bitsy Yoga classes!

Yoga experience nor buddha babies are required (but they're awful cute, aren't they!?) to try out a Baby Yoga class. It's open to any parent or caregiver seeking a loving, bonding activity to do with her child. Best of all, you might just gain more sleep in the process!

ChildLight Yoga's Itsy Bitsy Yoga Class Schedule for Babies (NH Seacoast area)

Find a Baby Itsy Bitsy Yoga Instructor near you...

ChildLight Yoga celebrates National Yoga Month with FREE kids/family yoga classes!

Join us in celebrating peaceful living AND National Yoga Month at the annual Peace Day Exeter event on Sunday, September 20th, 12 - 5pm at Swasey Park in Exeter, NH. ChildLight Yoga will have a booth with info about our fall classes, our signature Tees for infants, toddlers, big kids and adults, I Grow With Yoga CDs, and raffle giveaways. Come say 'hi!' to Heather Warr and Lisa Burk-McCoy, our amazing Exeter area instructors, then participate in one of the few mini family & kids yoga classes we'll be offering that day - Free!


PEACE DAY EXETER PRESS RELEASE:
The Peace Day Exeter festival will be held on Sunday, September 20, 2009 in the lovely downtown Swasey Parkway between the hours of Noon and 5 PM. Activities for the festival include workshops and games for children, music and poetry, guest speakers, panel discussions on peace and sustainability issues, and other exciting events at the Swasey Parkway gazebo and surrounding green.

Some of the participants and speakers to date include: Julia Simon-Mishel, the national Managing Director of the Student Peace Alliance; Kelly Moore with Music for Mankind; Eric Cohen with the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur and The Tents of Hope Project; Sarah Brown from The Green Alliance; Open Minds with Marilyn Kellogg; Andrea Renz with Exeter Area Interfaith CropWalk; Barbara Thorngren from Nashua Community Technical College; the Taoist Tai Chi Society; and music supplied by Tom Duffy and Chordwood; and other speakers and musical guests.

The festival is planned to coincide with the UN International Day of Peace. Teachers and students from around the Seacoast area are invited to stop by the Peace One Day Education Resource USA table at the festival to sample its educational materials. Peace One Day is a non-profit, nonpartisan, humanitarian organization founded by Jeremy Gilley - the man who spearheaded the establishment by the UN of its International Day of Peace. The POD Education Resource campaign is sponsored by Ben and Jerry's, with the goal of distributing its educational materials throughout the United States, having started this Spring in New England.

The Blue Moon Market and Cafe and The Divine Cafe will supply a wonderful array of food and drink. Phillips Exeter Academy students will work with children in supportive and educational roles. Films and meditative exercises for adults are also scheduled.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket or folding chairs and enjoy the day's activities. Non-perishable food items will also be collected at the festival and donated to the Seacoast Family Food Pantry. The Cage at Phillips Exeter Academy of Exeter is the rain location for this event.

Our event sponsors include ESSO at Phillips Exeter Academy, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Exeter, Blue Moon Market - Exeter, Serendipity of Exeter, Seacoast Words of Peace - Stratham, Sperry Tents Seacoast - Portsmouth, and Exeter Jewelers. Any proceeds from the event will be donated to Peace One Day Education US.

For more information and directions, please visit our webpage: www.peacedayexeter.org. If you're interested in volunteering for Peace Day Exeter, please contact either Cindy Lategan (cindy@peacedayexeter.org) or Bob Moore (bob@peacedayexeter.org or at 603-642-4648).

How to Get Teens to do Yoga

I physically cringe when I think back to Jr. High and High School. Yes, it was fun and if you asked my classmates, they would probably say I was one of the 'popular kids' (whatever that means). But inside I really never felt like I truly fit in. I felt I was on the outside, different than everyone else in a way that I didn't understand. I desperately wanted to feel accepted. Everyone else seemed (and that's the key word, isn't it?) to be so together, have lots of friends, and be comfortable in their own skin. I worried a lot about getting good grades to be able to get into a good school later on - as good a one as my friends, as there was a lot of competition in that area. I felt is was important to have the right clothes and 'keep up with the joneses'. I felt I was misunderstood by my parents. And then there were the boy dramas...

If any of the above sounds familiar, it's probably because these are typical thoughts of the typical preteen and teen. And, I'm sure I'm not the only one who, as an adult yogi, has often thought back to those times and wondered how different things might have been had I been introduced to yoga THEN.

So many of us involved in teaching yoga to kids understand the importance of introducing yoga at a young age. Of any age however, I feel it's the preteen and teenage years that can benefit the most from learning yoga, mindfulness, pranayama and relaxation techniques. Our friends at KarmaSpot recently posted a nice list of the benefits of yoga for teens. Check it out.

If you've ever tried to set up a class for teens, you know that they can be tough to fill! Teens are super busy - and they don't want to be involved in anything that may be perceived as 'weird'. If you're going to attract teens to participate in a yoga program, it's important to make it both accessible and acceptable.

Here are some suggestions:

1) The class description should be inviting and utilize teen-friendly language. Unlike with younger kids classes, it's the teens that will most likely be making the decision about whether or not to participate, not the parents.

2) Be sure to mention benefits of teen yoga and their participation as it relates to THEM, the TEENS - not just yoga in general. Tying in what yoga might help them with in their chaotic life as a teen is the key. Mentioning some of the hundreds of athletes and celebrities doing yoga these days can also help gain buy-in from this age group. Everyone knows Madonna does yoga, but did you know the Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins, Jennifer Anniston, Halle Berry, and even that hot guy, Peter Facinelli, of Twilight fame (thanks to YogaDork.com for the great article and photo about Peter and his yoga practice!) does yoga daily?! That is super important news to a teen.

3) Use non-threatening images in your marketing materials and flyers. Showing an unattainable perfect body doing a difficult yoga position, ie, a Yoga Journal cover image, is not recommended! Instead, either use graphics or fun, friendly image of a real teen with a real body doing a simple position or maybe even just holding a yoga mat. HINT: A most wonderful place to find FREE IMAGES is www.bing.com.

4) Consider holding separate classes for preteen and teen girls and guys. The distraction and anxiety caused by the presence of the opposite sex is removed and possible feeling of modesty or embarrassment becomes less of an issue. I find that in separate classes, preteens and teens of both sexes are better able to enjoy, and gain the most benefit from, their respective yoga class. If you have a female instructor for teen girls class and a male instructor for a teen guys class, all the better for this particular age group.

5) Talk to your local Jr. High or High School health or physical education teachers. They will most likely jump up and kiss you if you offer to you come in to introduce some yoga to their students. I recommend doing a series of classes, the first of which can focus on the myths of yoga to get that out of the way. You know, the ones about having to be a vegetarian, having to be able to put your foot behind your head, having to Ommmm for hours in a quiet room. It's amazing to me the perceptions that are still prevalent out there, especially with the teen set. Shed the myths, talk about what yoga is and isn't, and make the connection for the kids through analogies and personal stories of how yoga has made a difference in YOUR life. You'll be on your way to gaining their trust and buy-in to try it out for themselves.

Need some ideas?
ChildLight Yoga is offering Stress Less Yoga for Teen Girls this fall. Take a peek at the image and class description to get your creative juices flowing. If you live in or around Kittery, ME / Portsmouth, NH, we hope to see you there. Bring Peter Facinelli with you and your class is free! ;)

Dell Ad uses Colors Song from Dance for the Sun CD by Kira Willey

A wonderful song from "Dance for the Sun", one of our favorite CDs of kids yoga songs, is featured in the new Dell ad! Congrats to Kira Willey!

The YogainMySchool Blog has done a great job highlighting this news and includes a link to the ad - check it out!

For this and other kids yoga songs and CD recommendations, see our blog post titled "Yoga Songs Make Kids Yoga Fun!"

Raising Maine | Managing the Gift of ADD and ADHD: ADD/ ADHD: Why All The Focus on Medication?

An interesting article in Raising Maine Magazine's Blog on the side of avoiding medication such as Ritalin, Adderal, etc. posted by Dr. Kevin Ross Emery is the author of "Managing The Gift: Alternative Approaches for Attention Deficit Disorder."
I can agree wholeheartedly that the natural approach take a lot of work and patience. We are in the midst of that path currently. Will be blogging about the journey in upcoming entries.

Raising Maine | Managing the Gift of ADD and ADHD: ADD/ ADHD: Why All The Focus on Medication?

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