Teenagers Take Care of Your Self, Your Health, Your Life 

A teenager’s life can be filled with turmoil and stress. These are important transitional years as individuals move from childhood to adulthood. This episode will focus on how teens can take care of themselves in holistic and natural ways to ensure they live happy, healthy lives. Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist and Certified Anusara Yoga Instructor, Cate Stillman provides ideas on taking charge of your life and how you feel. Numerous suggestions for maximizing teens academic, creative and athletic performance including specifics in yoga, eating, sleeping, studying and meditation will be presented. And maybe even some ideas on how to get rid of those pesky pimples.

Original Air Date: August 5, 2010

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Some highlights from this episode include:

• Ayurveda 101 – what is ayurveda and how does it work
• The Three Doshas – Pitta, Vata, Kapha (the best explanation I’ve ever heard)
• Living in synch with nature
• Making prana filled food choices
• Practicing inner hygiene

Cate Stillman can be found on Facebook and her website yogahealer.com.

Mindfulness Games for Kids & Teens

We often get stuck on negative moments and enlarge their significance. This game teaches children and youth to pay attention to the events of each day and intentionally focus on the positives. It encourages paying close attention, living in the moment and appreciating all that life has to offer. Learning to pay attention to how different moments/events make us feel is an important skill leading to emotional intelligence, improved self understanding and greater compassion and empathy.

Five Good Moments

Suggest to your ‘Negative Nelly’ (my apologies to all the positive Nelly’s out there) that they pay attention today/this week to moments that make them feel good and try to find five different ones. The moment might be a thought that inspires, a view that is lovely and makes them pause, an interaction with someone, etc.  What it is doesn’t matter. What matters is that for at least a  moment it made them feel good. You do the same. When you get together at the end of the day/in class next week, share your five good things with one another.

We do this as a family each evening, each person saying one thing at a time in a circle, and call it “Thankful For.”  Often at the end of a full day the responses are, “I’m thankful for bed, pillows, sleep, etc.” When the offerings get generic and often repeated (my family, my friends, my home) we remind the kids to think of something specific from today (a trip to the park, the colours of the clouds at sunset, the taste of fresh picked berries, etc). We also occasionally switch it up by saying “If I were so-and-so (the family member to their right or left) I would be thankful for…” This is always an interesting exercise and prompts some insightful observations. It also helps teach children to think about others and what happened of importance in someone else’s life that day.

Over the next while YIMS will be providing numerous mindfulness and compassionate living exercises and games so be sure to subscribe (RSS or e-mail) in order to get them delivered directly to your reader or in-box.

photo by Hamed Saber

Dr Seuss asks You to Discover Your Place in Life, Be Your Best Self

We just got home from vacation. Each year we head to my parent’s cabin on a beautiful lake in British Columbia, Canada. There are so many memories of my childhood there. I especially love picking up the well worn books off the shelf in the corner to read to my children. These are the books I read as a child. Illustrations, rhymes, tattered covers take me back to the innocence, joy, and simplicity of that time.

This year my six year old loved reading the Dr Seuss books. As I read Put Me in the Zooby Robert Lopshire for the umpteenth time I was struck by the fundamental life lessons found within those pages.

Questioning Who You Are

First the leopard is rejected and tossed out of the zoo, then he is asked by the young girl and boy “What good are you? What can you do?”

Don’t we all ask ourselves those same questions? Again and again at various times in our lives we search to define who we are, our worth, our contributions.

Your Time to Shine

And so the leopard shows all he can do by turning his spots various colours, juggling them, changing their size, etc. He is one talented leopard!

You are too! It is vital to remember that we all have talents and abilities…divine worth. As we come to know ourselves, we can shine by being the genuine article: our best, truest self. Share it with the world. Do your thing!

Finding Your Place

However, the girl and boy regretfully inform a disappointed and discouraged leopard, “But you should not be in the zoo.” Only to show him his true calling, “…the circus is the place for you.”

We also need to find the place we truly belong, somewhere we can shine. We may need a guide, a teacher, a friend to show us the way. That place may also change as we grow and learn, progressing along life’s journey. However, once we are there, we, like the leopard, can bask in the joy of finding our place, of being our best selves.

So I thank Dr Seuss (and my sweet daughter) for making me reflect on these essential life questions.

• What is your mission?
• How can you fulfill it?
• Have you found your place?
• Are you sharing and giving joyfully from the heart?

Mindfulness means “the awareness that emerges through  paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgementally to the unfolding of experiences moment by moment.” (Joh Kabat-Zinn) It is an active process involving staying aware of the external environment and the internal bodily sensations in the present moment without judgement, positive or negative.

Children live in a world of being told what to do: what time to wake up, what to eat, where and when they have various activities such as school, sports, music lessons, etc. This can lead to going through the motions of living without conscious awareness. For example, if you ask them what they ate for lunch they may not be able to tell you. This in not simply because of poor memory, but more likely because they were not paying attention at the time.

Children are often much closer to their experiences than adults. Watch an infant experience anything for the first time; they look at it, touch it, feel it on their face, taste it. Every experience is fresh and new. They live in the moment reacting emotionally and immediately to stimulus, then moving on to the next experience.

However, children also exists on auto-pilot, are easily distracted, are forgetful, lack concentration, have poor self-control and often do not understand themselves or the world. Mindfulness exercises address these concerns and can assist children in living with attention and awareness of themselves and their environment.

Keeping the needs and abilities of children in mind is key when adapting mindfulness exercises to various age groups. Children learn through concrete activities with clear, descriptive instructions. They also enjoy engaging their imaginations and creativity. And don’t forget the power of humour or the need for play.

Be sure to start with brief activities which will lead to success. Beginning with a five minute focus activity will be better than a 15 minute seated meditation.

Like all activities, mindfulness training improves with practice. As they learn mindful techniques, children can practice independently in everyday life: as they walk, as they eat, as they play. Purposefully engaging in their various activities will actively shape the mind helping children to live deeply each moment of daily life.

In the coming months we’ll be posting specific techniques and methods of teaching mindfulness to children and adolescents. Be sure to subscribe (RSS or e-mail) to receive these articles as they are published.

Hooray! The long lazy days of summer have arrived. After having successfully completed another school year you can’t wait to spend time doing nothing. It is important to allow kids unstructured time to renew, refresh and come to know themselves. However, more often than not, sometime during the next few months children will utter the words, “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do!” (add whiny voice as appropriate). Here are some suggestions to keep kids active mentally and physically which also nurture them emotionally. Remember summer is a wonderful time to build relationships by spending time playing, doing, and growing together.

1. Have family members set summer goals. For example: list of books you want to read, things you want to do, places to visit, skills you need to learn.
2. Take your child to the library and sign up for a summer reading program.
3. Have your child help put together a first aid kit that can go with you on your many summer outings.
4. Give your child an inexpensive camera and let them take pictures of all the fun activities you do over the summer. Create a scrapbook of memories.
5. Practice pranayama by blowing bubbles or dandelion heads.
6. Pack a picnic and enjoy eating outdoors.
7. Watch a baseball/football/soccer/beach volleyball game together. Talk about the rules and how they are important.
8. See how many places in your home (not including books) where your child can find words to read.
9. Make paper airplanes and practice airplane pose (Warrior III with arms out to the side).
10. Plant a garden and enjoy tending it throughout the season.
11. Visit a local museum or art gallery.
12. Sketch or paint outdoors: clouds, night sky, trees, a favourite view, an interesting building…let your imagination and creativity soar.
13. Lie on the grass and look at the clouds. Make up stories about the shapes you see.
14. Colour mandalas. Go for a walk and find mandalas in your neighbourhood (flowers, signs, art, stepping stones, etc).
15. Learn geography while watching the World Cup. Find participating countries on a map.
16. Teach your child their personal information: phone number, address, etc. Practice each day.
17. Can your children tell time? Teach them how to read an analog clock with yoga eyes.
18. Check out a book of jokes or riddles. Share one over dinner each day.
19. Create an indoor or outdoor miniature golf course. Play a round or two.
20. Grab a broomstick and hold a limbo contest. Back-bends open the heart and invigorate the body.
21. Add food coloring to a dollop of shaving cream. Let your child use it as finger paint.
22. Make homemade ice-cream. Practice two scoops partner pose.
23. Help your child write a letter or card to a relative or friend telling about summer events.
24. Fly a kite. Practice triangle pose (sometimes called kite pose).
25. Have a pillow fight.
26. Enjoy face painting and then perform face yoga in the mirror and laugh at your funny faces.
27. Read under the stars. Take a blanket and book outside and read with your child by flashlight.
28. At dinner have each family member say something nice about every person at the table.
29. Make puppets out of a paper bag, an old sock or a stick. Put on a puppet show.
30. Cut out pictures from several magazines. Have your child write a story about them.
31. Give your child a bucket of water and some paint brushes. Let her “paint” the sidewalk, fence, house, etc.
32. Find out when the sun sets and rises in your area. Learn how to do Sun Salutations.
33. Look at the stars with your child. Make up new constellations together.
34. Find a local kiddie pool, beach or fountain and go wadding.
35. Play alphabet games with your child. List countries, animals, cars or yoga poses in alphabetical order.
36. Build a fort inside or out using blankets, sheets, boxes, tables, chairs and other items found around the house.
37. Meditate upon the breeze as it ruffles the leaves of your favourite tree.
38. Create a treasure/scavenger hunt and help your kids follow the clues for a fun reward.
39. Play hopscotch.
40. Choose a new recipe. Have fun cooking with your child.
41. Cut out pictures of healthy foods from weekly grocery ads.
42. Discuss the Food Pyramid. Have your child use the pictures from the above activity and make a chart of nutritious choices.
43. Look at family photos. Share stories and remember wonderful moments together.
44. Play with a hula hoop and discover hoop yoga.
45. Make musical instruments from things around your house. Have a concert.
46. Play a card game with your child; Crazy 8s, War, Rummy, Old Maid, Go Fish, Snap all build memory, hand-eye coordination & math skills.
47. Collect bugs and do insect poses such as locust, spider, inchworm, bumble bee lips, etc.
48. Fill water guns, buckets and water balloons and have a water fight.
49. Camp out in the back yard.
50. Create amazing sidewalk art with sidewalk chalk and a little water.
51. Help out at the local SPCA. Learn how to do downward dog pose, cat pose, rabbit pose and other poses for animals at the shelter.
52. Visit an orchard or u-pick farm.
53. Build sandcastles.
54. Feed the ducks at the local pond. Enjoy a great hip opening exercise by walking like a duck.