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.