Egyptian Desert and More, Jan. 29th, 2014

Today the young kids got to engage their imagination and visit the Egyptian desert.   During our visit, we imagined ourselves as a camel, pyramid and an Eygptian cat.  Ask your child to show you their pyramid and camel pose.

I also showed them a different kind of breathing that is used to relax and calm our minds.  It is called Langhana breath, where their exhale is longer than their inhale.  As a class we practiced inhaling for 2 and exhaling for 3, pause for 1,  and then continue again.

I have also created Yoga Bingo game (see example below) for the older kids, I find it is a fun way to engage them and go deeper into our poses.  My focus with the older kids is increasing body awareness through each pose.   I asked them to observe what poses they are able to do with ease versus ones that are more challenging. The moving lunge pose is one that challenges most of us, so we agreed that we need to work towards strengthening our leg muscles in order to do this pose with ease.   Some of us observed that we have tight hips, which is restricting our flexibility to practice a challenging pose such as Bound Ankle pose.  So we practiced using butterfly pose to help open up our hips and will slowly prepare our bodies to practice the more challenging pose.  Ask you child what pose is most challenging for them and what part of the body they think they may need to strengthen to do that pose.

Suggested Activity:  Langhana breath can be used along with belly breathing as part of the bed time routine.  Place their favorite plushie on their belly/abdomen and have them inhale for 2 and exhale for 3 breaths, pause for 1 and then repeat 4-6 times.  Please let me know if you have any questions about the breath work, and I would be more than happy to go over these techniques with you.