"You can't stop the waves from coming, but you can Learn how to Surf" - Jon Kabatt Zinn

The above quote is one that beautifully captures how I feel.  Life will always be filled with challenges and my goal was to give these kids some tools, such as Mindful Breathing, Wish Fulfilling Tree, Breathing in the Big me, to help them cope with these challenges.  Friday was our last session for this term, I am going to miss all the smiling faces, enthusiasm and energy that the kids shared with me in our Yoga class.  

We warmed-up today, by revisiting the Wish Fulfilling Tree and played a fun Yoga game that helped the kids work on their balance, attention and body awareness.   

We continued Story Yoga (I'm Gonna Like Me), and explored several Yoga poses while reinforcing the message of being comfortable with who we are.  Remind your child about Breathing in the Big Me,  when bad thoughts start bothering them, and letting go of those thoughts as they exhale.

With the older kids we played Yoga Jenga which tested our fine motor co-ordination and focus and got us moving and doing all of our favorite Yoga poses.  We also practiced butterfly breathing, another way to mindfully breathe and build present moment awareness.  

Towards the end of class the older kids reflected on ways to be kind,  I have provided them with a checklist they could use to start them off.  We wrapped up the class with a Kindness Wish Fulfilling Art and a short relaxation.

I wish everyone a safe and fun summer and look forward to seeing everyone in September :)

Suggested Activity:  Continue to practice mindful breathing (balloon breathing) with your child as a family.  I find it works very well as a bedtime routine to help calm their bodies and minds.  As we breathe mindfully, I usually have my kids say 5 positive things about themselves during each in-breath and encourage them to exhale any doubts or worries they may have.  

When spending time outside, ask your kids to come up with a Yoga Pose based on what they see and play the "What I can See, I can be" game.  For instance, if they see trees, have them do tree pose or forest of trees with siblings, or butterfly pose when you see a butterfly, flower pose, airplane pose and so forth.  I find this is a fun way to keep the practice going through the summer and foster an active imagination.

Kindness to Self

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today the kids were especially enthusiastic and excited about performing on Arts Night.  We used this opportunity to investigate how our breath feels when we feel excited.  Most of us felt our breath also racing with excitement.  Continue to explore your child's breath with them by asking them if their breath is racing, warm, cold, fast, jumpy during different parts of the day.  It is amazing to see and learn how our breath changes based on how we feel.   

In the spirt of being kind to ourselves we did Story Yoga with the book called "I'm Gonna Like Me."  This is a positive story that teaches kids that the key to feeling good is liking yourself because you are you.  We explored a lot of new yoga poses such as Warrior pose, mountain pose, lion pose and lotus pose while reading the book, and I was amazed at how the kids creatively used the poses that they have learned to come up with their own variations.  The story lend itself to many opportunities to discuss how we can use our breath and breathe in the " Big Me," when we are feeling down or when we make a mistake.  This will teach us to be resilent and ground ourselves when things are not the way we would like them to be.

In the spirt of being kind to ourselves we did Story Yoga with the book called "I'm Gonna Like Me."  This is a positive story that teaches kids that the key to feeling good is liking yourself because you are you.  We explored a lot of new yoga poses such as Warrior pose, mountain pose, lion pose and lotus pose while reading the book, and I was amazed at how the kids creatively used the poses that they have learned to come up with their own variations.  The story lend itself to many opportunities to discuss how we can use our breath and breathe in the " Big Me," when we are feeling down or when we make a mistake.  This will teach us to be resilent and ground ourselves when things are not the way we would like them to be.

We are part way through this book with the younger kids and I have promised the kids that we will finish off on Friday.  The older kids took some time to reflect on reasons why they "Like Themselves" and expressed their ideas creatively through art.  

Suggested Activity:  Extend the idea of reasons why we like ourselves to now discussing reason why they like different members of the family.  Have fun with it, create a family bouquet of flowers, assign a flower to represent each member of the family.  Then use the petals to write the reasons they like each member.  

Stress Release & Relaxation

On Friday, I checked in with the kids and most of them felt very tired after their Track and Field event.  This was a wonderful opportunity for me to introduce one of the core Yoga philosophies of observing  our body's cues and then respectfully responding to them.   So we did just that, we focused on using part of the class to calm our bodies and minds and enjoy the stress relieving benefits of breathing and deep relaxation.

I introduced the younger kids to an art called "Mandala" meaning "circle" in Sanskrit.  Drawing and colouring a Mandala is used as therapeutic art to calm the mind.  We also used pinwheels to observe our breath and experimented how we felt when we took deep breaths versus short breaths.  Towards the end of class we worked on belly breathing by placing our pom pom's on our belly and observing the movement of our belly, as we took our in breaths and out breaths.

The older kids, continued to work on their balance by playing the pom pom game,  only this time they walked the imaginary tight rope backwards.  We worked on increasing our awareness of thoughts and breath by playing the Mindful bell game and using Pinwheels.  Breath awareness is key in Yoga and for building focus and attention.

The class ended with deep relaxation and I took the older kids through a guided visualization of kindness to ourselves.  The kids reported feeling very calm and relaxed at the end of this practice.
After relaxation, Tanya shared a wonderful example of how she dealt with someone saying unkind words to her.  She shared that she did not get affected by it, as she reminded herself of the lesson we learned in the "Story of the Wish-fulfilling tree." Unkind words spoken by someone only end up hurting the person saying it as they are attracting bad thoughts to themselves.  Ask your child about the Wish Fulfilling tree and please share your stories on my blog.


Suggested activity:
Breathing prompts:  I love the activity that Susan Kaiser Greenland suggests in her book, it is a simple way to build awareness of mind, body and breath.  Pick one routine activity that the kids and you do every day such as brushing teeth and use this activity to build awareness.  Every time before you brush remind yourself and the kids to stop and take 5 balloon breaths and then brush.  Have you noticed you go into  automatic pilot when performing routine activities?   Mindfully breathing will interupt this process and bring attention to the activity that you are about to perform.

Announcement:  The Blossom Yoga kids will be on stage on arts night.  We are scheduled to go up towards the first part of the evening.  I will be showing a short movie of a theme that they have been working on during the show.  Please let me know of any questions you may have.