This is Part 3 of a four part series on Om for Kids and Teens. Enjoy Part 1: Om the Sound of the Universe,  Part 2: Chanting OM: Teaching Kids to Chant (Video) and coming soon Part 4: The Benefits of Om.

When and Where Is Om Appropriate?

In the Studio

In private yoga studios and classes I often chant “om” at the beginning and end of each session. This helps to open and connect the chakras, bringing us into harmony with ourselves and one another, and creates a space between the busyness of life and yoga class. Most children really like to chant “om” and look forward to this ritual. I’ve even had some kids specifically remind me to “om” before class ends if they think I’m going to rush them out the door with only a “namaste”.

“Om is like a tuning fork, it brings everyone to the same point.” ~Manorama

Sometimes though the students aren’t really into it. Often a group of tweens/teens may be reluctant, embarrassed to chant in a group, or may think chanting is a little too “out there.” You can either persevere and hopefully convert them to the power of “om,” or not. At times it may be best to back off and allow children and teens to discover yoga in stages and steps, accepting what they are prepared to accept, as they are prepared to do so. If this means leaving “om” out of class, or including it occasionally, then do so.

In the School

Most often I follow the children’s lead when introducing chanting in schools. If they are really excited about learning to “om” properly then I’ll teach it (always without Hindu references). If they don’t bring it up, I leave it alone.

Many schools are keen on bringing the physical and mental benefits of yoga to their classrooms, but understandably want to stay well away from the spiritual. Respect is necessary.  Many of the benefits of chanting have nothing to do with the spiritual connection, so feel free to explain why it is valuable citing it’s physiological and mental effects. More on this in the upcoming Part 4: The Benefits of Om.

What’s your experience with teaching “om” and other chants to children and teens in various situations?

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5 Days To Increase Love in Your Life

Make your Valentine’s week more loving by connecting with yourself and others in a positive, respectful way. From Monday to Friday of Valentine’s Week put into practice these simple daily tasks and watch your heart embrace goodness and joy with appreciation and compassion. Get your family and friends involved too.

It’s easy to cultivate love in your life with the YIMS Valentine’s Week Tender Loving Care Challenge.

Monday: Give the Gift of Love

Tell each member of your family you love them. Look them in the eye and let them know the depth of your feelings. Write a note and slip it into their lunch bag. If they live far away, send them a quick e-mail, e-card or Facebook message. If you can, pick up the phone, Facetime or Skype them so they can see you and hear you as you express your love. Simple or profound, doesn’t matter. Just let your family know how much they mean to you.

Tuesday: Increase Confidence w/ Compliments

Tell the people in your life what you admire about them. It could be your kids, spouse, co-workers, boss, teacher, neighbor, friend, or a stranger on the street. Express how much you like their natural style, how they take on challenges, their new haircut, a piece of jewelry, their smile, the kindness they show to others, etc. The best compliments are those which are specific and sincere. Compliments are a wonderful boost to anyone’s day so be generous.

Wednesday: Share the Love of Positive Affirmations

Affirmations are a powerful way to access your sub-conscious. Share positive, encouraging, heart-felt messages with those important to you, including yourself. Write them on post-it notes, cards, homemade Valentine’s, paper plates, poster-board, Facebook messages, Twitter updates, lipstick on the mirror…everywhere and anywhere. Have fun, be creative. Some ideas to get the ball rolling: Believe in Yourself, Love with an open heart, You are Fabulous, Sweeter than Candy, Smile from deep inside, Share the joy, Abundance abounds. Photo from ChildLight Yoga Facebook Page.

Thursday: Indulge in a Hand or Foot Massage

Healing touch is a wonderful gift. Take a few moments and connect physically and emotionally with someone. You don’t need to be an expert, simply use confident strokes, gently giving attention to all areas, especially on hands: the fingers & fleshy part at the base of the thumb, and on feet: the toes & the tender areas of the arch. For specifics watch this video on how to give a fab foot massage.

Friday: Relax w/ Loving Visualization

Spend 5-10 minutes lying in savasana while focusing on opening your heart. Let go of old hurts. Clear your heart and mind of those things which are holding you back. Soften and let go. Allow space within your chest for the heart to rest comfortably and perform it’s proper function. Focus on your heart center, anahata chakra, and tap into your true heart’s desire. Fill your body with compassionate awareness and peace. Take this feeling of contentment and hope with you throughout your day and share it with others.

Leave a comment letting us know how the YIMS Valentine’s Week TLC Challenge went in your life. Have fun cultivating love!

More Yoga Valentine’s Day Ideas

For more yoga inspired ideas on celebrating Valentine’s Day visit

• Kids Valentine’s Day Yoga Class: a heart centered practice
• play Sending Joy: fill the the entire world with good intentions and watch it make our own life more loving
• In Search of a Softened Heart healing & opening for teens and adults
• Give Love: A Valentine’s Day Yoga Lesson Plan from OMazing Kids Yoga
• enjoy this Loving Kindness Meditation
• play Hearts Hide ‘n Seek: increase intuition & sensitivity

photo courtesy of lifelikeapps

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Yin Yoga Helps Kids Relax & Connect

Most children’s yoga classes are of the yang variety: energetic, strong, mobile. This reflects kids natural tendencies toward movement, activity and spontaneity. However, kids sometimes become overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, overtired and sad. At our home this is often the case in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays. There is so much going on with concerts, parties, shopping, exams, get-togethers with friends and family, etc. that my kids (and I) simply need some down time.

The Winter Solstice provides a lovely opportunity to delve into a child friendly yin practice. This is a wonderful way to provide space and time for purposeful relaxation. Yin yoga also assists in turning inward and helps children connect with their intuition and personal wisdom, finding peace in a quieter, slower yoga practice.

Yin Yoga Poses for Kids

• Child’s Pose – balasana
• Rag Doll Pose
• Wide Angle Forward Fold - upavishta konasana
• Happy Baby Pose – ananda balasana
• Sphinx Pose
• Legs up the Wall Pose - viparita karani
• Sleeping Swan (aka Reclined Pigeon)
• Reclined Twists
• Reclined Cobbler’s Pose – supta baddha konasana
• Savasana with Eye Pillow & a blanket
• Supported Savasana – legs on a chair or a bolster under the knees

Kids Yin Yoga Best Practices

• Allow the children to set the pace holding poses for as long as children allow, once they start to fidget, move along
• Encourage longer holds with a timer or counting breaths
• Approach with curiosity and wonder
• Speak slowly, calmly – children will take their energy cues from you
• Pretend you are practicing in deep water, every movement is slow and purposeful
• Allow space for feelings of sadness, fear, anger
• Most important – Breathe

Meditation for the Winter Solstice

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Dr Amy Saltzman knows the benefits of accessing the “Still Quiet Place” deep inside each individual and works tirelessly to bring those benefits to children, teens and parents.

Founder of the  program Still Quiet Place, Amy strives to teach mindfulness skills to youth (Pre-K to college) so that they can reap the rewards and live a engaged, full, calm and rewarding life. Join us for easy to implement techniques which are proven to develop focus, increase attention, decrease anxiety and allow you and your children to interact with compassion with yourself and others. Tap into your “Still Quiet Place” within.

Original Air Date: November 14, 2011

Connect with Amy on Facebook or on StillQuietPlace.com.

Stay tuned for Reflections 2011 with guests Amy Ippoliti, Christina Sell, Kristin McGee, Roseanne Harvey of It’s all yoga, baby and more.

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Psychiatrist & clinical lecturer on pyschiatry at the Univeristy of Alberta, Dr Catherine Phillips is dedicated to bringing the benefits of mindfulness to others. She joins us to discuss how MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) techniques can work equally well with teens as with adults to reduce stress, improve connections with self and others, and lead to greater happiness and contentment. Founder of the Mindfulness Institute.ca and one of the key organziers of the upcoming International Conference on Mindfulness with Youth (July 15-17, 2011), Catherine works tirelessly to promote mindfulness meditation in the areas of education, health care and society at large.

Original Air Date: June 30, 2011

Connect with Catherine on the Mindfulness Institute.ca Facebook page.

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Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhoodand Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, blogger and Zen Buddhist priest and teacher, shares insight on ways to let go, accept, and simply be during the hectic holiday season. She will help us to see the spirituality in everyday chaos, encourage us to trust our innate wisdom and assist us to slow down and enjoy each moment. Learn how to survive and thrive during the holidays with her Zen tips.

Original Air Date: December 2, 2010

Enjoy more of Karen’s insights on Facebook and her website.

Other interviews in this series include:

• Dec 1 – Sadie Nardini
• Dec 6 – Elena Brower
• Dec 7 – Bob Weisenberg
• Dec 8 – Esther Ekhart
• Dec 14 – Cora Wen
• Dec 16 – Kathryn Budig
• Dec 20 – Faith Hunter
• Dec 21 – Brock & Krista Cahill
• Dec 24 – Ally Hamilton
• Dec 28 – John Friend
• Dec 30 – Waylon Lewis

All interviews are available for download from Yogainmyschool.com on iTunes.

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Guest post by Edward Stern

It is no secret that life is stressful for children. Peer pressure, academics, and trouble at home, coupled with a busy extracurricular schedule, scarcely give kids a second to breath let alone decompress. Stress builds up overtime, and very few children are actually given the tools to deal with the stress of school and being an adolescent.

Yoga provides a perfect outlet for stressed out youngsters and gives them the tools to deal with stress in the other facets of their busy lives. At the very least, it is a time out of a given day to focus on their own physical and emotional well-being and put negative feelings on the backburner.

Many parents feel athletics are a good stress reliever for their child, and in many cases they are, but oftentimes the competition from other players and their coaches only adds to stress. Yoga is a non-competitive way to do a healthy physical activity without adding stress.

Yoga also provides the tools students need to deal with stress outside of the studio. They learn to meditate and learn breathing exercises for calming. Students can learn to find a quiet classroom and perform these rituals to take a second for themselves, away from all the pressures of school, academics, and other students.

Students who learn yoga and its ways of dealing with stress get a head-start in life. A large part of the battle of growing up is learning how to manage oneself in a healthy manner that strikes balance and finds ways to achieve emotional and physical well-being. A healthy body inspires a healthy mind and vice versa. The lessons learned in yoga will be ones seldom found elsewhere — teachers do not have the time to teach stress management in their classrooms, which are already stressful environments, and guidance counselors are overloaded and often undertrained.

Yoga classes offer something schools cannot: a true peace of mind, and a way to return to this peace of mind amongst times of stress, disorder, and unease. Yoga gives children a leg up by teaching them how to release complex emotions, ones made more difficult by the sheer act of being inexperienced in the world. The teachings of yoga are time-tested and have been helping adults manage their stress; now, it is time for children to receive the same tools.

Edward Stern is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on Accredited Online Universities for Guide to Online Schools.

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Welcome to labyrinth week. This week we’ll be exploring the wonderful world of labyrinths and how children and teens can use these ancient tools to discover themselves, learn mindfulness, reduce stress, increase fine and gross motor skills, practice math, gain appreciation for nature, explore world history and much more.

To kick off the week we have an interview with Rev. N. Elaine Nagy, the Labyrinth Facilitator at the St Albert United Church, where on the last Friday of every month they hold a labyrinth walk.

Q: What is a labyrinth?

A:  It’s a path. The kind of labyrinths that we use in place like a church, or in a garden, it’s a path that’s used often to help people connect with something beyond themselves.

Q: Why do people walk labyrinths?

A: The reason I walk a labyrinth is that I find it an easier way for me to connect with God. Lots of times people who start walking labyrinths have had some big change happen in their life. They are sad for some reason, or they are having to make a big decision, and so when they walk on the labyrinth it is an opportunity to let go of what’s bothering them, it’s an opportunity for them to understand what they are worried about in a new way. And sometimes it helps them to feel a lot better about what is going on, so that they feel more peaceful.

Q: Where are some famous labyrinths?

A: The most famous labyrinth in the world is in Chartres Cathedral in France which is about 45-60 minutes by train to the west of Paris. The reason its so famous is that is the only labyrinth from the middle ages left intact in a church. I’ve been to that labyrinth. It’s a stone labyrinth in the floor. This is a picture of it right here. Labyrinths used to be popular for hundreds of years and then they fell into disuse and so they got ripped out. The story I like to tell about this labyrinth is that it used to have copper in the center of it but it doesn’t anymore because Napoleon needed the copper. He was a famous leader in France. He was so desperate for metal to fight his wars that he even took the copper out of the middle of the labyrinth for his cannons and for metal to fight his enemies.

They say that originally that piece of copper had a Greek mythical figure in it because even though it is old, there are labyrinths that are much older: in Greece, in Crete. There are labyrinths there that are thousands of years old. And then among the Hopi people of Arizona they have labyrinths that are very old too. Labyrinths have been found in rocks and caves, thousands and thousands of years old, in different parts of the world. But the one in Charters you can actually see and still walk.

Q: Do you have any advice when walking a labyrinth?

A: My biggest advice would be to not treat it like a toy, but to treat it like something special. It’s not a trick. It’s not a puzzle. It’s a special place. The same way that you probably have special places you’ve been, someplace you’ve been on vacation, or grandma’s house, or someplace you like to be. I hope that a labyrinth might be a place that you enjoy going to. Whether just to be alone with yourself, or to think about something, or to just feel good and peaceful. So if you treat it like that, rather than a place for playing games, though children love to be free and to run in labyrinths and that’s a good thing. Always remember that it is a special place and that it’s meant not only for us to enjoy but for us to connect with something bigger than ourselves. I think my advice would be enjoy them, but always remember that it’s a special place.

Thank you.

Thank you for asking.

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Calm Your Class in One Minute with a Breathing Sphere

guest post by Jim Gillen

Because breathing patterns have such a profound effect on our general health and mental states, breath awareness is at the heart of almost all yoga practices. Breathing interacts with and affects the cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal and muscular systems. It also has general effects on sleep patterns, memory, energy levels and concentration.

Watch a baby at rest, and you’ll see a good example of healthy breathing. The pattern is relaxed, slow and wavelike. Every bone, muscle and organ moves with each breath. Unhealthy breathing, by contrast, is rigid or inappropriate to the situation and often exhibits excess muscle tension.

While abnormal breathing patterns vary, they’re often high in the chest, overly fast and shallow. Often, there’s no pause at the end of the exhalation. There may even be breath-holding or gulping. Such habits reinforce feelings of tension, agitation and anxiousness. By contrast, a healthy breathing pattern elicits a relaxation response, shifting the nervous system from fight-or-flight mode to a state of relaxed alertness.

One of our favorite ways of teaching and encouraging children to breathe healthfully is by using a Hoberman breathing sphere – a popular children’s toy that’s basically a geodesic dome made of jointed segments. By lightly pushing or pulling it on opposite sides, you can make it expand or contract, accordion-style. The movement serves as a visual model for the type of breathing we want the kids to imitate by helping them see and synchronize their breath with movement.

How to Use A Hoberman Sphere

The teacher or other supervising adult may lead the group or – something we like to do – encourage one of the kids to lead, establishing the breathing rhythm. As the leader slowly expands the sphere, all inhale deeply and slowly through the nose, from the belly. The leader then pauses, emulating the short, natural pause that happens at the “top” and “bottom” of each healthy breath. As the leader contracts the sphere, all exhale through the nose just as slowly.

This efficient diaphragmatic breath is like watching the waves at the beach, with each breath swelling up from abdomen to chest and back down again.

The expansion-contraction cycle may be repeated as many times as necessary, but we find 5-10 cycles to be effective for helping the group calm and focus through this simple breath work.

Rhythm and slowness are two keys to using a breathing sphere effectively. By  consciously  slowing  our  breath, especially the exhalation, we can  facilitate the relaxation response even more and develop some control over how our nervous system responds to our environment.

In the classroom and school environments such breath work lends itself readily to focus and mindfulness, preparing students to learn. Speeding thoughts slow. The body as a whole relaxes. Body and mind become centered, grounded. Thus, many teachers, counselors and administrators start their classes off by leading students in breathing with a sphere. Some schools have even used these breathing practices at assemblies or over the school intercom to calm and focus their students.

With the powerful visual representation of a healthy breath, no other words or descriptions are necessary. This tool can be effectively used by teachers who have no yoga experience and is particularly useful for second language learners, visual learners and children who struggle with anxiety and self regulation.

Synchronized breathing in a group exercise is also useful for developing a sense of community and safety as the group’s energy coalesces by breathing together. Simply, we are affected by each other’s breathing patterns. Conversely, it’s hard to relax and concentrate when we are around stressful breathing patterns. And when teachers learn, practice, and model healthy breathing, their classes become calmer and more productive, with corresponding benefits to everyone’s health and well-being.

Jim Gillen, RYT-500, is the cofounder of Yoga Calm, director of Still Moving Yoga in Portland, Oregon, and co-author of numerous education articles and Yoga Calm for Children: Educating Heart, Mind, and Body

Breathing spheres are available through the Yoga Calm Store.

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With that in mind I’ve started to readjust bedtime to more closely reflect a school night. Knowing that it takes about two weeks for any routine to become part of daily life this process begins now so that we are ready the night before that first day back to class.

Here are some yoga tips to creating a bedtime routine that will lead to a restful sleep for children and parents alike.

1. Reduce Stimulus – Children need a winding down period before hitting the hay. In order to maximize a restful sleep begin about an hour before bed to reduce sensory stimulus. In yoga this is called pratyahara (the 5th limb of Yoga according to the Yoga Sutras by Patañjali). Take away video games, turn the TV off, lower the lights, introduce soothing music or the blessed sound of silence. The body will transition from activity to inactivity beautifully when given time to adjust and flow smoothly into relaxation.�
   

   ragdoll pose

    

2. Connect – Taking time to connect with your mind and body is essential to health and wellness even for little ones. Encourage your children to do some restorative yoga poses such as child’s pose, ragdoll, hero’s pose and gentle twists to get the kinks out and reduce muscular strains and stresses from the day’s activities. Also, be sure to take time to connect with one another. Read a story together, chat about the day, share your lives, concerns, hopes and simply enjoy one an-other’s company.
3. Establish a Routine – Children thrive on predictability and structure. In yogic terms this is called tapas (self-discipline). Establish an order of events (1. cleanup, 2. bedtime snack, 3. brush teeth, 4. yoga b4 bed, 5. read together, etc.). Create a chart with easy to follow graphics. This is helpful for all children whenever they are learning a routine, but especially for pre-schoolers and those with special needs.
4. Be Content – Practice santosha (contentment) one of the yoga niyamas (observances) by learning to be happy with who you are, where you are, and with what you have. Encourage the attitude of what you have is enough and that there is satisfaction and happiness to be found in each day. Five Good Moments is a simple gratitude game you can play daily with your children to develop a thankful heart and mind.
5. Practice Pranayama – Yogic breathing techniques are extremely effective at reducing stress and anxiety which often hit children as they are laying in bed waiting to fall asleep.  Swimming Stuffies and Take 5 are wonderful breathing exercises that help connect the mind and body. Even very young children can develop breath awareness and practice these safe and simple techniques before drifting off to sleep.

Be sure to allow sufficient time (about an hour) in order not to rush your children as they transition from the day’s activities to calm relaxation. Speak in a calm tone of voice and provide 2-5 minute warnings whenever an activity will change (“In five minutes you’ll need to put away your toys and get into PJ’s.”). Most importantly love your children. Use the time before bed to demonstrate daily how important they are to you.

Remember it takes time to create a routine and fine tune it to your personal needs. Stick with it and you will create a better sleep environment, manage stress and anxiety, as well as calm and nurture yourself and your loved ones.

Another article with great yoga inspired ideas is Bedtime Bliss on the Kids Yoga Resource.

Photo by flickrized

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